Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  The fate of Prinzenthal is unknown. Poland was one of Eastern Europe’s most anti-Semitic countries. Even so some Gentile Poles offered refuge. From December 1942 a secret Council for Assistance to the Jews in Warsaw did whatever it could to help Semitic Poles, although everyone knew that any Pole caught helping Jews would be tortured and executed. At Szczebrzeszyn a Polish peasant who hid six Jews in his barn was shot to death – as were his wife and two children, a six-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy.

  Theresienstadt: The Children’s Quarters, September 1942–May 1944

  RUTH KLUGER

  Approximately 140,000 Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto. Usually 40,000–50,000 were imprisoned at any one time in a fortress intended to hold, at most, 3,500. Fifteen thousand children passed through Theresienstadt. Although forbidden by the SS to do so, they continued their education there.

  The children’s barracks were the former officers’ quarters – two large yellow buildings flanking the church, which was closed in our time. They had numbers: L410 and L414. The Jews who ran the camp had put the Czech children into the first building and the German-speaking children into the second. I came to live in L414, in a room for the youngest group of girls. L414 is the only one of my many addresses which I have never forgotten. We were assured that I had been lucky to get in, because there wasn’t enough space for all the eligible children.

  At first, however, I didn’t feel all that lucky. We were thirty girls in a room where two or three would have been comfortable. This wasn’t our dormitory, it was our home, the only place we had. We even washed there with cold water which we fetched from the hallway in basins. Soap was scarce and treasured. In cold weather our teeth chattered in concert. There was a warm shower in the basement, and every two weeks we could use it. The hot water would barely come on before it would go off again. You had to be on the ball to make use of it. We slept in three-tiered bunks on straw mattresses, one or two girls per berth, depending on the width of the bed. Those were my first weeks of protracted hunger; in Vienna I had had enough to eat. There is little to say about chronic hunger: it’s always there and is boring to talk about. Hunger gnaws at and weakens you. It takes up mental space which could otherwise be used for thinking. What can you do with your food ration to stretch it? We acted as if the skim milk we were rationed was whipping cream and beat it into a foam, a popular pastime. (I think of this pastime dreamily when I order latte.) It could take hours, because it’s difficult to make skim milk foam with a fork. We were not sorry for ourselves: we laughed a lot, we were noisy and full of beans, like other children our age, and we thought we were stronger than the ‘pampered’ free kids.

  There was always a long line in front of the toilets, for there were only two on each floor, in a building that held hundreds of children. I tried to figure out when there was the least traffic, but the problem – everyone’s perennial problem – was diarrhoea. During the first weeks I was the outsider, the newcomer who had few social skills. I was stupid and clumsy, and the other girls laughed at me. I don’t know which of my reclusive habits made me the butt of their jokes, for who know how she appears to others? I must have seemed peculiar, coming out of my enforced company with hospital patients, nurses, and the grown-ups who shared our apartment. I was used to amusing myself, mostly with books, and mostly adult books at that. I wasn’t used to adapting to a group of peers and coevals, and at first I just wanted to go back to my mother. When she came to visit, I ran after her and desperately begged her to take me along. But she simply left, very quickly, without explanation or advice, leaving me to cope as best I could with my disappointment.

  So I turned to the group, and soon I learned to become part of it. At bottom I wasn’t too unhappy to escape from my mother’s contradictory demands, and it soon dawned on me that it might be easier to live with other kids. I observed the behaviour of the girls around me and saw that it wouldn’t be too hard to please them. In the end I developed a gift for friendship, which I believe I still have ...

