My friend. Their angel.
The group moves on to the House of Silence. As we will do at every site we visit, we pause and reflect. Pauline, with tears, leads the small service. Elaine, our tour leader, asks me to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish as candles are lit.
Mourners leave notes here. In this small room of reflection and remembrance, the Queen of England herself paid her first and only visit to a concentration camp, seventy years after the liberation. Here she found a handwritten lament:
If I could live my life again, I would find you sooner.
Outside, a single stone marks that Anne Frank and her sister Margot lie here somewhere, their youthful promise snuffed out in those terrible weeks just before the liberation. But where they rest, no one will ever really be sure.
Today, I feel the presence of the dead as I take this all in, moving slowly through the heath and barrows of Bergen–Belsen, steps in a long journey back into the past and reuniting American soldiers with the people whom they saved from the edge of the abyss. This journey will carry me from my small hometown to the halls of power at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. and the New York State Capitol; to the cities of the American South and to Canada; to horrors and wonders in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland; and to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, a passage that in many respects should have never happened to a small-town American boy and teacher like me.
But it did.
CHAPTER TWO
The Last Transport
Our group at Bergen–Belsen has lunch in the cafeteria and Bernd Horstmann asks us if we would like to see the exhibit on the evacuation transports. This is not our first meeting; Bernd has been working with survivors and their families for many years at the Bergen–Belsen Memorial and all over the world. As the Custodian of the Book of Names, it is his responsibility to help reconstruct the data destroyed by the SS as the British forces moved in. To date, out of the 120,000 who passed through the gates, less than half that number have been identified. The preface to the two-volume edition of the Book of Remembrance, which lists the name, birthdate, place of birth, and date of arrival at Bergen–Belsen, as well as the place and date of liberation, reads as follows:
I will give them an everlasting name,
That shall not be cut off.
(Isaiah 56:5)
Dedicated
To the children, women, and men
Who were humiliated, tormented and murdered
In Bergen–Belsen.
Bernd shows us to the gallery where the new exhibits reside. There, we discuss the circumstances of the evacuation of the camp and the creation of the new exhibit; his colleague Christian Wolpers had stumbled upon the photographs that the liberators had taken, which I had written about and placed online in 2002. As the afternoon winds down, we board the bus for Hannover, where we will pick up the train for Berlin.
After each of these confrontations with evil, we teachers must come to grips with what we have experienced, trying to formulate our pedagogical points of view. Tour leader Steve remarks that for him, Bergen–Belsen is sacred ground. One teacher is upset and even angry at the absence of structures in the camp, finding it impersonal and cold. Some agree that our first visit to an authentic site of a concentration camp leaves many of the 1945 horrors to be imagined. I chime in and say that it is important to know all of the history that we learned there, that it is overwhelming, but at the end of the day it is maybe not enough to say you understand it. We can’t. And it is also important to try to make sense of the history that came after liberation. The barracks had to be put to the torch. The former prisoners, themselves, residing here after the war, waiting for permission to move on and rebuild their lives, put up the first signage and memorials to the dead.
It’s a heavy day. At Hannover on a Friday evening, we dine at the train station in small groups. In the crush to board the proper rail cars, we almost lose some of our group. I can’t find a seat, but a German man, seeing my trouble, motions for me to take his place. I settle in, thanking him. The train picks up speed and glides silently and comfortably through the picturesque countryside. I look up at the monitor and see that the next stop is Brunswick (Braunschweig), on the way to Magdeburg, before heading to Berlin. Then it dawns on me. I am following roughly the same route as the transport from that April in 1945; what takes us less than an hour will take the Bergen–Belsen evacuees nearly a week.
Peter Lantos, from Hungary, was just six years old, and accompanied by his mother. His father had died in Bergen–Belsen.
Peter Lantos
In the distance there was the sound of muffled explosions, and excitement ran through the train at the possibility that the Allies might arrive to capture the station before the train could depart. But the muffled noise was only the echoes of far-away raids, and after long hours of waiting through the night, the train finally pulled out of Bergen station the next morning.
It was a long journey. The train travelled slowly, rarely gathering pace. Frequently it came to a halt, often on the open tracks, occasionally at small stations. Our food, however carefully rationed by my mother, did not last long—we were hungry and thirsty. The compartments were full, and there was not the remotest chance of stretching out. Nevertheless, the train was more comfortable than those that had delivered us to Bergen–Belsen. We were travelling with the aimlessness of a child's toy train, meandering round the same track again and again. The train changed directions several times, and we recognized places we had passed earlier. But if at first we were bored by the slow progress and monotonous rhythm of the train, we soon found excitement.
The guards accompanying us had anti-aircraft guns. These they fired at low-flying Allied aircraft which zoomed menacingly close to the train. We were terrified thinking that they were going to bomb us, mistaking our train for a transport carrying German soldiers. Suddenly, we heard explosions.
