“.. Not all victims were Jewish in this place but all Jews were victims.” Elie Wiesel.

My permanent motto stands for the Jews of The Holocaust and for very good reason, I ensure Always to Remember, Never to Forget. This clearly, has set me on a path where my focus remains upon 6,000,000 Jews who were so intentionally destroyed. These innocent Jews, Slaughtered solely because they were Jews has taught me well of the graver wrongs that are inherent within hatred. For me, when People stand by and allow hatred to be expressed, as they watch as it is entertained and they stand aside as it is given full vent to its pernicious and dreadful end, duplicity as such makes us all complicit in what that hatred then expresses itself as.

“..By clumping Jews together with Soviet citizens ..commemoration turned into empathy for ..Soviets at large rather than specifically for ..innocent Jews who were ..targets of ..majority of ..deliberate mass civilian killing.” Felicia Carmelly.

In this fact, and no matter how precise the exacting detail we will have, history cannot be seen shading areas of the truth so as to evade our appreciation of the facts. It is apparent that we condoned the expression of a hatred for the Jews of Europe as it converted into an outright annihilation process for 6,000,000 Jews. And while the fuller truth will always evade us, in relation to the totality of the loss, we continue our search in order to discover as many of those lost as we can find. Regardless of the evidences, despite the detailed testimony’s and given the monumental effort from eye witness accounts, we look deeper and search further than we have ever done in this science of History.

“..I follow on from what Elie Wiesel assures us and stress that while not all Nationals within Nations are guilty of ..crimes of The Holocaust ..not all nationals within those nations are innocent of ..very crimes we uncover and bear witness to.” Patrick Dempsey.

Researching a broader spectrum of that atrocity’s vista, and in order to infill any or all of those gaps, we have an urgency in those immediate and first hand recollections we seek. Of course, we come to the moments of today when we realise there are so many fewer memories that we can salvage from this obliterated past. That said, such is the overwhelming evidence of The Holocaust, it is being sanctioned as the most uniquely unparalleled and unprecedented Genocide in All of History. But for us to be concerned with all that transpired in such a negative and consistent route toward an inexorable brutality and crucially devastating destruction, our search is increasingly more important to civilised society today.

“..Gypsies had been murdered in a proportion similar to ..Jews ..about 80% of them in ..area of ..countries which were occupied by ..Nazis.” Simon Wiesenthal.

With the continuous blurring of these truths over time, the very veracity of what we have learned still cannot confiscate what it is that we now set before the bar of history. This then, the distorting attempt, moving on from what could never be advanced as denial, was my early lesson at having to counter the untruth’s facing The Holocaust lesson. The negative aspects of the frustating effort for all of History, which persuaded me to focus my intention where it belonged, on The Holocaust, and with that, these 6,000,000 Jews and even more whose extinguished voice called out for a chance to speak or be heard.

“..Government and with it ..great majority of ..German people ..are very conscious of ..appalling suffering brought to ..Jews in Germany and ..occupied territories. ..German people in their overwhelming majority ..disgusted by ..crimes perpetrated against ..Jews. ..in ..name of ..German people appalling crimes were committed ..that demand from us moral and material reparation ..not only as far as damages to ..individual ..but ..with regard to Jewish property.”  Konrad Adenauer.

I had been writing for a long while, attempting to find the vehicle for the words which seemed to be parked up, waiting for that sudden flourish of any expression that I could deliver. I found that expression in both a grief and its loss which I could extract from my own experiences, but in a small way, and transfer this loss and grief to paper, and hopefully in a more focused way. I read copious amounts of works, concentrated upon the very Survivor who could deliver their message for us and was deeply touched by the words of so so many who write and have written on such an odious episode in our history. For Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz, her words, which leapt out at me all the way back at the very beginning of this odyssey, it was a watershed moment.

“..history ..as a way of knowing ..past ..has survived ..partisanship ..ideological distortions ..attempts to extinguish its light and even to murder its practitioners ..and it will continue to do so. Its most terrible chapter ..murder of ..European Jews ..will surely remain recorded.” Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

In the pages of her Book: The War Against the Jews 1933 – 45, which she penned in 1975, this work struck a deep emotional chord. That I added to the personal grief and sense of loss I had been feeling personally, and for so long, galvanised all of a sudden into words I could identify with and recognise as empathetic and sympathetic to a Jewish struggle in their demise. For me too, fixed as I was that in History, only the factual truth can hold the integrity of its Science together, here was one of The Holocaust’s most eloquent writer’s assuring me that nothing that is History can be distorted by what is not history.

“..anyone ..attempting to write ..on ..nature of Nazism ..will not be able to express ..truth ..Nazism’s cruelty and barbarism. ..no writer among ..gentiles is qualified for this task. ..a Jewish writer who lives ..life of his people ..who feels ..suffers their agony ..cannot find a true path here. Only one who feels ..taste of Nazi rule ..only one who ..bared his back to ..lashes ..only ..a writer ..if he is a man of sensitivity ..might be able to.” Chaim Aron Kaplan.

For more than 20 years, even prior to Hitler’s intervention into Poland, the focus of all of Hitler’s vitriol and hatred was levelled at the Jews. Hitler’s very pronounced expressions of hatred were aimed at the Jewish People and that contempt for human life was concentrated upon those People of the Jewish Faith. When in 1939, with a further 3,650,000 Polish Jews on his doorstep, the clearer emphasis of that hatred moved along an expanding route and with a more widely expressed territorial demand. This would then become Hitler’s Weltanschauung, and it was a world view which would take his legions out of earshot and close proximity of a witnessing civilisation and into the realm of the gravest brutality atrocity could ever envisage.

“..I pray ..Jew ..non-Jew alike may unite in ..resolve that evil forces will never again be permitted to set one people against another.”  Alicia Appleman-Jurman.

Those expanded steps into an act of such clear brutality and grievous savagery, which was then completely unbounded by the norms of those borders that were both negated of human decency and the moral efficacy of ethical behaviour, developed exponentially. The sweep East then, while this was meant to provide a better prospect of more obscured secrecy, did not in face prove to be such a secret. That said, with the advancement of the Invasion of Poland on September 1st. 1939, this now delivered many more millions of prospective witnesses who could not be quieted. With these Polish Jews then added to the crucible of a solution that was as yet to be fully resolved, though it was more clearly recognised, Poland was a collander of views and expressions of witness testimony that informed the World. What is now secured for all of posterity is a reason to recollect and know what would be readily witnessed.

“..By ..time we reach ..75th anniversary ..liberation of Auschwitz ..there may be almost no survivors left. But they are coming now ..because they want to bear witness ..to stand there and say ..we outlasted Hitler. We made it.” Ronald Lauder.

It is clear too, that when Hitler opened up his Weltanschauung to the possibility of resolving the fuller issue of obliterating more than 12,293,300 Jewish European lives, he had moved all levels of his Reich toward achieving his ultimate aim. The Final Solution of The Jewish Question was ultimately running concurrently with that view of a World to be invested with the virus of hatred Hitler esposed, and divested of ever more Jews than can possibly be accounted for. For ever more Jews, who were brought closer to their own demise than a knowing World could countenance, an aware World looked on in cold silence. When, on June 22nd. 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, this too would bring Hitler closer to the completion of this ultimate goal, an accosting with more of European Jewry.

“..Operational Situation Report USSR No. 10 ..Einsatzgruppe B  ..Renamed on July 11th. Einsatzgruppe C. ..17th Army Command has suggested ..use first of all of ..anti-Jewish ..anti-Communist Poles living in ..newly ..occupied areas for self ..cleansing activities. On July 1st. 1941 Chief of Security Police and SD issued ..following order to all Einsatzgruppe ..Order No. 2 ..Poles residing in ..newly ..occupied Polish territories may be expected ..to be anti-Communist and ..anti-Jewish. ..cleansing activities have to extend first of all to ..Bolsheviks and ..Jews. As for ..Polish intelligentsia and others ..decisions can be taken later. ..It is therefore obvious that such Poles need not be included in ..cleansing action ..especially as they are of great importance as elements to initiate pogroms and for obtaining information. ..This depends ..of course ..on local conditions.” der Einsatzgruppe OSR’s.

When emerging from the terms of  die Endlosung der Judenfrage, what eventually became to be fully recognisable as The Holocaust, Hitler had consumed his Jewish prey. Contracted upon such an industrial scale, the mechanics were such, and they were invented purposefully to achieve Hitler’s aim, this fully realised all that he had aimed for with regards to at least 6,000,000 Jews. It becomes clear from the many edicts issued too, be they word of mouth proclamations or physical evidences of how Hitler’s whims were transferrable into real time, the Jewish destruction moved in pace with the more extreme efforts of Hitler’s hate filled protestations. When we read such as this OSR No. 10, that Poles were not considered in the same vein as the Jews, the exclusive nature of the Jewish presence is geared toward total destruction.

“..German authorities ..now carrying into effect Hitler’s ..intention to exterminate ..Jewish people in Europe.” American State Department.

The Jewish People, then exclusively targeted for complete annihilation, in both the first and final phase of Hitler’s plan for them, had no alternative to what had been envisioned for them as Jews targeted by Hitler’s extreme view. Of course, and while exclusivity exists in the realm of The Holocaust, by which all Jews were Victims, it is clear that not all victims of the War Hitler waged were Jewish. However, The Holocaust was an exclusive effort, and detailing as such for solely securing for the Jews, their confinement within its grasp. These intended victims of the systematic and sought out effort were always intended to be all the Jews of Europe and if that could amount to 11,293,300 People, then that would be a detail in time realised by Hitler’s plan for them.

“..no conceivable chronicle of any kind could succeed in turning 6,000,000 dead people into a political argument.” Hannah Arendt.

With that in mind, we have need to remind history that Jews have Never hidden the fact that Hitler made victims of other than the Jewish People. It is abundantly clear too, and I make reference to just a few of the foremost writers on The Holocaust, and many of whom are Jewish Survivors, to appraise you of this effort on their part. There is a picture which fully emerges still though, and it is with the Jewish People as the concerted effort for Hitler’s abject hatred, and it is for the Jews. With their systematic Slaughter, which was Hitler’s focus since he first sought to articulate his enmity for the Jewish People, words could not conceal the deeply held conviction of this hatred.

“..I saw a flood once in ..mountains. Wooden huts ..torn from their foundations were carried above ..raging waters. One could still see lighted lamps in them ..Men ..Women ..Children in their cradles were tied to ..ceiling beams. Other huts were empty inside ..but one could see a tangle of arms waving from ..roof ..like branches blowing in ..wind waving desperately toward heaven ..toward ..river banks for help. At a distance ..one could see mouths gaping ..but one could not hear ..cries because ..roar of ..waters drowned out everything. And that’s how ..Jewish masses flowed to their destruction at ..time of ..deportations. Sinking as helplessly into ..deluge of destruction. And if ..for even one of ..days of my life ..I should forget how I saw you then ..my People ..desperate and confused ..delivered over to extinction ..may all knowledge of me be forgotten and my name be cursed like that of those traitors who are unworthy to share your pain.” Rachel Auerbach.

It is apparent that only the Jewish People are then to be seen as the focus of all and every effort of Hitler’s Reich and all his future aims. No matter what it is we fail to say, no matter how we fail to say it, we cannot allow for the dilution of a genocidal term which was to treat 6,000,000 Jews with such disdain. It would appear that far more respect could be visited upon the Jewish destruction than was to be done well after we recognised their waning life was taken away. From amongst us, as we became increasingly more aware of what was being visited upon the Jewish People, our own absence from the realm of concern was growing immensely more indifferent. From every angle of moral probity, the ethics of concern was removed from where we stood, looking in upon the dissolution of Jewish existence.

“..The Holocaust ..Shoah in Hebrew is ..most tragic era in ..history of ..Jewish People 1933 – 1945 when ..Germans and their collaborators perpetrated genocide against them.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.

It is essential too that we acknowledge that The Holocaust term itself belongs to the Jewish People in both the words acted upon and the deeds then enacted. The Holocaust is a term framed around a hatred so embedded in much of European society, it was all too easy for Hitler to inflame those who fully bought into it. Within every sphere of Hitler’s world view, and every state of Hitler’s malevolence, Hitler became an influence in what was directed against the Jews. That all too many nations and all too many of their nationals were so invested and coerced into the atrocity, it is clear that they became duplicitous in all of what Hitler demanded for the Jewish People. Far too many people, who were willing to adopt the very tenets of that hatred from Hitler, and did so with impunity, have escaped anything remotely convincing of justice.

May 23rd. 1942 “..imprisoned were some Gypsies ..Auerswald terms Gypsy Jews.” Emmanuel Ringelblum.

That Hitler and his hatred then moved an entire Continent into dealing with and placating The Final Solution of The Jewish Question, is tantamount to the surrender to their debasement and inhumanity as has ever been witnessed. Then, as we delve into the depths of a Catastrophe, which exploited a 2,000 year hatred, there lay exposed an indifference amongst non-Jews which combined to deliver these 6,000,000 Jews toward an extinction we were loathe to intervene in. We know from the History of the time that much that was being falteringly concealed, achieved what it was intended to gain. That gain was a passivity of approach that would envelop a World in the most heinous act of abandonment ever to be enacted in civilising’s history. 

“..Through a maze of time ..hitler’s decision of November 1918 led to Operation Barbarossa. There never had been any ideological deviation or wavering determination. In ..end only ..question of opportunity mattered.” Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

At a time too when the Jews were unsure of the systematic nature of what was to assail them, there were people like Emmanuel Ringelblum who was certain of the fact of an egregious wrong that was to be perpetrated. It is true also that other people’s were treated equally badly, and through their fate we recognise the effort against the Jews fully eclipsed this. Every burden and range of hatred though would fully appear and prefix the treatment of so many with the example set aside exclusively for the Jews of Europe. The treatment of the Gypsy has been no less heinous, though the systematic nature of their destruction was predicated upon the Jews serving the first and foremost position of intended victims of Hitler’s.

“..a decision was made ..to exterminate ..Jews to ..last man. ..entire Jewish people were condemned to death. No such decision was made to kill any other group in this way ..although ..Gypsies come closest of all to ..Jewish tragedy.” Elie Wiesel.

It is essentially true that while the many vestiges of a Lalleri, Medvashi, Roma or Sinti presence was to be witnessed attempting to survive even in the Death Camps, the Porajmos lends them a basis for recognition of such facts that devourd them. However, their position was subordinate always to the call for a Jewish extinction and as such cannot be considered as exclusive an intention as proscribed for the Jewish People. No one attempts to minimise the deaths of others, nor should we diminish the terrifying ordeal of anyone faced by Hitler’s threat to them. But what had assailed the Jewish People, even given the incremental stages engaged with, so as to bring the solution to it’s final resolve, cannot be compared with. The total annihilation of these 6,000,000 Jews was administered to and accomplished in accordance with the dictats of the will of Hitler who urged them upon his entire Reich.

“..War ..annihilation of ..Jews were interdependent. ..disorder of war would provide ..hitler with ..cover for ..unchecked commission of murder. He needed an arena for his operations where ..restraints of common codes of morality and accepted rules of warfare would not extend.” Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

For 100’s of years the christian World sought to have Jews conform and convert to the views held against them. This conversion, in terms of how Hitler would administer to them, proved insufficient to save any Jew from an extinguished life. As perhaps we might recognise in the case of Edith Stein, a Jew first and foremost, and despite her conversion to the same version of a belief system even held by Hitler, Edith was sacrificed upon the altar of antisemitic hatred. Not even popes nor christianity sought to assuage a guilt ridden device which did nothing to save Edith but claim her for having been abandoned by those she sought solace amongst. It is true also, that once conversion had proved insufficient to diminish the Jewish presence in over 5,000 years of adherence to a Judaic belief system, an alternative force, more malevolent, was brought to bear.

“..From now on ..do not answer by your name. ..felt like ..not ..human person anymore. ..shaved our heads ..I felt so ashamed. And also when they told us to undress and to shower ..they made us feel like ..animals. ..men were walking around ..laughing and looking at us. And you take a young girl at that age ..who had never been exposed to a person ..to a man ..and you stay there naked ..I wanted ..ground to open ..and I should go into it. We were packed like sardines. ..beds were bunks ..3 layers. I was on ..top layer. If one person wanted to turn ..we all had to turn. They gave me ..little rations of hard ..dried up bread which was half mildew ..I could hardly eat it. ..a tin can of soup ..so rotten and vile ..when I tasted it I couldn’t eat it. .. I just ate ..bread and drank a little water ..which was just rust running out from ..sink that they had over there. ..finally ..got so hungry ..knew I had to eat ..soup ..so vile. ..so terrible. I never ate anything like that in my whole life. ..If I want to survive I have to eat ..soup. ..So I started eating ..soup. And I ..forcing ..soup down my throat ..big tears coming down my face. Eating ..crying ..eating ..crying ..this is how I was in Birkenau. Every day ..I woke up and I would find 1 ..2 people who wanted to end their lives and couldn’t take it anymore. ..throw themselves to ..electric wires ..make an end of it. ..every once in a blue moon ..couldn’t take it anymore. ..try to sneak out of ..barracks late at night and I would see ..sky. ..talk to myself ..can’t believe ..stars ..looking down at us in this Hell ..this camp ..same stars ..shining at ..outside of ..world. ..other people ..looking at ..same stars ..they are free. ..to do what they want to do. ..living a good life. ..we are ..in Hell ..human beings worse than animals. ..nobody is doing anything about it.  ..young as I was ..asking myself these questions. ..Where is ..world ..Why isn’t ..world doing anything about this ..I would question god ..Where is god ..How can He let us be killed like that ..after I cried myself out real good ..I would go back to ..barracks.” Lily Appelbaum.

This newer device of The Ghetto was brought to later use, and as it had in earlier effect become the very tool of many states and nations in seeking to remove both the body of the Jew from view and indeed the view of Jewish influence from them, Hitler would capitalise upon its demeanour. The Jewish People, expelled from amidst the civilisation of all of past society, became the catalyst by which Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann made certain of the corralling of the Jews within Europe. Such stricture was so very often, for the Jewish People in particular, an indefensible crime against all sense of morality. Even though many of the Jews had sought to enjoin and even attempted to adhere or assimilate to the constrictions of communities they were amongst, this did not preclude them from being the victims of 2,000 years of continued pogroms.

“..I lived through ..war ..Warsaw Ghetto ..Majdanek ..Auschwitz ..Ravensbrueck ..Neustadt-Glewe. ..Hope is last to die consists of recollections ..my first extensive work.” Halina Birenbaum.

Also, and with the Jewish position of being outsiders in a moral vacuum, a space that is always an uncharitable and unethical approach to humanity, this still left the Jews holding to their faith. Judaism was so steadfast and still remained as an adherence to the very morality that the Jewish People themselves were being denied during Hitler’s rampage through History. In all of their existence, the Jewish People have been the targets of what has diminished nations for such hatred they were espousing. The right to persist, at least as a human being, has all too often been denied to the Jewish People by concurrent civilisations wishing to confront, contain and detain them. For me personally, it is difficult to conform to any belief system which would sponsor such an inhumane outrage.

“..In ..Autumn of 1939 planning began for transfer of ..Austrian Jews to ..Lublin District ..Poland. ..organised by Eichmann.” Abraham Margaliot.

Here though, I do not wish to create any impression that my study of The Holocaust brought me to any conclusion relating to my disbelief. However, my own refusal to see any belief system as valid has been enlarged by the calculated destruction of 6,000,000 Jews as a World’s conscience was severely controlled, curtailed and limiting. Through discussions with Survivor’s, who held strongly to their faith, it remains difficult for me to comprehend the absence of a system which recognises any god at its head. The advocates of such systems always point to the god given right of choice for those who chose to Slaughter these 6,000,000 Jews.

“..For a variety of reasons ..women’s situation was a good deal worse than that of ..men ..physical endurance ..coupled with work more arduous and degrading ..agonies of disrupted families ..and ..haunting presence of ..crematoria ..located right in ..middle of ..women’s camp ..inescapable ..undeniable ..ungodly smoke rising ..to contaminate every day ..every night ..every moment of respite or illusion ..every dream and timorous hope.”  Primo Levi.

But what choice was there, or was even given to any of these 6,000,000 Jews that was other than a choice to conform to a fate that was clearly designed for them. The long held institutional belief that conversion, or removal, must then make way for extermination is an absence of what a godhead must mean. I so ardently reject the Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews as much as I dismiss those who profess a faith that is capable of the most devastating pogrom in all of History. I have been brought to the altar of a History so cruel and barbaric that I see no emergence of a god nor a place for any religion which can look the other way.  I am done with all the pretence that a World in conflict could not direct an effort toward saving 6,000,000 Jews. Nor do I recognise in any religious institution or body, so transfixed by Hitlerian obsession, that they abandon their own codex of moral compassion and ethical righteousness. I do not doubt the fervour of those whose belief offers them comfort but they cannot hold onto the institutions of those beliefs who so profoundly trashed any belief in the sanctity of any life then denied to 6,000,000 Jews.

“..Despite ..recent outpouring of popular and scholarly books on Hitler ..no work has yet been produced that satisfactorily explains Hitler’s obsessive ideas about ..Jews ..readiness of ..German people to accept these ideas ..and Hitler’s ability to harness an enormous apparatus of men ..institutions ..facilities just in order to murder ..Jews. Hitler has proved to be an elusive and unrewarding subject for conventional biography because ..explanations for ..baffling mystique he exercised ..for ..power he came to wield ..and for his unspeakable accomplishments are not to be found in ..facts of a banal life ..but in ..ideas and feelings that created ..symbiosis between him and ..German people. Their mutuality and interdependence thrived ..as Hitler first expressed and later gratified ..Germans’ most arrogant and abominable ambitions. He relieved their deepest fears and anxieties and ..near ..end ..disburdened them both of guilt and responsibility for ..wickedness they had given him warrant to commit.” Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

On December 8th. 1941, in a letter to Mendel Grossman:

“..I inform you herewith that you are not allowed to work in your profession for private purposes. Your photographic work is confined only to ..activity in ..department in which you are employed. You are therefore strictly prohibited to do any photographic work.” Chaim Rumkowski.

Over all the years I have been writing on The Holocaust, researching its Catastrophe and learning of its Atrocity, it is the imagery in testimony that strikes us. Of course, there is an inevitable collision between those images presented, which see life at its fullest and the stages leading toward, during  and after the Catastrophe. Photographs are presented that become as testified to by those who witnessed the atrocity or indeed, where consumed by it. There is no vindication of the disparity between the two, though a reposited victory is reserved for those Jews who beat all attempts to destroy them. As the photographs of Henryk Ross present us with a Memory Unearthed of The Lodz Ghetto, we recognise in that Ghetto, which is steeped in the same atrocity that awaits the Jews of every other created and functional Ghetto, the loss to come.

“..This Book is dedicated to ..Children whose lives ended during The Holocaust and to ..photographers ..known and unknown ..who risked their lives to record their story.” Chana Byers Abells.

Here too, at the Death Camp Chelmno, and within those other Death Camps, Lodz Ghetto Jews are extolled to calm as they are driven toward eternity. When we add to these impressions the very narrative of what Yitzhak Arad surely knew, what we then know of what is finally recalled, we are fully gripped by what in fact has been saved of the past. All of this is secured within centres such as Yad Vashem for future generations of nations to know how cruelty can permeate our own existence. With The Pictorial History of The Holocaust there exists, and because 6,000,000 Jews within Europe were forced to comply and die, a repository of that loss reigns throughout these terrortories. As starvation too played its hand in delivering to the eventual resolve of the Hitler acolytes for The Final Solution of The Jewish Question, mages of starving Jews are presented in grave numbers. When Roman Vishniac sought To Give Them Light, and here his words lead us to images which deliver back a People, though in still form, they are representative of a Jewish life that has gone, that has been taken away.

“..Jews were worried but did not dare to think ..disaster was close.” Roman Vishniac.

An immense thank you must go to those who risked both life and limb to record their story. Due to their effort and courage we have a portfolio of such imagery, now ingrained upon our psyche, we can never let go of what that impression is that has been created. Roman Vishniac is recording for us here, impressions created for those Jews of Bratislava who in 1938 could not contemplate what was coming. The Jewish People, who could never believe that such a disaster was approaching were moved to foresee such a prospect, moments before their own destruction. For us to attempt to imagine the worst, is for us to suspect a graver evil in mankind than has ever been contemplated. The entire extirpation of the whole of the Jewish People had not been written into Pogroms as yet devised. Our misfortune is to now realise that the Jews themselves were betrayed by their very belief in the decency within humanity. That humanity within society further realised that the society they belonged now remained uncivilised in the extreme

“..photographs. ..depict ..degradation ..oppression ..Jewish People suffered under ..Nazis ..before being exterminated en masse. For we ..spared The Holocaust ..know there is nothing normal on display. We know ..outcome.” Edgar M. Bronfman.

We come to recognise that this is just the impression which photographic images present to us as we survey the record a suffering for the Jewish People exterminated in extremis. Visually it is a vision of a past, not knowing yet what is about to assail those we seek to reclaim from a searing and brutal atrocity readily recorded. The warmth of such imagery however, the impression created which belies the outcome, is a horror beyond belief captioned in moments of sublime innocence. While I recognise too, that in these images, these are Your People, and though I often relate that they have become, as much my adopted People over the years, I cannot take away their place in our History is because they, as The Chosen People were instead chosen for complete annihilation.

“..Auschwitz ..world’s largest cemetery ..without a single grave. I held tight to 3 dreams. ..first living through ..nightmare ..surviving ..camp. ..second was to tell ..even though it ..cannot be explained. There was no reason whatsoever for what was done. ..I knew I had to tell ..to as many people as possible. ..third was that ..if I managed to accomplish ..first two ..I would do anything and everything to bring about ..establishment of State of Israel. ..I realized all three dreams.”  Noah Klieger.

Through the processing assimilation of concern for these Jews, with an anger at The Holocaust’s commissioning, and as an accusation that allowed for it all to happen, I share a rage that 6,000,000 Jews cannot express. Then, when we marry the image to the terrifying detail of the witness evidence, we have an unbearable depiction of an incomprehensible and indefensible inhumanity. This human but Jewish catastrophe, a horror never before realised in all of history, is exacted before a watching World and in a time of a festival of the renaissance of culture with its civilising influences and human appreciation.

“..Scream from every sand dune ..from under every stone. ..dust ..fire ..smoke. It is your blood ..your sap ….marrow of your bones ..your flesh..”  Yitzhak Katzenelson.

However, with the images presented of what was done against these 6,000,000 Jews of Europe, these must stand alongside the imagery of what has been lost. What was taken away and to such a cruel notion that civilised humanity had existed, must be more truthfully annotated. The essential in all of this is the preservation of all that had so far persevered for the Jewish People, faith in their belief system and even faith in us. For all that was conducted against them as The Jewish People, we have to look at the moral abandonment of anything we would now refer to as moral turpitude. It is apparent that with these images of what was lost, they stand in bold relief against the very detailed and defining imagery of what horror and terror was inflicted upon them as Jews. Tragically, the inevitable cost, in terms of the Catastrophe that is The Holocaust, cannot identify all those Jews who were either pictured before or during the rage conducted against them. This then is the tenure of The Holocaust which must deal in all aspects of a grave wrong, conducted by and for a hatred no civilised humanity should identify itself with. It is a hatred long conducted and then, by stealth, fully settled the Jews outside recognised boundaries, within structured Ghetto and eventually confined permanently to Grave Sites made up of  Death Camps and Killing Sites.

“..Nazis used photography as part of a sophisticated arsenal of media propaganda to control and intimidate German public opinion. ..camera was a weapon.” Sybil Milton.

We have all of these images, and as they are presented to us, even by Willy Georg, but more appropriately by those like Mendel Grossman, Serge Klarsfeld, Henryk Ross and Roman Vishniac we are gazing at a loss that is indescribable. Of course there are many photographs by the Nazi’s themselves, under orders not to do so, and some commanded to, we have a library of some 250,000 of their images to compliment their own atrocity. Mendel Grossman would leave us a repository of Jewish Life, not killed nor deadened by Hitler’s effort to eradicate every single trace of every Jew that lived in Europe at the time. That too is true of Serge Klarsfeld whose very herculean endeavour has secured more images of the Jews Children, particularly of French Jewry than Hitler would have ever expected.

“..Stories ..legends ..dredged up from ..dreadful past ..pogroms ..burnings ..expulsions ..whole Jewish communities massacred. ..tragedies seemed to cling to ..houses and squares.” Roman Vishniac.

