“.. Not all victims were Jewish in this place but all Jews were victims.” Elie Wiesel.
Every word I write is fully mindful of the very lessons that are to be learned, and I pay due diligence in those sentences to what the Survivors have taught me. Wherever I embark upon a paragraph, always related to the insurmountable struggle 6,000,000 Jews were unable to escape from, and as they were driven along toward their destruction, words seep out which add to the reminder of our loss of them. I well remember these phrases, which emphasise both the need to learn and the understanding to know, and this idea which Elie Wiesel proposes, marks a truth which defines The Holocaust as a catastrophe for all the Jews of Europe, even for those 1,000,000’s of Jews who managed to evade Hitler’s attention.
“..You must first study ..basic subjects within your own understanding.” Elie Wiesel.
In studying to even appreciate what is was like for a Jews to attempt to persist as a Jew during this time, I falter hugely on all levels of understanding. Though I appreciate fully the terrible dilemma this present, none of this can ever convey the emotional trauma surely played out with unspeakable brutality. While adding my own considerations to this obvious truth, I would assert also that while not all non-Jews were guilty, not all non-Jews are innocent of the implementation, perpetration or even participation in the realm of The Holocaust which cascaded 6,000,000 Jews into oblivion. Also in this, I recognise the need to ensure the Jewish voice is heard way above the clamour to remember those others who fell foul of such incarceration that would ultimately deal them a deathly blow.
“..her marvelous eyes ..proved ..not even in a Vernichtungslager ..an extermination camp ..a thought ..a smile could transform number A5480 into a breathless ..at times even happy ..young girl.” Liana Millu.
This position so challenges the right of any scientific account which History brings to bear upon the sheer scale of the atrocity that was first and foremost systematic of The Final Solution of The Jewish Question. So before I continue, I would like to dispel the overused myth, and usually by those who have misappropriated the term The Holocaust, and would then misuse the term Genocide, I find their dubious resolve into equating both terms to other than the attempt to deny life to an entire group of Jewish People, is symptomatic of their obvious bias, hate and disdain for the Jewish People, or their ignorance of what the Jews of Europe were forced to endure. It is certain, and in the case of The Holocaust in particular, this term alone will relate to the very sought after slaughter of these 6,000,000 Jews of Europe.
“..An SS ..gave ..order ..Men ..left ..Women ..right. ..words spoken quietly ..indifferently ..without emotion. ..simple words. Yet that was ..moment when I parted from my Mother. I had not had time to think ..but already ..felt ..pressure of my Father’s hand ..we were alone. ..for ..part of a second I glimpsed my Mother and Sisters moving away. ..I saw them disappear. ..I did not know ..in that place ..at that moment ..I was parting from my Mother and Tzipora forever.” Elie Wiesel.
With the dilution of all that has happened to these 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews, which is being so callously sought in much of history, we counter such obvious a threat with the bare facts which the truth relates. This contemptuous effort is not solely orchestrated by those positively seeking to further diminish the Jewish presence. But, and in highlighting the evidence apportioned to those others who were killed, and even murdered within Hitler’s diabolical system of destructive retribution, the Jewish People must not now be subjected to any further diminishing of their position within the overall catastrophe. While World War II possibly claimed 50 or even 70 million beings, that position is not as heavily questioned as the fact of more than 6,000,000 Jews of Europe having been removed from existence.
“..It’s so important to tell ..World what can happen when we are not tolerant of each other. That is ..main thing to understand. When somebody is different from you, it doesn’t mean they are worse or better. They are only different. If we can understand that ..we can live in peace with one another.” Lily Ebert.
Both the systematic and sought after extermination of those Jews, who are The Holocaust, fully delivers to posterity, the very term which Genocide demands to incorporate its usage as it delivers the Jewish People toward their carefully planned and itemised destruction. Today must look back to what the past affords us in relation to those best learned lessons we seek to bring us forward. While today, we see with Israel that they have gotten things wrong, even killing their own, the deaths of Children who are being killed is immensely wrong. We can too easily posit for the deaths of many who may or may not be exponents of the terror wave which continues to confront the Jews today. However, and while this is all within a War context, and where mistakes should not be made, these tragic deaths are not the deliberate aims of a government seeking to defend against the terms of obliteration proposed for them.
“..Jewish individuals who opened ..door to negotiation took tremendous risks ..personal ..communal ..conclusion must be ..they did ..right thing ..took ..only possible way to save lives. Contrary to all logic ..lives were saved.” Professor Yehuda Bauer.