Panic broke out. Everyone scrambled to leave and find safety under the trees, away from the track. We were no exception. Under the shelter of the trees, my mother again took me through a macabre but sensible procedure. She had already rehearsed me several times on what I should do and say in case I survived and she did not. I had to repeat my name and my parents' names and our address at home as identification information I already knew. As a further safety measure, she introduced me to other women who would look after me should she die—a reciprocal arrangement made by a couple of mothers who agreed to become guardians of each other's children. But we survived the air raids, which ceased after a short while; the pilots must have realized the nature of the train's cargo.
Fred ‘Fritz’ Spiegel
Very soon the doors were closed, and it became quite dark as there were no windows, merely a small opening near the top. Then the train began moving, traveling slowly eastward, or so some of the people with us seemed to think when they looked out the opening at the top.
This journey continued for about six days. The train stopped many times to let other trains pass, and we were even bombed by the Allies a couple of times. Luckily the bombs missed us, but I remember one particularly heavy bombardment near the town of Stendal.
Unfortunately, the bombs were not the only danger. Many people died on the way, either of typhus or starvation.
Ariela Lowenthal Mayer Rojek
In one of the stations, we saw a cargo train carrying beets. A good friend of mine convinced me to go steal the beets, and with my last strength, I went. The beets tasted like the Garden of Eden, and my aunt said they tasted like melon. Of course, I didn’t remember how melon tasted.
The train continued to some place and stopped—on one side there was a forest and on the other side the Elbe River. I remember the place exactly as it looks in Dr. Gross’s[*] photograph. American planes flew low above us and apparently took pictures that showed people and children. The German guards that were still there to watch over us started to shoot with machine guns at the planes. Our people asked them to stop shooting, but they refused. We got off the t
rain and hid under the wheels.
My aunt sat with me under the wheels and took out a little notebook that contained the names and addresses of our relatives in America. She told me to learn all of this by heart because you never know who the bullet will hit, and when the war would end, I should contact these relatives and ask them to take me in. I listened to her and learned everything by heart. Even today, I remember some of these names and addresses.
Leslie Meisels
Those red beets were the only food in the six days while we were on the train, to stay alive. The clothing, the stench, was indescribable. When you needed to go, [by the time you got to] that five-gallon pail, which was already overflowing, it was too late, and the other pail with our water was already empty. It was horrible—screaming, crying, and all the noise—and the stench—indescribable.
Agnes Fleischer Baker
You get used to this kind of awful thing. At first, when we were out of a comfortable existence, you couldn't get to the ‘bathroom,’ and you had to pee your pants, then, at first, you thought, that's kind of normal. It's a pee. I can't elaborate on that. See, I didn't see myself as stinking and as disgusting, [but] I had a hunch that I was stinking and disgusting. When I think back on the smell, it was really, really terrible.
Aliza Melamed Vitis–Shomron
We traveled by train for six days. The train moved little, it remained standing a great deal. The frontline was everywhere and chaos all around us. German families fled with their belongings in all directions in carts and on foot. Have they been encircled? What a cheerful thought! Our leaders and various oracles, experts in solving riddles and interpreting rumors, say that the Germans want to use us as hostages. Besides our group, hundreds of Dutch, Greek, and Hungarian Jews are with us on the train, all supposed to be exchanged, from the special camps in Bergen–Belsen. In the meantime, the most important thing is to get a hold of food.
During one of the stops, I saw people jumping from the train and rolling down. I also wanted to do so, but my sister was quicker and out already. I joined her. We rolled down the high embankment to a wonderful pile of animal feed, yellow turnips. I filled up my dress feverishly, grabbing as much as I could carry, and climbed back. But at the moment when all the children and youth began climbing up, guards on the roof of the train opened fire on us. The Germans were apparently surprised and reacted late. I ran and lost my sister. I didn’t see a thing, but I was determined to get the turnips into the carriage. The bullets whistled around us, but I didn’t drop the turnips. I didn’t even look back to see who fell and who survived. Only on reaching the top, under cover, did I look back in great fear, in search of my sister Mirka. She stood up next to me, trembling but smiling. We had food for the rest of the journey.
Leslie Meisels
On the sixth day of our journey, April 12, a Thursday afternoon, we were about fifteen kilometers from Magdeburg, a city on the Elbe River about halfway between Berlin and Hannover. The train stopped on a curve near a bridge over the river, which wasn’t unusual, since a red light frequently stopped the train for a short period. This time, however, there wasn’t any movement. We later found out that the Nazis had devised a new plan—they wanted to position the train on the bridge and blow it up so that they could both kill us and stop the Allied advance. Somehow, though, the engineer and his assistant had gotten wind of the plan. They, too, must have heard the rumbling explosions from the front line and realized that the end of the war was imminent. Not wanting to die, they just ran off while the train was stopped at the red light, leaving the train and its cargo behind.
Steve Barry
Since I was not locked into a cattle car, I could open the door of the third-class passenger car where we were. So, I see the SS changing into civilian clothes and disappearing toward the town that was nearby somewhere; we didn’t see the town. So, they disappeared, they changed. We saw them changing into civilian clothes because they disappeared in civilian clothes.