Then there are the collections at Yad Vashem, which seeks To Bear Witness to the Calamity that unfolds within its Memorial and the pages of those Albums and Books it lends to us. With all of this resource we are then delivered from the very Streets of Jewish persistence right to the very ramparts of their Destruction. This is all played out in an imagery unwarranted by or for any civilising humanity that pertains to have humanity in its heart. Also, and while there are also these centres in America which all add to an imagery that must never be looked upon without concern, we wonder most fervently why such a need was not present for what is now missing back then. The representation of those failed Jews, whose lives appear intact, are in fact a stolen premise before oblivion. Here, United States Holocaust Museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, all bear a form of witnessing which all adds to the greater need to recall. What we choose to remember is that 6,000,000 Jews require of us a voice, to echo to an image of the impression of what they can no longer deliver. There can be no image I have not seen that does not leave me without a need to write in such deep despair as to what was allowed to happen.

“..Wherever we went ..failure would be certain ..victory ..there could only be one victory ..to hold out as long as possible.” Noemi Szac-Wainkranc.

Though Noemi speaks here of the Jews of The Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she could be speaking of anywhere where Jews sought to cling to life. I cannot look at the imagery of the atrocity without the realisation that what such words add to what the photographers too have presented. To pave the way toward what is unacceptable, and the wastage of all human life, the Jews of Europe conceded, there was no way out from the failure that would be certain. Also, and while such images are cascading through such atrocity, we are adorned with the vibrancy of all Jewish existence. This all leads us forlornly toward the escalating trepidation soon to greet all Jews then facing their final peril, Life’s extinguishing solution. What we know from The Auschwitz Album, from the images Roman Vishniac presents to us, from Willy Georg’s detail also, is the extermination of that very existence these Jews are as yet unaware of. Here, for the Jews of Hungary at least, they have been far enough away from the inferno not to feel its heat.

“..Until then I had known Germans only as a steel wall of implacable death. I had come to contend with them as a free person with memories from reality ..created then by their countrymen. To bring right up in front of their eyes ..image of these experiences so that they ..their children ..their grandchildren might taste them for a moment. But I was faced with ordinary people ..shaken ..moved ..terrified ..shamed. Thus was I required. With shared tears.”  Halina Birenbaum.

Within this particular album however, we are at the end of the line as never before seen, witnessed or conducted in such a race against time. The victory of the Allied powers is almost upon us and at the gates to Auschwitz, the palpable sense that the end to Jewish torment might be closer by. Here though, Hitler sees only the final goal, the further elimination of even more Jews, and this time it is to be all of Hungarian Jewry, or at least 80% of them. This imagery too can be mirrored across the Death Camp system, and as it is presented by Roman Vishniac’s images, we are aware of what is at stake. For those Jews of Poland ostensibly, and Europe in particular, far too many who have no idea of the meaning of Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor or Treblinka, let alone Auschwitz nor Birkenau, we look back in angered frustration as to what will befall them in such massively huge, abhorrent numbers.

“..Passages from Diaries return words to a People who can never be silenced.” Rafael F. Scharf.

What we consider, and whether the Diary comes from those who left an indelible mark upon The Holocaust, because they did not Survive, or from those Jews who did in fact survive, we are the ones gifted with the lessons still to learn. To then allow for their oratory to add to what we are presented with, there are images from all these Books which contain the commentary of lost lives so as to provoke our attention. Along with that resolve to have emerged from Lodz, Lublin, Galicia, Hungary or Poland, the Jewish lives are now a vision in the main, which are to be extorted from living. Whether that is in any one of the 6 Death Camps, other Camps, Ghettos and the myriad of Killing Sites, their testimony is highlighted also in photographic evidences. We are thus struck by the images from The Auschwitz Album knowing full well, these are the Jews of Hungary at the end of their journey toward annihilation.

“..power ..of historical reconstruction ..sombre immediacy ..we are taken inside ..realities of life and death which led to ..most significant act of Jewish resistance during The Holocaust.” Eva Hoffman.

Any or many of these photographs, even those providing the images of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, are clearly known to us. Much of that imagery then has become recognisable and are of those Jews those both presented to Treblinka and those which have presented Hitler with a detail in true bravery. What we also have, in some of Vishniac’s effort, are many of these same Jews prior to their transportation toward the resettlement murder awaiting them. For much of Polish Jewry, and we speak mostly of these, as they are more than 3,000,000 destroyed, Mendel Grossman shares his images too of what is lost. Roman Vishniac also shares a passing of Lodz Jews, alongside the very evidences of which stains our memory. Tragically, and with such losses that we are eternally competing over, in terms of that which was expelled from all existence, we look with huge emotion at what inevitably becomes our human loss. Though I speak of our loss, it is of mainly Jews that I speak for as 6,000,000 deserve better from those of us, non-Jews, who did not speak loudly enough for them, back then.

“..What kinds of beasts of burden were these Jews of ..Carpathians.” Roman Vishniac.

It becomes apparent that these beasts of burden, the Jews of the Carpathian Ruthenia Region, were foresters. Here too we can enjoin with the imagery of Grossman, Vishniac delivering ordinary lives and recognise that this is a photographic reservoir of immense importance. Memory is the essential of that imagery we must hold onto as we realise, this is a testimony to all that is lost. While we do not have all the names and personages of the 6,000,000 Jews that have been detained within The Holocaust, we recognise their loss. We must search ever wider and far deeper for what can ensure more of what is lost that can still be retained. Roman Vishniac brought us through that trauma of Jewish life, prior to its extinction for us to welcome their presence. He leads us toward much of where Jews were formerly vibrant and productive to where they were almost nearly obliterated, as a whole and almost totally. Alongside Roman Vishniac, whose photographic evidences include Lodz, we see the Jews from the former Hungarian province of Carpatho-Ruthenia, these same Jews who fed the furnaces of Birkenau, who look straight back at us unknowingly and while we still to ask the question as to Why, the repository of images has no answer.

“..camera captured anonymous human beings ..but we made every possible effort to identify them ..to give them back their names ..their individual uniqueness ..their personal essence.” Avner Shalev.

What I have always sought, in those words I have so often used, is to enable History to give back to a vanquished Jewish presence. Here, and if not their names can be fully presented, the very essence of their being is recorded for knowledge to be made aware. In this particular insight alone, The Auschwitz Album, where we are given a glimpse of the intended anonymous imagery of these Hungarian Jews enroute to extinction, their anonymity is being whittled away at to present us a fuller knowledge of who they are. As fortune would have it, Lili Jacob found the photographs which provide all of History, not just the progress toward Hungarian Jewish destruction, but the physical presentation of individual uniqueness of the Jewish Person as is being recognised, named and forever recalled. Tragically, not all the images provide the necessary names for memory, but we now recognise some whose anonymity has now been given an identity. The certain aim from within The Holocaust, is for The Final Solution of The Jewish Question was to obliterate all Jewish presence and then the evidences of that presence.

“..From ..mountains to ..Tisza River ..lumber industry used Jews as woodcutters ..log carriers ..raftsmen. ..tools ..as primitive as their arguments were refined.” Roman Vishniac.

Whether we are with Roman Vishniac in the region of Carpathia, or in the Ghetto of Lodz, where we see the Children, the comparisons are a Jewish one in all we see. For those Jews we see, who travel along local Streets, and where Synagogues still stand, this is merely an impression of what presents us of what once existed. As we look deep into the area of Baluty, Pabianice, recognising all that is gone as they and it was torn viciously from us, the journey from here is reflective of what Auschwitz will present to them all. Toward the end of the War, and into Hungary, we move relentlessly toward a realisation that is callous in the extreme. Hitler has not as yet destroyed all the largest Centres of European Jewish Cultural existence, nor the Jews who reside within them. However, that inevitable confrontation, a colossal tragedy that was to be rectified in brutal fashion, and speedily, takes place in 1944 as the realisation has been secure that Hitler, his Reich and those who adorn it, as a spent force. Here though, and prior to ever more Jewish lives that are to be destroyed, the Hungarian Slaughter is to be organised as Hitler’s decreasing influence is forever waning and the speeding up of Allied victory is evidenced.

“..Mukachevo ..all that vanished with ..destruction of ..Shtetl.” Roman Vishniac.

These Jews of Mukachevo, Carpathia, Ruthenia and Hungary are now within sight of an expending reach of the Third Reich. However, all of this meets with that final push toward that of Hitler’s ultimate and final resolve for the Jews of Europe, ahead of the more glaring need of the German people or the German nation, a War effort. From May 15th. 1944 until July 9th. 1944, and the imagery gained of Hungarian Jewry, is being decimated. Here, and over a 55 day period, Hungarian Jews on some 147 Transports, representing a total of 3,419 Jewish People averaging each transport, reach Birkenau. What eventually totalled some 502,491 Hungarian Jews, all of whom were transported and delivered to Birkenau for Destruction, we have the imagery of prior existence, a Jewish persistence, where once there was Jewish life, all of this rocks us to our human core. As the Mukachevo, the capitol of Carpatho-Ruthenia comes into view, we recognise that some 14,000 Jews who lived in City are a part of that final and terrifying aim. More than 100,000 Jews from the whole region were consumed within Birkenau n these latter day transports. Here, and mostly in Eichmann’s last managed drive against Hungarian Jewry, the dissipation of what had been Jewish existence, was no longer.

“..People caught in these photographs ..busy ..feverish ..emaciated ..oppressed ..but still living a life of sorts ..are unaware of ..unthinkably cruel end that awaits them shortly. Virtually none will escape a horrible death.” Rafael F. Scharf.

What Roman Vishniac and Lili Jacobs bring together, what Yad Vashem holds on to preserve and what all such albums possess is that line of communicating that is an evil for the Jews. For the vast majority of the Jews therefore, unknowing of what is to come and Hungarian Jews who are seen immediately before they too are destroyed, who should suspect such evil. While Roman Vishniac’s effort moves us relentlessly to where The Auschwitz Album, thanks to Lili Jacobs, brings us to a step just outside the Gassing Chambers at Birkenau, we have images interposed which take us all the way back to 2,000 years of Jewish life in Europe. This Auschwitz Album alone, which is an Historical record on its own, is confirming of the progress of Hungarian Jewry toward extermination. While this is of such imagery as would deliver further knowledge of the processes toward destruction, in the very detail of an atrocity which impacted most deadly upon 6,000,000 Jews, we are denied the much more virulent evidences. I can show you every image that is to come out of the period leading up to and during and eventual progression toward The Holocaust.

“..They are standing on ..ramp ..Women young and old ..with frightened Children and Infants clinging to them on all sides. Next to them are ..Men young and old. They are about to undergo a selection process that will send them to a horrific death within hours.” Avner Shalev.

I can make you more aware of the brutality and horrifying detail that you are already aware of, though remaining as incomprehensible to it as I am. We have perhaps become inured by the spectacle of the human form being brutalised and even being shot while visioning the images of a passive state of affairs for the Jewish People at home, at leisure, in business or simply parading through life as they should have been allowed to. What the German soldier Willy Georg presents to us, with his photographs In The Warsaw Ghetto is an insight into the horror to come. This is an almost voyeuristic entry point to the pre-apocalyptic slaughter. As we visit what we think we might know of Cracow, Lodz, Lublin, Mukachevo and particularly Warsaw, Roman Vishniac informs us further of what Poland, Europe, the World of all that we have lost. There is not too much we can owe to a German soldier whose role in the occupation of Warsaw and indeed all of Poland, but Warsaw led Polish Jewry inextricably toward Treblinka. Here, Willy Georg lends us the images of a day in passing, when the Jews of that capitol of Polish Jewry, Warsaw was still at odds with the images to emerge.

“..carriers of heavy loads. ..on their backs roughly hewn crates filled with merchandise. They pushed handcarts and pulled carriages meant for horses.” Roman Vishniac.

The Jews of All of Poland, though languishing in a hatred for their persistence within a land they had been national to for nearly 2,000 years, were still living a heightened life, even a form of peace from the relentless hatred to soon present itself. What with the Nazi occupation easing these Jewish People toward a horrible death, we have their visual, episodic and written testimony clearly etched into an imagery now of soon to be extinct lives. Here, and surrounded by the very Jews set for annihilation, Willy Georg captured the images we see of a disappeared Jewish People. Though targeted and confined, so as to be starved to death, these Jewish People in the Warsaw Ghetto set the standard by which Jewish Ghetto life would be measured in a life over death struggle played out in pits, ditches, Ghetto, Labour and Concentration Camps and then the embodiment of mechanised and industrialised Slaughter, the Death Camps in Poland.              

“..camera grasps a moment when there were 100’s of 1,000’s of Jews still living in ..Ghetto of Warsaw ..and regardless of ..horrors of every day life there ..conditions retained a semblance of normalcy. ..moving images capture ….seemingly innocent beginnings of The Holocaust.” Dr. Lucjan Dobroszycki.

Also, we are now aware that many of these exact same Jews, who Survived the impenetrable hunger that was forced upon them, are then transported off to be gassed to death in a most lethal form. From the Umschlagplatz of Warsaw, transports of trains which led directly toward Malkinia Station, where the Warsaw Jews are detrained, and from there it is but a short distance to where Treblinka and extermination awaited them. Here, while we are being urged to accept that some 900,000 Jews of Warsaw and from all of Poland are confined, there are possibly as many as 1,500,000 Polish and other Jews Slaughtered at Treblinka. Of course we are equally aware that non-Jews occupy each and every possible site to convenience the Nazi killers, but none share the intentional detail that has been fixed by The Final Solution of The Jewish Question.

“..Slonimer were eager to tell me what their grandfathers had told them about him. ..Shtetl kept ..names of its ..constituents alive ..remembering them ..for generations.” Roman Vishniac.

What Roman Vishniac listened to in Slonim, what history has been allowed to listen to wherever Jewish Culture reigned, were reminiscences over his Grandfather Wolf, a Writer, Philosopher and Banker. Whether we glimpse the image of a Jew we might never know, we know their humanity that had existed before it had been torn from every anchor that had rooted them. Whether that settling had been in Cracow, Galicia, Hungary, Kiev, Lodz, Mukachevo or Slonim, Vilna, Warsaw, The Baltic States or in fact from the rest of Europe, their imminent demise was easily preventable on some limited or more urgently, a grander scale. While I see within the normalcy of these images, there is a horrifying realisation that they all perhaps no longer exist and I and we happen to know fully of their fate. It is a troubling reality for me, that even as I crossed the threshold of the 6 Death Camps, and while I sensed I knew those who had preceded me, I would at least emerge.

“..Before she died ..my Mother left a note asking my Sister and me to remember ..yarzheitsof our Family. She listed ..dates and explained ..My Family has no tombstone. I am their tombstone.” Ann Weiss.

That reality was as true at Belzec as it is for Ann Weiss and the memory of her Mother, who is a tombstone to a Family denied such a luxury at a burial site that does not recall them. Outside each of the gates to the Death Camps, I heard myself repeat each time, almost as a mantra to these Jews who had gone before me, never to re-emerge, I was preparing myself, knowing I would come back out through each of these gates. What we might not see, and in abundance of the Jews taken from us, is the lives of those Jews of Europe now resting before the calamity that is Adolf Hitler. History pours scorn upon their existence and rips apart their very lives amongst us by having failed these Jews in life and after Justice has clearly failed all 6,000,000 of them. It is indeed terrifying to me that I can look to what has been gathered in such imagery, and that collectively assembled imagery within Yitzhak Arad’s, The Pictorial History of The Holocaust, shares both the imagery and its consequential reality, which so confronts us.

“..last time I was in Cracow ..winter 1938. I stood in ..falling snow ..old legends and tales descending. ..An old scholar passed by ..looking like a patriarch in biblical times. He appeared tired. I ..asked ..how long he had walked. ..Since ..beginning. I dis not ask what he meant.” Roman Vishniac.

Clearly Roman is presented with 6,000 years of imagery, an impression we can still barely create as it became lost to us and is now pressed into oblivion. I am reminded here too of my own walk in the Belzec snow as I trawled memory to add it to a recollection of all too many Jews who are detained within its confines. These images though, of a natural Jewish World being played out while the tenets of an extreme hatred is being realised against them, is heart rending. In such a cataclysmic ordination of atrocity, which is as abhorrent a reminder of what is to come as it is to what has been lost, we look at all these images with renewed emphasis. What has disappeared, and is no longer, is a Jewish existence that was made no longer viable in the presence of such a hatred to consume them. All that  has been stolen from all of us, certainly for the many of us who wish to know who these Jewish People are, has a representation that is testified to in the images we can add these words to.

“..eyes of 2,500 Children gaze at us from across ..years in these pages. They are among ..more than 11,400 Children whose lives are chronicled here ..innocent Children who were taken from their homes all over France to be deported and put to death in ..Nazi Camps.” Serge Klarsfeld.

For me, the images of the Children pose a greater threat to us all, as the Children are the most defenceless of our own humanity. It is more inconceivable that any civilised nation could so abuse, consume and Slaughter innocent Children in the name of hatred, and it is simply because they are Children. What ensures that we are more sickened at the concept of murdering Children, let alone the enactment we are to become witnesses to, impoverishes all sense of civilised society. What Serge Klarsfeld has managed to collect together, in images of the Children and many of Their Families in the worthy tome;  French Children of The Holocaust, is a memory so near exhaustive, we look more impressionable upon what is lost here. These Jewish Children, catapulted into an abyss of atrocity, who are no longer allowed to live up to their own expectations and promise, assail us with an accusation tat is indefensible. So we now manicure a position for the Jewish Child who is fully installed within the terms of The Holocaust. They are taken away from so many Jewish Centres of excellence, both Historical and Religious, and are the disappeared.

“..Vilna ..labyrinth of passages and intersections. ..centre of all Jewish life ..great Synagogue ..its shulhoyf ..courtyard. ..Vilner Gaon held court 200 years ago.” Roman Vishniac.

The centre of both belief and study, Vilna was an exceptional place of Jewish antiquity that was however so violently shook, all the while that antecedence of great learning was being ripped from its founding and shaken to its core. As such, all Jewish study and belief remains as it was brought out of the darkness to allow us to know the truth of what is missing. Though devalued by extermination, these Centres that have been consumed while its lively heritage rose to a nation that bore fruit. Along with its Jewish presence, the rich civilising influence that has been removed, and almost entirely from many parts of Europe, has created a vacuum of pre-existence. Where Jewish eminence within Vilna once was, now ground to dust in Ponary, imagery replaces much of what is lost.

“..I buried my negatives in ..ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy. I was anticipating ..total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom.” Henryk Ross.

Aligned to testimony, such evidence lends us the impression of persistence that had led the Jewish People here to Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania, some 600 years previously. Together with these resurrected negatives, so as to ensure memory can be bolstered, adds a steady supply to us. What is now certain, with images of so many more, including the Children who are equally of the disappeared, is a broader repository.  I perhaps add more emphasis to the Child so as to leave, if not a hint of their passing, certainly an echo of who they are and what we owe to their memory. It is monumentally clear that the Jewish People have fashioned many aspects of what is classed as civilisation. Here though, and during the period of what is to emerge into The Holocaust, theirs is a positivity which eventually would crush them to death in the annihilation factories and pits of extermination.

“..In ..cases we have undertaken ..our goal has always been ..to institute legal proceedings ..and ..contribute to history by assembling and publishing an accurate documentary record.” Beate & Serge Klarsfeld.

Such then were these death dealing facility’s, that the device of destruction was an eradication process so formally developed, it was mechanised and machined to deadly perfection. Along with the usage of bullets, designed to rip apart bodies, all was sought to consign the Jewish People toward an ignominious ending that Hitler had clearly sought. Once the design for mass destruction had been devised, the Jews of Europe, left to starve to death in Ghettos constructed to confine them, faded into an oblivion that would not remain. These temporarily assigned holding areas where they were housed into non-existence, enveloped the Jews into a feeling of security. What we must recognise, in any element of the overall atrocity, is the meaning of loss that the imagery now seeks to place over the certain destruction. It is apparent that the photographic images do not fully allow for the recognition of all those Jewish People that have been consumed. However, the extent to which I have sourced volumes on the imagery to emerge from The Holocaust is as exhaustive as it is a searing stain upon the back of humanity, that shows us the loss.

“..Yad Vashem ..tells ..tragedy of ..planned extermination of ..Jewish People ..an act nearly carried out to completion. ..Surviving remnant who lived ..experience ..moment of liberation began their return to ..land of ..living in a process of personal and national rehabilitation ..overshadowed by interminable memories and nightmares.” Bella Gutterman & Avner Shalev.  

The very numbers of those 6,000,000 Jews, for whom I wish to do Justice to their memory, has not fully emerged. History will never ever retrieve anything like 6,000,000 records of their passing and no 6,000,000 individual details of who they were will ever confront us. Nor even is there any where near the 6,000,000 images necessary of those Jewish People who are permanently lost to us all. All that has been swept aside to allow the flood of hatred to sweep across a Continent of people, so as to subsume anything approaching civilised humanity, destroyed far too much of Jewish Community. The route back is to be forever written in the abject failure in firstly, failing to prevent the atrocity and then denying any form of Justice necessary to absolve our human, moral and ethical guilt. Se here we end a passage which does no more for resurrecting a further name necessary in order to deliver toward the 6,000,000 losses, but we add more to the loss by knowing we all have lost.

“..The Holocaust ..Shoah in Hebrew ..most tragic era in ..history of ..Jewish People ..1933 ..1945 ..when ..Germans and their collaborators perpetrated genocide against them. By ..end of Second World War ..Nazis and their minions had managed to put ..6,000,000 Jews to death and destroy 1,000’s of Jewish communities. Cultural and material assets built with great labour and care over centuries ..were burned and destroyed. ..pictorial history of ..Shoah. ..photographs depict ..humiliation ..abuse ..suffering ..death ..lot of Jews in ..territories under ..rule of Nazi Germany and its allies in occupied Europe.” Yitzhak Arad.

Chana Byers Abells.         The Children We Remember.

Yitzhak Arad.                     The Pictorial History of The Holocaust.

Willy Georg.                      In The Warsaw Ghetto.

Bella Gutterman.              To Bear Witness.

Lili Jacob.                           The Auschwitz Album.

Serge Klarsfeld.                 The Children of Izieu.

Serge Klarsfeld.                 French Children of The Holocaust.

Henryk Ross.                     Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto.

Roman Vishniac.               To Give Them Light.

Ann Weiss.                        The Last Album.

Franciska Mann

“..Remember ..there is a national treasure buried under ..rubble. It’s ..Ringelblum Archive. We must not rest until we find ..Archive. ..even if there are 5 layers of ruins over it ..we have to find ..Archive.” Rachel Auerbach.

What Rachel Auerbach is alluding to here is a Written Archive that Survived, even while underneath that same rubble, many of these Jews who showed a fighting spirit, who succumbed to debilitating hatreds and shortages of food are so buried. For Franciska Lola Manheimer-Rosenberg, known professionally as Franceska Mannowna, then shortened to Franceska Mann, she danced across the area before it was turned into rubble. Franciska, who also danced under the name of Lola Horowitz, lived in this Polish Capitol of Warsaw in Poland. Franceska was born on February 4th. 1917 and while we know certain facts, please recognise that there are questions which are outside the competence of those who seek all answers. It is obvious that where trails have been lost and forgotten, we cannot ever answer for the multitude of reasons we are searching for. Realistically too, there are answers that cannot ever be known of the  more than 6,000,000 Jewish People whose remains of their demise are residing in craters, pits, fields and in trenches many had dug for their own interring.

“..Everyone knows ..what happened in Warsaw ..Slonim ..it is already time to count ..cities where ..catastrophies did not occur. ..understand ..better to be sent to Wolkowsk than ..Treblinka.” Ephraim Barash.

The very fact that anywhere a Jew met with the obeyance of Hitler’s hatred, that had spread all over Europe, there was no Jew that was ever going to be safe. For all too many of these Jews, further confined within Gas Chambers designed to fully obliterate any trace from whence they came, we have lost more than we can ever retrieve. For these 6,000,000 Jews of Europe, they have been totally eviscerated. Of course, and while not all of the 6,000,000 Jews are forgotten, for all of them they each enjoin a search which will not deliver up all their names, one of which is Franciska. For their former residences, purloined and stolen, there is no wish to deliver their purpose in any meaningful way. However, what we can know in particular for the Jews of Warsaw, Treblinka awaits for the vast majority of them. But, for Franceska Mann, she was not to be one of them as fate had singled her out as a further hero of Birkenau. For many other Jews too, Treblinka was not to be their end nor did this particular  Death Camp signify all that these Jews of Warsaw would suffer. In the 6 Death Camps for Polish Jewry, and then European Jewry, no whole place received an entire Jewish community totally.

“..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.

In the space of Warsaw where we find Francisca, there is this constant movement of Jewish People all seeking to reach other Cities and Towns. Individually escaping or collectively attempting to hide from what was becoming an obvious fate, success was not in the last guaranteed. What consumed many of these Warsaw Jews, alongside their National Jewish Population, and within Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek and even Sobibor was a loss too of their belief in their fellow man. The relentless and systematic Slaughter that was designed specifically for all Jews emerged from the fetid mind of Hitler’s resolve for The Final Solution of The Jewish Question to be commissioned, enacted and fully exacted upon the Jews as Jews. The same here must be stated for the Jews of Hungary who we will meet as Franciska meets with the platform that would greet them as they too were driven inexorably toward their fate. Here in Birkenau, and mostly during 1944, and toward Hungarian Jewry, the last sizeable Jewish Community within Europe was to suffer as Warsaw’s Jews had. Birkenau and the annihilation that was in preparation for the swiftest annihilation of this entire Hungarian Jewish presence had been disposing of Jewish transport upon Jewish transport, so consistently.

“..I am in Warsaw ..I am here. ..hard to grasp who I actually am. But it is actually here that I understand and know everything most precisely.” Halina Birenbaum.

Here, Birkenau is instrumental in defining what atrocity fully means and while this is not to say we will find all the traces of Hungarian Jewry either, our search is not bounded by any lack of effort. For those perishing within Birkenau, Hungarian Jewry too was to be Destroyed elsewhere in accordance with Hitler’s remit for their annihilation. That truth is as variable as to the number of those Jews that we seek to apply to each killing centre within Poland. Before the outbreak of World War II on September 1st. 1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, we are now brought together to meet Franciska who worked as an Actor and music hall dancer. What subsequently would emerge as a World conflagration, does not prepare the Jews for what is to come.

“..But one who understands will not judge ..and will have no pride. Before him I shall not be ashamed. Whoever has found himself can never again lose anything in this world. He who has grasped ..human in himself understands all mankind.” Stefan Zweig.

For Franciska, who performed regularly at the Melody Palace nightclub in Warsaw, this was equally true. When, upon the invasion, and with a growing awareness of what the anti-Jewish measures meant, an increasing deadly toll of Jewish murdered was being witnessed. What took hold for Franciska was a great fear as she became aware of her own mortality and with that, there was the constant frailty of all Jewish existence enacted by both Nazi’s and their collaborators.

“..I am happy to die amidst fighting Halutzim. We will take with us into our graves ..awareness that ..Jewish People will endure eternally.”  Yitzhak Katzenelson.

Then, on January 9th. 1943 when Himmler was in Warsaw, there could be no doubt left as to Hitler’s intention for all of European, Polish or Warsaw Jewry. We cannot know what Franciska knew but in what is a precursor to the final liquidation of the 70,000 or so Jews still Surviving in Warsaw’s Ghetto, Franciska is a target of that demand. There was however, here in Warsaw, a Jewish Fighting Resistance which spurred Himmler to act more swiftly. Against the deliberately ill equipped Jewish Warsaw Resisters Hitler’s forces were thrown against an entirely abandoned Polish Jewry. Here, as 8,000 more of Warsaw’s Jews are ordered toward their final ‘resettlement’, a retributive and deadly blow was struck. On January 18th. 1943, and with the resumption of the resettlement programme for Warsaw, and with some 6,000 of these Warsaw Ghetto’s Jews being led toward Treblinka, did Franciska know of this fate.

“..On ..site where for 400 ghastly days ..blasphemy of Treblinka tormented human history there is now a monument. It shows in ..centre an enormous rock topped by a menorah to symbolise ..300,000 martyred Jews of Warsaw. ..rock is surrounded by huge slabs of concrete from which rises a forest of 1,000’s of granite pillars of varying shapes and sizes ..representing cities ..villages ..and shtetlach lost in ..Holocaust. On 150 of them are carved ..names of ..localities from which ..murdered Jews came. ..massive pillars bear ..names of ..Country’s of ..victims origin.”  Alexander Donat.

