The Other Schindlers
Page 28
This concurs with my own view. Whatever reasons the rescuers I have written about gave for their actions, I believe in the end they were all humanitarians. We all may have to respond to the persecuted, wounded, hunted, sick and frightened in our midst. We never know what will happen – when we will have to respond. When a fellow human being is attacked, will we regard him as our brother or sister, and, as Yehuda Bauer said, shout ‘I am here’?127
Would you be a rescuer or a bystander?
Notes
1. Monica Porter, e-mail to the author, 17 November 2002.
2. Jaap van Proosdij, letter to the author, 12 January 2004.
3. Andy Marino, American Pimpernel: The man who saved the artists on Hitler’s death list (London: Hutchinson, 1999), p. 337.
4. Agnes Spier, Affected by Atrocity, p. 87.
5. Agnes Hirschi, e-mail to the author, 15 March 2001.
6. Agnes Hirschi, notes of meeting with the author in London, 14 April 2002.
7. Arnold Brown, notes of telephone conversation with the author, 22 November 2001.
8. Jane Marks, The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust (London: Bantam, 1993), p. 253.
9. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 5–7.
10. Michael Burleigh, ‘The Chill of Evil’ book review, Sunday Times Culture magazine, 25 July 2004.
11. Dr Moshe Bejski, ‘The Righteous Among the Nations’, in Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust, ed. Y. Gutman and E. Zuroff (Jerusalem: 1977), based on Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, April 1974, pp. 634–5.
12. Hubert Locke, ‘My Professional and Spiritual Journey’, Perspectives, Autumn 2003, p. 22.
13. Thomas Powers, ‘The everyday life of tyranny’ in The London Review of Books, Vol. 20, No 18, 21 September 2000, pp. 3–7.
14. Hugo Gryn, Chasing Shadows: Memories of a Vanished World (London: Viking, 2000), pp. 236–7.
15. Monia Avrahmi, Flames in the Ashes, written in 1985 for the film. Monia worked at the museum.
16. H.D. Leuner, When Compassion was a Crime: Germany’s Silent Heroes 1933–45 (London: Wolff, 1966), p. 71.
17. Ewa Berberyusz, ‘Guilt by Neglect’ in My Brother’s Keeper? Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust, ed. Antony Polonsky (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 69–71 (70).
18. Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (New York: OUP, 1981), pp. 156–7.
19. Dr Frances Henry, ‘Were All Bystanders Indifferent or Malevolent?’ in Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, Fall 1985, Vol. 1, No 2, pp. 7–10 (8).
20. Victoria J. Barnett, Bystanders; Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 2.
21. Ibid., p. 3.
22. Ibid., p. 4.
23. Ibid., p. 5.
24. Henry, ‘Were All Bystanders Indifferent or Malevolent?’, p. 10.
25. Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (London: Sheldon Press, 1978), pp. 91–2.
26. Bauer, ‘Jew and Gentile: The Holocaust and After’ in The Holocaust in Historical Perspective.
27. Ibid., pp. 77–8.
28. Adam LeBor and Roger Boyes, Surviving Hitler: Choices, Corruption and Compromise in the Third Reich (London: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 306.
29. Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness; Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland (Oxford: OUP, 1987), p. 65.
30. Ibid., pp. 64–6.
31. Ibid., pp. 66–8.
32. Michal Grynberg (ed.), Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto (London: Granta, 2003), p. 19.
33. Irene Gut Opdyke, In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 83.
34. Piotr Wilczek, ‘Michal Glowinski, Czarne Sezony’, Chicago Review, 2000, 3/4, Vol. 46, pp. 383–5 (383).
35. Marci Shore, translator’s Preface to The Black Seasons, sent to the author by e-mail, 8 July 2004, p. 1.
36. Michal Glowinski, The Black Seasons, trans. Marci Shore, p. 77. (I am grateful to Marci for sending me the complete translated manuscript prior to publication in December 2004.)
37. Ibid., p. 79.
38. Michal Glowinski, ‘A Quarter-Hour Passed in a Pastry Shop’, cited in Jan T. Gross’ Neighbours (Woodstock: PUP, 2001), pp. 135, 241.