  The administration of L414 was in the hands of youngsters who employed other youngsters. A sixteen-year-old was in charge of our room. These half-grown children made a point of creating some group spirit and turned our forced community into part of the youth movement, be it Socialist or Zionist. Either one was an antidote to fascism, but Zionism was the be-all and end-all of our political awareness, and I was swept up in it, because it simply made sense. It was the way out of an unendurable diaspora, it had to work, and besides, my father had been a member of a Zionist youth organization back in Vienna when he was a student. A land without a people for a people without a land – a catchy motto. Turning Jew boys into young Jews – a phrase from our prophet, Theodor Herzl, who was not above using the derogatory lingo of our enemies, if it served his cause. To till the soil and become a beacon for mankind. Show the world an example of a just commonwealth. We learned all we could about the history of Zionism and about the land of Palestine, which we called Eretz Israel. We sang Zionist songs and danced the hora for hours on end in the barracks yard. Our elders (by a few years) addressed us as haverim and haverot (comrades, male and female) and when going to bed we didn’t wish each other Gute Nacht, but Leila tov, one of the few Hebrew tags we had learned.

  Because we lived in this children’s home and had ideas about the future, we thought of ourselves as an elite. We formed haughty groups and were proud of our commitment to each other and our ideals. And yet I have largely forgotten my haverot. Sometimes a name floats to the surface from the depths of forgetfulness where my roommates lie buried: there was a German girl, Renate, and I learned that the name means born again, and that she owed the name to a sister who had died as an infant. She was dark and tall. Another girl from Germany was petite and delicate and knew how to step dance. She was as sweet as her name, Melissa.

  Of course I haven’t forgotten Hanna, who lives today in Australia. She was from Vienna and we became best friends. Her father was a mathematician, had wild hair, and was the author of unpublished mythological stories. Hanna showed me one of them about an earth goddess, Hertha. I was impressed by his ability to write so many pages in a rather impenetrable language, and by the fact that he was both a scientist and a writer. I envied Hanna for having a father.

  It was common for two girls to bond and share everything. Food was precious, and bread was therefore a kind of currency. Sometimes in a supermarket I have a flashback and marvel that bread is so cheap. My mother traded her wedding ring, soon and without much ado, for bread. She has never been sentimental, except to impress an audience, not when it really mattered. (She was so right: it was the murder of a husband, not the loss of a ring, that ended her marriage. And at least she got something for it before the Nazis took it.) Once she brought me some extra food, and I shared it with Hanna. When she found out, she was angry: she had saved it from her own ration. ‘It was for you, just for you.’ ‘But you told me that it was extra.’ ‘I said that only so you would take it.’ Once again, a guilt-producing double blind. I had not only eaten my mother’s food, which she needed as much as everyone else, but I had spread it around and felt good about it. Again, an insoluble dilemma: what belongs to you absolutely, so that you can give it away, and what is yours with strings attached? Such questions change in quality, not just quantitatively, where no one has much to give. Gift giving is a human impulse, generosity a function of social behaviour which doesn’t disappear when you have virtually nothing to give. My mother knew this, she liked to give, and she was actually quite fond of this girl. She helped her after the war and wrote to her as long as she was still able to write letters.

  We stored our few belongings either in our bunks or in small, open pigeonholes. Theft was virtually unheard of. We were far too well socialized, and besides, it could get you expelled from L414. In which case you would have had to move in with your parents, a depressing prospect, given how the parents lived. You could also get expelled for drinking the contaminated water from the pump
in the yard, but I did just that a few times when I was thirsty, and was more afraid of being caught than of getting sick. Later in life, nothing offended me more than the generalization that the camps turned us all into brutal egotists, and whoever survived them must be morally defective. Again, the blithe refusal to look closely, to make distinctions, to reflect a little.