Those Jews who are to be murdered within the Death Camp, many of these Jews escape back to the confines of the Ghetto. As the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto was surrounded for the 2nd. Liquidation, the Jewish fight was brought to the Nazi’s at 4 different Battle Group Barricades. Jewish Resistance plans were now set in motion which was conceived of to at least disrupt, if they could not fully prevent all future Jewish ‘resettlement’ operations. Tragically, a further 4,500 of Warsaw’s Ghetto Jews were deported with some 1,200 other’s of Warsaw’s Jews Murdered in situ after Resisting. This is the 1st. Jewish Fighting Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Resistance lasts for 4 days, till the very day it had been proposed for the actual Uprising. On February 7th. 1943 future plans for the Armed Resistance in Jewish Warsaw Ghetto are commenced as Franciska must be considering what her own future means.

On Tuesday February 16th. 1943 “..For Sale to Humanity ..70,000 Jews.” New York Times.

On February 16th. 1943 Himmler now orders that the entire Jewish Warsaw Ghetto is to be reduced to rubble and the World now recognises that the 70,000 remaining Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto are to be resettled. Can it be that any Jew, now resident within the crumbling Warsaw Jewish Ghetto had not been made aware of what America was now admitting to. The timely reminder of all moral duty or ethical response is once more set aside as the Jews look out across a wasteland of omitted compassion. 

Tuesday February 16th. 1943 “..In this way ..Warsaw ..will be reduced.”  SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler.

Of course, we cannot know what Franciska witnessed here, whether she was made aware of the mass executions taking place on Warsaw’s Streets, but she cannot have been far away from knowing. For me, it is an odious reality we now recognise that the World had still looked on as the Jews within Warsaw, and even still remaining alive within Europe, were left to their own devices. It is both true that the Jewish People of Europe were both abandoned and left to die, but they became hostage to machinations between Hitler’s regime and the West that would still not save them.

“..Saturday March 13th. 1943 ..Dear Sirs ..coming days are likely to see ..end of ..Jews in Warsaw. Are we ready. From a material point of view it is very bad. Of ..49 weapons that have been allocated to us only 36 can be used ..for lack of ammunition. Our position as regards arms has worsened after ..many operations of ..past few weeks ..during which much ammunition was used. At ..present moment there are no more than 10 bullets for each weapon. This is a catastrophic situation. Please inform ..authorities in our name that if large scale help does not arrive immediately ..we shall look on it as indifference on ..part of ..representatives and ..authorities to ..fate of ..Jews of Warsaw. ..allocation of weapons without ammunition is a cynical mockery of our fate ..and confirms ..assumption that ..poison of antisemitism continues to pervade ..leading circles in Poland ..despite ..cruel and tragic experiences of ..past 3 years. It is not our intention to persuade anybody concerning our willingness and ability to fight. Since January 18th. Jews of Warsaw have been in a state of continuous struggle with ..invader and his servants. Anyone who denies this or casts doubt upon it ..is nothing but a deliberate antisemite. We do not expect only understanding from ..authorities and ..delegatura but also that they should consider ..murder of 1,000,000’s of Jews ..who are Polish Citizens ..to be ..main problem of our current life. We regret most deeply that it is not possible for us to make direct contact with ..Allied governments ..with ..Polish Government and ..Jewish organizations abroad in order to inform them about our situation and ..attitude towards us on ..part of ..Polish authorities and public. ..We request that you take ..necessary steps immediately with ..Army Authorities and Government Representatives. We request that you read them this letter and demand immediately at least 100 grenades ..50 revolvers ..10 rifles and several 1,000 bullets of various diameters. I am prepared to submit within two days accurate plans of our positions ..with maps ..so that there need be no doubt whatsoever concerning ..necessity of ..supply of arms. Commander ..Jewish Fighting Organization.” Mordechai Anielewicz.

No matter the narrative, the secrecy that never existed around The Final Solution comes back to trouble History. It is impossibly difficult for any nation to suggest other than what it was aware of in relation to what was happening to their own Jewish Community. We know, especially in catholic Poland, not much escaped the attention of the church and yet, the role of christianity was wholly abandoned in failing to intervene in what Hitler committed Poland to. Then on April 17th. 1943, the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins with some remnants of Warsaw’s Jews, 70,000 Jews who are still alive, take up arms

Wednesday May 5th. 1943 “..In Poland there were ..about 4,500,000 Jews ..there remain ..only 100,000. ..Warsaw Ghetto containing ..650,000 ..only 20,000 ..25,000 Jews there. ..majority killed. ..Special death camps at Lublin (Majdanek) ..Treblinka near Brest-Litovsk. ..several hundred ..jammed into large rooms ..where they die by gassing.”  Vatican Memo.

On May 8th. 1943 and in the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, the Headquarters of Jewish Resistance, 18 Mila Street, is surrounded and liquidated. Mordechai Anielewicz and 97 of the Resistance Fighters who fought and Died that Day are recorded into History, acknowledging what Polish Jews did in defending their Nation, Poland. The Jewish refusal to succumb to the Nazi brutality will point the way toward all future Jewish Persistence and Resistance! No Jew can have failed to recognise what Jewish Resistance was seeking to achieve on their behalf, including Franciska. Tragically, few Jewish resister’s managed to Survive what was more than made ready for the more than 50,000 of Warsaw’s Ghetto Jews who had been murdered in recent months. On May 10th. 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Uprising came to an end as the Jewish Ghetto was reduced to a pile of rubble about 3 storey’s high. It would be a week before Stroop could declare Warsaw was ‘Junderein’, but 22,000 of these Jews were transported immediately to Majdanek for ‘resettlement’ and attempts were being made to lure ever more Jews out of their hiding places and into extinction.

On Tuesday May 11th. 1943 “..responsibility for ..crime of ..murder of ..whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out ..but indirectly it falls also upon ..whole of humanity ..peoples of ..Allied nations and on their governments ..who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenceless millions tortured children ..women and men they have become partners to ..responsibility…My friends in ..Warsaw ghetto fell. ..I did not succeed in dying ..same way or ..with them. ..I  belong to them and ..mass graves there.”    Shmuel Zygielbojm. 

On May 11th. 1943 Shmuel Zygielbojm commits suicide as what he saw was the clear abandonment of his Jewish Community. There was then a ewer cynical ruse, to further weaken any further Jewish Resistance within the rubble strewn Warsaw. The Nazi’s made aware that all those Polish Jews who had been furnished with safe passage, from the issuance of Visa’s and Passports from Latin America Countries could emigrate to those various Country’s that would have them. For Franciska, who by now had been living on the Aryan side of Warsaw, came forward to gain access to such a promise and received her promised emigration certificate. However, for all of these who meet at the Hotel Polski for processing, the promise that they are to be these exchange Jews is captivating to a weakened sense of reality. For the many of those Jews once more corrupted by the promise of survival the Camp of Belsen awaited. Yet here the ‘Star’ Camp for these privileged Jews, whose reasoning had been practicably obliterated, this is but another con. We recognise too that these Polish Jews are mostly those Jews who either emerged from the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising or from a secure hiding place outside the Ghetto Walls.

“..new arrivals were assembled in the yard outside crematorium.” Filip Mueller.

Franciska was amongst them who gave up her safety in search of an end to the awful nature of perpetual persecution. Here too, and lured by the prospect of emigration to Eretz Israel, these seduced Jews joined the ranks of those other Jews all heading for Belsen and a supposedly privileged though fraudulently prepared deception. When, on July 3rd. 1943, the Nazi’s surrounded the Hotel Polski and arrested its 600 Jewish inhabitants, they were all taken to Warsaw’s Pawiak Gaol. Here and in this moment, any pretence must have been shaken from the very hope so many Jews had always held onto. Some of these ‘safe’ Jews were immediately shot in the prison courtyard while those Jews who remained alive were further transported to Belsen, straight to Birkenau or even to Vittel. For many of these proposed states in South America, they too played along to what would be Hitler’s gambit and refused entry to all too many Jews of Europe. For these remnants of Warsaw’s Jews, they too are included in what the World had already recognised was a murderous enterprise beyond comprehension, and for Franciska in particular, she too was moving steadily toward extermination.

“..Polish Jews knew. ..schillinger had taken a fancy to ..a body ..she had a classic figure. .he walked up ..took her ..hand. ..naked Woman ..scooped ..gravel ..threw it is his face ..dropped his revolver ..Woman snatched it ..fired ..into his abdomen…naked crowd turned on us. ..Woman fired ..again ..at ..chief ..wounding. ..chief ..SS men made off. ..we managed ..drove them all ..into ..chamber with clubs ..bolted ..doors .called ss to administer Cyclone B. ..we’ve had time to acquire ..experience.” Tadeusz Borowski.

On October 23rd. 1943 there were 2 Jewish transports to arrive at Birkenau, the smaller one was some 1,035 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children arriving from Rome. Some 149 Jewish Men and 47 Jewish Women of these were spared the immediacy of selection for Gassing and entered the Camp proper. The second arrival, which delivered Franciska from amongst a Belsen transport of 1,800 Polish Jewish Men, Women and Their Children, who were purportedly free from the ‘resettlement’ programme, they none the less arrived at Birkenau. As was the case for all arrivals this transport arrived at the ramp of Birkenau Death Camp and here the ruse continued. The Polish Jews, remnants of Warsaw Jewry’s last stand, arrived in passenger trains at Birkenau and not Bergau. They were still informed that this was their last stop before their departure for Switzerland. Here they were told of the Swiss requirement to disinfect, and this was at the behest of the Swiss authority’s. Taken to Krematorium II, especially cleaned for the arrival of these tricked  and not so privileged Jews, the Women and Children are scolded into believing they will be showered and disinfected.

“..Quackernack and Schillinger were strutting back and forth in front of ..humiliated crowd with a self important swagger. Suddenly they stopped in their tracks ..attracted by a strikingly handsome woman with blue black hair who was taking off her right shoe. ..Woman ..as soon as she noticed that ..2 men were ogling her ..launched into what appeared to be a titillating and seductive strip tease act. What happened next took place with lightning speed ..quick as a flash she grabbed her shoe and slammed its high heel violently against Quackernack’s forehead. He winced with pain and covered his face with both hands. At this moment ..young woman flung herself at him and made a quick grab for his pistol. There was a shot. Schillinger cried out and fell to ..ground.” Filip Muller.

However, and despite this assurance, these Jews had all their documentation for freedom to protect and were reluctant to undress. Along with this reluctance came the beatings, which was uncontrollably savage, with the ss wielding large sticks. The wounding and beating senselessly of these Jewish Women and Their Children forced them into abject submission. All the SS preparation was about to break down and all it now needed was a spark, and Franciscka, a stunning Polish Jewish beauty provided that spark. Amongst the ss present were: ackerman, boger, emmerich, gorges, hustek, kurchuss, quackernack, schillinger, schwartzhuber and voss.

“..Schillinger told ..Women to undress ..and 1 Woman said she did not undress in front of men. In consequence of this he raised his whip ..his cane ..he always walked around with a cane ..and he wanted to strike her. At this point ..she drew a revolver and killed him with one shot. From ..time we received this information Schillinger never appeared in ..camp ..naturally ..because he had been killed.” Dr Aharon Beilin.

The Women and some of the Children were led into the undressing room, right beside the Gassing Chamber and were ordered to fully undress for disinfection. As History informs us, though it is relayed in many varying descriptions, and in ss Scharfuhrer Josef Schillinger and ss Oberscharfuhrer Walter Konrad Quackernack, the law of Rassenschande is set aside for personal demands over the Female form. However, this Polish Jewish Woman, Franceska Mann, who was aged 26, an arrival amongst these 1,800 ‘privileged’ Jews from Belsen, is an Actor, Ballerina and Dancer and a resister of the Nazi intention for them.

“..incident ..grew into a legend. Without doubt ..this heroic deed ..in ..face of certain death ..gave moral support to every prisoner. We realized all at once that if we dared raise a hand against them ..that hand might kill ..they were mortal ..too.” Wieslaw Kielar.

Franciska was amongst many Polish Jews who had had their long held suspicions of Hitler’s intentions for them. Clearly knowing well the rumours of Death Camps and Killing Sites, these Jews were almost certain of what the Nazi intention toward them was. Franciska certainly felt the leery gaze of her captors upon her and she struck a blow for both Women and Jewish Resistance within The Holocaust. Franciska threw her clothing at Schillinger and hit Quackernack with the heel of her shoe, driving the heel into the side of his lecherous head.

“..One transport from Belsen arrived ..approximately two thirds ..mostly men were in ..gas chamber ..remaining third was in ..undressing room. When 3 or 4 armed SS guards entered ..dressing room to hasten ..undressing ..mutiny broke out. ..light cables were torn down ..SS men were overpowered ..one of them was stabbed and all of them were robbed of their weapons. As this room was in complete darkness wild shooting started between ..guard near ..exit door and ..prisoners inside. When I arrived I ordered ..doors to be shut and I had ..process of gassing ..first party finished and then went into ..room together with ..guard carrying small searchlights ..pushing ..prisoners into a corner from where they were taken out singly into another room of ..Krematorium and shot ..by my order ..with small calibre weapons.” Rudolf Hoess.

In retaliation, Schillinger went to shoot her but Franciska grabbed the gun and shot both Schillinger and Wilhelm Emmerich. Schillinger was shot in the stomach, and this would prove fatal. In also wounding Emmerich, she crippled him to a certain extent. For the majority of this transport, with as many as 1,200 of these Jews, mostly Men and Children already gassed, the Nazi machinery was forced to review its usually mechanised like efficiency. The surety that panic would be alleviated was now in question and any future transports were forced to be dealt with more aware that the Jews had been prepared to fight back. Kommandant Hoess arrived with heavily armed reinforcements to face a darkened room filled with Jewish Women who had had enough of being subjected to Nazi extremes. For many of these Jewish Women, who had bitten, scratched and fought their assailants, now locked into the Krematorium, some of them are taken out one by one and shot. For the others, who are then shot in the dressing room from a fusillade of machine gun bullets, hand grenades and even savage beatings, the sting of Jewish Resistance struck deep and hard.

“..10 years old when ..Nazis marched into Warsaw. My sister was in ..hospital having her first baby. I was about to be an uncle. That night we went to ..hospital to visit my sister. Soldiers throwing bundles out of windows and catching them on their bayonets surrounded .. hospital. Blood was everywhere. We never saw ..baby or my sister. ..Nazis put my family in ..camps. My father and I were together. We never saw my mother and sisters again. My father died. I promised him I would write our story.” Ben Edelbaum.

For 2 more of these SS guards, who were severely injured, the end for the vast majority of this privileged transport was never in question. They are then crushed into the Gassing Chamber and are Gassed to Death. We do not know how Franciska’s life was ended, nor do we know how many of this Belsen transport’s Jewish Women were either shot or Gassed. But what we do know with certainty, not even all of those 196 previously spared at the ramp managed to Survive what had always been intended for them. My words have to have meaning and for that reason I record for all Human lives that they must matter. It is simply unacceptable that any life can be seen as expendable as some overseers might demand.

“..Most of ..Jews ..Warsaw ..Cracow ..Lublin ..already dead. ..killed mainly in ..death camps ..built in ..spring of 1942. ..autumn 1942 ..Ostrow Jews probably knew ..vaguely ..terrible facts.”  Isidore Last.

Tragically, in terms of those Jewish lives in The Holocaust, they are to be extinguished to an estimate, or at best, a revised estimate of their loss to us all. In this, Franciska Lola Manheimer-Rosenberg is not amongst the estimated but is known to us in History. Clearly, and as we are aware, in excess of 6,000,000 Jews who were Gassed, Murdered, Annihilated and Destroyed are so relegated into this assessment. Tragically, we will Never know the exacting detail of that Jewish grief for the Jewish loss, which is our loss as human beings is incalculable. That said! We cannot then afford to allow for any estimate to dismiss any single Jew who succumbed to Hitler’s efforts in The Final Solution of the Jewish Question. We have to know that we have risen above the levels of a barbarism that was clearly on display and added a dimension to atrocity it is defined as The Holocaust.

“..As to what was happening ..in all of Europe occupied by ..Germans ..Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam ..in ..pit of Babi Yar ..Kiev ..ghetto of Warsaw ..Lidice ..this pestilence ..about to submerge us ..no precise information ..reached us.” Primo Levi.

“..Germans ..always in such a hurry. Death was always urgent with them. Jewish death. earth had to be cleansed of Jews. We already knew that. We just didn’t know that sharing ..planet for another minute was more than this super race could live with. ..air for them was befouled by Jewish breath ..and they must have fresh air.” Isabella Leitner.

There are some works you have to return to, to reprise the essential necessity of what has been written and what requires an evidenced gain from a futures proof. For me, to even to attempt to appreciate the calm dignity of those who Survived, I aim to ensure nothing I have said has caused such offence as to be somewhat spoiled in my effort. One such work by Isabella Leitner, is clearly a narrative in the category of its worth, and as it is her Memoir on Auschwitz, that effort needs continued retrieval from memory. That Book of Isabella’s: Fragments of Isabella has so impressed me and is from amongst the many such works that cascade us through on the varying themes that amount to The Holocaust term.

“..Auschwitz may be 100’s of kilometers from Hungary but it is part of Hungarian history. ..This Death Camp was ..scene of ..inhumane suffering ..humiliation and death of nearly 500,000 of our compatriots.” Janos Ader.

It is as relevant a read today as to the complexities of the hatred which drove Jews, and in particular the Jews of Hungary, toward as potent an extinction as we are likely to read. To be honest, my own first Book should have been forming merely the initial chapter in the delivery of my continuing and accusing narrative to the Catastrophe. What had been wrought upon the Jewish People was heightened as I became a witness to a 4 year old Jewish Child, Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak. Isabella too, who is profound in doing her utmost to inform us and deliver lessons we should adopt, does so word by word and chapter after chapter.

“..On ..basis of an image of this 4 year old Jewish Girl Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak ..I have based my entire work on The Holocaust ..within 3 published Books. Between many competing agencies not one can find her. I have an image ..presented to me ..of her Dead Body ..and an e-Mail from a Survivor who knew her. You find her in The Holocaust.” Patrick Dempsey.

The Holocaust, which the World should clearly recognise is the most unique, unparalleled and unprecedented assault upon any People, and that this World has ever known, was waged on a People because they are a Jewish People. Retrieving from memory, and back to my idea for that initial book, the effort has been emotively charged, due to the distortions some would wish to place upon the factual truth I have carefully sought to deliver. My own emotive reasoning is based largely upon what emerged from the Polish Town of Sokoly, and for those Jewish Survivors who were no longer allowed to live past their very Survival.

“..As our Children cried underneath ..gallows ..wrath of  ..world we did not hear.” Natan  Alterman.

I thought I had learned of what I needed to know, so as to write this 1st. Book on the Children of The Holocaust, it should be based clearly on what I knew the World knew. This has been my essential in why I chose to write this Book and I am constantly reminded that within a Catastrophe such as The Holocaust, a greater tragedy is as incomparable as the horror I write into the pages of my work. I choose therefore to deliver back to its protagonist, Hitler and his position in the Death Camps and why these annihilation centres reside within a Polish nation of 3,650,000 Polish Jews. Of Poland’s non-Jewish Citizens, they stand astride the death’s and murder’s of other than the ritually annihilated and Slaughtered Jews, and simply because they are Jews, but gained monetarily, substantially and in terms of property and lands from their own Jewish Dead.

“..Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed ..no one in our age should speak of Providence.” Primo Levi.

This fact too is the testimony of my actual 1s. Book and also my 2nd., 3rd. and even 4th. Books for those Jews who stood as Jews and were separated out, incarcerated and destroyed for that very certainty. For those who saw to it, for those who saw it and for those who chose not to see The Holocaust strands of atrocity which was exacted in front of them, there is an accusation which is not fully measured by the sheer weight of loss of these 6,000,000 annihilated Jews of Europe. Also, and it is from an image of a 4 year old Jewish Girl, Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak, cruelly Murdered because she was a Jew, who had not fully managed to Survive Polish hatred. For this fact, it is my reason to constantly remind myself why I choose to write on The Jews of The Holocaust.

“..One of our companies held out for 40 minutes and another ..for more than 6 hours. ..mine set in ..brushmakers area exploded. Several of our companies attacked the dispersing Germans. Our losses in manpower are minimal. That is also an achievement. Yechiel fell. He fell a hero ..at ..machine gun. I feel that great things are happening and what we dared do is of great ..enormous importance. Beginning from today we shall shift over to ..partisan tactic. Three battle companies will move out tonight ..with two tasks ..reconnaissance and obtaining arms. Do you remember ..short range weapons are of no use to us. We use such weapons only rarely.  What we need urgently ..grenades ..rifles ..machine guns ..explosives. It is impossible to describe ..conditions under which the Jews of the ghetto are now living. Only a few will be able to hold out. ..remainder will die sooner or later. Their fate is decided. In almost all ..hiding places in which 1,000’s are concealing themselves it is not possible to light a candle for lack of air.  With ..aid of our transmitter we heard ..marvelous report on our fighting by ..Shavit radio station. ..fact that we are remembered beyond ..Ghetto walls encourages us in our struggle. Peace go with you ..my friend. Perhaps we may still meet again. ..dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self defense in ..Ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to ..magnificent ..heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle.” Mordechai Anielewicz.

The very idea for that first Book, which has not been shelved, nor has it been forgotten, as it is a work in progress, remains as a constant in my effort to bring more and more words of remembrance forward. I might also add, there are the many other Books I wish to write, so to add further to remembering what we all have lost. The tenets of the work I am engaged in, the ideal of its commentary, the remit of such a huge sense of loss, which resides permanently upon my Computer, is in a file which still searches for Tokele, continuously. From time to time I add snippets of information being gained, which also allows for me to write on what always matters, 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews of Europe. In all of this I am awake to the prospect that was denied the Jews of The Holocaust to find sanctuary, find allies or at least the weapons necessary to fight the common evil of Hitler’s Reich.

“..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.

Honestly, I have but one agenda, to bring to the working narrative I explore, as many of these 6,000,000 Jews as is possible to do so, out of the passivity all too often accusing them. The essential for me, as I have always been a writer, even aged 6/7 when I penned a book listing all I had read, or wished to read would fill my head with the words worthy of rethinking them. There is the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ivanhoe, Black Beauty, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist and always the works of Charles Dickens to fill the more filled void. I gravitated toward social commentary as a concern for what should matter in human concern for the humanity we have each been lent. Moving from Dublin to Birmingham, I knew I would not be a writer on the Irish situation as it opened the door to accusations of some bias or other.

“..You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish ..Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom ..then our children will win it by a better deed.” Patrick Pearse.

The Pub Bombings, and then allowing for innocent Irish to take the fall for an unsupported cohort could not be ignored though and so Ireland would not loosen its hold. I told a Publisher I could not face being accused of bias, as integrity must matter in all I would attempt to put onto paper. I was then presented with that image of a 4 year old Child, this was Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak, murdered for being a Jew. How could I not respond. With 6,000 years of seeking to consolidate their homeland, the Jews who survived The Holocaust realised the Promised Land of their forefathers. As all of Christendom clearly acknowledged, the spiritual home of the Jewish People became at once, the blood, sweat and toil for their renewed existence.

“..Ultimately ..we have just one moral duty ..to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves ..more and more peace ..and to reflect it toward others.” Etty Hillesum.

So when we get back to this 1st. Book, and the image of Tovah, she was to be presented on the Cover to that initial Book. Bear in mind also, that I had a desire to not only write about the Murder of an innocent 4 year old Jewish Girl, I needed to share an empathy with a Jewish People that was wholly absent during the period of their greatest need. I also needed to inform those Jews who Survived, that a non-Jew would spend the time to inform, accuse and research well what intolerable atrocity’s these 6,000,000 People faced, simply for being Jews. I thought long and hard about it and came to the conclusion, I could not identify in a work for these Jewish Children as victims yet.

“..On ..site where for 400 ghastly days ..blasphemy of Treblinka tormented human history there is now a monument. It shows in ..centre an enormous rock topped by a menorah to symbolise ..300,000 martyred Jews of Warsaw. ..rock is surrounded by huge slabs of concrete from which rises a forest of 1,000’s of granite pillars of varying shapes and sizes ..representing cities ..villages ..and shtetlach los in ..Holocaust. On 150 of them are carved ..names of ..localities from which ..murdered Jews came. ..massive pillars bear ..names of ..Country’s of ..victims origin.”  Alexander Donat.

It was too troubling, on a personal level, as I would still require the years of experience necessary to do justice to such a more intense horror within and intensely grievous atrocity. But the thing for me now, and after all these years, the Jewish Children would be clearly identified as from amongst the 1,500,000 Murdered Jewish Children of the 6,000,000 Jewish People, who are The Holocaust. Also, and while we have the names of some 4,700,000 Jews who were Murdered, I know the faces of many of these Jewish Children intimately. In every sense I seek Always to Remember, Never to Forget, be it a single Child or as many of the 6,000,000 Jews that is physically possible. Whether we can be certain of the Death Camp or Killing Site, Belzec or Treblinka, Babi Yar, Ponary or Rumbuli, Jewish lives were mistakenly Slaughtered, victims of the greatest hatred ever to infest humanity.

“..Towards ..end of December 1942 there came to our workshop once a young dentist whose name I do not recall. He told us that he escaped from Belzec. This dentist was in Belzec ..3 months. Because of his profession he was detailed to a dentist brigade ..which numbered ..15 men. ..job was to pull out gold teeth and bridges from corpses yanked out from ..gas chambers.”  Sanio Ferber.

We have many images of un-named Jewish Children, People who most probably are the lasting impressions from amongst the Murdered, we cannot identify. I do not know the fate of all of these Jewish Children I see in cold relief but I do know they were intended for destruction. I do know that the intention was to ensure NO Jew, Male, Female, Child, Infant or Baby would Survive the tenets of die Endlosung der Judenfrage, as Hitler had ordained them. What we know as The Holocaust Slaughter of some 6,000,000 Jews confirms for us that not a single Jewish  Child should be allowed to Survive. While we are sure that 50/70 million lives are lost in World War II, we are all too certain that only 6,000,000 Jews were selectively chosen for extermination, and on an industrially managed scale, which cannot be that certain.

“..At ..first shots ..Cousin David climbed a tree ..wrapped his arms around ..trunk like a child hugging his Mother ..and that was ..way he died.” Ida Fink.

The cover to that 1st. Book would have been so different if I had stuck rigidly to what I was certain would present The Holocaust atrocity to the World that seemingly remained unconcerned. What was in my mind, the images of a Jewish Child, of Jewish Children, though fewer in number than the overall Catastrophe, still represents a monstrosity that must be continuously presented to all of our humanity. This atrocity, of a Child clinging to hope, and as a signifier of all that dissolves what civilisation should represent, confronts those of us so concerned with its enactment. The images of course are of groups of unknown Children, force fed through the grist mill of annihilation or an experimentation that was conducted by savage medics which would still end their lives.

Saturday August 19th. 1944 “..This human mass is heterogeneous. It is piled together here ..by force ..by violence ..in this small patch of dirty ..humid ground ..forced to live in ..most humiliating conditions and to endure ..most brutal deprivations ..that all human passions ..weaknesses have unleashed themselves ..taking on beastly forms.”  Hanna Levy-Hass.

We then have the images of the Child created in words by those wo affected by their memory, we are gifting the memory we must hold onto. Beings, with no capacity for human concern, human beings who conducted themselves with such barbarity, not even a Child was spared. Throughout this initial search, the Children remain an unknown, their images pressing deeply upon me as I search to present History with the very presence that was so ritually destroyed in The Holocaust. It still occurs to me that perhaps there is this image of such a youthful presence, a 4 year old that would have spelled out more vigorously what I have been stating ever since. Today, as Israel has been borne through promises not kept and with Our conscience accused by 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews, what must such an image present us with that would be any different now than then.

“..A dictator put an end to my freedom ..injected hate ..fear by his terrible tactics ..into ..majority of ..population and I became an outcast.” Halina Lustig.

As intolerable a hatred as was ever imagined and for such indifferences as humanity should not allow to be recognised, we affirm Israel’s status. What was finally to be honoured in 1948, which has not afforded a regional recognition of History restored, an inclusive State was declared, will never quash the pain and resentment human beings must feel for what was allowed to happen. It is not for history to deny, Israel did not demand the abandonment of any lands by any of those Citizens it would represent equally. The promise to those who would assist in building a memory to what is best in humanity from the detail of the worst of humanity should have been enough for all Citizens of the area to be accepting of such promise.