39. Margaret A. Salinger, Dream Catcher (New York: Washington Square Press, 2000), p. 55.
40. Adina Blady Szwajger, I Remember Nothing More (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), p. 164.
41. Czeslaw Milosz, Campo dei Fiori, 1943, in Holocaust Poetry (London: Fount, 1995), p. 168, verse 5. This Polish poet received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.
42. Szwajger, I Remember Nothing More, p. 87.
43. Barnett, Bystanders, p. 112.
44. Elie Wiesel and Richard D. Heffner, Conversations with Elie Wiesel (New York: Schocken Books, 2001), p. 14.
45. Gerda Haas, letter to the author, 29 April 2000.
46. Henry Walton, letter to the author, 20 August 2000.
47. Ibid., 10 August 2000.
48. Barbara Lovenheim, Survival in the Shadows: Seven Hidden Jews in Hitler’s Berlin (London: Peter Owen, 2002), p. 19.
49. Roman Halter, ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ in Perspectives: Journal of the Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom, Autumn 2003, pp. 10–11.
50. Max Hastings, ‘The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation’ in The Sunday Times, 23 November 2008.
51. Philip Gourevitch, ‘Behold now Behemoth: The Holocaust Memorial Museum: one more American Theme Park’, Harper’s Magazine, July 1993.
52. ‘Reporting the Story of a Genocide’, conversation with Philip Gourevitch, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, 11 February 2000, p. 6.
53. Salinger, Dream Catcher, p. 45.
54. Berel Lang, ‘Uncovering Certain Mischievous Questions About the Holocaust’, Ina Levine Scholar-in-Residence Annual Lecture, 12 March 2002, p. 11.
55. Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion & Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. vii.
56. Ibid., p. viii.
57. Christopher Browning, Tables 1 & 2, Ordinary Men, pp. 191–2.
58. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: 1985), cited by Browning, p. 194.
59. Browning, Ordinary Men, p. xvi.
60. Ibid., p. xx.
61. Ibid., p. 188.
62. Ibid., p. 2.
63. Kristen Renwick Monroe, John Donne’s People, pp. 427–8.
64. Nicholas Wapshott, ‘Archbishop of Canterbury blamed the Jews for excesses of the Nazis’ in The Times, 23 April 2004, p. 11.
65. Arthur Berger, Papers of Ambassador James G. McDonald, Record Rise of Nazism to Creation of Israel, Washington Holocaust Museum Press Release, 22 April 2004, p. 2; www.ushmm.org/museum/press/archive/collections/mcdondiary/htm, accessed 2 May 2004.
66. Ibid.
67. James G. McDonald, Letter of Resignation to the Secretary General of the League of Nations (London: 1935).
68. Ibid., p. 5.
69. ‘Petition in Support of James Grover McDonald’s Letter of Resignation’, undated printed booklet in British Library, ref: 20087 b.38.
70. James G. McDonald, Palestine to the Rescue (London: Jewish Agency, 1943), p. 3. Document in the British Library, ref: 4035.aa.15.
71. James G. McDonald, My Mission in Israel 1948–1951 (London: Gollancz, 1951), p. xi.
72. Ibid., p. iii.
73. House of Lords, Hansard, Column 811–21, 858–60.
74. House of Lords, Columns 820–1.
75. CCJ website, www.ccj.org.uk/history.html, accessed 3 January 2010.
76. David Wyman, ‘Remembering William Temple’ in Jerusalem Post, 20 February 2006.
77. ‘Stein plea to Pius XI’ in Jewish Chronicle, 28 February 2003.
78. John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History
of Pius XII (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 140.
79. Susanne M. Batzdorff, Edith Stein: Selected Writings (Illinois: 1990), pp. 16–7. Ms Batzdorff is Edith Stein’s niece.
80. ‘Stein plea to Pius XI’, 28 February 2003.
81. Batzdorff, Edith Stein, p. 17.
82. Epstein and Rosen, Dictionary of the Holocaust (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997).
83. Abraham H. Foxman and Rabbi Leon Klenicki, The Canonization of Edith Stein: An Unnecessary Problem, www.adl.org/opinion/edith_stein.asp, October 1998, pp. 1–3 (3).
84. Jean Medawar and David Pyke, Hitler’s Gift: Scientists Who Fled Nazi Germany (London: Piatkus, 2002), pp. 53–4.
85. Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 224.