  The Jewish camp administrations are today a bone of contention among historians and others. Was it necessary that the prisoners help the Germans maintain order, or wasn’t it collaboration with the enemy? From my child’s perspective, I saw, ‘What would have happened to us if the Jews had done nothing to reduce the chaos, if there hadn’t been these children’s homes which they organized and ran within the purview of Nazi directives?’ At the same time, I add that Jewish criticism of the forced community at Theresienstadt is nothing new and began in the ghetto itself. The outsider’s tendency, presumed innate to Jews, to judge, to question, to uncover hidden motives, which has been a thorn in the side of gentiles for centuries, not because it is immoral (the Nazis called it degenerate and corrupting), but because it is irritating, was as present in the ghetto as discontent with the Chosen People is present in the books of the Biblical prophets. You can bring up children to develop the critical spirit, which is how I was educated. Very early in my childhood there were some brothers and friends of my father who would come in the door and immediately provoke me with jokes and comments just barely comprehensible to a child. These guys didn’t expect me to be a good, shy little girl, they expected me to answer with quick repartee. If I succeeded, they would give me credit with some brief phrase, like ‘just so’. Licence to be impertinent, or education for egalitarian thought? Take your pick. In Theresienstadt criticism was not only permitted but a matter of course. So I was not surprised that there were critical voices about the children’s homes. Some said our games were too similar to the games of the Hitler Youth. You had to ponder this disturbing charge, and you might not come to any conclusion, but it kept you awake and alert. There were stormy open discussions, a boiling kettle without a lid.

  Looking back, the treatment of the children in Theresienstadt seems to me to have been exemplary, with one exception. That was the separation of the Czech children from the German speakers. The Czechs in L410 looked down on us because we spoke the enemy’s language. Besides, they really were the elite, because they were in their own country, and many Czechs had connections to the outside, which we didn’t have. I know some Czech survivors who claim they were never hungry in Theresienstadt, while I never got enough to eat. I think the young Jews in charge should have made an effort to reduce the hostility of one group of Jewish kids towards another.

  Approximately 90 per cent of the children who passed through Theresienstadt perished, either from disease and malnutrition in the ghetto, or from gassing in an extermination camp. Ruth Kluger survived both Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

  Escape from a Train Bound for the Camps, Franco-German Border, 7 November 1942

  LEO BRETHOLZ

  Leo Bretholz was one of the many Austrian and German Jews who fled the Reich westwards, to the Low Countries and then France, to find that everywhere he went the German Army followed. He crossed into Switzerland in September 1942, only to be expelled. On being sent back into France, Bretholz was held initially at Drancy, the infamous transit camp outside Paris, before being put on a train to a camp in the East.

  The moans of the elderly, the screams of the children, the ‘Sha! Sha!’ ‘Hush! Hush!’ plea of a mother to her infant, were being drowned by the clatter of the death train as it moved through the French countryside of contrasting bucolic beauty and serenity.

  My thoughts flashed back to my childhood. Then, the sound of a train had that soothing, even romantic, quality – and it made me dream of faraway places I would have liked to visit. At this time, however, it was striking a note of fateful doom and finality. The gamut of emotions accompanying the rattle of the train ranged from hysterical cries of despair by many, to absolute silence of fatalistic resignation by others.

  The scenes were unbearable to the witness, who had all intentions to keep a clear mind and a cool grasp of the situation. We needed to keep our senses intact, as our decision was made to escape before the train would reach the devil’s enclave, Nazi Germany itself.

  Two parallel iron bars in the rectangular opening in the corner of the cattle car represented the only obvious obstacle to our escape. We had to go to work immediately. The mood of the occupants provided the impetus, and set the stage. Many among them shouted words of encouragement. Our decision would give them some measure of hope, if only symbolically.

  We took off our sweaters, soaked them in human waste, wrung them out, thereby giving the fabric greater tensile strength. We then wrapped them around the iron bars, tourniquet-style. Working feverishly, we applied that twisting method until the bars showed some inward bending. Relaxing the tourniquet, we tried with our hands to bend the bars in the other – outward – direction. The bars began to give.

  We repeated that process for several hours, until the bars were loose enough in the frame, we were able to bend them at will. Having achieved this, we put the bars back into their normal position. All we had to do now was to wait for darkness to provide the cover for our escape. It was now early afternoon, and our attempt was only a matter of a few hours away.

