The Child in The Holocaust.“..If this Book should contain just 1,500,000 words ..it would never come close enough to ..form of our detestation to register for ..Jewish Children’s loss.” Patrick Dempsey.
This then is my latest Book on The Holocaust theme, and has been screaming out at me ever since I was introduced to Tovah Olshak.
For Tokele, this 4 year old Jewish Girl, whose life was so treacherously cut short, has cornered my attention for so long, it feels that I personally know her, and seemingly very well. To our utter shame, we People who acclaim our humanity, when Survival had all but been secured for this Child, amongst the Survivors of Sokoly, Tovah suffered from that same hatred Hitler witnessed from within Poland. For the grave loss that is these 1,500,000 Jewish Children, who are just like Tovah, their lives too were forfeit to Hitler’s rancid and febrile nature. Hitler’s mind was so warped by such a hatred, he would even abandon even those most ardent of his follower’s who were to suffer for doing so much he had demanded of them.
“..Children are not ..People of tomorrow ..but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect ..as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. ..unknown person inside each of them is ..Hope for ..Future.” Januscz Korczak.
Sadly, there was this persistent argument that was sought to distance the murderous act from the Jewish Children, but the slaughter itself all about the Jewish Child, and for whom we know:
“..rest of ..women ..children ..old people ..700 of them ..taken to ..wooden barn. ..forced inside. ..Nazis opened gasoline cans ..spread gas all around ..barn ..and set it on fire. Flames soon gutted ..entire structure.” Yehuda Adelman.
They Should have been saved, “..After my Mother was Murdered ..I was deported together with my Father to Transnistria. We have spent many weeks on a penal trek of sorts. For days we have been slogging along roads deep in mud ..a lengthy convoy surrounded by Romanian and Ukrainian soldiers who flog and shoot at us. Father holds my hand tight ..my feet no longer touch ..ground. ..sound of ..water slices at my legs and my hips. It’s dark all around ..apart from Father’s hand I don’t feel a thing. Truth to tell ..I don’t feel his hand either ..since my hand is already partly numb. If I move just a little I’ll surely drown. Even Father won’t be able to pull me out. Lots of Children have already drowned this way. I fall asleep ..still clutching his hand. But not for long. While the sky is still dark ..soldiers light up ..convoy with sniping and gunfire. Father holds my hand and tugs me. ..mud is deep and I can’t feel ..bottom. I’m still half asleep and tremendously afraid. It hurts. I call out. Father hears my call and answers at once.” Aharon Appelfeld.
They Could have been saved, and “..first victims were ..Jewish Children ..and I shall never forget ..harrowing scenes and ..blood curdling incidents when ..ss men ..cruelly attacked Children. ..Even today ..cries ..shrieking of those Children are clear in my mind.” Adolf Berman.
The Final Solution ensured that they Would not be saved.“..pure myth ..Jews ..merely passive. ..Jews fought back ..to a degree no other community anywhere ..would have been capable of. ..they fought against hunger ..starvation ..disease ..a deadly Nazi economic blockade. They fought against murderers and ..traitors within their own ranks ..and ..were utterly alone in their fight. ..forsaken by God and ..man ..surrounded by hatred or indifference. ..there was much heroism ..little beauty ..much toil ..suffering ..no glamour. We fought back on every front ..biological ..economic ..propaganda ..cultural ..with every weapon ..possessed. In ..end ..ruse ..deception ..cunning beyond anything ..world had ever ..seen ..accomplished what hunger ..disease ..terror ..treachery ..could not. What defeated us ..Jewry’s unconquerable optimism ..eternal faith in ..goodness of man ..even a German ..a Nazi ..could never have ..renounced ..own humanity as to murder women ..’children’ coldly ..systematically. ..when we finally took up arms ..we inscribed in ..book of history epic of ..Ghetto Uprising.” Michal Berg.
There is this continuing myth, that such were the protestations of the nazis and the nazi killers also, that the Jewish Children would be spared such as their Parents were delivered onto. Eventually though, the veil of such hypocrisy slipped and all of this, a mere proposition which such hatred, as was cancerous within Hitler’s very being, would not allow for any Jew, Young, Small, Tiny or a Babe in Arms, to survive. True, many Nazis and their collaborators balked at the thought of killing Children. But the very idea that the Jewish Child should not be treated as all Jews were to be discarded and with disdain, certainly with disregard and with total contempt, this was merely a feigned illusion of supposed human behaviour. Its inhumane outlet was to see both Parents, other Adults and all the Children crammed together and assailed and then murdered.