86. Varian Fry, ‘The Massacre of the Jews’ in The New Republic, 21 December 1942.
87. Amy Z. Gottlieb, Men of Vision: Anglo-Jewry’s Aid to Victims of the Nazi regime 1933–1945 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), p. 44.
88. Viscount Templewood, Nine Troubled Years (London: 1954), p. 240.
89. Hansard, 7 July 1938 – Written Answers (Commons), http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1938/jul/07/refugees, accessed 5 January 2010.
90. Hansard, 14 July 1938. William Thorn (1857–1946) had been an MP since 1906.
91. Gottlieb, Men of Vision, p. 45.
92. Dr Ralph Kohn, Nazi Persecution – Britain’s gift: A personal reflection (London: The Royal Society and Cara, May 2009), pp. 6, 7.
93. Lord Beveridge, A Defence of Free Learning (London: OUP, 1959), p. 1.
94. R.M. Cooper, Refugee Scholars: Conversations with Tess Simpson (Leeds: Moorland Books, 1992), p. 33.
95. Duke of Devonshire, letter to the author, 7 April 2000.
96. Notes of the author’s meeting with the Duke of Devonshire in his study at Chatsworth, 25 October 2000.
97. Duke of Devonshire, letter to the author, 13 April 2000.
98. CARA booklet, p. 4.
99. Archie Burnett (ed.) The Letters of A.E. Housman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 2 vols.
100. CARA booklet, pp. 13, 15.
101. Norman Bentwich, They Found Refuge (London: The Cresset Press, 1956), p. 67.
102. BBC Breakfast with Frost, Sir David Frost interviewed Bill Clinton on Sunday 18 July 2004.
103. Robert Walker, ‘Rwanda Remembers the Holocaust’, BBC News, 27 January 2005.
104. Sula and Paul’s stories are on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s website: www.hmd.org.uk.
105. Stefan Lovgren, ‘“Hotel Rwanda” Portrays Hero Who Fought Genocide’, National Geographic News, 9 December 2004, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/ pf/44550124.html.
106. Philip Gourevitch, ‘Reporting the Story of a Genocide’, at Berkeley University, 11 February 2000, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Gourevitch/gourevitch-con4.html.
107. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website: www.hmd.org.uk.
108. Ibid.
109. Etgar Lefkovits, ‘Rwandan genocide survivors look to Israel’ in Jerusalem Post, 3 November 2005.
110. Yifat Bachrach-Ron, ‘Shaping Remembrance: Seminar for Survivors of the Rwandan Genocide’ in Yad Vashem Quarterly Magazine, Vol. 40, Winter 2006.
111. Elie Wiesel, speech at the Darfur Emergency Summit, 14 July 2004 in New York (www.ajws.org), cited in Darfur: A Jewish Response (London: The Pears Foundation, 2007), pp. 11–2.
112. Yom Hashoah is the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Day established by law in 1951 when Ben Gurion was Prime Minister. It is marked on 27 Nisan which falls around April or May.
113. ‘IsraCast: Darfur and the Holocaust’, Sunday 22 April 2007, www.isracast.com/article.aspx?id=546, accessed 15 December 2009.
114. Oona King, ‘With fragile optimism’ in the Guardian, 19 April 2006.
115. Simon Round, interview with James Smith, Jewish Chronicle, 2 September 2009.
116. Rabbi Hugo Gryn, Chasing Shadows: Memories of a Vanished World (London: Viking, 2000), p. 258.
117. Tara McCartney, ‘I kept saying, “Help me, help me.” But no one did’, the Guardian, 4 August 2005.
118. Peter Walker, ‘Police errors contributed to suicide of tormented mother Fiona Pilkington’, the Guardian, 28 September 2009.
119. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), p. 71.
120. Elie Wiesel and Richard D. Heffner, Conversations with Elie Wiesel (New York: Schocken Books, 2001), p. 14.
121. Eugene Heimler, Resistance Against Tyranny (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), p. xi.
122. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), p. 151.
123. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (Tavistock Publications, 1974).
124. Since the famous Genovese case was reported in the New York Times in 1964, several articles have suggested the case was largely misrepresented because of inaccuracies in the article.
125. J.M. Darley & B. Latané, ‘Bystander Apathy’ in American Scientist, 1969, No 57, pp. 244–68.
126. Kristen Renwick Monroe, ‘John Donne’s People’ in Journal of Politics, Vol. 53, No 2, May 1991, pp. 394–433.
127. Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, pp. 91–2.