To be clear, no one has the right to kill, to either maim or deprive innocent lives of life, as all life is sacrosanct before humanity. I have too often heard from certain groups, even large proportions of community’s, who would reference to that which those 6,000,000 Jews of The Holocaust were constantly referred to, with an indifference to their struggle. We are already well aware of the abject indifference shown to so many of these Jews, and no one has the right to both defame their right to life, nor insist upon their brutal or callous destruction being somehow lessened because they were Jews. Here, while we clearly seek to define the term itself, and as Genocide is meant in simple terms, the destruction of a national or ethnic group, as the Jews of Europe are, Genocide becomes the term for what The Holocaust has decided. It is a term generated by Rafael Lemkin so as to record those age-old hatreds, and then by formulating them toward newer constructs which, when designed to act upon such a hate, devoured these 6,000,000 Jews of Europe.
“..Generally speaking ..Genocide
(from Genos, the Greek for race, and from Cide, the Latin for killing)
..does not necessarily mean ..immediate destruction of a nation ..except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at ..destruction of essential foundations of ..life of national groups ..with ..aim of annihilating ..groups themselves. Genocide is directed against ..national group as an entity ..and ..actions involved are directed against individuals ..not in their individual capacity ..but as members of ..national group.” Rafael Lemkin.
It has long been my wish to tie in to this term what emerged and one day, and from such singular a lesson, I will attribute everything I have learned from its meaning. I have personally asked of so many Jewish Survivors, and those like Yitzhak Arad, Yehuda Bauer, and Elie Wiesel who responded with kindness and direction, so that I too will lend from their experience, a testimony that will clearly belong to them. I recognise from within The Holocaust, which targeted them expressly, and I lean heavily upon all they have informed me of to ensure my dedication remains fixed to what they were subjected to. Partially, that is why I chose not to communicate with so many historians who consistently wrote about The Holocaust. Instead! I chose to hear from those Jewish Historians who clearly knew about The Holocaust, as they had managed to survive the very tenets of the grip which was meant to confine them also.
“..Jews were compelled to establish relations with an alien ..hostile government that regarded them as subhuman ..fit only for exploitation and extermination. ..human values in which they believed and on which they had built their lives tottered and collapsed. In this cruel reality ..Vilna Jewry struggled to survive and seek rescue. ..daily struggle was for life itself ..survive in ..face of hunger ..disease. Jewish Vilna embodied ..majority of hardships ..torment ..European Jewry ..underwent during The Holocaust ..its responses sum up most of ..options ..available to ..Jews during this tragic epoch. Vilna Jewry was a microcosm of ..fate of all Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.
In my research to further gain from what I was learning, places like Cracow, Kiev, Lodz, Lublin, Riga, Vilna, and Warsaw, all delivered up places which have become murderously synonymous with their geographical positioning in relation to those Jews to be consumed.
“..cherished objects ..brought with us this far were left behind in ..train ..and with them ..at last ..our illusions.” Elie Wiesel.
Today we are gaining further insight into such places, and spaces, like Babi-Yar, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Ponary, Rumbula, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Tuchinka, through carefully worded evidence’s of those Jews who experienced and survived them. For the Jewish Survivor therefore, and indeed more practically for the Jewish Survivor who emerges to become an historian, they all afford us their own perspective, which has long urged me forward. That said, and in search of knowing further what they knew from their own evaluation, I have borrowed heavily from an experience we are unable to add comprehension to, in other than failed words to do so.
“..I knew ..Jewish World in Eastern Europe that was alive and well and destroyed in The Holocaust. I saw with my own eyes 1,000’s of Jews being led to ..firing pits. I survived ..and fate allowed me to join ..partisans ..fighters against ..murderers of our people ..and in their ranks to blow up German trains.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.
Gleaning all that is relevant of what is the Jewish Survivor’s Historical truth, it emerges from within them as a learned experience fraught dangers to the human intellect, as it was learned on a first-hand level. I was certain that all I needed to learn was to be gained from their own personal, well woven and interlaced experiences. I remember being struck by a visit to one of the Death Camps, as I traipsed though deep snow, in such freezing conditions I had never ever experienced before. I knew I was following in so many well worn steps of those Jewish Men, Women and Their Children made those same steps, while I could recite, I will emerge back through these gates. I was struck with the matter of Art and Artistry, as even the literature of words stretched my imaginings forward and toward a deadly experience I could not envisage. However, what I was lending a hand to, so as deliver some form of appreciation for our unskilled intellects to secure, the sheer scale of the Jewish losses would be added to in memory and remembrance.
“..Written In Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car
here in this carload
i am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that i.” Dan Pagis.