“.. Korczak’s Children did not romp ..on ..manicured lawns ..but languished in ..dark slums of Warsaw. He set up orphanages ..lived his life among Children in real life ..not just in imagination ..for he saw them as ..salvation of ..world.” Betty Jean Lifton.
All of which was etched into such a killer mindset, that all of this was to be easily dismissed by the perpetrators in favour of the total Slaughter of even the smallest Jewish Child . No Jew would ever escape both Hitler’s attention from their certain isolation, and inevitably their complete evisceration and destruction was guaranteed. This reality for the awakening Jews to such a prospect could not fail to see every effort Hitler’s legions made was including the mass murder of 1,500,000 of their Jewish Children. It has become all too evident, and recognised widely, that for so many Hitler apologists, the Jewish Child was to be somehow spared, if but initially. For these miscreants then, who continually sought to remove the Jewish Children of all of Europe from Hitler’s Worldview, it is as distasteful as it is completely untrue.
“..How calm was this Woman ..perhaps just a little younger than me in ..middle of unparalleled uproar and ..general anxiety in ..hospital. When it became clear ..heads would leave ..hospital ..Dr. Rotstein did not hesitate and took everything under her control. ..Children walked by themselves ..with only some of them being carried away in arms. Adult patients were usually transported on stretchers. This was horrible ..incomparably more horrible than a procession of healthy people walking towards their demise.” Dr. Henryk Makower.
It is evident that with Hitler’s Weltanschauung, he saw both a wide expanse of territory for his own realm and a broadening of his erstwhile goal. This multi layered effort, a Lebensraum that would run alongside The Final Solution, was to ensure all lands would become totally devoid of all and any Jewish presence. This most certainly did not preclude the Jewish Children from being considered an otherwise threatned body. So let me remind them, those with blinkered souls, biased and bigoted ideas and blinded minds, their defence of anything Hitler envisaged is savagely wrong. The very fact is certain, and that no Jew could be left alive who could, should and even would avenge what was done to the Jewish Hopes and Dreams of the Jewish People living freely amongst the nations and peoples of Europe they had previously adopted.
“..I was in Auschwitz. 1,000’s were killed there. ..a law and had to be done ..SS camp leader Schwartzhuber said at ..instructional session. ..They said there must be gassings. ..necessary to exterminate ..Jews. When we asked ..women ..children too. ..everything Hitler did was law.” SS Rottenfuhrer Stefan Baretzki.
It is a tragic reality that for all Jews, who were finally removed from the reality of civilised existence, and with their lineage and persistence wholly destroyed, there was no alternative view. Escape had never truly been an open door and as the noose tightened around them within Europe, the World was engaged in a spectacle that saw the birth of what Genocide fully came to mean. Even for those history seekers who measure this with the Madagaskar Plan, must see there was futility in Hitler even suggesting such an attempt. To move more than 11,000,000 or 12,000,000 Jewish People to this malaria infested island could never have been logistically managed while a Hitlerite Worldview was being anticipated. While the Jewish Family’s were set upon a path then, with their total life force being wasted on the whim of a lunatic, the Jews of Europe were summoned by law and decree, and they simply complied. Even as a killing operation was presented to them, which levied its extreme brutality upon every Jew, we see no variance in the vicious and vile treatment for any Jew, even despite their youthful age.
“..Perhaps I will be invited to participate in building a new order in ..world ..or in Poland.” Januscz Korczak.
Everyone of the Jews under attack, now lay beyond the bounds of a humanity being discarded, and the integrity of the entire Jewish Community was to be laid to waste. Sadly too, and for all of those just like Januscz, he was not allowed to live long enough to even see a World order, let alone a Poland that would invite those like him to remain or return, because he and they were Jews. Here though, while the Jewish Child would face the full force of what Hitler demanded for all of the Jews of Europe, any World order was being decapitated. I would take you back for an instant, and into the space of a few square kilometres that are The Warsaw Ghetto. Here, there were crammed, crushed, and essentially forcefully dying Jews, who were Jews who somehow thrived on all of this carnage with competing aims. For some of these, and like all the Jews ever to have existed, Family was a major focus that could be maintained right up to the gates of the Death Camps or even alongside the ridges of those Killing Sites reserved for them all. Despite having been immersed in such scenery as has been presented to us, it is impossible ever to come to terms with what these Jews and their Children became a witness to, and a testimony they could never bring forth.