“..To ..Arab Kings and Presidents ..Poverty is killing us yet you are still searching for ..way to provide aid like ..armies of your predecessors in ..year of 1948 ..who forced us to leave Israel.” Fuad Abu Higla.

To be honest too, I never considered the level of bigotry and hatred directed toward my effort that would broadly accuse me of the bias I knew was not mine. What has been directed at this body of work, because of its concerning structure, which is the Slaughter of the 6,000,000 Jewish People, is disheartening. I am a forever optimist and allow nothing other than a human concern that studies nothing but the factual truth and the integrity it contains to spell out those words I use. It is essential to know that government is the Parent of Nations and those who go toward it cannot be failed by it. It remains consequential of human endeavour that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere for all that would be failed.

“..a time that will remain forever. ..hope was ..constantly ..life of ..Ghetto.”  Vladka Meed.

It is true too that we are not born without concern, but are delivered in hope and that very relationship between us all ensures that any and all life is not disposable. That is why for me, the memory of what happened to 6,000,000 Jews, 1,500,000 of whom are Jewish Children, has to resonate with purpose for everyone so as to ensure their loss is not forever in vain. Children are Our most precious legacy in life and in Death, and they are  our most intense and immense loss. For that very right to their life to be either callously taken from them or denied to them, and in the most terrifying way, is beyond a human understanding, a comprehension that will forever remain incomprehensible. For that reason, I am convinced of what legacy must be applied from the knowledge we must assuredly obtain from those who know what it means to be so savagely treated, the Jewish Survivor.

“..No human race is superior ..no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgements are wrong. Only racists make them.” Elie Wiesel.

Always to Remember, Never to Forget.

“..I was not too interested in ..origins of Belsen. All we knew was ..we were Surviving ..that was all we needed to know. We were moving ..away from Auschwitz ..away from ..gas chambers ..we were happy ..if I can use such a word.” Anita Lasker-Walfisch.

I have not explored deeply enough the Concentration Camp and with them, the Exchange Camp that is Belsen. From as early as 1933, with a view being gained to adminster the enemies of the Reich, and then in 1935, Belsen came into view. It wasn’t until 1940 that the Camp was establishged as a holding pen for Prisoner’s of War, for which it continues until War’s end in 1945. Along with this horrendous place, a space of decaying death and destruction for those Jews and others who were immersed into Belsen, these have been well documented. However, and while knowing that in my search for truth and accuracy, there is an acceptance that I was seeking to explore the finite differences within the entire Camp system.

“..I sang in cabarets where German officers went.When they were drunk I would photograph ..contents of their briefcases and pass ..film along.” Fania Fenelon.

For all Jews, no matter the reasoning for them to be sent to any such establishment, their demise, death and destruction was to be a certainty. So as to ensure, that in the History of The Holocaust there is the understood knowledge that there exists but 6 specific Death Camps. Though all such Camp facility’s detaining and containing the Jews settled within them, these were to be places of their Deaths. With these 6 Annihilation Centres however, they were significant in that they were places for the systematic and intentioned annihilation of all of the Jews of Europe.

“..Let me explain that even though I had been in Auschwitz I did not know about ..gas chambers. Can you imagine that. We thought ..when we were there ..that our parents and ..children were taken to camps which were much better. We assumed that they couldn’t live through ..camp we were in. It was not until a large contingent from Auschwitz came to Belsen that I had to give up that idea that they were safe. I met 2 women in their 30’s who spoke Hungarian and they asked if it was true that ..Hungarian transports were so severely selected people to ..camps and ..others to be gassed. I said ..What are you saying. ..And they looked at me as if I were foolish ..but they didn’t want to destroy my hope and so didn’t try to explain. I ran back to ..tent and collapsed. I think I cried for weeks. I finally realized that everybody was killed.” Maria Frank-Abrams.

That they are as distinct from all other Camps such as Labour and even Concentration Camps is a proven fact. The very truth of the Death Camps, and their sole purpose, which was to exploit the very existence of the Jewish People has been borne out by evidences, testimony’s and first hand witness experiences narrated throughout The Holocaust. Theise Death Camps, and their sheer capacity to destroy those Jews transported there for resettlement is a major component of what we recognise is The Holocaust account.

“..My constant concern was for ..world not to forget that tragic period when 6,000,000 Jewish Men ..Women ..Children perished.” Josef Rosensaft.

The fact too that all of these Death Camps were established within Poland, has to be recognised that this was for a very specific and obvious place reason. That there where 3,650,000 Polish Jews, who were in situ within their own National Polish border confirmed for Hitler that the major strike at European Jewry would be made here. I recalled when I had been speaking to the Survivor of Belsen, Paul Oppenheimer, ironically it was before an exhibition on Anne Frank, who I then promised I would do my utmost to visit all of these Death Camps.

“..We travelled by train in 3rd. class passenger coaches ..arrived early in ..morning at another camp ..Belsen. ..We had never heard this name before and had no idea what it was like. ..as soon as we marched into ..camp ..we could see that it was even larger than Westerbork ..and much worse. ..barbed wire ..guard towers ..electrified fences ..SS ..with bloodhounds ..machine guns ..searchlights. ..a real concentration camp.” Paul Oppenheimer.

Paul reminded me that there was no space which Jews were detained in which death or destruction did not deliver itself to them. For barely a minute, or perhaps these were two minutes, I spoke with the recognised Survivor that is Paul Oppenheimer. I knew, or more readily I sensed that I needed to place myself where I could, or felt that I might or even would be touched by all that Paul knew. For me, to even attempt to understand even a sample of what it was that Paul had endured, as I am certain the Survivor’s could all confirm, agree with and recognise was critical in my own understanding.

“..Opposite us was a shed. You could call it a mortuary ..it was actually an old shed. They were bringing bodies there all day long. They started off in carts. They would push ..cart with a body on it ..throw it in ..shed and collect ..next one. ..as ..carts wore out ..they would pull a body along in a blanket along ..ground but in ..end ..they were pulling ..bodies just on ..ground. Even ..blankets wore out. Then it was just pulling a body by a limb. ..terrible thing was that ..People who were doing it were only half alive themselves.” Mala Tribich.

For me to search for some meaning and comprehension I would have to look deeper into the horror to assess my own ability in reliving their terror to come up with the necessary words to to afford the Survivor an apology so missing for too long. Also, I resolved instinctively, in borrowing from many of the words I came into contact with, I would have to be visiting each of the 6 Death Camps in Poland for answers. I would be finally in search of an emotion that belonged to those Jews who knew its term of terrifying meaning.

“..universe ..seemed both an oasis and a Ghetto. ..Later ..I was to learn that it was also a sort of sandwich ..a slice of music between 2 slices of wretchedness.” Fania Fenelon.

As Paul reminded me, every place and area where there were Jews meant Death for All the Jews in those spaces and that meant anywhere in Europe. Violette Fintz, who was born on the Island of Rhodes and was deported from her home there found that very truth of the wastage felt by Jews in Belsen. By immediate contact with any of the Nazis or any of their collaborators, going all the way to when Belsen was liberated in April 1945, the Jews of Europe were in immediate threat of being destroyed.

“..Children were ..involved in ..running ..camp. ..distribution of food for ..60 or 80 People in our section.” Paul Oppenheimer.

For Violette, who passed from us in December 2007, and who was saved for her own World entire to survive, with a Son, a Daughter in law, a Granddaughter and 2 Great Grandchildren, her truth is known to us. When, and as I shook Paul’s hand, there was a tangible realisation that I was somehow in touch with all the terror and the horror that had confronted him. I came away from that meeting with Paul, and I have always been struck by the Survivor who manages to hold deeply held beliefs in the goodness of human kind, and Paul reconfirmed that sense for me.

“..I thought ..war was ..end of racism. ..I found that racism and anti-Semitism still existed. Nothing had really changed.” Fania Fenelon.

All of these Jews, even as they emerged from the depths of the deepest depravity ever to confront our very own humanity, still held that hope remained for humanity. For Fania Fenelon, her tattoo number is 74862, and who was torn from Paris, France, she has carried her deepest impressions and hopes, all the way from Auschwitz to Belsen. From Fania we learn much more than words can ever deliver but we choose her words to deliver us back to the horror we have little capacity to ever understand.

“..British ..marched into ..Belsen. ..I was alive. When I think back on ..pain ..torture in Ghetto ..suffering in Majdanek ..fear in Auschwitz ..hunger in Dora and Belsen ..that day in April ..world started over again for me and My People.” Joseph Schupack.

There are many a memoir of the lives that were to be lost in the shadows of the gas chambers and crematoriums. We recognise in these evidences, which then became the experiences of those of us willing to learn from them, all add to the witnesses we will eventually become. My insistence though, and that Jews had been given no right to life, wherever Hitler found them, theose who Survived pass on that experience for us. While the Death Camp remains an orchestrated design, these Death Camps, as formerly envisioned, were the mechanised and industrialised Slaughter Houses all of History must come to terms with.

“..We shall not forget and will not forgive.” Josef Rosensaft.

On reading of what Josef Rosensaft connects us to, was an Auschwitz escapee before he was returned to be brutalised there. Josef was amongst the many Jews who were transported to Belsen, exiting the myriad of Camps still in operation and he remained there until liberation. Into that mix of Camps, systems of ghettoisation and prepatory halfway spaces for the forwarding of transports for a deadly resettlement, the Death Camp system was in decline. The ability to ensure no Jew remained alive so as to deliver their evidences to the liberating Allies, still occupied Hitler ahead of any other consideration.

“..stunned. A call up ..everyone knows what that means. Visions of concentration camps and lonely cells raced through my head. How could we let Father go to such a fate.” Anne Frank.

The Second World War was a subsidiary endeavour, devouring further millions, while the effort to annihilate all of European Jews, 11,293,300 of them, was forcibly conducted. With the construction of these 6 Death Camps in Poland, Belzec, Birkenau (of which Auschwitz was the parent Camp), Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, we recognise their spaces in the fuller analysis of annihilation process. However, and it should not be mistaken, in every Camp, including Belsen, in every Ghetto and Town, Village and Shtetl that once used to house Jews, their life was subsumed by Hitler’s demand for their destruction.

“..a lot of People do feel guilty for Surviving but there must be a purpose in Surviving somebody has to Survive to ..speak for ..People who can no longer speak. ..This is now My Purpose.” Anita Lasker Wallfisch.

That destructive demand was on the insistence of a decree we recognise is The Final Solution of The Jewish Question. As this played out across the length and breadth of Continental Europe, 6,000,000 Jews were laid to waste. As die Endlosung der Judenfrage is fully translated as The Final Solution of The Jewish Question, what we then recognise is the systematic and ordained Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews and here we have The Holocaust. But even when we cannot identify with that suggested tally of destruction, it cannot be acceptable as a complete assessment.

“..There were people ..skeletons. ..shuffling along aimlessly ..zombies ..looking into space. They would shuffle along and just collapse and die. You could be speaking to someone ..and they could just die in front of your eyes.” Mala Tribich.

The silencing effect of acceptance of an assessment which is limited to a conservative estimate is a conjecture too far. We are bound by such parameters as these figures and assessments to accept their limiting reach. Within the term of The Holocaust itself, which seeks to dismiss even Jews from that very intention derived from Hitler’s resolve, we do a grave disservice to History in limiting how too readily we accept limitations in the overall truth of the destruction. The capacity alone ensures we are way off the mark when it comes to how many Jews are actually lost to us.

“..I remembered finding myself in a house belonging to Germans ..idea being to help oneself to whatever took one’s fancy. .It made me realize ..a thief is a thief whatever ..circumstances. There could never be adequate compensation for ..losses we ..sustained.” Anita Lasker-Walfisch.

In each and every assessment we reach, we find the Survivor Jew raging at the loss but determined not to sink to the depths to which Hitler’s perpetrators decended to. Therefore, and while we look for the similarity’s that occur in the expression of the events to consume all Jews, that search ensures no space is closed off with regard to both the humanity lost and the inhumanity detailed. For the final assessment, a configuration that is still to be made and of which the 6,000,000 figure has become a long standing issue, no definitive account can ever be certain.

“..We ..cowed ..emaciated inmates ..did not believe we were free. It seemed ..a dream which would ..turn ..into cruel reality.” Josef Rosensaft.

Of course, of the final account that is to be representative of what was conducted against the Jewish People, and once freedom had been assured, we find exception in that 6,000,000 figure. It is all too easily exposed as way too conservative a figure, when we add to the evidences and testimonies we have been given. Then, when we look to those deadly circumstances that did not overcome all of the intended victims, the Survivor Jews of this Belsen Concentration Camp, are here to elaborate upon what we are searching for.

“..Anne Frank wrote at ..end of her Diary ..she still believed people were good at heart ..I wonder what she would have thought if she had Survived ..Auschwitz and ..Belsen. ..people have a unique capacity for cruelty ..brutality ..indiffernce to human suffering. ..I have seen ..unedifying evidence of that at close hand ..it has led me to a lifetime of wondering about ..human soul.” Eva Schloss.

The human soul has been exposed to such horror’s, it has been torn from the civilised approaches to a humanity that is shattered by the experience. All of which is an effort I seek to explore further what we come to acknowledge what are those differences to lost Jewish lives. What this amounts to, and if ever you need to add to what you might think you mmay know of places like Belsen, you then need to learn what these Jewish Survivors and Writers of their experiences all wish inform us of. I speak here highly of Hetty Verolme, Fania Fenelon, Hanna Levy-Hass, Anital Lasker-Walfisch and Paul Oppenheimer who have written of their evidences within Belsen.

“..A new life breathed in ..camp. Our liberators ..moved among our skeletal ..tenuous silhouettes like a surge of life. ..These men seemed nit to know ..one could live in slow motion ..that energy was something you saved.” Fania Fenelon.

As such, those whose very experience of the terror and horror of The Holocaust, deliver for us a grasp of their abject fear that we as yet cannot begin to comprehend. Of course, there are many works which create an impression of what Belsen was like, all adding to what Hetty Verolme declares on books written which should only add to the narrative of the search. No books, on such a monumentally and outrageous assault upon the integrity of human existence, cannot ever detract nor distract from it.

“..Wednesday March 1st. 1944 ..It’s really scary ..since we don’t know whether ..burglar will take it into his head to try and get in again. Or was he so startled when he heard someone else in ..building that he’ll stay away. Yours ..Anne ps ..We’d be delighted if you could hunt up a good detective for us. Obviously ..there’s one condition ..he must be relied upon not to inform on people in hiding.” Anne Frank.

There is too a Diary, by a Young Girl, Anne Frank, who was consumed within Belsen, but who did Not know what Belsen was yet to mean to her, nor to her Sister Margot. For both Anne and Margot, Frank, tragically consumed by exceptionally callous intolerances, they are laid to unrest amongst 50,000 or even 70,000 of their fellow Jews. Here, unlike in the Death Camps were Gas Chambers sought to conceal the final horror, Jews were still beaten, Jews were starved voraciously, and Jews were killed and Murdered at a whim.

“..For some most fortunate reason ..I did not have to work in Belsen.” Paul Oppenheimer.

The seriously debilitating detail amidst all of this grandiose levels of slaughter was set as an example of the inhumanity conceived to the amass the humanity together to be discarded. Between 1943 and 1945 more than 50,000, though it is conceivable, and we don’t know that 70,000 Jewish People Perished in this, the Jewish exchange Camp Belsen. On July 24th. 1943 after intervention by the Spanish government, 367 of the Jewish Citizens, given protected status by Spain, were redirected away from Birkenau, and settled into a subsistence level within Belsen too few could ignore.

“..they had food for us ..sardines ..chocolate. ..Quite a combination ..don’t ask me how ..I don’t like either one ..frankly ..but believe me ..it tasted wonderful at that time.” Judy Jacobs.

On August 2nd. 1943 Belsen was officially opened as an Exchange Camp for Jews and the Star Camp was created. Of the many of these supposedly saved Jews, on October 25th. 1943 1,700 of these so called privileged Belsen Jews were deported to Birkenau for resettlement there. Exposed then is the myth of the transfer of Jews anywhere other than to their deaths, though there are cases were Jews did eventually receive such status as would free them. For Belsen, it was rapidly losing its fraudulent mask as other than a further well of despair for those Jews dispatched there.

“..name Belsen conjures up pictures of heaps and heaps of ..corpses and human skeletons moving ..among ..corpses. My courage has begun to desert me as I try to tell you what it was ..like living in this place. I am fully aware that Belsen is in every way indescribable.” Anita Lasker-Walfisch.

Those Jews led to believe, and who then assumed that they were bound for freedom, were again fooled and were transported directly to their deaths at Birkenau. Throughout 1944 Jews from all too many camps, which were being gradually emptied, were transported, marched and then discarded and dropped into the growing catastrophe that is Belsen. Many, who had even Survived Birkenau could not begin to contemplate what would then confront them across the breadth of Belsen. A mass of Jewish persistence was crushed and sprawled across the vastness of human misery and wee confined in a heap of human destitution.

“..life in Belsen ..during 1944 ..pretty dull ..tedious ..monotonous.” Paul Oppenheimer.

On February 4th. 1944, the 367 Jews who had been transported to Belsen from Birkenau, back in July 1943, were finally returned to Spain after their near seven month stay in Belsen. During March 1944, some 400 Albanian Jews arrive in Belsen of which barely 100 of these will Survive. It is ominously to those who are looking in, that it is perfectly clear that Survival and those aspirations for a future life go hand in hand. With most Jews, who were faced with an extinction which many of them are neither prepared for or informed of, recoil at the idea, the thought and the sight of such a horror to confront them, did not recognise where civilisation nor humanity existed.

“..Wednesday April 5th. 1944 ..end of ..war still seemed so far away ..so unreal ..like a fairy tale. If ..war isn’t over by September ..I won’t go back to school ..since I don’t want to be 2 years behind. ..I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant ..to get on in life ..to become a journalist ..because that’s what I want. I know I can write. ..Unless you write yourself ..you can’t know how wonderful it is ..I always used to bemoan ..fact ..I couldn’t draw ..but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write. ..if I don’t have ..talent to write books or newspaper articles ..I can always write for myself. ..I want to achieve more than that. ..I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people ..even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death. ..When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sor row disappears ..my spirits are revived. ..writing allows me to record everything ..all my thoughts ..ideals ..fantasies. ..Anne Frank.”

On April 5th. 1944 of the over 690 Dutch Jews to be transportd for resettlement, many of them, some 240, find their way on a deportion to Belsen, as others of their community are transported to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. On May 19th. 1944 over 680 more Dutch Jews are deported to Belsen while many of them are directed straight to Auschwitz. I look to these lines as I realised along the way og my own journey and as I stood in each of the Annihilation Centres, nothing I could sense, nor feel could ever be comparable to any emotion, surely ingrained, that the Survivor knew.

“..Friday May 19th. 1944 ..I’ve distanced myself a little from ..situation ..but you mustn’t think my love has cooled. ..I’ve slammed ..door to my inner self.” Anne Frank.

What is it about the words I state which draws such consternation amongst those surely seeking only the truth, which is what matters in History. I have learned along the way too that it can simply be the mere mention that my concern is for the 6,000,000 Jews of The Holocaust. The stain of intolerable hatred will not allow for these Jews to rest in any form of peace befitting their evidential destruction at the hands of an ostensibly christian cohort. Throughout October and November 1944 the fuller scale of arrivals of Jewish Transports at Belsen began to escalate.

“..In May 1944 big transports of Hungarians came in at Birkenau and scarlet fever was rampant. I remember that all those who were even suspected ..who were not yet in hospital but still in their proper blocks ..were sent to ..gas chambers. ..myself still being in charge of ..hospital in Block 3 ..and on that day big transports from a Concentration Camp called Lodz arrived and there were quite a few cases of typhoid fever. Those were put into my hospital and in a sort of big room ..and every 2 or 3 days selections were made and those were sent away. 2 or 3 days I saw trucks loaded with human beings on ..way to ..gas chambers. In ..first few days of ..month of October 1944 that hospital where I was working was ..liquidated.” Dr. Ada Bimko.

The degradation of the Jewish People did not begin in the Death Camps, nor indeed with the entire Concentration Camp system, nor does it end there. The genesis of what occured began in the minds of Men and Women who sought out differences to manipulate their own minscule existence. For 6,000,000 Jews of Europe, their very existence was at the hands of those who could not see past their own hatreds. Dr. Bimko, giving her evidence before the Belsen Trial, it was a comparison being sought between the excesses at Birkenau and Belsen that bore and brought equivalences to the human capacity for grave inhumanity toward the Jewish People.

“..if one wants to argue this thing to its logical conclusion ..is it not quite obvious that ..actual internment itself was all done with a view in fact to further ..war effort. These were 2 reasons for interning these people. One was ..deliberate destruction of ..Jewish race. ..avowed object of that was to strengthen ..home front and to prevent what happened in ..last war. It was an avowed war effort.” Colonel T.M. Backhouse.

While Colonel Backhouse sought to inveigle every arm of the Reich in what was conducted both in War and within the resolve for The Final Solution, Dr. Bimko explored the depths to which humanity would sink. She was asked about the position within Birkenau that was now contrasted, though barely, to the already deadly conditions within Belsen. The major difference as I see it, even if degradation, starvation, insanitary conditions, methods of brutality, death and even if the eventual destruction were to be compared, was in fact the systematic attempt to drive more than 4,500,000 Jews from existence and through the doors of the Death Camps.

“..In ..beginning there was some talk about ..camp being some sort of exchange camp for prisoners ..but later on it did not give me that impression at all ..it was not a camp for sick people ..it was a death camp ..a torture camp.” Dr. fritz klein.

Though Dr. Klein in his capacity as an SS medic did see that both Birkenau and Belsen constituted a death sentence for the Jews within both, the distinction I make remains a valid onw. With the industrialised nature and mechanised approach to the Slaughter derived for all the 6 Death Camps in Poland, this fact transcends any comparison other than the Deaths it details. For the Jews, now detailed to rot within Belsen, what became even more devastating for those crushed into this swamp of human degradation, was the sheer horror that followed them.

“..at ..very bottom end of ..prison area was a small crematorium. ..conditions in ..camp were really indescribable ..no description nor photograph could really bring home ..horrors that were there outside ..huts and ..frightful scenes inside were much worse and ..were only seen by very few.” Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes.

As Hitler’s cohort began dismantling and then emptying all Camps that were coming close to being liberated by the Allied forces, a concealment exercise fully emerged. Allied troops in the East were fast approaching Auschwitz and Birkenau and the Western Allies were pinching off the lines of Hitler’s communication and logistical effort. Here, and while it would be criminally wrong to condemn the entire Allied effort on the basis of their own losses, the Jewish People were being consumed without let up. But, and while the Allied World was well aware of the fuller intention to terminate from all existence all Jews, this was essentially true by 1941, at the very latest.

“..August 28th. 1944 I’m in charge of taking care of ..Children. ..110 of them ..all different ages ..from 3 year old infants to 14 and 15 year old Boys and Girls.” Hanna Levy-Hass.

By1944, the full scale of Hitler’s final purpose, which has already resulted in 6,000,000 Jews having been systematically Slaughtered, was known to the intelligence services of the Allies, both East and West. Here though, and given the sheer logistics of supply and even communicating within the German front line, this was more and more secondary consideration to that final resolve of The Jewish Question. What remained permanently present in Hitler’s Worldview was that vista of a Jewish presence being terminally eradicated.

“..August 29th. 1944 Without books ..we are ill. ..beaten down. .. ..many lost hours ..so many vanished ..inaccessible riches. ..a miserable ..sterile existence ..atrophied minds” Hanna Levy-Hass.

My hope is in delivering the truth for these 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews, and with the integrity inherent in its proposal, to serve well their everlasting memory. That very earnest and sought after truth, so denied these Jews in life, must avail them in The Holocaust, and not merely as a testament to their being. As a non-Jew, I defer to all Jews, for in their search for knowing, their demand comes from a more personal perspective. The Jewish need, and the Israeli States sought after expectation, given the spread of Jews throughout Europe, all too many were caught up in the catastrophe.

“..To give you some instances of what happened on arrival ..Auschwitz ..you will hear that in November 1944 in one transport of 1,400 people 1,000 never went into ..Camp ..only 400 were accepted and ..remainder were taken and gassed straight away. Another transport came ..and of 5,000 persons brought there 4,500 were gassed. You will hear that 45,000 Greek Jews were taken to that camp ..and when ..evacuating ..only 60 were left out of ..45,000.” Colonel T. M. Backhouse.

What is for a memory and eventual restitution, which is far greater than my effort could ever restore, and stretches far beyond what my search in the researching of The Holocaust can, it is within the qualification of the Survivor to deliver. All of that stated, this does not mean I agree wholeheartedly with those whose opinion might differ from mine. However, in a state of sheer collapse, as Allied forces decended upon the far reaches of Hitler’s Reich, and given that the Jews had no choice but to die, Survival was an extraordinary feat. Despite what History teachs us of Theresienstadt and Belsen, these spaces were somewhat privileged in name only as we learn of the fate of those Jews whose lives were rescinded there.

“..I do not know ..number of deaths which occurred in this period at all ..but ..conditions in Belsen got worse from ..middle of February till ..middle of April ..1945 ..when ..Allies came.” Josef Kramer.

In fact, no Jew was ever exempt from the full tenets of Hitler’s resolve to finally destroy them all, and wherever he found them. Until their own point of full Survival, 11,293,300 Jews of Europe were in permanent danger of total annihilation. For a man such as Kramer, whose capacity for degeneracy and hatred can be evidenced literally in his own words, he is unable to afford any form of redemption for humanity. For certain, there are so very few of these Nazi’s who could restore what the civilising terms of all humanity truly requires.

“..It is quite impossible to give any adequate description on paper of ..atrocious ..horrible ..utterly inhuman condition of affairs.” Lieutenant Colonel James Alexander Deans Johnston.

It is clear here that I speak highly of anyone who stands so much taller in the midst of the Catastrophe even when that personage is an SS, as Kurt Gerstein was. In that assessment I have written of his position in my Book on Hitler’s Belzec, even when I am strongly averse to any commendation of those who wore the black uniforn of hatred. But there is a precient point in which a soul can be redeemed by actions devised to dismantle, or attempt to, the supposed secrecy with which Hitler provoked his long standing hatred for the Jewish People.

“..I was one of ..handful of people who had seen every corner of ..establishment ..and certainly ..only one to have visited it as an enemy of this gang of murderers.” Kurt Gerstein.

Of course what some Allied liberator’s witnessed upon entry into Belsen, Gerstein was a witness to and subsequently advanced to the World what he knew of The Death Camp system, particularly at Belzec and Treblinka. But, and if Gerstein acted against his former offering of a loyalty to a code which betrayed the basic precepts of humanity, he showed where his humanity finally lay. Whereas, for a man like Rudolf Kasztner who polarises, not just an Historical division but a Jewish cadence in response to The Holocaust itself, there resides the position of injustices aimed at those who still acted for the Jews, or toward the tenets of civilisation.

“..There were cases of people who worked in ..crematorium called ‘Sonderkommando’ ..they had ..privilege when they came across a relation of saving them.” Dora Szafran.

What Dora recognised in Birkenau, having arrived from Majdanek was presented with such similar scenes within Belse. So in this I aim directly at those who would judge other’s who acted where we have no place to offer an opinion. That anyone offers up an accusation of those who stood before the abyss does not withstand the scrutiny of J’accuse by anyone having being absent from the point of the calamity they would now seek to judge. For me Reszo, as much as any Jew who acted within the confines of that certain lack of choice, it is as worthy of all historical defence for this Man for having saved so many Jews.

“..My place was ..so terribly dirty ..I tried to get another place to sleep and I managed to sleep in 220 ..and for that privilege to sleep in a cold corridor ..I had to clean and wash ..place there.” Ilona Stein.

Rudolf ‘Reszo’ Kasztner is an exemplary human being amongst the many Righteous who have been recognised more succintly as Gentiles before we look more closely at those who are Jews. I am certain too, that of the 1,685 Kasztner Jews, who we now list as Survivor’s, it is essential for me that None of these Jews are considered the wrong Jews. The story of Belsen holds with that exact same truth, and even as we establish a supposed route out of The Final Solution of The Jewish Question, but for certain Jews only, this was a Jewish ‘privileged’ position and was merely deemed as so and only on paper.

“..In half a barrack there were 600 to 700 people. People were lying on ..floor covered with lice and every other kind of vermin one could imagine. Our food depended very largely on ..efforts of ..senior of ..block. If she was energetic we might get a quarter basin of soup at midday ..if not we might get it at 3 o’clock. We received one bread for 10 people every 2nd. week ..and there was no bread for 4 weeks before ..arrival of ..British troops. During ..whole time I was at Belsen people were not taken for baths ..neither were their clothes changed. Towards morning there were several 100 corpses in ..blocks and around ..blocks and when ..block was closed ..when ..lagercommandant or Grese came along to inspect ..people ..from ..front of ..blocks ..corpses were cleared away ..but inside they were full of corpses.” Dora Szafran.

