This Holocaust Author's Auschwitz Blog

Day 23: World War Once More?

1939 September 1st. Germany invades Poland and World War Two commences. German troops enter Danzig.

5,000 Jews are trapped in the City of Danzig and a Jewish curfew now operates in both Germany and Austria. Wehrmacht and SS Mobile Murder Groups, the fledgling ‘der Einsatzgruppe,’ set about murdering Jews, burning Synagogues and attacking the Catholic intelligentsia in ‘Operation Tannenberg.’ The German General Staff do not protest this newer role for its forces though General Johannes Blaskowitz does protest such a murderous crime.

“..attitude of ..troops toward SD and police alternates between abhorrence and hatred. Every soldier ..disgusted by ..crimes committed in Poland by ..Reich ..representatives of our state.” Johannes von Blaskowitz.

1940 September 1st. Kovno Jews are issued 3,500 visas by Japanese Consul Sempo Sugihara.

Isolated incidences of intervention make a massive difference to some 3,500 Jews of Kovno. We can only begin to imagine if there had been such widespread an intervention by 3,500 other individuals. The prospect of what might have been achieved is incalculable and a World entire would have been more complete!

1941 September 1st. A further 9,000 Hungarian Jews are murdered at Kamanets-Podolsk while 5,090 Mariampole Jewish Men, Women and Their Children are also murdered. Over a 2 week period, 440 of Vilna’s Jewish Men and Women are murdered. This date marks the end of Hitler’s ‘Euthanasia Program’ ends, officially.

More than 120,000 German and Austrian Citizens have been murdered in the program of Eugenics conducted by Hitler. No one escaped Hitler’s attention. The Woman after giving Birth feels a little down! German deformity is un-Aryan! Germans with learning difficulties! The list is endless in Hitler’s pursuit of perfection? Hitler now proposes that all Jews leave the Reich and it becomes a tiny reminder of what might await all Jews should they ignore what under scores Hitler’s full intention. The Janowska Camp opens and the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia and Slovakia must now wear ‘The Yellow Star.’

“..September 1942 I reported to Dr. Thomas in Kiev.” Paul Blobel.

Blobel will set about his task obliterating every trace of what he, and his SK4a force achieved at Babi Yar. The Sonder ‘Aktion’ 1005 will move steadily though the system of destruction and attempt further to conceal all that The Death Camps could not conceal, or the countless Killing Sites secrete from History. With amazement I hear that same hackneyed argument for the less gifted, where are the traces of Destruction. Well if they look to what Birkenau could accomplish there is a massive clue. When we look to the embryonic state of Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka, we see why Blobel was required to mask the stench of an illicit policy of Mass Murder.

1942 September 1st. 13,500 of Wlodzimierz Wolynski’s Jews are murdered at the Piatydni gravel pits. Elsewhere, 3,000 Stryj Jews murdered.

There is no let up in the murderous undertaking, as newer sites are sought and found for the disposal of The Jews of Europe. Even now, when most are aware that the German plan for victory has been over calculated, every means at Hitler’s disposal for the conduct of War, must hold until the prerequisite demands for The Final Solution are fully met.

1943 September 1st. Vilna Ghetto Uprising fails.

The Jewish Resistance during the period of The Holocaust is a very broad area of research that doesn’t give enough credit to those Jews who stood against the tide of Annihilation which overwhelmed them. True, in relation to the 6,000,000 Murdered Jews in The Holocaust, those who fought back were a very tiny percentage of that overall Catastrophe. But fight back many did. We are aware that Jews converted in order to hide their status as Jews. We know that Parents gave up their Children in order for them to be saved. We know too of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Bialystok Revolt, Revolution in Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka. But what could a Jew achieve when they were in harm’s way and the resulting shove would see their entire Families further brutalised, pushed headlong into the Abyss and without their consoling arm of comfort for Their Children? The question should not be about Revolt! It should be about the need to?

A Book a Day, or so of suggested reading!

26. Sternberg-Newman, Judith In the Hell of Auschwitz.

Edith Stein in The Holocaust.

“..As a child of ..Jewish people who ..by ..grace of God ..for ..past 11 years has also been a child of ..Catholic Church ..I dare to speak to ..Father of Christianity about that which oppresses millions. ..deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity ..not to mention love of neighbour. For years ..leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of ..Jews.” Edith Stein.

Edith Theresia Hedwig Stein was brought to Auschwitz Death Camp, from the Carmelite Convent of Echt and dressed in the habit of her Order. As Sister Theresia Benedicta of the Cross, she was gassed upon arrival, August 8th. 1942. As to whether we should assume she was murdered for the profession of her Faith, for which she is being Canonised, or that she was simply murdered as a consequence of her Jewish antecedence, the debate lingers on.

“..Spiritually ..we are all Semites.” Pope Pius XI.