I could have gotten off the train, but we were still in the middle of Germany. At that moment, we were extremely weak; I know because just getting on and off the train, or just walking, or making normal moves, was quite an effort because by that time, I weighed ninety pounds, so obviously I lost a great deal of weight, and I lost a great deal of muscle and everything else that goes with it. Fortunately, I was twenty. Had I been younger or much older, I probably wouldn’t have made it, I would guess. And the way we looked, I don’t think we could have gotten too far. An escape was really just not possible, because they could shoot you on sight anyway. So we hadn’t even thought of going too far from the train. What we were thinking of was trying to get some food. We knew that there were a couple of passenger cars where the SS guards were staying. My two friends and I, the first chance we had, got out of the car and walked over to these two railroad cars, hoping to find something to eat. Well, unfortunately, we didn’t. What we did find were rifles, ammunition, overcoats, German uniforms; no food.
Through their weariness, Barry and his friends saw that the Germans had returned.
Mounted SS troops came around, rode by the train, and started to yell, ‘Raus, Raus, get out of the train! Get out of the cars!’ And we saw them putting up machine gun nests. So obviously, even at that last moment, they were still trying to murder us.
Leslie Meisels
After a while, the guards opened all the doors, and the commandant ordered all males above the age of twelve to get out of the wagons and go over to a little embankment across from the train. Then, while we were facing our respective cattle wagons that contained our family members, a machine gun was set up in front of each wagon.
Irene Bleier Muskal
April 12, 1945. We now reached the most crucial hour of our life during World War II under German Nazi rule. From each and every truck, a Jewish leader was asked to appear before a high-ranking SS officer, who issued a disastrous order that we immediately carried out. All men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were to line up in columns of five in front of the cattle trucks, with the angels of death fluttering around.
A paralyzing darkness seized me. They were going to gun down the men with machine guns in front of the cattle cars, and then blow up the rest of us—babies, small children, women, and the elderly—in the cattle cars. That was the decree that the Nazi beast devised when its hour of doom came—our SS captors decided to annihilate us all.
CHAPTER THREE
Darkness Descends
A world away on the East Coast of the United States, a breaking news bulletin interrupted radio programming around dinnertime on Thursday, April 12. Americans were stunned to learn of the sudden death of the president of the United States as he sat at a table at his private retreat in Warms Springs, Georgia, earlier that afternoon. How could this be? The only president that many had ever known was now dead at age 62, just as Allied troops were poised to stab at the heart of the Reich.
In the early morning hours of Friday, April 13, 1945, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels reported the news to Hitler. Deep in the Führerbunker as Soviet forces prepared to assault the city, Hitler heard Goebbels assure him that a turning point was at hand, that this was ‘written in the stars,’ just as previous astrological readings had also foretold the start of the war and previous victories.[11] To his Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, Hitler proclaimed, ‘Here we have the great miracle that I have always foretold! The war is not lost! Read it! Roosevelt is dead!’ His jubilation was short-lived. Later that same day, news would reach him that Vienna had fallen to the Soviets as the Red Army completed its preparations for the final siege on the capital. In desperation, Hitler announced to besieged Berliners that Soviet troops would be met with ‘mighty artillery waiting to greet the enemy.’
Imperial Germania lay in shambles. The Reich that would last a thousand years was in its final death throes. And millions of Germans and their collaborators were lost in astonished, terrible wonderment at the height from which they had fallen so precipitously. It was not s
upposed to be like this. Hitler had promised greatness and the vanquishing of their enemies. And there were no bigger enemies of the Germanic peoples than the Jews and their infection.
There were no secrets. Hitler laid out his plans all along as he developed the party platform. Simple answers to complex problems. But while the insidiousness of the invective struck fear in the hearts of the fractional minority of Germans who were Jews, no one could predict just how far this madness would go. No one could believe that in a short six years, two-thirds of European Jewry would be murdered by the Nazis and their willing accomplices.
How could this happen? Like many infections, the terror incubated slowly and innocuously from the dregs of society; from the back alleys of Munich rose up a movement that proclaimed glory and greatness, revenge and revolution. Setbacks would occur, but struggle is the father of all things, after all. From the pain and the suffering a new race of mankind would emerge. The weak would give way to the strong, and from the blood of the martyrs of the movement Germany would be purified and reconciled on its destined plane of glory. Sieg Heil; All hail, victory.
January 30, 1933. Adolf Hitler, with the win of his Nazi party in the Reichstag election of November 1932, comes to power in the depths of the Great Depression. Like his future adversary Franklin Roosevelt, he promises a platform of change and gives hope to myopic millions. Fearing ‘Red Revolution,’ they reward him with dictatorial powers following the torching of the Reichstag. With the death of the aged president Von Hindenburg, the office of president and chancellor is combined. Der Führer, the Leader, is cultivated as a god.
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