As Jews, and all Jews were Never exempted from the destructive capacity of the Reich, I am fearful that some might consider certain Jews less than concerned for. How then could I ever argue with the truth of the Survivor whose story is the narrative I wish to carefully weave into my own search. That 6,000,000 Jews were wholly betrayed, abandoned and Slaughtered, how could I not seek to defend all that these 6,000,000 innocent Jews could not withstand. For those who were saved, who stand before us, now too few, the Survivors who are now remaining for a lesson we need them to deliver and for that necessity so truthfully told by them, how can we not yet learn.

“..Gruppenfuhrer Pohl inspected Belsen Camp. ..I conducted Pohl right through ..camp and pointed out conditions as they were. ..first measure he suggested was to close ..camp and put no more people into it. I suggested 2 measures to Pohl

(a) no further transports to come in

(b) ..exchange of ..Jews in ..camp to take place immediately.

..result of this was that he dictated a letter from my office ..to Berlin ..saying that ..exchange of Jewish prisoners had to take place immediately. This exchange did eventually take place. ..I do not know against whom these prisoners were to be exchanged ..they left Belsen going to Theresienstadt. Between 6,000 and 7,000 ..were sent away to be exchanged. These 6,000 or 7,000 constituted ..entire number of Jewish prisoners ..to be exchanged.” Josef Kramer.

I then hear so often the acclaim given over only to those of The Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as if all the 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews could of or should have done similarly. Perhaps life, or better still the merest of existence for those Jews and others, had not contemplated their existence was terminal in those moments. For those Surviving Jews, now more tightly bound to Belsen, and who came to a more bestial position of degradation, these had even less choice than some might give them. With the arrival of Josef Kramer on December 2nd. 1944, to replace Adolf Haas as Kommandant, the demise of those Jews, affixed to the experience of Kramer at Birkenau, this had taught him all too well.

“..This human mass is heterogeneous. It is piled together here ..by force ..by violence ..in this small patch of dirty ..humid ground ..forced to live in ..most humiliating conditions and to endure ..most brutal deprivations ..that all human passions ..weaknesses have unleashed themselves ..taking on beastly forms.” Hanna Levy-Hass.

The very depths to which Kramer’s depravity could descend however, did Not spur the Allies to act more concertedly, or in anyway in fact, toward preventing all future Jewish loss. Hitler was now further assured that The Final Solution was being raged and would be continuously resolved by his closest ideologues, the SS. On October 23rd. 1944, and for some 3,000 Jews who had Survived the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, these still alive were transported out of Birkenau. Some of these where amongst many who now found their way to the Camp at Belsen and the human mass of piled high bodies awaiting them.

“..first time I had any choice because ..guards came and said ..you can go to a labour camp or go back to Belsen ..and luckily I chose ..work camp. I thought that while we’re working ..chances are they will keep us alive.” Evelyn Lipmann.

At this same time some 1,750 Polish survivng Jews were being transported to Birkenau and away from Belsen. On October 28th. 1944 there is a last transport of Theresienstadt Jews to Auschwitz and as a major selection from amongst these and other Jews of Auschwitz and Birkenau, this sees 8,000 Jews deported toward Belsen. The disarray around what to do with the Surviing Jews, to keep them from ever falling into Russian and their American and British Allied hands was astounding, given the very need for the Wehrmacht for Trains, Transport, Time, Weapons and even the manpower to stave off the Allied threat a little longer.

Amongst these eventual Jwish Survivor’s to depart toward Belsen are:

1) Anne Frank was transported from Auschwitz at the end of October 1944 and was brought to Belsen Concentration Camp near Hanover in Germany. There was a typhus epidemic which broke out shortly thereafter, as the lack of any humanitarian concern for those interned there mounted exponentially. 1,000’s of lives were ravaged by disease, hunger and starvation including Anne’s Sister Margot, a few days before Anne hereself too succumbed to the same debillitating effects. It is uncertain when Anne actually died though this is more likely to have been sometime toward the end of February or the beginning of March. Both Anne and Margot’s bodies are interred some where in a mass grave within Belsen itself and there no marker to show exactly where!

2) Margot Frank was transported with Anne from Auschwitz toward the end of October 1944 and was brought to Belsen Concentration Camp near Hanover in Germany. There was a typhus epidemic which broke out shortly thereafter, as the lack of any humanitarian concern for those interned there grew. 1,000’s of lives were ravaged by disease, hunger and starvation including Anne, merely days after Margot too succumbed to the same debillitating effects. It is uncertain when Margot actually died though this is more likely to have been sometime toward the end of February or the beginning of March. Both Margot and Anne’s bodies are interred some where in a mass grave within Belsen though no marker exists to show eaxactly where!

3) Auguste van Pels was transported from Auschwitz to Belsen and from there to Buchenwald and then on to Theresienstadt on April 9th. 1945. Auguste did not survive though we are unaware when she Died was Killed or was Murdered.

“..In respect of Belsen ..there will not be an allegation that there was a gas chamber or that persons were herded by their 1,000’s to their death ..but there will be an allegation that by ..treatment that was given to those at Belsen ..every member of ..staff at Belsen who stands before you bore their share in that treatment which they knew was causing and would continue to cause death and injury.” Colonel T.M. Backhouse.

On until November 1st. 1944 Birkenau’s Orchestra Girls, those ordered to play for the Nazi’s and to provide musical accompaniment for the march for those inmates from the Camp, out and back into the Camp from work details. They were now transferred to Belsen. By January 23rd. 1945, there were 98,000 Jews who were expelled from the Death Camp at Birkenau. Many of these Jews, barely clinging to life itself ended up in Belsen and this is where so many of them ended their final days of torment.

“..April 1945 ..this gloomy barracks full of ghosts ..humiliation ..hatred ..motionless sick People reduced to total powerlessness ..these living ..already putrefied corpses ..a dark abyss where an entire humanity founders.” Hanna Levy-Hass.

On March 24th. 1945 a train arrived with 1,000 Jewish Women from the Flossenburg Concentration Camp with 820 of them who were already dead. Upon liberation 1945 there were still some 60,000 Jews, and others, clinging to life on the body strewn vastness of the Belsen Camp, all too many barely able to crawl away from death itself. That immense number would drastically dwindle, with 5,000 in the first few days of rescue succumbing to weakness and exhaustion. All too many, too debilitated to even hope for life persisted before death while their Survival chances capsized around them.

“..such desecration of human beings. ..lost souls. ..dying ..no way back for them. ..Their minds ..gone.” Lt. Eric Brown.

Belsen was finally liberated on April 12th. 1945, by the British Army and with more than 13,000 of those Dead who still lie as they fell. For those clinging to hope still, Medical attention could do little for all too many of these individuals who had been discarded from all or any concern. And here again I meet my nemesis, The Holocaust, which has proved such a formidable adversary and I am usually somewhat buoyed by the sense of acheiement I am delivered to it. For these, the Jewish People of The Holocaust, who more than require my continued effort, I deliver in writing what I cannot relinquish, and it is in the form of their hold over me.

“..Enough ..enough. ..I have to stop writing. No. No. I can’t stop. I remember another girl of 14. My own brother’s orphan daughter in Lvov whom I carried about in my arms as if she were my own child. Lussye.” Rachel Auerbach.

As we know, amongst those to lose their hold on life here in the final days of the suffering, are Anne and Margot Frank. It is now believed that Anne succumbed to the appalling conditions sometime prior to the end of March, perhaps a month later than suspected. The flimsy estimates which suggest that 50,000 Jews were Murdered here, and some 40,000 others, and even as 40,000 others are freed, some to die subsequently, will never add to the knowledge we now seek. Of course, and despite the efforts of the Allied medical teams, Jews were dying at the rate of 4,500 per week upon their liberation. The toll for all who died here in Belsen is an incalculable slur upon the civilised world to act with humanity, compassion and concern!

“..When British came and liberated us I was already a corpse ..full of lice ..but I remember ..first time in almost a year ..gentleness ..kindness. Somebody lifted me up and placed me in this little ambulance ..how was that possible. ..I was so dehumanised.” Susan Pollack.

Susan had arrived from Birkenau, and faced a nightmare and perhaps it is a consideration, that it was in the interests of the Allies to bear witness to what was done by Hitler and his regime. Also, maybe in destroying the very evidence of what Hitler managed and for them, for what they themselves are complicit in, such evidence would have been so accusing. I have spoken to many Survivor’s whose hunger was so ingrained, they did Not have to imagine that hunger. Far too often I have researched what hunger meant for those starving Jews and it came down to scavenging for the merest morsel that would sustain life.

“..advised ..to stretch ..coffee ration since it was ..only liquid available. It wasn’t that I wasn’t hungry ..I’m sure I was ..too scared to deal with ..strange bread .and horrible coffee.” Tomi Reichental.

Far too many Survivor’s have identified exactly how devastating hunger became with many eating things they didn’t particularly like, or even abhored. But we, who stand on this periphery, look for a comprehension that gives us a further insight into what drove the Jewish People to extraordinary lenghts to stay alive. I am amazed at the sheer devastation that was forced upon the Jewish People in whatever antechamber to the destructive processes that were designed for them. Many, forced to squabble over a piece of bread, or a ladle of putrid water classed as soup, ersatz coffee or some other concoction. But the hold on life was strong.

“..She limped down the corridor looking old and haggard. She was 42 years old ..a little over 5 feet high ..trembling as she was put on ..scale. she said ..I have my feelings.”Albert Pierrepoint.

On Monday, 17th September 1945 the Trial of 48 Belsen Camp personnel began with 3 of the defendants omitted and the remainder arraigned before what we recognise is The Belsen Trial. One of these indicted, and hanged for her crimes Against Humanity, was Juana Bormann. She is numbered 6 in all the displays showing the indicted at Belsen and for whom the hangman Albert Pierrepoint witnessed her tremble.

“..Many People talk about Auschwitz ..a horrible camp ..but Belsen ..no words can describe it.” Violette Fintz.

No doubt this trembling is not to be witnessed by countless Jews and others who stood before her and witnessed her outrage of power. Here though at her final execution, Bormann had more feelings it appears than she ever gave to those inmates she confronted with brutality and inhumanity. Josef Kramer, the former Kommandant of Belsen and fourty-four other Camp guards, administrators and perpetrators were tried by a British war crimes court at Luneburg.

“..People were dying in such numbers that there were dead bodies everywhere. There were piles of bodies ..piles of naked ..decaying ..twisted bodies. What a most terrible sight.” Mala Tribich.

Like Fania Fenelon, I found the continued will to write for the memory of those Jews, all 6,000,000 of them being lost to time. From the start date of September 17th. 1945 to November 17th. 1945, the trial against these nazi’s was progressed. While identifying specific Crimes Against Humanity, we can be assured that no Justice for all those lost to such inhumanity will ever be in evidence. There were 11 death sentences delivered and all the guilty perpetrators were Hanged. There were also acquittal’s and various terms of imprisonment.

“..entering Belsen once again ..did not rekindle ..horrors. ..instead ..mass graves were telling me. We are at peace now.” Hetty Verolme.

Accused No. 1 Josef Kramer Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 2 Dr. Fritz Klein Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 3 Peter Weingartner Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 4 George Kraft Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 5 Franz Hoessler Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 6 Juana Bormann Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 7 Elisabeth Volkenrath Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 8 Herta Ehlert 15 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 9 Irma Grese Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 10 Ilse Lothe Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 11 Hilde Lohbauer 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 12 Josef Klippel Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 13 Jenner is not present and is struck from the charge.
Accused No. 14 Oscar Schmitz Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 15 Steinmetz is not present and is struck from the charge.
Accused No. 16 Karl Francioh Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 17 Ladislaw Gura (Hospitalised) Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 18 Fritz Mathes Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 19 Otto Calesson Kulessa 15 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 20 Medislaw Burgraf 5 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 21 Karl Egersdoerf Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 22 Ansgar Pichen Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 23 Walter Otto Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 24 Melcher is not present and is struck from the charge.
Accused No. 25 Franz Stofel Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 26 Heinrich Schreirer 15 Years Imprisonment.
Accused No. 27 Wilhelm Doerr Executed by hanging on December 13th. 1945.
Accused No. 28 Eric Barsch Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 29 Erich Zoddel Life Imprisonment
Accused No. 30 Ignatz Schlomoivicz Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 31 Vladislav Ostrowoski 15 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 32 Antoni Aurdzieg 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 33 Ilse Foerster 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 34 Ida Foerster Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 35 Clara Opitz Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 36 Charlotte Klein Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 37 Herta Bothe 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 38 Freida Walter 3 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 39 Irene Haschke 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 40 Gertrud Fiest 5 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 41 Gertrud Sauer 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 42 Hilde Lisiewitz 1 Year Imprisonment
Accused No. 43 Johanne Roth 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 44 Anna Hempel 10 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 45 Hildegard Hahnel Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 46 Helena Koper 15 Years Imprisonment
Accused No. 47 Anton Polanski Acquitted & Released
Accused No. 48 Stanislawa Starostka 10 Years Imprisonment

Many of these prison sentences, not worth the sought after justice, were further commuted as time went by. Ignoring the echoing pleas of 6,000,000 lost Jewish souls in need of some form of Justice, once again the World failed the Jewish People. While I have borrowed here from those like Hetty Verolme, Paul Oppenheimer, Anita Lasker and Hannah Levy-Hass, and their purpose has been mine for more than 25 years now, I commend their evidences as essential. The purpose I seek, so that I too can speak for the 6,000,000 Jews, has awakened me to the gravest wrongs ever perpetrated against an innocent People in all of History, and this because they were Jews.

“..penetrating silence ..they are resting in Peace.” Mala Tribich.

It might be true as Mala suggests that around Belsen there is a peace that has descended , but these Jewish People, given no future voice to speak for themselves, look to us all to gain them some form of actual justice. For 6,000 Jews of Europe, consumed wholly and intentionally on an industrial scale, we cannot assess Justice by its sheer lack of attribution. That many more than the conservative estimate delivered, and just to 6 Death Camps, cannot ever be accepted as definitive in any finite study.

“..I’ve seen Nazism make a strong comeback ..So I had to write this book ..finally.” Fania Fenelon.

We simply cannot ever know the fuller extent to those reaches of this Catastrophe that we seek to comprehend. Having stood in each of the 6 Death Camps in Poland, I thought back to all those Survivors I have met, who could not know that they would emerge. Paul Oppenheimer is amongst those to emerge from the very system that was designed to annihilate them. The distinction I make, and though Belsen was Not a Death Camp, it was a place of Death for those Jews and others placed there.

“..From ..Jewish viewpoint ..it is a grievous disappointment in that there is a complete absence in ..indictment of ..slightest suggestion of ..colossal crime against ..Jews resulting in ..annihilation of 6,000,000 souls. ..word Jew is not mentioned once in ..preliminary formal proceedings.” Alexander L. Easterman.

That said, and it is a sad fact that I reminded myself at the entrance to each of these factories of destruction, that I would at least be walking back out of them, yes all of them. For me, this was a salutory reality that struck very deeply at me as I stood outside these Death Camps. After each visit, there was this immense relief as I walked out knowing full well that 1,000,000’s of Jews, and others had been consigned to the spaces I had just walked across. Truly, I could not walk upon such blood soaked lands without the deepest concerns that must be afforded such a vanquished People.

“..I wish to draw a distinction between Auschwitz and Belsen. At Auschwitz 1,000’s of people were killed ..at Belsen 1,000’s of people died. But there is no dispute that at Auschwitz there was a gas chamber in which 1,000’s of people met their end. It is ..clear that this was one of ..methods used by ..Germans for ..liquidation of those people that were of no use to ..German Reich. It is quite clear that this gassing was carried out on ..orders of ..very highest authority in Germany.” Major Thomas C. M. Winwood.

I realised too that this was not the privileged status for the Jews in Hitler’s Reich, as the very highest authority of that Reich, generally denied those dispatched to the Death Camps. However it was promoted or envisaged for these Jews within Belsen who somehow were led to believe that they might be spared, none of which would be a guarantee of their life. I have spent the past 25 years searching for meaning even comprehension and certainly some form of understanding. Gradually over time I have recognised there are opposing views based solely upon the same hatred that interred 6,000,000 Jews in The Holocaust.

“..Ida Foerster ..whom I know from Belsen ..in Kitchen No. 2 ..on one occasion when a prisoner came near ..kitchen to get some food or some remnants of it she ran out from ..kitchen with a sort of rubber tube and started hitting this prisoner so badly that she had to be carried away by ambulance.” Ilona Stein.

The truth is being worn down to suit a bias that does not reflect badly on the Hitler design which destroyed these Jewish People. I also recognise from some media platforms, that they are choosing to deny the existence of The Jews, who are The Holocaust, in the midst of the gravest catastrophe ever inflicted upon human civilisation. In the medium used, where some wish to inform us with, there is a reluctance to recognise the status of the Jewish People in the solution devised to destroy them. I have written and have had Published four Books, which might not account for much in the delivery to Memory of these 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews, but they are at least my attempt to.

“..camp was really at an end because people were just dying in such numbers and ..food was coming to an end and it was nearing ..end of ..war ..not that I knew that. There was no roll call. I don’t think anybody was working there except for in ..kitchens.” Mala Tribich.

In each of these 4 Books, my accusation comes from the abandonment of the Jews and then the denial of the very fact of the Jewish presence. I also respond resolutely to the intention to somehow diminish Hitler’s carefully designed plan to annihilate All the Jews of Europe. In that, the truth that a World’s indifference to the emerging truth in The Holocaust is also a fact. It is for the very Science of History that we must ensure that we do not visit misleading, disingenuous and biased disregard for the truth onto the pages of any testimony.

“..Irene Haschke ..I remember this woman from Belsen ..also ..Kitchen No. 2. She took part in these beatings ..and whenever a prisoner got a few drops of soup then she knocked it over ..poured it out ..and hit that prisoner until hardly they could get up.” Ilona Stein.

As a resource, I have used much of the evidence on Belsen gained from the very People who Survived its devastating effects, these Jews of Belsen. Many of them have poured their torment, the devastation of such evidence as makes us wretch, with a hunger and debilitating emotional trauma to deliver words which I have sought out in the tomes I have described below. Here too I present a short Belsen Bibliography to assure you, this is not merely a detail of History, but a torment for more than 10’s of 1.000’s of Jews from the 6,000,000 Jewish People who were torn from all existence.

Lasker-Walfisch, Anita. – Inherit the Truth.

“..I have never ..had an overwhelming desire to talk about my experiences. ..reason for this are complex ..varied ..but I have ..not had any desire to forget…there seems to be a taboo on ..subject of The Holocaust.” Anita Lasker-Walfisch.

Levy-Hass, Hanna. – Diary of Bergen – Belsen.

“..My whole being seems paralysed and with each passing day I feel more apathetic about ..World outside ..less suited to life as it is now.” Hanna Levy-Hass.

Oppenheimer, Paul. – From Belsen to Buckingham Palace.

“..I do not remember everything that happened to me more than 50 years ago. I was 16 years old when World War II ended ..and I have had to assemble my story from a variety of sources.” Paul Oppenheimer.

Reichental, Tomi. – I Was A Boy in Belsen.

“..My childhood is divided into 3 very different phases ..carefree years before ..onslaught of ..anti-Jewish laws ..subsequent arrest and deportation of myself and My Family to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp ..and finally ..struggle to return home to a tattered normality after our liberation.” Tomi Reichental.

Verolme, Hetty – The Children’s House of Belsen.

“..My Family ..Mother ..Father ..Myself ..younger Brothers Max and Jacky ..lived in Amsterdam ..Jewish Quarter. It never used to be a Jewish Quarter ..as ..Dutch people did know ..word ..segregation ..and everybody could live wherever they wanted.” Hetty Verolme.

In my need to know!

I have sought out the works on those Jews of individual Country’s, City’s and Towns who were destroyed. For my work on Hitler’s Belzec too, I sought out those large number of Communities for Annihilation, wholly eviscerated in this Death Camp. In my own Library of The Holocaust, Books have Bohemia and Moravia, Denmark, France, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Transnistria, Ukraine and Volhynia to expand upon. Here the knowledge resides that is necessary to attempt to understand, more appreciably, the Jewish losses.

I owe too a great debt to many Friends here who introduced me to Towns and Cities vacated of its Jews. The Final Solution, vexed by the exact same hatred destroyed Jews with an impunity justice would not even evoke. Some of these made the very effort to send me their own Books of this Memory. For these places, whose lost Jews are their own Families, I cannot begin to thank them. I speak here of Cracow, Delatyn, Grajewo, Kovno, Lodz, Lvov, Slonim, Vilna and Warsaw where I have been put in touch with personal and such an intimate loss, I am humanly touched.

Also, and in my research for Hitler’s Belzec, I sought out the plunder of Jewish life from dozens of Jewish Communities. This more fully extends my appreciation of the sheer immensity of the Jewish loss. I recognise too, that in here, we owe more to the deliverer’s of Testimony than we can ever stress. Now I come to why memory reaches back here reminded of what Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman afford us. This is a deeply intense reality that faced Jewish existence throughout the Soviet lands.

Here too, a poignant reminder of what the connection cannot afford to lose between present and past in the form of a Letter from a Mother, Ekaterina Savelyevna Grossman to her Son, Vasily Grossman (Iosef Solomonovich Grossman).

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry.

Edited by

Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman.

“..During the years of its domination German fascism transformed entire lands and regions into wasteland, destroyed hundreds if cities, demolished the capitals of many European countries, and burned tens of thousands of towns and villages. During the years of its domination German fascism destroyed millions of human lives.” Vasily Grossman.

The Last Letter from Mother to Son

Ekaterina Savelyevna Grossman to Her Son Vitya (Vasily Grossman)

“..Vitya, I’m sure my letter will reach you, even though I’m behind the front line and the barbed wire of a Jewish ghetto. I will never receive your answer, I will be dead by then. I want you to know about my last days, as this idea makes it easier for me to pass away. It is hard, Vitya, to truly understand people. The Germans stormed into the city on the seventh of July. The radio conveyed the news in the city garden. I was walking from an outpatient clinic after receiving patients and I stopped to listen. An announcer was reading an article about battles in Ukrainian. I heard distant gunfire, then there were people running across the garden. I went home, amazed at how I could have missed the air-raid siren.

And suddenly I saw a tank and somebody shouted

‘the Germans have broken through!’

I said:

‘Don’t spread panic’.

I went to the Secretary of the City Council the day before to ask him about leaving. He got angry

‘..It’s too early to talk about that, we haven’t even made lists.’

In short, these were Germans. The neighbours were going to each other all night, and the calmest of all were the little children and me. I decided that what happens to everyone will happen to me. I was terrified at first when I realized that I would never see you again. And I wished desperately that I could look at you one more time, could kiss your forehead and your eyes. And then I thought that it was extremely fortunate, after all, that you were safe. I fell asleep towards morning, and when I woke up, I felt terrible sadness. I was in my room, in bed, but I felt like an alien in a foreign land, lost, alone. It was on this very morning that I was reminded that I was a Jew, something I had forgotten over the years of Soviet government.

The Germans were driving a truck and shouting

‘Juden kaputt.’

And then some of my neighbours reminded me of that. The street cleaner’s wife was standing beneath my window and saying to a neighbour

‘Thank God, the Jews are finished.’

Where did that come from? Her son was married to a Jew, and the old woman used to visit them and tell me about her grandchildren. My neighbour, she has a six-year-old girl, Alenushka, endowed with beautiful blue eyes ..I wrote to you about her once, came to me and said

‘Anna Semenovna, take away your things before the evening, please, I’m moving into your room.’

‘Fine, then I’ll move into yours’ I said. She answered

‘No, you’ll move into the small room behind the kitchen.’

I refused as there was neither window nor stove. I went to the clinic, and when I came back I found out that my room was broken into and my possessions thrown into the small room. The neighbour said to me

‘I kept the sofa because it’s too big for the small room, anyway.’

Amazingly, she graduated from a technical school and her late husband was a nice quiet man, an accountant in Uksopspilka.

‘You’re an outlaw’

she said in such a voice, as if it was really advantageous for her. Yet her daughter Alenushka was sitting at my place all evening and I was telling her fairy tales. That was my house warming party and she didn’t want to go to bed, and her mother took her away in her arms. And then, Vitenka, our hospital was reopened again and I and my fellow doctor were fired. I requested money for a month of work, but the new superintendent told me

‘Let Stalin pay you for working under the Soviet regime, write him a letter to Moscow.’

The orderly Marusya hugged me and moaned softly

‘Oh my God, what will happen to you, what will happen to you all.’

And the doctor Tkachev shook my hand. I don’t know, what is harder, gloating or pitying looks that are given to a dying mangy cat. I never thought that I would have to go through all of this. Many people amazed me. And not only the vulgar, the angry and the illiterate. One was an old teacher, retired, 75 years old, he would always ask about you, send his regards, say about you

‘He is our pride.’

And those cursed days when we met he didn’t greet me, but looked away. And then I was told that he said at a meeting in the commandant’s office

‘The air has cleared, and there is no smell of garlic.’

Why was he doing this, it was he whom those words stained. And how much slander against the Jews was there at that very meeting. But Vitenka, not everyone went to that meeting. Many refused. And, you know, in my mind since tsarist times antisemitism is associated with the jingoism of people from the Union of the Archangel Michael. And here I saw those who claimed that Russia had been freed from the Jews were abasing themselves, they were flunky like and pathetic, ready to sell Russia for thirty pieces of German silver. And vulgar people from the suburbs went to rob, take over flats, blankets, dresses; such people probably would kill doctors during cholera riots.

And there were people who were mentally inert, who would echo anything evil, just so as not to be suspected of disagreement with the authorities. Acquaintances continuously come running to me with the news, all mad-eyed, as if they were delirious. A strange expression has appeared

‘to rehide things.’

It seems like it’s safer at the neighbour’s. Rehiding reminds me of a game. Soon the resettlement of the Jews was announced, and people were allowed to take 15 kilos of belongings. There were yellow notices on the walls of houses.

‘All Jews are to resettle in the Old Town district by six in the Evening by the July 15th. 1941. Those who don’t resettle will be executed.’

Well, Vitenka, I was ready. I took a pillow, a little laundry, a little cup that you once gave me, a spoon, a knife and two plates. Does a person need a lot? I took some medical instruments. I took your letters, the photos of my late Mum and Uncle David, and the one where you and your Dad were pictured, a volume of Pushkin, Lettres de Mon Moulin», a volume of Maupassant where One vie was, a dictionary, a book by Chekhov, containing A Boring Story and The Bishop. So it turned out that I filled my whole basket. How many letters I wrote to you under this roof, how many hours at night I spent crying and now I’ll tell you about my loneliness. I said my goodbye to the house, to the garden, sat under a tree for a few minutes, and said goodbye to the neighbours.

Strange how some people are made. Two neighbours started arguing in front of me over who will take the chairs, who will take the desk, but when I was saying goodbye both began to cry. I asked the Basankos to tell you everything in detail if you come to inquire about me after the war, and they promised. The mongrel Tobik touched me, it particularly petted me on my last evening at home. If you come back, feed it for being nice to the old Jewess. When I was about to set out and thought how was I going to drag my basket to the Old Town, my patient Shchukin who was sullen and, as it seemed to me, a callous man suddenly came. He carried my things, gave me 300 rubles and said that he would bring me bread to the railing once a week.

He works at the printers as he wasn’t sent to the front because of an eye disease. He was my patient before the war, and if I had to list people with a sympathetic and pure soul, I would list dozens of names, except his name. You know, Vitenka, after he’d come, I felt human again, which means not only a mongrel can treat me humanely. He told me that an order was being printed in the city printing house forbidding the Jews to walk on pavements. They had to wear a yellow cloth in the shape of a six-pointed star. They have no right to use transport, bathhouses, attend outpatient clinics, go to the cinema; they must not buy butter, eggs, milk, berries, white bread, meat, all vegetables except potatoes.

Shopping at the market is allowed to be done only after six o’clock in the evening when the peasants leave the market. The Old Town is surrounded by barbed wire, and leaving is prohibited except under escorted forced labour. If a Jew is found in a Russian house the owner will be executed, as if for sheltering a partisan. Shukin’s father in law, an old peasant, came from a nearby village, and he saw with his own eyes that all the local Jews with bundles and suitcases were driven to a forest, from where gunshots and terrible screams were coming throughout the day. And the Germans who were staying at his house came back late at night all drunk, and they continued drinking till morning they were singing and sharing the brooches, the rings, the bracelets among themselves in front of him. I didn’t know whether it was an arbitrary action or a harbinger of the fate awaiting us as well.