“..Dr. Rotstein received called number of life and could attempt to rescue herself. Instead ..she voluntarily entered ..wagon with her patients considering it her duty to do so.” Dr. Adolf Polisiuk.
Here too, and not solely within this the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, but in every single containment space registered as the Ghettos within Poland, there were many Jews who doggedly catered for many 1,000,000’s of their fellow Jews. For each Jew, who was isolated from the reality of their former existence, they fell back into the depths of a squalor they had not envisaged. But here in the Polish capitol, there was the largest congregation of Polish Jewry that was to be incarcerated. Here, as throughout Jewish existence, it was an essential concern as to how best to nurture and to protect the Child, and their Children. Now, more and more Jewish Children were placed in the care of those Elders, and Pedagogues like Januscz who would be charged with their protection. For the survival of any of these Jewish Children, we have much to be thankful for, with more than 5,000 years of Jewish dependence upon Family, and those values which bonded them so closely to each other. Sadly too, this had as its counter point, the very fact that the complete evisceration of the Jewish People, as Community from so many places, would be total and complete for all too many established Jewish enclaves throughout Eastern Europe especially.
“..Part of ..trolleys and rails originated from ..sawmill that bordered ..Sobibor camp. Additional trolleys and rails arrived by train from Trawniki. ..locomotive of this train came later ..about two months after ..trolley was in operation. At ..beginning horses pulled ..trolleys. ..trolley was ..to transport ..sick ..handicapped Jews from ..arriving trains to Camp lll. ..these people ..handicapped and sick children ..particularly infants ..taken to ..Lazarett ..were shot by those serving in Camp lll. ..known ..Lazarett was used ..for ..extermination of ..people.” SS Oberscharfuhrer Hermann Erich Bauer.
As Jewish Parents died, or were killed, as more and more Jews headed toward the ramparts for resettlement transports, many of their Children were left behind and filled the streets. It seemed necessary to heap more and more anguish upon the Jewish People by separating their Family line, though every effort was made to ensure the wholesale slaughter of all within the Family unit would ensure no legacy would be left behind. Even then, and after the Jewish Children’s Homes could literally take no more, and the Judenrate had no space left to allocate to them, the beseeching cries of beleaguered, starving and traumatized Jewish Children, rendered the air of this, and all other Ghettos with pleas, protestations and tears voluminous with the ravages of hunger and the mounting pain anguish of not knowing what was approaching but what was seemingly a disaster awaiting them around every corner. There was the hue of such an immense desperation, and which would only be fully quelled within the Gas Chambers of places like Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Birkenau. This was certainly true for the many 100’s of 1,000’s of those Jews being gradually removed away from the Warsaw Ghetto enroute toward Malkinia. For these Jews in the main, who took everything of value with them, and most especially for the Parents, it was to be their Children who would be alongside them and consigned to an eternity together.
“..We shot women as if they had been cattle. ..a large quarry where 10,000 men ..women ..children were shot. They were still lying in ..quarry. We drove out on purpose to see it. It was ..most bestial thing I ever saw.” Lieutenant General Fritz von Broich.
Here, like Januscz Korczak or Dr. Halina Rotstein, and I have no wish to exclude anyone from this roster of human compassion, we recognise all that civilisation presents is being eroded and then erased. For all of those Jews who did not allow for their charges to be abandoned, it is for us to reassure the world that not only should they be remembered, they should be recounted as the best of us. Indeed, for those Jews especially, who entered the wagons together with those they were charged to care for, and from the many places just like Warsaw’s Umschlagplatz, for these now enroute to Treblinka, or from the many places earmarked for the embarkation of Jews toward the Death Camps and the East, their heroism is exemplified. We sit in awe at what a human being can achieve knowing we too have an obligation to this past, so as to ensure their lesson is well taught, it is learned, and we must learn from it. It has never been enough for me to become a witness to what we allowed to happen to 6,000,000 Jews, and especially to all those 6,000,000 Jews who were Slaughtered, but we must assess the entire loss as it matters to us as it confronts our own humanity.
“..Each person carries an entire world within himself ..and everything exists twice: once ..way it is ..other ..way he perceives it with his own eyes and feelings.” Januscz Korczak.
