This Holocaust Author's Auschwitz Blog

Testimony and Remembrance!

” ..Opening ..Bible at random I find this:- ‘ Lord is my high tower’ I am sitting on my rucksack in ..middle of a full freight car. Father ..Mother ..Mischa ..a few cars away. ..departure came without warning ..sudden special orders from The Hague. ..left ..camp singing ..Father ..Mother firmly ..calmly ..Mischa ..too. We shall be travelling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. Friends left behind will still be writing to Amsterdam ..perhaps you will hear something from them. Or from my last letter from camp. Good-bye for now from ..four of us.” Etty Hillesum.

Ettie Hillesum offers us a Remembrance which is so important on many levels! With regard to the 6,000,000 Murdered Jews of The Holocaust, Ettie was just one amongst that volume of Remembrance Memory which is clearly not enough! It is essential that we retrieve for History the exact detail which accounts for all of those Jews who were Murdered. For those Jews whose Names are Forgotten we cannot retrieve their identities! For those Jews whose Names are Missing, we may never find them and for those Jews whose Names are Unknown to us all, we have lost an integral part of our own History. We need to make the effort to remember what we can recall of them. From those who knew them or have information pertinent to their having passed this way, it is ever more urgent that we add to the detail of what is known of all 6,000,000 of those Murdered Jews of The Holocaust.

Especially for me, and in Tokele’s name, my work is for the many Infant Jewish Children, who hadn’t been allowed to live long enough to have enjoined the community of life or for some who have had no Name given to them. We need to afford a Memory that belongs to all of these Children so that History will know them! Jewish Babies, Infants, Children not even given enough life to qualify them an individual footprint in our time, we should recall their passing. All of these Children are fixed securely amongst the 6,000,000 Innocent Jewish People who are lost to us. Their Murders, in an account which defies what the Past in History expects, in a lesson we must learn for the future, shames us today for our failure in that past.

Tomorrow is that future, and while having barely scratched the surface of The Holocaust account, what can we deliver to Tomorrow that will be a positive gain? We know the personnel involved in the Murders. We know Hitler exempted himself from the litany of accusation by a death in his bunker. With a supposed ideology that he was cowardly enough to not dare face scrutiny over, Hitler cheated both his accusers and the German people. We clearly know the many acts of savagery that were enacted upon Innocent Jewish Lives in his name! What we cannot have, given his empirical effort, are the Names, the Personalities, the Memories of those who were Murdered, hidden by an effort that was Genocidal. Too many, whose loss is secreted amidst the enormous undertaking of his Final Solution, will never be found. But for us, we are left with a Tomorrow where we are supposed to learn from their Yesterday, with little or nothing of them to go on!

Day 9: Would We deny them Entry?

Here they are! Dejected and alone! Some are to be transported East, with no Family to keep them from fear. They will be ‘resettled’ in some Eastern Camp, Belzec, Auschwitz or Birkenau, Sobibor or Treblinka. Who will assist them in their final hours. Only God knows the tragedy of what feelings gripped them as they were sorted for killing.

1938 August 18th. The Swiss Government denies entry to refugee Jews.

When the door to safety is firmly closed, and for these Jews of the Transport, it is already too late. The only option for those free to do so is to make entry through all other means and having the opportunity. The problem for the Jews of Europe, for those who could not afford the levies applied to seeking entry into other Countries, the Doors, or the Borders were firmly closed. However, through illicit means, many Jews, their Families included, could exit out of harms way with the aid of Funds provided by relatives, their own Wealth and Property or by sheer luck. Tragically, all too often there was a profit to be made by smugglers which was enhanced by selling the Jews they were supposed to be leading to safety. To the Nazis payment was gained either way this all worked!

1940 August 18th. The German authorities allow Adam Czerniakow, Chairman of the Warsaw Ghetto, to establish a vocational education program inside the Ghetto.

Essential to the Growth of a People is that need to educate and ensure knowledge is to be had by all. Jewish antecedence is enhanced by that Educational demand which has imparted to all of Christianity, and even Islam, a need for learning. Judaism has gifted to the World, and the gift of a Monotheist belief System and a God of the People known by Mankind, is held by Billions of us. Much then is owed to the learning from Judaism that has furthered our own Belief in a God system. That God, whose Tolerance has been categorically ignored throughout all of History, has not presented us with Free will to simply choose what is wrong! Conscience must decide what is worthy of that belief system and we must choose to accommodate what is best for all in place of accepting what is only good for one!

1941 August 18th. Over 1,811 of Kovno’s Jewish Men and Women are murdered at the IV Fort. Elsewhere over 160 Jewish Men and Women of Bjala-Zerkow are murdered by units of the Wehrmacht, members of the Waffen SS and units of SonderKommando 4a. As Romania deports Jews across the River Dniester, the remnants of Berlin’s Jews are to be murdered as Hitler promises Goebbels. Hitler halts his progress on Moscow.

A moment of grave indecision occurs on the War front as Hitler orders a strategic move away from the prime Russian target, that is Moscow. This newer deflection toward Kiev and the Caucausus Oil, is both strategic, but miscalculates the progress that has already been made. The fall of Moscow, a completely Political target would have been a psychological blow to Stalin and the Russian People. But this move away from what had been an obvious target will also ensure that Hitler is vanquished from the Russian lands ahead of all previous expectations.

1942 August 18th. 2,500 of Drogobych’s Jews are murdered at Belzec while SS Obersturmfuhrer Kurt Gerstein arrives at Belzec

“..Himmler visited ..gassing installation in Camp III.” Karl Frenzel.

Here, where the examples and practices of mass murder are experienced, Gerstein, this Gas and Disinfection specialist sees for himself the wrongs been done in Germany’s name. Gerstein’s testimony is a crucial piece of evidence in the knowledge we have of the gassing process. It is somewhat difficult in the final analysis to suggest that Gerstein acted out of conscience, but we have the testimony from those who knew Gerstein that he could not live with the knowledge of what he witnessed at Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and then Treblinka. This was all to lead eventually, to him taking his own life.

1943 August 18th. Blobel returns to Kiev and ‘Sonderkommando 1005’ exhumes and disposes of much of the evidence of mass murder.

“..instructions were ..Jews ..as well as ..Soviet political commissars ..to be liquidated. ..I mean “killed”.” Otto Ohlendorf.

There are over 100,000 Jewish Murdered, and others, at the ravine in Babi-Yar. Their remains, which are disinterred and cremated, are finally obliterated from any future effort at testifying what occurred here. Those exhumed, and further destroyed, would be amongst those of Blobel’s own achievement in the Mass Murders of 33,771 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children of Kiev. That two day period, September 29th. to September 30th. 1941, saw a murderous momentum over a sustained 2 day assault upon the integrity of an Innocent Jewish Community of People, achieve what the Industrialised killing centres could not, over a similar time frame.

A Book a Day, or so of suggested reading!

11. Kulka, Erich Five Escape from Auschwitz.