How sad was my way, dear Son, to a medieval ghetto. I walked through the city where I’d been working for 20 years. First we walked along the deserted Svechnaya Street. But when we turned to Nikolskaya Street, I saw hundreds of people walking to that cursed ghetto. The street became white with bundles and pillows. The sick had to be supported by people. Paralysed Doctor Morgulis’s father was carried on a blanket. One young man was carrying an old woman in his arms, and his wife and children loaded with bundles followed him. The head of a grocery shop Gordon, a thick man with shortness of breath, walked in a coat with a fur collar, and sweat was running down his face. A young man did amaze me, he was walking without things, with his head held high, holding an open book in front of him with a haughty and calm look on his face.

But how many were mad looking, filled with horror close by. We were walking along the road and on the pavements stood people watching us. I was walking with the Morgulis’s for a time and I heard the sympathetic sighs of women. And Gordon in his winter coat was laughed at, although, trust me, his was terrible, not funny. I saw a lot of familiar faces. Some were slightly nodding at me saying goodbye, others were looking away. It seemed to me, there were no indifferent eyes in this crowd: there were curious, there were merciless, but several times did I see tear filled eyes. I looked there were two crowds, one crowd of the Jews in coats, hats, women in warm shawls, and another crowd all wearing summer clothes. There were some in light blouses, men without jackets, some in Ukrainian embroidered shirts. It seemed to me that even the sun refused to shine for the Jews walking down the street, as they were walking on a cold December night.

I said goodbye to my companion in front of the gates to the ghetto and he showed me a place near the wire netting where we would meet. You know, Vitenka, what I felt when I got behind the wire? I thought I would feel horror. But, imagine, in that cattle pen I felt relieved. No, not because I have the soul of a slave. No! No! Around me were people of the same fate, and in the ghetto I didn’t have to walk on the pavement like a horse, and there were no dirty looks, and familiar people would look me in the eye and would not avoid meeting me. Everyone in this cattle pen bore the stamp that the fascists had put on us, and therefore this stamp did not burn my soul so badly. Here I felt not like powerless cattle, but like an unhappy person. This made me feel better. I settled down with my fellow therapist Sperling in a two-roomed hut. The Sperlings had two adult daughters and a son, the boy was about twelve. I cast long looks at his thin face and big sad eyes. His name is Jura, but I called him Vitya on two occasions and he corrected me

‘I’m Jura, not Vitya.’

How different people’s characters are! Being fifty eight years old, Sperling is full of energy. He got mattresses, kerosene and a cart of firewood. At night a sack of flour and half a sack of beans were carried into the house. He rejoices in every one of his achievements as a newlywed. Yesterday he hung rugs on the walls.

‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing, we will survive. ,,most importantly, stock up food and firewood.’

He told me that we should start a school in the ghetto. He even asked me to give French lessons to Yura for a bowl of soup per lesson. I agreed. Sperling’s wife, plump Fanny Borisovna sighs

‘All is lost, we are lost’

At the same time she keeps an eye on her eldest daughter Liuba, a kind and sweet creature, so that she didn’t give anyone a handful of beans or a slice of bread. And the youngest, mother’s favourite, Alya is a true fiend domineering, suspicious, niggardly. She screams at her father, at her sister. Before the war she came here on a visit from Moscow and got stuck here. My God, what poverty is all around us! If only those who speak of the wealth of the Jews, and say they always have something saved for a rainy day, could look at our Old Town. So here it came, the rainy day, as rainy as it could possibly get. After all, there are not only the resettled with 15 kilograms of luggage in the Old Town; artisans have always lived here, and the elderly, the workers and the nurses. In what terrible conditions they lived and continue to live. How they eat! You should see these dilapidated, sinking into the earth huts. Vitenka, here I see a lot of bad people the greedy, the cowardly, the cunning, who are even ready to betray you.

There is a terrible man, Epstein, who came here to us from some Polish town. He wears a badge on his sleeve and conducts searches with the Germans, takes part in interrogations, gets drunk with the Ukrainian policemen, and they sent him to houses to extort vodka, money and food. I saw him twice  he was tall, handsome, in a smart creamy suit, and even a yellow star sewn to his jacket looks like a yellow chrysanthemum. But I also want to tell you about other things. I had never felt like a Jew. Since childhood I grew up among Russian girlfriends, I loved Pushkin and Nekrasov more than other poets, and I saw ‘Uncle Vanya’ starring Stanislavsky, where I was crying along with the entire auditorium which was filled with the Congress of Russian Zemsky doctors. And once, Vitenka, when I was a fourteen year old girl, our family was going to emigrate to South America. And I told my father

‘I will not leave Russia, I’d rather drown myself.’

And I didn’t leave. But in these terrible days my heart is filled with motherly tenderness to the Jewish people. I’ve never known this love before. It reminds me of my love for you, dear son. I visit the sick at their homes. Dozens of people are crammed in tiny rooms: the half-blind elderly, the infants and the pregnant. I used to look for symptoms of disease in human eyes glaucoma, cataracts. Now I can not look people in the eye like that all I can see now is the reflection of a soul. A good soul, Vitenka! Sad and kind, grinning and doomed, defeated by violence and at the same time triumphant over violence. A strong, Vitya, soul! If only you could hear how attentively elderly men and women ask me about you. How kindly people are consoling me even though I don’t complain to them. People whose situation is more terrible than mine. I sometimes think that it is not me who attends the ill, but the good doctor treats my soul.

And how touching it is when they give me a piece of bread for treatment, or an onion, or a handful of beans. Believe me, Vitenka, it isn’t payment for visits! When an older worker shakes my hand and puts two or three potatoes in my purse and says,

‘Well, well, Doctor, I’m asking you,’

my eyes fill with tears. There is something so pure, fatherly, good in this, that words can not express.

I do not want to console you that I lived easily through this time. You should wonder how my heart did not explode in pain. But don’t torment yourself with a thought that I was starving, for all this time I have never been hungry. And something else I’ve never felt lonely. What shall I tell you about the people, Vitya? People strike me as good and bad. They are extremely different, though all are undergoing the same fate. But, imagine if during a thunderstorm the majority tries to hide from the rain, it does not mean that all people are the same. And everyone is hiding from the rain in their own way. Doctor Sperling is sure that the persecution of the Jews is only a temporary, wartime episode.

There is quite a few people like him, and I see that the more optimistic people are, the more petty and selfish they are. If someone comes during a meal, Alya and Fanny Borisovna immediately hide the food. The Sperlings are good to me, especially because I eat little and bring more products than I consume. But I decided to leave them as they repel me. I’m looking for a place of my own. The sadder a man is and the less he hopes to survive, the more generous, kind and good he is. The poor, the tinkers, the taylor’s, all doomed to death, are much nobler, gentler and wiser than those who have managed to stock up some food. Young teachers, a strange old teacher and chess player Spielberg, quiet librarians,an engineer Reyvich who is as helpless as a child, but who wants to equip the ghetto with homemade grenades what wonderful, impractical, nice, sad and kind people they are. Here I see that hope is hardly ever related to the mind, it is meaningless, I think it is raised by instinct.

People, Vitya, live as if they have years ahead of them. I can’t understand whether it is silly or wise, it’s just the way it is. And I obey this law. Two women have come from town now and they tell me the same thing my friend told me. The Germans kill all the Jews in the county, they don’t spare the children or the elderly. Germans and policemen come by cars and take a few dozen men for work in the fields, where they dig ditches, and then after two or three days the Germans drive the Jewish population to these ditches and shoot everyone. Everywhere in the villages around our city appear these Jewish burial mounds. In a house next door lives a girl from Poland. She says that there are always murders, the Jews are all being massacred, and there are only a few ghettos in Warsaw, Lodz, Radom where the Jews still live. And when I thought it over, it became quite clear to me that we are gathered here not to be saved like it was with bison in the Bialowieza Forest, but to be slaughtered.

According to the plan, it will be our turn in a week or two. But, imagine, knowing this, I continue to treat the ill and say,

‘If you regularly wash the eye with the medication, then after two or three weeks you will recover.’

I am treating an old man, whom it will be possible to remove a cataract in half a year or in a year. I give Jura French lessons and get upset about his mispronunciations. At the same time the Germans burst into the ghetto and rob, guards shoot children from behind the barbed wire for fun, and all the new people confirm that our fate can be decided any day. That’s how it happens people continue to live. There’s even been a wedding recently. There are dozens of rumours going around. A neighbour, breathless with joy reports that our troops have started to advance and the Germans are fleeing. Then suddenly a rumour spreads that the Soviet government and Churchill have presented the Germans with an ultimatum, and Hitler has ordered not to kill Jews. Then it is reported that the Jews will be exchanged for German prisoners of war. It appears that there is nowhere so much hope, as in the ghetto.

The world is full of events, and their meaning, the reason behind them all is always the same saving the Jews. What great hopes these are! And there is only one source of these hopes the life instinct, without any logic resisting the terrible inevitability of us all perishing without a trace. And I look around and I can not believe my eyes is it possible that we are all condemned prisoners awaiting execution? Barbers, shoemakers, tailors, doctors, potters everyone continues working. There is even a small maternity hospital now, or rather, something of the kind. Linen is being dried, the washing is being done, lunch is being prepared, the children go to school on September 1st. and their Mothers ask the teachers about the grades. Old Spielberg has given a few books to be published. Alia Sperling does exercise in the mornings and wraps her hair round curlers before going to bed, she also quarrels with her father and demands two pieces of summer cloth. I am also busy from morning till evening I go to the sick, give lessons, darn, wash, prepare for the winter, sew cotton wool to my autumn coat.

I listen to the stories about the punishments which were inflicted on the Jews. One of my friends, a wife of a legal adviser, was beaten unconscious because she had bought a duck egg for her child. A boy, the son of a pharmacist Orphans has been shot on the shoulder when he tried to crawl under the wire and get a ball which had rolled away. And then again, rumours, rumours, rumours. And here is something which is not a rumour. Today, the Germans have driven 80 young men to work, ostensibly to dig potatoes, and some people were happy that they would be able to bring some potatoes to their families. But I knew what kind of potatoes it was about. Night in the ghetto is a special time, Vitya. You know, my friend, I had always told you to tell me the truth, for a Son should always tell his Mother the truth. But a Mother also should tell her Son the truth.

Do not think Vitenka that your Mother is a strong person. I am weak. I’m afraid of pain and I quake when sitting in the dentist’s chair. As a child I was afraid of thunder, afraid of the dark. As an old woman, I used to be afraid of illness, of loneliness, I feared that once I had fallen ill I would not be able to work, that I would become a burden to you, and that you would let me feel it. I was afraid of war. Now at night, Vitya, I am seized by terror, from which my heart freezes. Death is waiting for me. I want to call you for help. As a child you would run to me, seeking protection. And now in a moment of weakness I want to hide my head in your lap, so that you, smart and strong, would shield and defend it. I do not possess the strength of character, Vitemka, as I am weak. I often think about suicide, and I don’t know if it is weakness, strength, or vain hope that stops me. But enough. I fall asleep and have dreams. I often see my late mother and talk to her.

Tonight I saw Sasha Shaposhnikova in a dream, from the time when we both lived in Paris. But I have never seen you in a dream, although I always think about you, even in the moments of extreme agitation. I wake up, and suddenly I see this ceiling and remember that there are the Germans in our land and that I am leprous, and it seems to me that I haven’t woken up, but on the contrary, have fallen asleep and now I am dreaming. But after a few minutes, I hear Alya arguing with Lyuba over whose turn it is to go to the well and I hear people saying that Germans have broken an old man’s head in a nearby street that night. A friend came to me, she was a student in a pedagogical institute, and asked me to go to a sick man. It turned out that she had hidden a lieutenant who had been wounded on the shoulder and who had a scorched eye. He was a nice exhausted young man whose pronunciation betrayed his Volgian origins.

He made his way at night through the wire and found a shelter in the ghetto. His eye was injured only slightly so I was able to stop the abscess. He talked a lot about the battles, about the flight of our troops, which made me very sad. He wanted to have some rest and then go across the front line. A few young men would go with him, one of whom used to be my student. Oh, Vitenka, if only I could go with them! I was so glad helping this man, I thought, that I was involved in the war against fascism. People brought him potatoes, bread, beans, and some elderly lady knitted him woollen socks. Today has been filled with drama. Yesterday Alya got a passport of a young Russian girl, who died in a hospital, through her Russian friend. This night Alya will be gone. And today we have learned from a familiar peasant, who was passing along the fence of the ghetto, that the Jews who were sent to dig potatoes, dug deep trenches four miles from the city, near the airport, on the way to Romanovka.

Remember, Vitenka, this name, because there you will find a mass grave, where your Mother will lie. Even Sperling understood everything, he’s been pale the whole day, his lips trembling, perplexedly asks me

‘Is there any hope that the experts will be left alive?’

Indeed, they say that in some towns the best tailors, shoemakers and doctors were not executed. Yet in the evening Sperling called an old stove maker and he made a hiding place for flour and salt in the wall. And in the same evening I read Lettres de mon Moulin with Jura. Do you remember how we read aloud my favourite story Les vieux and we looked at each other and laughed and we both had tears in our eyes ? Then I gave Yura an assignment for the day after tomorrow. It was necessary. But what a sinking feeling I had when I looked at the sad face of my pupil, at his fingers as he wrote in his notebook the numbers of grammar paragraphs given to him. And how many such children there are with wonderful eyes, dark curly hair, some of them are, probably, future scientists, physicists, professors of medicine, musicians, and maybe poets. I watch as they run to school in the mornings, un-childishly serious, with wide tragic eyes. And sometimes they start messing around, fight, laugh, and this doesn’t make you feel better, but horror struck.

They say, that the children are our future, but what can be said about these children? They won’t become musicians, shoemakers, dressmakers. And tonight I clearly imagined that all this noisy world of bearded anxious daddies, grouchy grandmothers, creators of honey cakes, goose necks, this world of wedding customs, sayings and Saturday’s holidays will disappear forever. And after the war life will bustle again, and we will not. We will disappear as the Aztecs disappeared. The peasant who brought the news of the preparation of graves, said that his wife had spent the whole night crying and wailing

‘They sew, and make shoes, and make leather and repair watches, sell drugs at the pharmacy. What will it be like when all of them are killed?’

And I imagined it very clearly how somebody walking by the ruins will say

‘Do you remember, there once lived the Jews? There was this stove-maker Boruch. His old lady used to sit on the bench and the children would play beside her on Saturday evenings.’

And another will say

‘And over there under that old pear tree used to sit a doctor, I forget her name. She had once treated my eyes, after work she would always bring out a wicker chair and sit with a book.’

That’s how it will be, Vitya. It was as if a terrible gust passed over the faces and everyone felt that our time is near. Vitenka, I want to tell you no, not that, not that. Vitenka I’m finishing my letter now, and I’ll take it to the fence of the ghetto and give it to my friend. This letter is not easy to break off, it is my last conversation with you, and by sending the letter, I will finally leave you, and you will never know about my last hours. This is our very last parting. What can I tell you, saying goodbye before eternal separation? These days, as well as my whole life, you have been my joy. At night, I would remember you, your children’s clothes, your first book, I would remember your first letter, your first day at school. I remembered everything, everything from the first days of your life to the latest news from you which was the telegram received on June 30. I would close my eyes, and it would seem to me that you, my friend, had shielded me from the horror drawing near.

And when I thought of what was happening around me, I was glad that you were not with me let you be spared  this terrible fate. Vitya, I have always been lonely. At sleepless nights I cried with anguish. And no one knew this. My consolation was the thought that I would tell you about my life. I would tell you why your dad and I separated, why I have lived alone all these long years. And I’ve often thought how would Vitya be surprised to learn that his Mother made mistakes, was furious, jealous, made others jealous, that she was the same as all the young. But my destiny is to end my life alone, without sharing everything with you. Sometimes it seemed to me that I should not live apart from you, because I loved you too much. I thought that love gave me the right to be with you when I’d be old. Sometimes it seemed to me that I should not live with you, because I loved you too much.

Well, finally. Be always happy with the ones you love, the ones around you, who have become closer to you than the Mother. Forgive me. From the street I can hear women crying, policemen swearing, and I look at these pages, and it seems to me that I am protected from the terrible world full of suffering. How can I finish my letter? Where to get the strength, Son? Are there human words that can express my love for you? I kiss you, your eyes, your forehead, your hair. Remember that in good times and in bad times Mother’s love is always with you and no one can kill it. Vitenka. Here’s the last line of Mother’s last letter to you. Live, live, live forever.

Mum.

Let this letter break your Hearts as it breaks mine. I reflect upon a Mom whose non too peaceful passage from us was not as this was calculated for Ekaterina Savelyevna Grossman. But Ekaterina’s Motherly passion, who was shot in Romanovka on September 15th. 1941, is the passion of all Mother’s who love their Children My words for Ekaterina, and now that Vasily is passed also, I will seek Always to Remember, Never to Forget.

“.. Not all victims were Jewish in this place but all Jews were victims.” Elie Wiesel.

My permanent motto stands for the Jews of The Holocaust and for very good reason, I ensure Always to Remember, Never to Forget. This clearly, has set me on a path where my focus remains upon 6,000,000 Jews who were so intentionally destroyed. These innocent Jews, Slaughtered solely because they were Jews has taught me well of the graver wrongs that are inherent within hatred. For me, when People stand by and allow hatred to be expressed, watch as it is entertained and stand aside as it is given full vent to its pernicious and dreadful end our duplicity as such makes us complicit in what that hatred then expresses itself as.

“..By clumping Jews together with Soviet citizens ..commemoration turned into empathy for ..Soviets at large rather than specifically for ..innocent Jews who were ..targets of ..majority of ..deliberate mass civilian killing.” Felicia Carmelly.

In this fact, and no matter how precise the exacting detail we will have, history cannot be seen shading areas of the truth so as to evade our appreciation of the fact that we condoned the expression as it converted into an outright annihilation process for 6,000,000 Jews. And while the fuller truth will always evade us, in relation to the totality of the loss, we continue our search in order to discover as many of those lost as we can find. Regardless of the evidences, despite the detailed testimony’s and given the monumental effort from eye witness accounts, we look deeper and search further than we have ever done in this science of History.

“..I follow on from what Elie Wiesel assures us and stress that while not all Nationals within Nations are guilty of the crimes of The Holocaust ..not all nationals within those nations are innocent of ..very crimes we uncover and bear witness to.” Patrick Dempsey.

Researching a broader spectrum of that vista, and in order to infill any or all of those gaps. we have an urgency in those immediate, first hand recollections we seek. Of course, we come to the moments of today when we realise there are so many fewer memories that we can salvage from this obliterated past. That said, such is the overwhelming evidence of The Holocaust, it is being sanctioned as the most uniquely unparalleled and unprecedented Genocide in All of History. But for us to be concerned with all that transpired in such a negative and consistent route toward an inexorable brutality and crucially devastating destruction, our search is increasingly more important to today.

“..Gypsies had been murdered in a proportion similar to ..Jews ..about 80% of them in ..area of ..countries which were occupied by ..Nazis.” Simon Wiesenthal.

With the continuous blurring of these truths over time, the very veracity of what we have learned still cannot confiscate what it is that we now set before the bar of history. This then, the distorting attempt, moving on from what could never be advanced as denial, was my early lesson at having to counter the untruth’s facing The Holocaust lesson. The negative aspects of the frustrating effort for all of History, which persuaded me to focus my intention where it belonged on The Holocaust and with 6,000,000 Jews whose extinguished voice called out for a chance to speak.

“..Government and with it ..great majority of ..German people ..are very conscious of ..appalling suffering brought to ..Jews in Germany and ..occupied territories. ..German people in their overwhelming majority ..disgusted by ..crimes perpetrated against ..Jews. ..in ..name of ..German people appalling crimes were committed ..that demand from us moral and material reparation ..not only as far as damages to ..individual ..but ..with regard to Jewish property.”  Konrad Adenauer.

I had been writing for a long while, attempting to find the vehicle for the words which seemed to be parked up, waiting for that sudden flourish of any expression that I could deliver. I found that expression in both a grief and its loss which I could extract from my own experiences in a small way and transfer this to paper in a more focused way. I read copious amounts of works, concentrated upon the very Survivor who could deliver their message for us and was deeply touched by the words of Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz. Lucy’s words, which leapt out at me all the way back at the very beginning of this odyssey, was a watershed moment.

“..history ..as a way of knowing ..past ..has survived ..partianship ..ideological distortions ..attempts to extinguish its light and even to murder its practitioners ..and it will continue to do so. Its most terrible chapter ..murder of ..European Jews ..will surely remain recorded.” Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

In the pages of her Book: The War Against the Jews 1933 – 45, which she penned in 1975, this work struck a deep emotional chord. That I added to the personal grief and sense of loss I had been feeling personally, and for so long, galvanised all of a sudden into words I could identify with and recognise as empathetic and sympathetic to a Jewish struggle in demise. For me too, fixed as I was that in History, only the factual truth can hold the integrity of its Science together, here was one of The Holocaust’s most eloquent Writer’s assuring me that nothing that is History can be distorted by what is not history.

“..anyone ..attempting to write ..on ..nature of Nazism ..will not be able to express ..truth ..Nazism’s cruelty and barbarism. ..no writer among ..gentiles is qualified for this task. ..a Jewish writer who lives ..life of his people ..who feels ..suffers their agony ..cannot find a true path here. Only one who feels ..taste of Nazi rule ..only one who ..bared his back to ..lashes ..only ..a writer ..if he is a man of sensitivity ..might be able to.” Chaim Aron Kaplan.

For more than 20 years, even prior to Hitler’s intervention into Poland, the focus of all of Hitler’s vitriol and hatred was levelled at the Jews. Hitler’s expressions of hatred were aimed at the Jewish People and that contempt for human life was concentrated upon the Jews of the Jewish Faith. Then in 1939, with a further 3,650,000 Polish Jews on his doorstep, the clearer emphasis of that hatred moved along with a more widely expressed territorial demand. This would then become Hitler’s Weltanschauung and it was a view which would take his legions out of earshot and close proximity of a witnessing civilisation.

“..I pray ..Jew ..non-Jew alike may unite in ..resolve that evil forces will never again be permitted to set one people against another.”  Alicia Appleman-Jurman.

The steps into an act of clear brutality and savagery, which was then completely unbounded by the norms of those borders that were both negated of human decency and the moral efficacy of ethical behaviour, they were meant to provide a better prospect of more secrecy. However, with the advancement of the Invasion of Poland on September 1st. 1939, this now delivered many more millions of prospective witnesses. With these Polish Jews then added to the crucible of a solution that was as yet to be fully resolved, though it was more clearly recognised, what is secured for all posterity is a reason to recollect what would be readily witnessed.

“..By ..time we reach ..75th anniversary ..liberation of Auschwitz ..there may be almost no survivors left. But they are coming now ..because they want to bear witness ..to stand there and say ..we outlasted Hitler. We made it.” Ronald Lauder.

It is clear too, that when Hitler opened up his Weltanschauung to the possibility of resolving the fuller issue of obliterating more than 12,293,300 Jewish European lives, Hitler had moved all levels of his Reich toward achieving his ultimate aim. The Final Solution of The Jewish Question was ultimately running concurrently with that view of a World to be invested with the virus of hatred Hitler espoused, more Jews were brought closer to their own demise than a knowing World could countenance. When, on June 22nd. 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, this would bring Hitler closer to the completion of this ultimate goal.

“..Operational Situation Report USSR No. 10 ..Einsatzgruppe B  ..Renamed on July 11th. Einsatzgruppe C. ..17th Army Command has suggested ..use first of all of ..anti-Jewish ..anti-Communist Poles living in ..newly ..occupied areas for self ..cleansing activities. On July 1st. 1941 Chief of Security Police and SD issued ..following order to all Einsatzgruppe ..Order No. 2 ..Poles residing in ..newly ..occupied Polish territories may be expected ..to be anti-Communist and ..anti-Jewish. ..cleansing activities have to extend first of all to ..Bolsheviks and ..Jews. As for ..Polish intelligentsia and others ..decisions can be taken later. ..It is therefore obvious that such Poles need not be included in ..cleansing action ..especially as they are of great importance as elements to initiate pogroms and for obtaining information. ..This depends ..of course ..on local conditions.”

Then emerging from die Endlosung der Judenfrage eventually what became recognisable as The Holocaust had consumed its Jewish prey on such an industrial scale, the mechanics were such, they were invented purposefully to achieve Hitler’s aim. It becomes clear from the many edicts issued too, be they word of mouth proclamations or physical evidences of how Hitler’s whims were transferrable into real time, the Jewish destruction moved in pace with the more extreme efforts of Hitler’s protestations. When we read such as this OSR No. 10, that Poles were not considered in the same vein as the Jews, the exclusive nature of the Jewish presence in geared toward total destruction.

“..German authorities ..now carrying into effect Hitler’s ..intention to exterminate ..Jewish people in Europe.” American State Department.

The Jewish People, then exclusively targeted for complete annihilation, in both the first and final phase of Hitler’s plan for them, had no alternative to what had been envisioned for them as Jews targeted by Hitler’s extreme view. Of course, and while exclusivity exists in the realm of The Holocaust, by which all Jews were Victims, it is clear that not all victims of the War Hitler waged were Jewish. However, The Holocaust was an exclusive effort, and detailing as such for solely detailing Jews for their confinement within its grasp. These intended victims of the systematic and sought out effort were always intended to be the Jews of Europe.

“..no conceivable chronicle of any kind could succeed in turning 6,000,000 dead people into a political argument.” Hannah Arendt.

With that in mind, we have need to remind history that Jews have Never hidden the fact that Hitler made victims of other than the Jewish People. It is abundantly clear too, and I make reference to just a few of the foremost writers on The Holocaust, and many of whom are Jewish Survivors, to appraise you of this effort on their part. There is a picture which emerges still though, and it is with the Jewish People as the concerted effort for Hitler’s abject  hatred for the Jews. With their systematic Slaughter, which was Hitler’s focus since he first sought to articulate his enmity for the Jewish People, words could not conceal the deeply held conviction of this hatred.

“..I saw a flood once in ..mountains. Wooden huts ..torn from their foundations were carried above ..raging waters. One could still see lighted lamps in them ..Men ..Women ..Children in their cradles were tied to ..ceiling beams. Other huts were empty inside ..but one could see a tangle of arms waving from ..roof ..like branches blowing in ..wind waving desperately toward heaven ..toward ..river banks for help. At a distance ..one could see mouths gaping ..but one could not hear ..cries because ..roar of ..waters drowned out everything. And that’s how ..Jewish masses flowed to their destruction at ..time of ..deportations. Sinking as helplessly into ..deluge of destruction. And if ..for even one of ..days of my life ..I should forget how I saw you then ..my People ..desperate and confused ..delivered over to extinction ..may all knowledge of me be forgotten and my name be cursed like that of those traitors who are unworthy to share your pain.” Rachel Auerbach.

It is apparent that only the Jewish People are then to be seen as the focus of all and every effort of Hitler’s Reich future aims. No matter what it is we fail to say, no matter how we fail to say it, we cannot allow for the dilution of a genocidal term which was to treat 6,000,000 Jews with such disdain. It would appear that far more respect could be visited upon the Jewish destruction than was to be done well after we recognised their waning life was taken away. From amongst us, as we became increasingly more aware of what was being visited upon the Jewish People, our own absence from the realm of concern was growing more indifferent.

“..The Holocaust ..Shoah in Hebrew is ..most tragic era in ..history of ..Jewish People 1933 – 1945 when ..Germans and their collaborators perpetrated genocide against them.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.

The Holocaust term itself belongs to the Jewish People in both the words acted upon and the deeds then enacted. The Holocaust is a term framed around a hatred so embedded in much of European society, it was all too easy for Hitler to inflame those who bought into it. Within every sphere of Hitler’s world view, Hitler became an influence in what was directed against the Jews. That all too many nations and all too many of their nationals were so coerced that they became duplicitous  in what Hitler demanded for the Jewish People. Far too many people, who were willing to adopt the very tenets of hatred from Hitler did so with impunity.

May 23rd. 1942 “..imprisoned were some Gypsies ..Auerswald terms Gypsy Jews.” Emmanuel Ringelblum.