Appendix I
RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE
NATIONS & YAD VASHEM
Yad Vashem was created by the Knesset in 1953 as the Jewish people’s living memorial to the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It was intended to be a world centre for four main aspects: documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem is today a dynamic and vital place of intergenerational and international encounter. At the same time, one of its principal roles is to demonstrate the gratitude of the State of Israel and the Jewish people to those non-Jews who helped rescue Jews in that darkest time. Since 1963 the authority has run its worldwide Righteous Among the Nations scheme. This is run by a public commission headed by a Supreme Court judge.
Moshe Bejski, who as we have already seen was on Schindler’s list, emigrated to Israel after the war and became a judge. He told no one of his wartime experiences until, in 1961, he gave evidence to the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. As a result he became involved with commemoration and subsequently joined the Commission of the Righteous. He soon became president and wrestled with the moral dilemma of who should be awarded the ‘Righteous’ title and who denied. He ensured that his own rescuer was honoured but this was problematic as there was a philosophical divide over which rescuers were considered worthy.
Apparently there was an issue over honouring Schindler because of his lifestyle. The original chair of the Righteous Commission, Judge Moshe Landau, was looking for heroes with no flaws, who had saved Jews and had a virtuous lifestyle. Bejski, with his close relationship to Schindler, knew him ‘warts and all’, and was looking for ordinary flawed people. He said to Schindler’s detractors that had he not been the type of man he was, he would not have had the verve to achieve his outrageous rescue. He defended other ‘dubious’ rescuers – a prostitute who served Nazi officers but hid Jews and the SS officer George Duckwitz, the trade attaché in the German Embassy in Copenhagen. As soon as he heard of the plan to deport the Danish Jews he told the Danish authorities, even though he was a Nazi.1 However, Dr Paldiel, former Director of the Department of the Righteous, has argued that Avner was incorrect in his article when he claimed Landau was looking for the perfect Righteous. He claims Landau’s objections to Schindler ‘stemmed from Schindler’s forceful takeover of two Jewish firms in Krakow during the initial period of the Nazi occupation, and even threatening force to bring this about’.2
Gabriele Nissim, an Italian journalist, spent three years visiting Bejski, who died in March 2007 aged 86, while writing his book Divine Grace. He told me about Bejski’s theory of the ‘inherent consistency of the rescuer’s gesture, which has to be triggered by a genuinely humanitarian spirit’.3
The Yad Vashem website gives very full details about the award
of the title ‘Righteous Among the Nations’. The awards could be deemed somewhat arbitrary, in as much as they are dependent on survivors telling Yad Vashem about the rescuer and providing the appropriate documentation. It is a tragic fact that, inevitably, it is only the participants in successful rescues who can become involved in the process. There were undoubtedly many, many courageous rescuers whose attempts failed and consequently they and their charges were discovered and paid with their lives.
Most Righteous were recognised as a result of requests made by the Jews they rescued. But sometimes survivors could not overcome the difficulties of dealing with the painful past and didn’t take any action. Others were not aware of the programme or were unable to apply, particularly those who lived behind the Iron Curtain during the years of communism in Eastern Europe. In other cases, the survivors may have died before they could make the request. Titles and medals, however, are still being awarded even now, sixty-five years after the end of the war, as with Soeur St Cybard, recognised in November 2009.
Notes
1. Avner Shapiro, ‘Beisky’s court of the righteous’, www.haaretz.com, 17 April 2007.
2. Mordecai Paldiel, Haaretz, Talkback, 17 April 2007.
3. Moshe Bejski in the Italian Parliament, Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide, GARIWO website: www.forestadeigiusti.net/attivita.
Appendix II
TABLES
TABLE 1: DETAILS OF RESCUERS AND INFORMANTS
KEY:
Face-to-face interview; notes made during interview, typed afterwards and corroborated with interviewee.
Unpublished memoirs or memoirs and letters; followed up with correspondence or telephone. Notes made and filed.
Video; follow-up as in 2.
Correspondence by letter or e-mail; follow-up as in 2.
Book or newspaper articles; follow-up as in 2.
* Was in Blackburn when information was provided. Now in Belgium.
** Rescued – rescuers not known.
TABLE 2: RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS AND NATIONAL POPULATIONS