This is the title to a Poem which is written across the entrance to the Death Camp at Belzec, and it greeted me as I stood bitterly cold, but driven to add ever more words to the experience. Poetry in The Holocaust is part of a cultural emphasis to our appreciation of the lack of understanding, all of which can be described both in Books, Poems, Artworks and even deeds done by humanity to confirm its rejection of the atrocity itself. Dan Pagis designates, as the Cattle Car is the deliverer of those Jews to Belzec for destruction, words which finally end abruptly. The poem appears, and it finishes its sentence before it ends, recognising all hope had faded in this space as the lives of the Jews were cut permanently short here. For our inability at the understanding of the wrongs done, which cannot be rewritten, they can certainly be learned from if we pay proper tribute to the memory of those Jewish People who lend us their need to be heard, understood and be remembered.
“..I fought ..Nazi Germans ..their Lithuanian collaborators. ..murderers of my family ..of my people.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.
For instance, and if we are to take learning from the Book, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka as was written by Yitzhak Arad, we would have more than an insight into these spaces of ultimate horror. Arad’s own words add an in-depth recourse to memory while adding more fully to the lexicon of words and knowledge we seek to understand. As my arrival in visiting this and the other 5 Death Camps confirms, it conveys that I would then fulfil a promise I had made to another Survivor, to visit all these establishments in Poland. Also, and now I could be guided, girded, and warned by a knowledge substantially delivered by the Survivor Historian Arad, who could still not warn nor prepare me for the almost spiritual incline I was to face. For me it was relevant that Arad, while exploring where much of his People’s devastation took place, he has afforded such insight as only such personal trauma could deliver. As such threats were likewise invoked, as could have been imposed upon him, the immediacy of his position would deliver for us a sense of the devastation he endured surviving his own People.
“..When ..occupied territories were liberated ..no single Jewish Community ..survived. Only small numbers of Jews emerged. ..Over 1,000,000 Jews had been killed in ..occupied ..Soviet Union.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.
Not until I had reached each and everyone of these Death Camps, could I again begin to understand what Polish Jewry endured. It was patently obvious also, and despite the huge protestations to emerge from Poland, it was not too far from the truth that much of Poland itself looked on as The Final Solution was being played out on their doorstep. Safe in their own houses, and though many Poles were indeed kidnapped, for forced labour, or the fact that 3 million non-Jewish Poles either died, or were killed, it remains true that outside their own doors and windows, the flames of this Jewish hatred burned 3,200,000 Polish Jews to death.
“..perpetrators should be brought to trial ..in spite of age ..not as a vengeance ..but as a lesson and warning for ..future.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.
What Arad brings to us, and what Dan Pagis adds to, there is this Woman, who issues a narrative that is without words, in very fine brush lines which depict the horror taken from the terror inflicted upon an innocent Jewish People. But, and while striking chords of anguish with such linear precision, we see deeply into the impact the fuller meaning of the catastrophe must display.
“..This need to document became an extraordinary force that carried me to survival ..just as painting saved my life.” Halina Olomucki.
If then we are to learn from this, another Book, Jews for Sale by Yehuda Bauer, comes into view. We are then witness to the indifference forwarded by much of what Poland knew, and what the rest of Europe certainly learned from their intelligence services. The Holocaust of 6,000,000 European Jews has led to a fact which swamps totally the conceived of idea that societal civilisation could withhold the tenets of such hatred as was applied to these 6,000,000 of European Jewry. Her careful portraiture carefully denotes the struggle that was to beset her fellow Jews, alongside whom she recalls and eulogises in every brush stroke she puts to paint. Her work, drawing upon the daily struggle for the life of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were retrieved after the War. She also managed to find a few of the drawings she had hidden in Birkenau. Even as a forced labourer Halina still managed to draw, picking up the necessary supplies as she worked tirelessly to stay alive.
“..While I was in ..Birkenau someone told me ..if you live to leave this hell ..make your drawings ..tell ..World about us. We want to remain among ..living ..at least on paper.” Halina Olomucki.
Here we recognise in all that Halina attempted, what she forms is a certain spiritual resistance as she drew her experience of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek, Birkenau, Ravensbrueck, and then finally to Neustadt-Glewe from where she was released, liberated even on May 2nd 1945. My duty is to add words to paper and to have them printed in order to at least, remind the World why we must recall those who now exist ‘at least on paper’, and as a fulfilled memory for so many of them. At varying times throughout my journey I have looked in awe ass such images provoke the words to emerge. I listen to age old Music which Jews were listening to in their homes, and along the busy Streets which they were being continually disgorged from. I have read endless tomes of the factual truth of what The Holocaust is, its integrity languishing the fuller remit of The Final Solution and The Jewish Question.