When a Church chooses not to do battle with the powers of racist and intolerant forces, Edith Stein remains benign in the face of Christ who demanded that we treat all our neighbours as we would treat ourselves. The Church then becomes the stagnating purveyor of its own decline if it does not act in that accord. Those, best able to confront anti-Christian morality must be condemned to immorality outside what Christ had demanded of us. Such a communion cannot ever invoke the encyclical of moral thought and the teaching of ethical being, without the cynicism of its position further undermining its example and its universal position.

A concordat with Hitler openly resolved the willingness of Hitler to murder the Jews of Europe and signalled from the Church an acquiescence that subordinated itself to the will of such hate-filled advocacy. When Edith Stein demanded of Pope XII that he act on behalf of the Jews, little did she know that there would be this almighty clamour to beatify her, afford her a saintly status, and within a movement that would overlook her beseeching concern for the Jews of Europe. That entreaty still seeks to sink the Catholic Church beneath a scandal seemingly condoning of the mass murder of the Jewish People.

“..responsibility must fall ..on those who brought (Jews) to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in ..face of such happenings.” Edith Stein.

That mass murder, in The Final Solution, was equally ignored by the Church as was Edith’s plea to that Church. History still holds the Church with an amount of contempt that should have been heavily regarding of all Christian values and its proper charitable status! When we measure with this, in the starkest contrast, that the Church wishes to deliver an elaborate gift, and with such a great honour upon the former Jewish Philosopher, this Catholic Sainthood is surely otherwise motivated? For the Jews of Europe, and those whose conversion to Catholicism couldn’t even grant them security from a final solution, Edith’s Jewish antecedence certainly sealed her fate.

It would appear that the Catholic Church protest in Holland had such an adverse effect upon those Jewish converts, the SS moved more swiftly against them, and found Edith Stein awaiting the same fate as her Semite cousins. The case is well made, and thoughout our recourse to The Holocaust study, that the Jews, whether they were assimilated, Italian, German, French or Latvian, they were Jews first and foremost and victimised as a consequence. There is no doubt that Edith Stein was murdered, and though she dies a convert to Catholicism, that conversion was no more a guarantee of her safety than the many baptismal certificates that had betrayed so many other Jews.

When Edith’s voice was dulled to such an extent, so as not to allow her to speak on behalf of a beleaguered, a condemned and a devastated People, 6,000,000 Jews passed into an abyss. With a limited prospect of achieving any semblance of aid for her fellow Jews, how then can my Church so own an Edith Stein, or call her theirs when they so blatantly ignored her pleas for The Jews of the Time?

“..badge is attached ..but has not touched our consciusness. ..we are not ashamed of our badges. Let those be ashamed who have hung them on us.” Yitzhak Rudahsevski.

When we are set to judge how a convert to Catholicism might be treated in The Holocaust, it was Hitler’s system of illegality which defined who was a Jew and as such, who might be condemned. We surely must look to the former belief system of those Jews as to what marked them ahead of mainstream Catholics for The Holocaust of Destruction. What Elie Wiesel has said about such inequaliy, has a remarkable bearing upon how Edith was seen, how Edith was treated and why Edith was eventually murdered:-

“..While not all ..victims of ..Nazi’s were Jews ..all Jews were victims.” Elie Wiesel.

Herein lies the problem for those who might wish to attribute the martyrdom of such a wonderful lady to her Catholic ambivalence, she was considered above all else a Jew. Edith was murdered alongside countless other Jewish converts, all because they were Jews. When this Jewish convert asked the Holy Father to answer the call to conscience, she was ignored. The Jews were not just ignored, they were abandoned and posterity still deals with the consequences of 6,000,000 unanswered calls! Edith was finally arrested. After Catholic Church protests were raised over the detaining of converts from Judaism, a beacon of light would be switched off. It must have occurred to Edith, that while such protests arose over the fate of Jewish converts to Christianity, no such challenges were made over the Reich’s deliberrate mis-treatment of the Jews of the Jewish Faith.

As Catholics we need to continually ask ourselves, and our Church, not so much what was done, or what the Church say’s was done, but more what was not done to save the Jews. That more could have been done to at least alleviate their suffering or in some simple way afford them a fraternal look, have given them a sense that we understood what charity meant, or at a minimum what Christ would have demanded of us, betrays for us what duty in the Church has failed. When Edith herself knowingly sensed in Hitler a threat that would undo the Catholic Church, though less brutally than in dismantling the life of The Jewish People, that duty too surely betrays the wishes of St. Teresa Benedicta of The Cross.

“..fight against Catholicism will be conducted quietly and less brutally than against Jewry ..but no less systematically.” Edith Stein.

Read something of what it was like to be a Jew Convert damned by Hitler’s hatred!

Volume I Life in a Jewish Family.
Volume II Essays on Woman.
Volume III On the Problem of EmpathyI.
Volume IV The Hidden Life.
Volume V Self-Portrait in Letters.
Volume VI Science of the Cross.