  By evening, the din which had emanated from the ghost-like forms in the car throughout the day had somewhat died down. We were now six or seven hours into our journey to oblivion, and many had dozed off, collapsed from exhaustion or fainted. An old lady on crutches – one of her legs had been amputated below the knee – pointed a crutch towards us, faintly uttering the French words: ‘Courrez, courrez et que Dieu vous garde!’ ‘Run and may God watch over you!’ This woman’s gesture of encouragement keeps flashing back to me through the veil of time. I shall never forget her words, or her face ...

  It was a dreary, raw and cold November evening. My body was shivering, my mouth was dry, my cheeks felt feverish ...

  We chose the moment of escape very carefully. It had to come at a time when the train would slow down for a curve. It also had to be timed correctly to avoid the floodlights which the guards were aiming over the entire length of the concave curvature of the train during the period of reduced speed.

  At the propitious moment we bent the bars into the spread-apart position. I lifted myself, rump first, out of the opening, holding on to the ledge above it on the outside. The rest of my body followed. My right leg, testingly, reached around the corner for the coupling which joined our car with the next. I found it and was safely standing on it, holding on to one of the rungs of the iron steps leading to the roof of the car.

  My friend followed, using the same method. The train, at that point, was going full speed as the two of us were standing on the couplings between cars. Something had held up our friend who was part of the escape plan, for it took him some time to lift himself on to the opening. As he appeared to have reached the outside, the train went into a slight curve, slowing down as we had expected.

  At this split second, we had to take our chances and leap before the beams of the floodlights would fall upon us. We jumped. We tumbled into a ravine and held our breath for what seemed like an eternity. Our friend never joined us. He must have been frightened or he had been caught in the glare of the lights and discovered.

  The Hoefle Telegram, 11 January 1943

  SS-STURMBANNFÜHRER HERMANN HOEFLE

  This message was an intercepted ‘Enigma’ signal, decoded by British analysts at Bletchley Park. The bare figures and letters do not do justice to its implications; it records the arrivals of Jews over the previous fortnight, together with a cumulative total, for five camps in Action Reinhard, the Nazis’ programme for the extermination of Polish Jewry following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. ‘L’ is Lublin Majdanek, ‘B’ is Belzec, ‘S’ is Sobibór, and ‘T’ is Treblinka.

  State secret! From the Rei
ch Security Main Office, for the attention of SS-Obersturmbannführer EICHMANN, BERLIN

  13/15. olq de omq 10005 83 234 250

  State secret! To the commander of the Security Police, for the attention of SS-Obersturmbannführer heim, krakow. Re 14-day report reinhard. Reference: radio telegram from there Recorded arrivals until 31 December 42, L 12761, B 0, S 515, T 10335 totalling 23611. Situation [gap] 31 December 42, L 24733, B 434508, S 101370, T 71355, totalling 1274166

  SS and police leader of Lublin, hoefle, Sturmbannführer

  The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 1943

  SAMUEL ZYLBERSZTEJN

  From the outset, there was resistance by Europe’s Jews to Nazi terror. This resistance increased with the knowledge that the Third Reich had unambiguously determined on the destruction of the Jewish race within its sphere of influence. Underground resistance groups, usually led by Bundists or left-wing Zionists, formed in most ghettos, but with few arms they had little real chance of stopping deportations; their intention was more, as one Jewish resistance fighter put it, ‘to bring down as many Germans as possible’. By dying fighting, the resistance gave heart to Jews throughout Europe.

  Of all the ghetto revolts, that in Warsaw over April–May 1943 is most famous. When the liquidation of the ghetto began on 19 April 1943, some 750 Jewish men and women of the Jewish Fighting Organization rose up against 2,000 Waffen-SS and their Ukrainian auxiliaries.

  Finally the Nazis decided Warsaw must be Judenrein; all Jews had to leave. They devised a perfidiously clever tactic of murder, securing the help of the shop owners. The slave dealer Schultz went from house to house delivering his pre-planned ‘sermons’. ‘My workers! Come out to the country with me and we’ll work there. I will take care of you. From now on you will no longer be considered Jews but workers in a German armament plant. Stick with me and you’ll survive the war.’