“..Jews attempted to save Jews from ..Nazis through negotiations ..and for varying motives a few Nazis entered into such discussions. Most ..attempts failed ..some succeeded to a very limited degree. But considering them might be of importance ..because they raise a host of historical ..philosophical ..and moral issues.” Professor Yehuda Bauer.
When I look to the many Books, whose titles I must continually refer to, there are some striking examples, particularly in the title itself, which marks these Books out from the rest. With such a contemptuous Book title, Jews for Sale, there was an accusation within such syllables I felt that was fully warranted. I had generally thought, and until I came to fully understand the total indifference a World paid to a Jewish struggle, Yehuda Bauer’s Book struck a deep and meaningful chord. It troubled me greatly that such contention could be dealt with over the lives of Human Beings. So figuratively, and when we visit the Jews on board the St. Louis for instance, who could not even buy their own freedom, the seal was set upon the Jews becoming, mere pawns in a Worldly game. By the time Eichmann taunted the very idea that Jewish Blood could and was offered for goods, too many 1,000,000’s of Jews were already consigned to a fate worse than their own deaths.
“..The Holocaust was a watershed event in human history. Attempts at rescue from The Holocaust were a sideshow ..there implications are very significant. ..discussion may throw light on human motivations ..and it ..brings us back to questions of personal and public ethics.” Professor Yehuda Bauer.
The prevailing winds of hate, and this pervasive knowledge of what it meant, secured that what these Jews either might have believed, conjectured with, or suspected, became such a stark reality. Even for these Jews who had supposedly cruised out of harm’s way, 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean was soon to catapult all too many of them back in the clutches of herr Hitler, himself an ‘Angel of Death’ and his entire cohort of mass murderer’s. It cannot be clearly ascertained but what Hitler allowed for the freedom of Jewish movement, foresaw the chance to gain financially from this, knowing too well that German, Austrian and even Polish Jewry would forfeit their very existence with travels to Western Europe.
“..an SS ..had come in ..with him ..odour of ..Angel of Death. ..looked us over as if we were a pack of leprous dogs hanging on to our lives.” Elie Wiesel.
Such then was the descent of civilised humanity, it practically disappeared into an abstract reality of division, darkness and destruction which overtook the Jewish light. So as to diminish way too much of Jewish existence, the Jewish lantern was finally extinguished for far too many. Here we can see from this particular lesson in History, and that Hitler had fully pledged his intention within his Weltanschauung, that World View which would subjugate all people’s to subservience and viewed the Jewish People fully decapitated. The Jews then, sent toward obliteration, were motioned forward, and toward the traffic of his fetid mind, Hitler was fixed upon owning all of Western and Eastern Europe. With that in mind, the view looked out to anywhere were there might be a Jewish presence, in order to destroy them all.
“..People seldom learn from history. Can we be an exception.” Professor Yehuda Bauer.
Amidst the consigning of this Jewish presence to such terror and horror, there is a compelling and immersive Book such as Night. This Book delivers from Elie Wiesel, a deeply strong evidence which has us transfixed, and he places us into an inhuman devastation he managed to emerge from. There are far too many books whose pretence is in delivering a narrative which is barely representative of what annihilated the Jewish People. Elie Wiesel’s Book has taught me of that grave darkness that hugely descended, and immersed the Jews in an unimaginable horror. That which surrounded them as a Jewish People, was targeting them, fully enveloping them in terror, simply because they were Jews. What then manifested itself, and within the horror of the Death Camps and Killing Sites, has shredded what was left of the human existence of 6,000,000 Jewish People, their death fully adding to the fabric of the land across the width and breadth of Continental Europe.
“..a novel about Treblinka is either not a novel or not about Treblinka.” Elie Wiesel.
From Elie Wiesel’s direction, I gained an insight into prospective works that would not be countenanced as they were not in search of the Jewish position. For me, any Book which presents itself as work on The Holocaust must always recognise the Jews are central to its commissioning. That the Jews were subjected to the most egregious and brutal atrocity ever to confront the heart of humanity, must be reflected with such works. I remember, as I sat alone in an amphitheatre in Belzec, and reasoned without comprehension, that with an ocean of despair, annihilation was visited upon these Jews, purposely. I could not then countenance such visions of grave loss without succumbing to a deep shame that this had happened. It was a personal shame too, as any human beings must sorely feel. I could no more imagine the trauma though, of Jewish People with Their Children, finally winding their way toward oblivion. Nor could I imagine the distress of Jewish Parents as the are immediate witnesses to this humanitarian downfall. So I go on, reminding us all that with such a catastrophe, hatred has no place amongst reasoned people who judge humanity, humanely.
“..first act as free men was to throw ourselves on to ..provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge ..not of our families. Nothing but bread.” Elie Wiesel.