That they then moved an entire Continent into dealing with and placating The Final Solution of The Jewish Question is tantamount to the surrender to debased inhumanity as has ever been witnessed. Then, as we delve into the depths of a Catastrophe, which exploited a 2,000 year hatred, there lay exposed an indifference amongst non-Jews which combined to deliver these 6,000,000 Jews toward an extinction we were loathe to intervene in. We know from the History of the time that much that was being concealed achieved what it was intended to gain, a passivity of approach that would envelop a World in the most heinous act of abandonment ever enacted. 

“..Through a maze of time ..hitler’s decision of November 1918 led to Operation Barbarossa. There never had been any ideological deviation or wavering determination. In ..end only ..question of opportunity mattered.” Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz.

At a time too when the Jews were unsure of the systematic nature of what was to assail them, there were people like Emmanuel Ringelblum who was certain of that fact. It is true also that other people’s were treated equally badly, and though the fate of the Jews eclipsed this, every burden and hatred would appear to prefix this treatment of so many with the example set aside exclusively for the Jews of Europe. The treatment of the Gypsy has been no less heinous, though the systematic nature of their destruction was predicated upon the Jews serving the first and foremost position of intended victims of Hitler’s.

“..a decision was made ..to exterminate ..Jews to ..last man. ..entire Jewish people were condemned to death. No such decision was made to kill any other group in this way ..although ..Gypsies come closest of all to ..Jewish tragedy.” Elie Wiesel.

It is essentially true that while the many vestiges of a Lalleri, Medvashi, Roma or Sinti presence was to be witnessed attempting to survive even in the Death Camps, their position was subordinate always to the call for Jewish extinction. No one attempts to minimise the deaths of other’s nor diminish the terrifying ordeal of anyone faced by Hitler’s threat to them. But what had assailed the Jewish People, even given the incremental stages engaged with to bring the solution to it’s final resolve, cannot be compared with. The total annihilation of these 6,000,000 Jews was administered to and accomplished in accordance with the dictates of the will of Hitler who urged them upon his Reich.

“..War ..annihilation of ..Jews were interdependent. ..disorder of war would provide ..hitler with ..cover for ..unchecked commission of murder. He needed an arena for his operations where ..restraints of common codes of morality and accepted rules of warfare would not extend.” Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz.

For 100’s of years the christian World sought to have Jews conform and convert to the views held against them. This conversion, in terms of how Hitler would administer to them, proved insufficient to save any Jew from an extinguished life. As perhaps we might recognise in the case of Edith Stein, a Jew first and foremost, and despite her conversion to the same version of a belief system even held by Hitler, Edith was sacrificed upon the altar of antisemitic hatred even popes nor christianity sought to assuage. Once conversion had proved insufficient to diminish the Jewish presence in over 5,000 years of adherence to a Judaic belief system, an alternative force was brought to bear.

“..From now on ..do not answer by your name. ..felt like ..not ..human person anymore. ..shaved our heads ..I felt so ashamed. And also when they told us to undress and to shower ..they made us feel like ..animals. ..men were walking around ..laughing and looking at us. And you take a young girl at that age ..who had never been exposed to a person ..to a man ..and you stay there naked ..I wanted ..ground to open ..and I should go into it. We were packed like sardines. ..beds were bunks ..3 layers. I was on ..top layer. If one person wanted to turn ..we all had to turn. They gave me ..little rations of hard ..dried up bread which was half mildew ..I could hardly eat it. ..a tin can of soup ..so rotten and vile ..when I tasted it I couldn’t eat it. .. I just ate ..bread and drank a little water ..which was just rust running out from ..sink that they had over there. ..finally ..got so hungry ..knew I had to eat ..soup ..so vile. ..so terrible. I never ate anything like that in my whole life. ..If I want to survive I have to eat ..soup. ..So I started eating ..soup. And I ..forcing ..soup down my throat ..big tears coming down my face. Eating ..crying ..eating ..crying ..this is how I was in Birkenau. Every day ..I woke up and I would find 1 ..2 people who wanted to end their lives and couldn’t take it anymore. ..throw themselves to ..electric wires ..make an end of it. ..every once in a blue moon ..couldn’t take it anymore. ..try to sneak out of ..barracks late at night and I would see ..sky. ..talk to myself ..can’t believe ..stars ..looking down at us in this Hell ..this camp ..same stars ..shining at ..outside of ..world. ..other people ..looking at ..same stars ..they are free. ..to do what they want to do. ..living a good life. ..we are ..in Hell ..human beings worse than animals. ..nobody is doing anything about it.  ..young as I was ..asking myself these questions. ..Where is ..world ..Why isn’t ..world doing anything about this ..I would question god ..Where is god ..How can He let us be killed like that ..after I cried myself out real good ..I would go back to ..barracks.” Lily Appelbaum.

The Ghetto, in effect, became the very tool of many states and nations in seeking to remove both the body of the Jew from view and indeed the view of Jewish influence. The Jewish People, expelled from amidst the civilisation of all of society became the catalyst by which Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann made certain of the corralling of the Jews within Europe. Such stricture was so very often for the Jewish People an indefensible crime against all sense of morality, and even though many of the Jews had sought to enjoin and even attempted to adhere to the constrictions of communities they were amongst, this did not preclude them from being the victims of 2,000 years pogroms.

“..I lived through ..war ..Warsaw Ghetto ..Majdanek ..Auschwitz ..Ravensbrueck ..Neustadt-Glewe. ..Hope is last to die consists of recollections ..my first extensive work.” Halina Birenbaum.

Also, and with the Jewish position of being outsiders in a moral vacuum, a space that is always an uncharitable and unethical approach to humanity, still left the Jews holding to their faith. Judaism was so steadfast and still remained as an adherence to the very morality that the Jewish People themselves were being denied during Hitler’s rampage through History. In all of their existence, the Jewish People have been the targets of what has diminished nations for such hatred they were espousing. The right to persist, at least as a human being, has all too often been denied to the Jewish People by concurrent civilisations wishing to confront, contain and detain them. For me personally, it is difficult to conform to any belief system which would sponsor such an inhumane outrage.

“..In ..Autumn of 1939 planning began for transfer of ..Austrian Jews to ..Lublin District ..Poland. ..organised by Eichmann.” Abraham Margaliot.

Here though, I do not wish to create any impression that my study of The Holocaust brought me to any conclusion relating to my disbelief. However, my own refusal to see any belief system as valid has been enlarged by the calculated destruction of 6,000,000 Jews as a World’s conscience was severely controlled. Through discussions with Survivor’s, who held strongly to their faith, it remains difficult for me to comprehend the absence of a system which recognises any god at its head. The advocates of such systems always point to the god given right of choice for those who chose to Slaughter these 6,000,000 Jews.

“..For a variety of reasons ..women’s situation was a good deal worse than that of ..men ..physical endurance ..coupled with work more arduous and degrading ..agonies of disrupted families ..and ..haunting presence of ..crematoria ..located right in ..middle of ..women’s camp ..inescapable ..undeniable ..ungodly smoke rising ..to contaminate every day ..every night ..every moment of respite or illusion ..every dream and timorous hope.”  Primo Levi.

But what choice was there, or was even given to any of these 6,000,000 Jews that was other than a choice to conform to a fate that was clearly designed for them. The long held institutional belief that conversion or removal must then make way for extermination is an absence of what a godhead must mean. I as ardently reject the Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews as much as I dismiss those who profess a faith that is capable of the most devastating pogrom in all of History. I have been brought to the altar of a History so cruel and barbaric that I see no emergence of a god nor a place for any religion which can look the other way.  I am done with all the pretence that a World in conflict could not direct an effort toward saving 6,000,000 Jews nor a religious institution so transfixed by Hitlerian obsession, they abandoned their own codex of moral compassion and ethical righteousness.

“..Despite ..recent outpouring of popular and scholarly books on Hitler ..no work has yet been produced that satisfactorily explains Hitler’s obsessive ideas about ..Jews ..readiness of ..German people to accept these ideas ..and Hitler’s ability to harness an enormous apparatus of men ..institutions ..facilities just in order to murder ..Jews. Hitler has proved to be an elusive and unrewarding subject for conventional biography because ..explanations for ..baffling mystique he exercised ..for ..power he came to wield ..and for his unspeakable accomplishments are not to be found in ..facts of a banal life ..but in ..ideas and feelings that created ..symbiosis between him and ..German people. Their mutuality and interdependence thrived ..as Hitler first expressed and later gratified ..Germans’ most arrogant and abominable ambitions. He relieved their deepest fears and anxieties and ..near ..end ..disburdened them both of guilt and responsibility for ..wickedness they had given him warrant to commit.” Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz.

“..newly conquered territories ..East must be organised ..made secure and ..in full co-operation with ..Armed Forces ..exploited economically.” Adolf Hitler.

The World looked on as 6,000,000 Jews were so liberally assailed and assaulted, they were ritually Slaughtered. Always Remember, a Jew was never a POW in Hitler’s Worldview, they were Jews pure and simple and a solution to what would be final for them. In that and we recognise, each branch of Hitler’s War machine was indelibly involved in both Hitler’s Final Solution and his Weltanschauung. That said! In unison with the entire atrocity the cross over of identifying those Jews, taken as prisoner’s of War has been muddied. The Jewish Slaughter, as purportedly outside that world view, should not be combined within the category assigned to the fallen in War, which the Jewish slaughtered were Not.

“..Einsatztruppen ..called upon to fulfil a repulsive duty. But you are soldiers who have to carry out every order unconditionally. You have a responsibility before God and Hitler for everything that is happening. I myself hate this bloody business and I have been moved to ..depths of my soul. But I am obeying ..highest law by doing my duty. Man must defend himself against bedbugs ..rats ..against vermin.” Heinrich Himmler.

From my perspective in all of this History, the World will all too readily accept that these Jews walked willingly toward their fate without protestation or even resistance. To be clear. NO Jew should adopt this idea of any lack of protest or even resisting what is remotely unrealistic. From the North of the Baltic States to the ramparts of Crimea, the Jewish People remained unaware of The Final Solution until it was being resolved in front of them. This is not to say that leaks, which warned many of the Jews of their forthcoming fate did not emerge. But it was more obvious, and possibly from the vantage point of the perspective what is to be gained from retrospection, who could ever believe that a cultured and civilised German nation could ever be this callous and destructive about human life.

“..I must assume ..after all I have read about ..Fuhrer ..that he knew all about it.” (‘it’ being The Holocaust) Major General Johannes Bruhn. (553rd. Volksgrenadier  Division.)

Of course, scepticism is a brilliant defence against the obvious wages of brutal atrocity that was raged by all too many in the ranks of the Military. For the same ignorance from those who knew and could easily define the human moral and ethical principles within societies, too many chose to ignore their moral duty. Wherever those morally ethical societies were housed within Europe in those days of descent, the Jewish People were not only ejected from those principle considerations, but they were also excluded from all existence. What we have to realise early on is that the Nazi’s learned collaboratively in the 1939 incursion into Poland was that the suppression of all and any State was to be achievable. Along with the realisation that a subservient Polish work force would be made available, Hitler could then pursue The Final Solution of The Jewish Question. For those Jews within Poland, this secured for Poland a dubious role that would not see any defence for Polish Jewry from the last vestiges of Polish humanity.

“..There were 100’s of Jews walking along ..street with blood pouring down their faces ..holes in their heads ..hands broken ..eyes hanging out of their sockets. ..covered in blood. Some ..carrying others who had collapsed. We went to ..citadel ..saw things that few people have ever seen. At ..entrance ..were soldiers standing guard. .. holding clubs ..thick as a man’s wrist ..lashing out and hitting anyone who crossed their path. ..Jews were pouring out of ..entrance. ..rows of Jews lying one on top of ..other ..whimpering horribly. ..Jews kept streaming out ..completely covered in blood. ..just being hit out of rage and hatred.” SS Hauptscharfuhrer Felix Landau. (Lvov and Drohobycz, Poland)

A World View, this ‘Weltanschauung’, which would deliver in excess of 11,293,300 Jews to meet Hitler’s deadly demand, initially contained 3,650,000 Polish Jews immediately at risk in 1939. Within Poland too came the experience of the logistics to ensure and extend the killing spree into the rest of Europe was secured. Also, and what the Waffen SS then learned in the field, even back in the learning stages of 1939, and as they assisted and brought to the ranks of a formative der Einsatzgruppe in Poland, all the outpouring of atrocity was adapted to wherever they were meeting and taking and killing Jews. Further down the line of atrocity, and for all the amassed Slaughter that was yet to come, practices were being honed and skills gained to deliver ever more and increasing levels of brutal violence against the Jewish Community’s they encountered. Then, what both auxiliary and military forces took back into the field, so as to continue their assault, was mounted against other Civilians and then other POW’s.

“..By resettling ..Jews out of ..European economic area to a yet to be determined territory. In ..framework of this ..5,800,000 Jews will be affected.” Adolf Eichmann.

All of this was a steep learning process in which the cross fertilisation of murderous endeavour maximised the killing process. While that progress moved stoically from gun to gas, from van to killing centre, it was an almost seamlessly executed machinery of destruction which der Einsatzgruppe expanded upon and gave vent to. At places such as at Le Paradis, at Oradour-sur-Glane, at Ascq  and at Malmedy when the ranks of these fighting Waffen SS, Wehrmacht and Police Battalions were filled with those killers who had already enabled and had performed their worst excesses against the Jews in Poland and in Russia, experience was brought to bear against other targets. Here at Babi Yar, at Liepaja, at Ponary or in the Tuchinska Forest, such murderous endeavour was now a transferred experience to deal with a Military opposition which stood before them. Here the question arises as to whether these Allied Soldiers were merely going like Wolves to the Slaughter.

“..In respect of ..Jewish question ..make a clean sweep. ..world war is here ..annihilation of ..Jews must be ..necessary result. This question is to be regarded without sentimentalism. We are not here to have sympathy with ..Jews ..but ..with our German people. If ..German people have sacrificed 160,000 dead in ..eastern campaign ..authors of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their lives.” Adolf Hitler.

Perhaps, as history would suggestively promote for the 6,000,000 Jews of The Holocaust, these likewise innocents were merely Murdered in absolute shock that conventions such as human morality could be abandoned. Even accepted conventions, as spawned and outlined by Geneva, were these to be so brutally ignored? Along with this contamination of the fighting member of Hitler’s armies was an infection from ideology founded upon the principle first and foremost that the Jewish People must be eradicated so as to become extinct. That was indeed how the early battalions of the Waffen SS behaved in Poland as they then transferred their Murderous undertakings through France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia and then into Russia. Once embedded in the expanse that was Russia, where they excelled in the killing process engineered by der Einsatzgruppe, the murder rate extended to 1,000,000’s.

“..I am no longer in ..area of Stalingrad but further north in ..middle of ..front. ..sight of ..dead ..including women and children ..is not very cheering. ..we are fighting for ..survival or non-survival of our people. ..As ..war is in our opinion a Jewish war ..Jews are ..first to feel it. Here in Russia ..wherever ..German soldier is ..no Jew remains. You can imagine that at first I needed some time to get to grips with this. ..We happen to be in possession of old clothes ..which are very much sought after. We can get everything here. ..clothes belonged to people who are no longer alive today. ..We have got to be tough here or else we will lose ..war. There is no room for pity of any kind. ..There are no Jews here anymore. ..I have already told you about ..shooting ..that I could not say ‘no’ here either. ..We have to eat and drink well because of ..nature of our work ..as I have described to you in detail. Otherwise we would crack up. ..If it weren’t for ..stupid thoughts about what we are doing in this country ..Einsatz here would be wonderful ..since it has put me in a position where I can support you all very well. Since ..as I already wrote to you ..I consider ..last Einsatz to be justified and indeed approve of ..consequences it had ..phrase ‘stupid thoughts’ is not strictly accurate. Rather it is a weakness not to be able to stand ..sight of dead people ..best way of overcoming it is to do it more often. Then it becomes a habit.” SS Obersturmfuhrer Karl Kretschmer.

For those many Million’s of Russian POW’s left to fend for themselves and even die, even repatriation at War’s end could not save them. Many 10’s of 1,000’s of Russia’s finest were Murdered by Stalin as he perceived them as collaborator’s for being captured. The simple fact that they were tactically beaten by an enormous mechanised War Machine Hitler placed on the field before them did not appease the ire of Stalin. Amongst these Russian POW’s taken by der Einsatzgruppe or Wehrmacht and their cohorts, we cannot assess the Jewish extent or the strength of their presence. So while this exact same War machine was in evidence, and as 1,000,000’s of Jews were summarily executed along the very same lines of Wehrmacht communication, fuller assistance was afforded the der Einsatzgruppe effort. While it is agreed that the ranks of these 3,000 or so Einsatzgruppe could Not have achieved such a Slaughter as 1,250,000 Jews, we recognise that others were complicit in the overall stench of the atrocity.

“..During ..war a person could at least try to have himself transferred from an Einsatzgruppe. I myself managed to do this successfully. ..I was not demoted as a result of my transfer and not disadvantaged ..apart from remaining on very bad terms with Heydrich until his death. There were without doubt cases where people who were transferred from an Einsatzgruppe suffered disadvantage. I can no longer recall individual cases. None ..less ..as far as I know ..nobody was shot as a result.”  SS Brigadefuhrer Professor Dr. Franz Six.

Here, the accompanying Wehrmacht assisted both logistically, tacitly and deliberately, by somewhere in the region of 90,000 personnel. These Men, and even Women in a smaller detail, were drawn from the very ranks of the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS and Police Battalions driving Hitler’s Lebensraum view into the heart of a Jewish presence. Of course there were other collaborative efforts, those from locals and even nations so infested with the same hatred’s Hitler had long espoused, Jewish existence was compressed in the midst of their former lives. So here we arrive at some of the examples which amplify this essential in atrocity which meets Hitler’s demands for the annihilation of the Jews with the murders of other’s who so much as looked sideways at Hitler’s legions.

On May 27th. 1940 at the Village of Le Paradis, Lestrem, Northern France 99 members of the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment were murdered. These Allied prisoner’s of War were taken by SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Fritz Knochlein’s 14th Company, 3rd Waffen SS Panzer Division ‘Totenkopf’. SS Gruppenfuhrer Theodor Eicke was its commander. Of these 97 Prisoners of War were Murdered in a Mass execution, while 2 others were severely wounded.

During October 1941, at a mass Slaughter of the Jews of the Town of Liepaja, Latvia, where once more than 7,100 Jews lived, a der Einsatzgruppe aktionen was witnessed by members of the Kriegsmarine. These members of Hitler’s Naval elite, now add their complicity to the conduct of those of the Reich involved in this and every other atrocity raged against the Jews of The Final Solution. Near the Naval Base, and on the sand dunes of Shkeden, we have the visual evidence of how and where many 100’s of these Jews were Shot. During the annihilation process here, which would continue relentlessly throughout the coming year and well into 1942, Jewish existence was being brought to a final closure in Latvia.

On September 8th. 1943, there was to be a pronounced correlation between Hitler’s War effort and his demands for The Final Solution here at the Lake Maggiore resort in Italy. We recognise now that  where 56 Greek and Italian Jews were Murdered  by elements of  the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’, under command of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper, the Jewish People would remain front and centre in the conduct of all too many atrocities. The Division itself was under command of SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich, a long time friend of Hitler himself.

On September 11th. 1943 at Tican, Italy the massacre of 84 civilians was conducted and executed by units of the 71st Wehrmacht Reserve Infantry Division under command of Lieutenant General Wilhelm Raapke.

On September 19th. 1943, the Boves massacre at Piedmont, Italy resulted in 21 civilians being executed and more than 350 Homes set alight by units of 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division ‘Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler’ commanded by SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich. 

On October 7th. 1943 at Bellona, Campania, Italy, 54 Men and Boys of the Town were massacred by units of the 15th Wehrmacht Panzergrenadier Division. Lieutenant General Eberhard Rodt was the commanding officer.

On November 21st. 1943, at Pietransieri, Abruzzo, Italy 125 Italian Men, Women and Children were Murdered by units of the 1st Luftwaffe Parachute Division under command of Major General Richard Heidrich.

On April 1st. 1944 in Ascq, France, 86 Men were taken from the Town and shot alongside the rail lines by units led by SS Obersturmfuhrer Walter Hauck of the 12th Waffen SS Panzer Division ‘Hitlerjugend’ under command of SS Brigadefuhrer Fritz Witt.

By now the War was effectively over for Hitler and all that was left to achieve of his Weltanschauung, as it receded into the background, was the final stages of his Final Solution against the Jews. With the D-Day landing on June 6th. 1944, and with Allied troops already forging a way forward through Italy and with the Russians rushing headlong toward the German borders in the East, all but Hitler accepted such a finality was approaching. To then add to Hitler’s contempt for the German people, while urging and pushing ahead on all fronts, Hitler was delivering even more losses. However, the last bastion of European Jewry in Hungary sees Hitler looking to have 750,000 Hungarian Jews added to the decimation of even more of European Jewry. This escalated approach, to deliver Hungarian Jewry to the gates of Birkenau would see an effort above and beyond what was necessary for any form of even a perfunctory defence of Germany.

“..About 3 weeks ago ..I saw a town within 4 hours bicycle ride ..Camille Gerbeau farm where some 500 Men ..Women ..Children had been murdered by ..Germans. I saw 1 Baby ..had been crucified.” Raymond J. Murphy.

On June 10th. 1944 at Oradour sur Glane, France, some 642 French civilians were Murdered by units of SS Adolf Diekmann’s ranks assembled from SS Gruppenfuhrer Heinz Lammerding’s Waffen SS ‘Das Reich’ Division.

On December 17th. 1944 at Malmedy, Belgium, 84 US POW’s of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, were Mass murdered by the ranks of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper’s unit. Peiper, Subordinate to SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich’s 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ was, as we are aware,  steeped in Human Rights violations and crimes against Jews and other’s. The captives here were machine gunned and the wounded were summarily shot in the head.

“..from June 1941 to January 1942 ..I was ..Commander of Sonderkommando 4 A. ..June 1942 ..entrusted by Gruppenfuhrer Mueller with ..task ..obliterating ..traces ..executions carried out by ..Einsatzgruppe ..East. ..orders ..report in person to ..commanders of ..Security Police ..SD ..pass on Mueller’s orders verbally ..supervise ..implementation. ..order ..top secret ..there was to be no correspondence in connection with ..task. ..September 1942 ..reported to Dr. Thomas ..Kiev ..passed ..order ..to him. ..May ..June 1943 ..made additional trips to Kiev ..after conversations with Dr. Thomas and ..SS Police Leader Hennecke ..order was carried out. During ..visit ..August ..observed ..burning of bodies in ..mass grave near Kiev. ..grave was about 55 meters long ..3 meters wide and 2.5 meters deep. ..top ..removed ..bodies ..covered with inflammable material ..ignited. ..about two days until ..grave burned ..to ..bottom. ..grave was filled in ..traces ..practically obliterated. Owing to ..moving up of ..front ..not possible to destroy ..mass graves further south and east which had resulted from executions by ..Einsatzgruppe. ..my orders ..should have extended ..duties over ..entire area occupied by ..Einsatzgruppe ..owing to ..retreat from Russia ..could not carry out my orders completely.”  SS Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel.

This then brings us to the ranks of the POW’s and what expressly we are supposed to ascertain of the many hundred’s of thousands of Russian POW’s who were taken captive. For these drilled and efficient soldiers, so uncertainly trained that they were vastly out manoeuvred and methodically encircled and defeated in their millions by Hitler’s Blitz, do we suggest they were culpable in their own defeat. On those early days of Hitler venturing into Russia, encirclements were swift and brutally efficient for the mechanised nature of the Wehrmacht. But do we see these Russian conscripts merely as Bears to the Slaughter or as part of a decisive effort by those who respected both the rules of Law and War.

“..I understood Russian and listened carefully to what ..Russian POWs were saying as they were being selected for death. One man ..about 45 years old ..considered too old for a labor camp and so ..Germans decided to shoot him. He stood tall and looked straight into ..eyes of ..German soldiers ..I have 3 sons in ..Red Army. They are on their way. Remember ..you will pay for this. ..then ..Germans shot him.” Sam Halpern.

How could ordinary soldiers perceive other than a treatment for them that would be at least honourable. In this assessment then, I clearly remonstrate with any of those who would so otherwise suggest that 6,000,000 Jews were no more than the victims of their own honest belief in human decency. The Jewish incredulity paid a heavy dividend for them as closer and closer Hitler’s legions brought 6,000,000 Jews toward an abyss and then cast them aside. And this is the crucial context in which the World would not see either US or British troops as Wolves to the Slaughter. Nor would the World wish to credit far too many millions of Russian POW’s going as being Bear’s to that exact same Slaughter. So why would it appear in the least bit appropriate for a history that would wish us believe that 6,000,000 Jews went like Lambs and Sheep to the Slaughter.

“..soldiers had all been trained to fight ..to use firearms ..to survive under ..harshest conditions. If they could not resist imprisonment ..how were we Jews ..a civilian population ..with little or no firearm experience and no weapons ..a tribe of Merchants ..Artisans ..Scholars ..Women ..Children ..all weak from starvation and exhaustion ..able to rebel against a well equipped army. If you are under ..gun ..there is little you can do.” Sam Halpern.

Of course, this is not to say that there could have been Jews ready to act, without the constraints of immediate Family they would further endanger. But Jews everywhere ordered themselves in minor details and acted against the Nazi’s, not least in the midst of the greatest carnage visited upon them within Warsaw, Poland. While the World was occupied, and Poland was avoiding the fate of Polish Jewry, an abandoned Jewish Force made themselves Count against a Waffen SS Army. While the local Polish population was avoiding efforts to both assist and rise against the common enemy, the Jewish presence was severely felt by a sol called elite. Of course, and this is not to say that individual Poles did not reach out to assist, help and even save their Jewish Neighbours. But, and it is consistently obvious that for the Polish state, the Jews of Poland were Never to be the consideration of any Polish state.

“..There are 2 Billion People in ..World ..and I constitute a community many 1,000,000 times greater ..therefore I have ..right ..I have ..duty to look after my own trillions toward which I have certain responsibilities.” Janusz Korczak.

I arrived at the semblance of a man fabled amongst Men, Janusz Korczak, who had but his charges, the Jewish Children of his orphanage to look out for. On August 6th. 1942, along with 15,000 other Warsaw Jews to be murdered in Treblinka, we reflect upon a stalwart of great humanity and this is Janusz Korczak. Amongst these of Warsaw’s Jews, and amongst these were those of the ‘Orphanage’ directed by Janusz (Hersch Goldszmit) Korczak, are lost Children not abandoned right to the very bitter end. Together with his assistant Stefania ‘Stefa’ Wilczynska at the head of a column of orphans, Korczak and Stefa walked these Jewish Children toward a more tragic but somewhat consoling end in Treblinka. Even right up to the doors of the Gassing Chambers at Treblinka, these Jewish Children were given a supreme support.

“..My dear ..we are well. I work a little at ..orphanage while Korczak is doing a great deal. I have not arrived because I do not want to leave without Children. Yours ..Stefa.” Stefania Wilczynska.

That support, by those who truly loved them, who gave them the very hope a World refused to deliver for them is worth more than words can invoke. Clearly, Korczak’s bravery is deeply entrenched into the psyche of those who even remotely visit this story of tremendous courage. For Stefa, greatly influenced by the immense humanity of such a Man, she too would hold hands with her charges and prove a resistance that is both visible and remarkable. As Janusz and Stefa held the hands of these Jewish Children, we must never suggest other than their ability to comfort these Jewish Children in reassurance is a remarkable resistance to the dehumanising effects of Hitler’s ignoble final plan. All the way to reminiscences and eventual Remembrance we are reminded of what great humanity looks like. Amidst the carnage of an inhumanity unprecedented in all of human history such humanity shines forth.

“..Reminiscences make a sad ..depressing ..literature.” Janusz Korczak.

Lisierl Einstein.

“..world is a dangerous place to live ..not because of ..people who are evil ..but because of ..people who don’t do anything about it.” Albert Einstein.

It is incomprehensible for humanity to come to terms with the loss of a life, especially if it is forcefully taken. So having to deal with exactly that sense of grief and loss which is measured 6,000,000 times over, is exactly what The Holocaust demands. There are many strands to any investigation, of that urgent search that is needed before the very evidences dissipates. Along with the strenuous research necessary, which poses many more questions than the answers we have been given, the humanitarian concern for so much lost and taken life must be critical, crucially aware and respectful.

“..I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles ..World.” Albert Einstein.

If we weigh the loss of these 6,000,000 individual Jews, and establish the clear essential which the Survivor delivers to our imaginings, we will learn what it is we need to know. Though the storm of terrifying horror which envelopes us as we delve deeper and dig further, none of this must ever lose sight of our reasoning for pursuing this immense atrocity. While it is essential that we learn all that We need to know of The Holocaust, it is particularly more so and true when we learn these lessons from those Survivors whose knowledge is certain.

“..I had become ..a true child of the camps. ..I had learned ..tricks I needed to survive.” Thomas Buergenthal.

There are evidences which will teach of a humanity that was seemingly downgraded to a level just above the tricks no Child should have been forced to learn. When we then engage our imaginings, so as to convey all recollections of Survivor’s, and through what they endured to what they still must suffer with and on our behalf, we lend a portion of our own humanity so as to be tested. Trawling through the debris of darkness of this catastrophe, we visualise the light at the end of that corridor in which the Survivor stands, so as to visit us with what has tested their very reason for life itself.

“..years of anxious searching in ..dark ..with their intense longing ..their alternations of confidence and exhaustion ..and final emergence into light ..only those who have experienced it can understand that.” Albert Einstein.

For those too few Jews, who emerged through the very gates of that hell, how can we not be doubled over in excrutiating pain over what they witnessed, suffered and then experienced. We who humbly seek to know, who can never reach that deeply into the abyss so as to deliver even a modicum of what it was for the Survivor to understand, what it was to have lived through it, we do so to commend them. We stand for all Survivor’s knowing alkl too well we would too easily have succumbed to the denigration and degradation which sought to make beings inhuman.

“..If you can’t explain it to a 6 year old ..you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein.

I have sought to pass on those lessons I have learned to those willing to learn, and while we must protect their senses, we cannot sanitise their suffering and pain. For those who are still the youngest, who are most capable of not being totally overwhelmed by the loss and atrocity this catastrophe inspires, we lean toward a cautious effort to inform them. So I temper my writing when I aim my work at those who are our most sensitive and impressionable. I seek here to use Albert Einstein as a prime example of one, who escaped what would have been intended for him.

“..Unthinking respect for authority is ..greatest enemy of truth..” Albert Einstein.

For all and any Jew, for me to exclaim an understanding, that from amongst the 6,000,000 Jews who perished, there are conceiveably so many Jews whose enlightenment could have gifted us just as much as Albert has managed. We know through the experience of these 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews that those who advocated for Hitler, left their own ability to discern the truth of humanity outside too many camp gates. Those very Death Camps, which visited hell upon the Jewish People, did not exclusively beckon reason nor humanity from those who explored the outer reaches of atrocity we now explore.

“..World is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.” Albert Einstein.

Part of the reasoning for the Holocaust is not only what happened to these Jews, but what was allowed to happen to them. As we stood along the sideline we became witnesses to the gravest tragedy ever to be visited upon a People for being a Jewish People. For us to learn then, and we simply have to know what was to be imposed, from Wannsee, upon 11,293,300 Jews within Europe, at a time when as many as 1,000,000 Jews had already been Murdered, Shot, Abused and Killed. It is also relevant that we recognise that immediately upon Hitler’s rise to power, the decline of any Jewish presence in Europe was assured.

“..If Hitler were not a lunatic he could easily have avoided ..hostility of ..Western powers. That he is a lunatic is ..sole advantage in ..present sinister picture of ..world.” Albert Einstein.

For all too many of these Jews, who sought refuge away from their own Homelands, they were caught out by the speed of Hitler’s assaults upon their very existence. But this too is also true of the many Jews who could both afford to flee and managed to do so. So many Jews were more related to those they were leaving behind than they could ascertain. The very need for all Jews to take heed of Hitler’s burgeoning threats was not immediately recognised by all too many. While we also recognise from the many who afford us their insight into what was emerging in Germany, escape was never easy nor was it even at all possible.

“..several opportunities ..to jump off ..train ..but my Brother and I wanted to remain with ..Father under all circumstances ..although he repeatedly begged us to escape.” Zev Birger.

These evidences then are from those Jewish Survivors who have delivered their Testimony to us and hopefully for us to learn from. Tragically though, and from those Jews of the Catastrophe who left their statement of their passing presence for us to search for and through, we must gain from the overall truth that both threatened Jewish groups deliver. Also, and in this intimate search, we recognise from within the Catastrophe itself, that we are always cognizant that these are Jewish People, 6,000,000 of whom must be considered individually.

“..Murder of 6,000,000 Jews must never be reduced to a statistic.” Simon Wiesenthal.”

For millennia, these Jewish People, who had been clearly recognised as the vibrant People they were intended to be, must never be recalled merely as a statistic. With this in mind, I can well understand the reaction of the Jewish Survivor, particularly in Poland, who must have then suffered gravely with the proposition as to why did they even bothered to Survive. Their number had been so devastatingly reduced to a remnant, their return ensured they were not to be considered humanely by former neighbours and colleagues and are to be further attacked by the ignorance of the hatred that has always hounded the Polish Jew within Poland.

“..on ..Umschlagplatz ..history of Polish Jews came to an end ..arrested and seemingly terminated.” Jaroslaw Marek Rymkiewicz.

In many community’s, across the whole of Poland, and after Hitler had been vanquished from Polish lands, the remnant of the Polish Jew sought to return. Hitler assumed correctly that Poland would not prove averse to die Endlosung der Judenfrage. Providing more than one third of those Jews targeted, Polish Jewry suffered 50% of all those European Jews Slaughtered. The Polish Jew who was to emerge was to be treated, not as a miracle of survival but were somewhat identified as an inconvenience and a former owner of goods adn property’s now purloined.

“..A man should look for what is ..and not for what he thinks should be.” Albert Einstein.

In these recurring instances, the returning Polish Jew’s status as an inconvenient, who was a hero amongst the Polish people, but would not be allowed to reclaim what had already been stolen. It is evident that what had been taken from the Polish Jews, and would not be returned to them, was a larceny was so immense, avarice and greed surfaced. The immorality and unethical application of societal norms was obviously abandoned in favour of a larceny no belief system could uphold. But gain has a measure above and beyond humanity which all too many people are loathe to apply to their own substandards.

“..killing was perpetuated by hoodlums. ..what about ..soldiers who ..took part. ..what about ..others ..onlookers ..bystanders. ..history of ..Polish people is filled with suffering and glory ..Be worthy of that history ..citizens of Poland. ..face ..recent past which is also yours. To forget is to choose dishonor.” Elie Wiesel.

The Jewish return had proven contrary to their presence from within their own community, and from former neighbours the response was such that they were unwanted, shunned, attacked and all too many of them were Murdered. From Chelm, Cracow, Kalisz, Kielce, Losice, Lublin, Parczew, Ryki, Rzeszow, Skarzysko-Kamienna, Slawatycze, Sokoly, Turek and Turobin all too readily the truth for the Jewish Survivor was Murder and Death. There was still a continuance of that antisemitic hatred they had experienced prior to Hitler’s brand of its effect.

“..Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.” Albert Einstein.

Even before mankind contrived to restrict us to versions of their divisive impositions, the right to say what needed to be said had been written into Humanity’s statute. While every effort must be made to ensure only what is positive and nurturing of that ideal in human relations, all too often there is an ugly truth which subverts the best of intentions. The being that was Hitler came along at a time when hatred could be engaed with and stretched to ensure the vast majority of a people, or a national state could be inculcated in the assault upon a smaller group with the state. Such is the diverse nature of divisiveness which antisemitism has been wreaking for the best part of 2,000 years.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lieserl Einstein Maric was born on January 27th. 1902 to Mileva Maric and Albert Einstein in Novi Sad, Serbia. Lieserl died from Scarlet Fever on September 19th. 1903.

“..Dear Lisierl

When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world.

I ask you to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades, until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.

There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us.

This universal force is LOVE.

There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us.

This universal force is LOVE.

When scientists looked for a unified theory of the universe they forgot the most powerful unseen force.

Love is Light, that enlightens those who give and receive it.

Love is gravity, because it makes some people feel attracted to others.

Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. Love unfolds and reveals.

For love we live and die.

Love is God and God is Love.

This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. This is the variable that we have ignored for too long, maybe because we are afraid of love because it is the only energy in the universe that man has not learned to drive at will.

To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation.

If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.

After the failure of humanity in the use and control of the other forces of the universe that have turned against us, it is urgent that we nourish ourselves with another kind of energy…

If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.

Perhaps we are not yet ready to make a bomb of love, a device powerful enough to entirely destroy the hate, selfishness and greed that devastate the planet.

However, each individual carries within them a small but powerful generator of love whose energy is waiting to be released.

When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, dear Lieserl, we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything, because love is the quintessence of life.

I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologize, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer!”

Your father Albert Einstein

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“..Out yonder there was this huge World ..which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great ..eternal riddle ..at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. ..contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.” Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein, the German Jewish Physicist was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14th. 1879 and by the time of his death, April 18th. 1955 he is recognised as one of the Greatest Physicists of all time. What we cannot know, and nor should we speculate on such certainty but, Albert Einstein would have been consigned to the same Slaughter as his fellow Jews, merely for being born a Jew. It is surely as Hitler would demand, that if Albert had stayed within the sphere of Hitler’s influence, one of the Death Camps or Killing Sites would have decreased our understanding of relativity.

“..All that is valuable in human society depends upon ..opportunity for development accorded ..individual.” Albert Einstein.

We can never know how many like minded Einstein’s have been cast into oblivion by the creed of such an infirm hatred as espoused by Hitler. It is most certain though, that the genius of the Jewish People survived in the likes of Albert Einstein to stand before the pillars of wisdom which confers upon all of humanity an understanding that any intolerance is unrelated to civilisation. The curse of any form of hatred, be it for the individual or here as Hitler proposed for the entirety of the Jewish People has wasted too much of what should only ever add to the culture we seek.

“..important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.” Albert Einstein.

Curiously, for 6,000,000 Jews who were thrown into an abyss of such hatred, we have given it a name, The Holocaust to signify its unprecedented level of that hatred. For more than 2,000 years of so called christian enlightenment, the Jews have faced isolation, abuse and destruction with a religious fervour beyond rationalisation. For 3,000 years prior to this, a Jewish People were ejected from the Promised Land and forced to wander, enslaved and separated out from those community’s which saw in them a difference they could develop into many forms of intolerances.

“..Although I am a typical loner in daily life ..my consciousness of belonging to ..invisible community of those who strive for truth ..beauty ..and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.” Albert Einstein.”

Albert Einstein also developed into one of the World’s leading thinkers, and luckily for us, he saw fit to quit Germany for a sanctuary that was well away from what saved him from very terms of The Holocaust. Albert’s genius is unquestioned, and even when we are aware his Jewish antecedence had condemned him under Hitler’s racial theorism, hatred blinded all too many to this fact. The Holocaust itself, needs no explaining in this piece as I have always maintained, The Holocaust is either the known fact or it is the denied truth.

“..I am by heritage a Jew ..by citizenship a Swiss ..and by makeup a human being ..and only a human being ..without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.” Albert Einstein.

We have dedicated sites, Museums and University’s devoted to who and what Albert Einstein was and what he brings to human understanding. However, it wasn’t until the late 1980s, when the Einstein Family donated 1,400 letters, written by Einstein, to the Hebrew University, that we further delve into his loss over Lieserl. With orders not to publish the Letters contents until some 20 years after his death, an extraordinary account of a gentle genius emerges and unfolds. In amongst these items is that letter to Lieserl, an outpouring to his Daughter, a communicating evidence of human emotion that is affording us the Man who had a Daughter.

“..I did not know what it was to have family ..you don’t know what it is to have family ..this security of people caring for you. It seems so natural to everybody ..when you don’t have family you just fend for yourself. You can’t just relax.” Evelyne Haendel.

Though this piece is on the use of the novel, so as to examine both the cruel and fraudulent effort to promote it as a work, they do not stand for The Holocaust. I wish to remind us all who we write for are those who can no longer add their pen to paper. These who relate their to a commercial exercise, an interest outside the integrity we have difficulty comprehending. For me, I lend my words while borrowing from this particular Survivor who knows what it is that is essential in the search for some form of comprehension to this catastrophic deed.

“..You should not feel bad because you don’t know at all what it is to be rootless. You have roots. I did not know at all what it was to have a family. You never know what it is ..what you have never experienced. Maybe it will help you in your thinking.” Evelyne Haendel.

While 6,000,000 Jews languish elsewhere in the novel’s attempt to compose words, this piece is broadened out to retain some of  what Evelyne Haendel shares of her own experiences. Evelyne was born in Vienna in August 1937 to Moses and Pessah Wolfowicz Haendel and life was both nurturing and concerning. However, when Evelyne and her Mother managed to escape the Nazi persecution and sought refuge in Belgium in December of that year, Evelyne’s Father did not immediately go along with them. Eventually though, Evelyne’s Father followed them in the January of 1938 just ahead of the Nazi’s invasion of Austria. 

“..Everywhere you went there was a rabble. People who suddenly felt they were someone ..who saw that this was their chance. People who looked on ..Anschluss ..first and foremost  ..as an opportunity to get involved in ..witch hunt.” Moriz Scheyer.

On March 11th. 1938, accommodated by the German forces who crossed the border into Free Austria, Austrian Nazi’s raised the tempo of welcome. The following day, on March 12th. the German Army entered Vienna amidst scenes of rapturous welcoming’s. There was to be no welcome from Austrian Jewry. By March 13th., with all of Austria being absorbed into the Hitler Reich, by means of this ‘Anschluss’, Austria disappears from the European map. The immediate assault upon the Jewish People, and the systematic larceny of all Jewish assets is set in motion and the grand witch hunt begins.

“..Shoah destroyed my Family and it nearly killed me ..I am alive again. I am myself. I am no longer in hiding.” Evelyne Haendel.

For Evelyne, as luck would have it, she Survived and her ability to inform us is in great part due to the generosity of spirit and strength of courage of her Parents Moses and Pessah. Now though, and within all of Hitler’s German Austrian sphere of influence, the enactment of the Nuremberg racial laws, which were previously applied to German Jews, struck deeper. Further along, and after Germany invaded Belgium in May of 1940, the peace was not only shattered for the Belgian People but particularly for Belgian Jews.

“..I’m still discovering who I am and trying to see people as they are ..all over ..World.” Evelyne Haendel.

All Jews migrant or national, who formerly felt secure were no longer so became perched upon that same knife edge which had been threatening German and Austrian Jewry. When the Belgians arrested Moses Haendel, he was constituted as an enemy alien and deported to France that same year. For Evelyne, who was but a 3 year old ‘enemy alien’, she now was under direct threat of both persecution and transportation. In 1941 when the Nazi’s began instituting a widespread set of anti-Jewish and discriminatory laws, Evelyne’s Mother knew it was time to act before Pessah was arrested late in 1942, she had arranged to hide her daughter with some Christian neighbours.

“..I love Israel ..but I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t like ..attitude ..that we are eternal victims. I don’t define myself that way.” Evelyne Haendel.

Evelyne, who was 5 years of age, was to be then raised as a Catholic and though this finally managed to save her life, a wedge was driven between her memory and her former Parents. Though she remained disconnected from her Family and Jewish ways, I clearly recognise with her in relating to this period as her ’emptiness’. I cannot know such emptiness. Both the hidden Jewish Child and the vacant sensitivity are both an element of The Holocaust that is in need of exploring. As I survey the novel’s suggestion, it becomes somewhat cumbersome to even attempt to relate the two.

“..For many hidden Children their parents were strangers ..often unwelcome strangers. When parents came to claim them ..it created ambivalent feelings at best. Acceptance ..hostility ..resentment ..shame ..regret were only some of ..emotions we hidden children had. Some of us may still continue to have such feelings about our Jewishness ..our religion. ..we children could ..not easily give up that which helped us survive. If being Jewish meant danger ..disapproval ..something one could be killed for ..why would a child want to take it back?”  Nechama Tec.

For me, to then search in these other books, which I will not name, I cannot find what I always hope for in my own words and that they are simply never demeaning of the effort to relate the immense loss. There are already far too many novel’s who bare enough of the wrongs I perceive that they perhaps manage. Without the very integrity necessary in our search we distort the view we are not fully at liberty to see. The unrelenting loss and the attempt at understanding what The Holocaust means to those who lived and died it is a compatible need.

“..Wherever Men and Women are persecuted because of their race ..religion ..political views ..that place must ..at that moment ..become ..center of ..universe.” Elie Wiesel.

Today, I stand aghast at the diminishing in words of a plight, of an effective scheme to mass murder 1,000,000’s of Jews, plans so substantially deliberate, the treatment of the Jews of the catastrophe must be exemplary. There can be no other tone which affords this unique and unparalleled assault upon human value, and which sunk civilisation into an abyss, without it being reverential. For me, and so as to find any of or similar responses to an immeasurable crime, those like Evelyne Haendel are amongst the sourced and sought out to bring forward their appreciation of my own and History’s search.

“..history of Man is ..history of crimes ..history can repeat. ..information is a defense. Through this we can build ..we must build ..a defense against repetition.” Simon Wiesenthal.

With Evelyne’s very words, the sense of both the belonging, which she does not feel capable of accepting and the gigantic loss which would overwhelm us, we extrapolate our concern. For her words alone, which are the most resistent to forgetfulness we seek to produce, can afford us an insight into a chasm so empty, the torrent of memory barely infills with 6,000,000 losses. Evelyne’s own sense of The Holocaust, because she is a constituent part of that tragedy, is the very relevance for which we must choose our own words.

“..A novel about Treblinka is either not a novel or it’s not about Treblinka.” Elie Wiesel.

Then, as I sought to remember it, when I discussed this subject of recollection with Elie Wiesel, it was clear that novels on The Holocaust do not exist. Elie was most adamant that such books are written either as novels or they are Not recognisable as aspects of The Holocaust. Elie, as a Survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, with his referencing of Treblinka here it has the same bearing for all Jews who emerged from any Camp, Killing Site or indeed any place of hiding from The Holocaust. I am one of many who would consider it unworthy of the memory of those 6,000,000 European Jews, catapulted into oblivion, to be at all served well by the novel.

“..It was a past of everybody leaving ..a child of 3 doesn’t know it’s because of ..War. It’s just that People ..closest that you have faith in ..that you rely on ..are just leaving.” Evelyne Haendel.

For The Holocaust, and for any work to be classed as a fiction, these works must remain outside such a remit as would be acceptable to the History of this catastrophe for the Jewish People. Throughout what I wish to say on this, I will use the experience of Evelyne, a Surviving Jew, somehow lost in a World that resides alongside us. After a time of uncertainty, she resorted to escape from this World she did not know and felt somehow distracted from it to find her way back. When Theodor Adorno pointed to the inexplicable use of poetry after such an event as The Holocaust, one cannot but consider it a concern for Evelyne or any Surviving Jew that their experience is being betrayed.

“..To write a poem after Auschwitz would be barbaric.” Theodor Adorno.

It is clear, and whatever form it takes, that all of culture has been vanquished in the Gas Chambers of Hitler’s Final Solution. For the Survivor, in trying to reclaim a life that would never sit comfortably with them, Evelyne too emerged to become aware of what loss means. Due to the massive destruction inflicted upon her Family, Evelyne was still alone to collect whatever memories she could recall. In all of this Evelyne was still a Surviving Jew, very much alone. For we, those who wish to be here, we also seek to regain fragments of a memory that has been crushed into dust.

“..It’s never finished. ..If I found another Aunt somewhere I would feel very happy because she would no longer be an Aunt or Cousin or whatever buried in ..darkness ..forgotten. I will not have abandoned them.” Evelyne Haendel.

For those missing Jews, whose embers have been scattered over all of Europe, they do not rest so lightly. Here, and I will contain the fuller critical analysis of the form of the novel, and though I have in my possession three such books, two are unworthy of a title as a work, due to their total lack of integrity. For me too, these two works are a blemish which indelibly stain the memory for the 6,000,000 Jews we both seek to remember and eulogise. The other of these three works, which was initially orchestrated as an autobiographical account of a Jew who managed to Survive, proved to be an account of a Surviving Jew.

“..biggest resistance that we could have done to ..Germans was to survive.” Eta Wrobel.

Though this third work was less than honest in the first aspect, it regains a redemptive quality in its fictional account of a Survivor’s own experiences. For me then, and to all of this we have to add that the genre of the novel does Not offer or lend the Surviving Jew a voice. The chance to emerge from the darkness does not manage to bring forth the lost Family, those firmly lodged within the grasp of The Holocaust. Today, as time elapses at an alarming rate, these Jews, who were so religiously taken from us, require more from us than tall tales.

“..I lost completely ..notion of who I was. ..I started to go back in my past ..which I had just totally pushed away. I recovered my first name ..then my original Family name ..name that my Father and Mother gave me.” Evelyne Haendel.

Such misguided efforts to commercialise the irredeemable loss with a value in monetary terms is both morally vacuous and ethically wrong. Such works, as these novels proliferate, are blotting the landscape of a view we wish to add to the lost memory of 6,000,000 Jews now being obscured. Our deliberate search, facing into a fading memory that is secreted beneath the soil of an entire Continent, is a fact which our research must afford us. It is in the effort to deliver an insight into such an immense loss that we approach the regular passing of those Survivor’s we must always seek to learn from, with an enormous measure of loss for us all.

“..Only much later did I grasp how important for history it is to record all details ..to write down witnesses’ statements. ..witnesses do not live forever ..following generations must ..learn of their fate ..their suffering.” Zev Birger.

It is clear that we, who stand against the tidal wave of imposition that pervades The Holocaust arena, become a further witness to the dismantling of the integrity only the truth maintains. The attempt to secure memory for those lost Jews who require it, is ably achieved by all that we seek to bring back from the depths of a deep despair. There is barely the faintest hint of a remembered past in the presence in such works that will be audibly recognised and recorded as factional efforts. How can it be that all that these Jews who suffered can be dismantled by the largesse of a profit motive already assigned to consuming their passage from us.

“..I didn’t feel Jewish before. I’m feeling it now. I have a duty to be Jewish and not to be afraid of being a Jew.” Evelyne Haendel.

This then is what we are up against and what must always be maintained properly in showing where once Jews were that there is No fear for the Jew being a Jew. The Jewish People are no longer a viable presence within their former community’s, either by design or by the wish of those who have sought to own all that the Jews once possessed. To the books in question, there are two passages in these formed words, which alight us to perhaps all that is wrong within their pages. From History we know their assertions to be untrue, in a garbled assembly of words which distract us from the real search in a memory departed.

“..he was my guide and mentor ..kind of father I would have wished for.”

This passage alerts us to what no Jew, who managed to Survive Hitler’s intention for them could propose. The only Father, Mother, Parent or even other Family member they could ever wish for would be those returned of the ritually destroyed and taken from them. In the immediate aftermath of all that the Jewish People had been put through and Survived, their search for any single member of their destroyed Family has been a lifelong quest. Their desire, impassioned as it has been, it has been a need to resurrect those memories of them, where there remained no significant chance of them having ever Survived.

“..this book is dedicated to ..memory of.”

In that limitless search, the Jewish People would never confine their Parents to a memory either forgotten or betrayed by the desire to implant another in its place. In this second quote from another work, there is no mention here of the parents supposedly lost or the family driven to extinction. The words are not for the loss of any immediate community, nor in Evelyne’s case the destruction of the 25,000 or so of the Belgian Nation’s Jews which Evelyne seeks to recall. The words are not even concerned with the 6,000,000 Jews of Europe who are The Holocaust.

“..past ..has enabled me to regard ..novel with a critic’s detachment ..but ..controversy aroused ..make me question my initial decision to write it.”

No! This unworthy tome is dedicated to the loss of a dog. The alarm bells should have wrung more clearly and louder for me. Latterly, and within this next work, it is not without impact, or even credit but, though lauded as a novel, it was created as a Jewish autobiographical journey through times when no Jew was safe. It is evident that the positive lessons of The Holocaust have yet to be learned and intolerance is as entrenched as the indifference which confides with it reaps ever further wastage from our own human existence.

“..impossible to put into words what we have been through. One thing is clear ..what happened exceeded our boldest dreams. ..Germans ran twice from ..Ghetto.”  Mordechai Anielewicz.

As a hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Resistance, Mordechai Anielewicz best chooses the words which exemplify the Jewish struggle. In the midst of a gentile indifference, force feeding the intolerance against them, only words designed to expand upon the incomprehensible nature of the perpetration, and the struggle against it, can best serve this Jewish memory. For all that remains wrong in societal intolerances to this day, inappropriate works have taken the wrong sided lessons from the terms of The Holocaust. So as to deal brutally with the tolerances we should have secured, the lessons of intolerances permeate the World arena.

“..I built a physical site for visitors ..which tells and presents ..history of The Holocaust. I expanded ..education and research of ..subject and laid ..foundations for making ..place a world center for commemorating ..memory of The Holocaust and its heritage. ..Despite years of lack of diplomatic relations with ..countries of ..Communist bloc in Eastern Europe ..I have been able to establish working relations with archives in these countries and obtain 100’s of 1,000’s of documents relating to The Holocaust there.” Dr. Yitzhak Arad.

For any semblance of hatred, which those same biased and bigoted people regard others, those who participate in this life and who are treated with, far too differently, The Holocaust lesson is not well learned. In all of this conjecture though we have to be certain, when dealing with such loss. This is Not with our own Father’s memory, nor with recalling our own Mother’s loss or those of our Brother’s and Sister’s so long disappeared, but we are dealing wholly with due respect for what we know is lost. Here too, we are accounting for those myriad of Family connections now vanquished from History and all of posterity.

“..It’s not such an easy road. I’ve been through it so I can understand. I’m happy. I’m making others aware of their Jewishness ..of ..tradition.” Evelyne Haendel.

In its stead, we recognise our duty is to respect the Jewish loss as our loss and record their omission  from this space and time so as not to forget they passed this way. That these were Jewish Families annihilated from the midst of a most civilised and cultural Continent, but who were still wholly and totally destroyed and eviscerated from all existence, confronts our moral probity. That these slaughtered Jews represent, as to what could have been a fate for us also, this all leaves an indelible stain over what supposedly civilised us. The stark lesson for us, while we must seek to come to terms with The Holocaust, which offers so little of what has passed into time, must be recalled in all we make of our effort.

“..I managed to go to Auschwitz ..I’m not sure I made peace there or ever could. ..I don’t look at Germany ..same way anymore. I’ve let go of that hate ..that fear.” Evelyne Haendel.

That we cannot give over a second to other than revisiting and reclaiming all that will present to us, the lost lives of 6,000,000 vanquished Jews, Men, Women and Their Children from Europe, it has to contain a veracity missing in such words that are not concerned with them. When Evelyne visited Auschwitz, she stood on the site of the closest graveyard to where her Family might well have been laid, or whose ashes might well have been sprinkled under her very feet, but Evelyne could not know. With what flowers Evelyne sought to rest before the memory for her incalculable losses, these must have been tinged with ever greater sadness.

“..Recognition of ..truth ..whole truth and opening ones heart and sharing ..experiences is necessary to stop ..evil ..to gel rid of ..aggression ..hate and ..prejudice. To convey ..Auschwitz truth is a great lesson. ”  Halina Birenbaum.

How could Evelyne ever be certain that her bouquet touched anywhere near where that place interring her Family was to be. When Evelyne visited Israel, the natural Homeland of each and every Jew, as it is proposed in all of History, there became a newer awareness. For Evelyne, this was to be a sense of belonging that has been missing from most of her life and has been delivered back to the Jewish People after 5,000 years. In ensuring this right of settlement and through it a perpetuity of living, we owe Evelyne what we cannot give to 6,000,000 other Jews. It should Never have taken, for the very gravest crimes ever perpetrated against a People to raise our conscious above a selfish concern. 

“..Give us a patch of Earth that is free of antisemitism.” Isabella Leitner.

The very State of Israel was thus handed back to the Jews of antiquity, but given over as a guilt ridden World’s salving of that guilt, as injudicious a personal absolution as can be suggested. Today, a World’s sanctioning is all too easily forgotten by too many willing to distort the rightful truth of ownership of a land bestowed upon the Jewish People. In acknowledging the Jewish 5,000 year return to their ‘Promised Land’, can we do less than assist the Jews to live free of antisemitism. In this demand I clearly write my words of loss, and as I hear the wishes of many like Isabella Leitner, for a land the Jews own and have been owed, my words do not falter.

“..My whole life I never had my feet under a table ..sitting and feeling I have ..right to be here ..I don’t have to do anything ..I don’t have to apologize ..I’m just home. ..That is how I felt in front of ..Wailing Wall.” Evelyne Haendel.