by Kim Thoday The age of nations is past.

The task before us now,

if we should not perish,

is to shake off our ancient prejudices

and to build the earth.

-Teilhard de Chardin

Some defensive mechanism took over. For ten minutes – or was it longer … Perhaps it was a sudden chemical reaction of the brain. Had I lost consciousness for a time? The panic was gone. Gone was the putrid air, the cries of agony, the groans, the pathetic sobs of mothers and children, the claustrophobia, the endless ache that punctured my whole body and the suffocating fear in the back of my throat. The monotonous metallic rattle of the train’s wheels became the noisy, friendly sounds of the main street in D ¼sseldorf. Ah … it was so good to be back … even for a moment.

How good were those few years before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reichstag. Life was still hard in Germany following the hyper-inflation of the early 1920s. Although unemployment was very high, the economy was improving. The new liberal, democratic mood of the Weimar Republic had enticed my wife and I to Germany.1 We were Polish Jews, with a long ancestry in the villages around Warsaw. My wife Anna came from a village called Ursus. I was from Zgietz just outside L ³dz. My name is David and our family name is Zowtyj. The name had been modified to sound Polish apparently centuries ago during a long and brutal pogrom2 against Jews by local Poles. My childhood memories were largely of a tranquil agrarian village life. For most of the time we lived peacefully alongside our Polish neighbours. The two groups had learned to live together over hundreds of years. However, anti-Semitism simmered not far beneath the surface and could erupt when it was useful to blame Jews for some new hardship. It was against this background that our community (like most minority communities) developed into a closely knit entity.3 Perhaps it was because of the community’s closeness that all seemed well.

In the summer of 1925, Anna and I moved to D ¼sseldorf to open a branch of the Zowtyj antiquarian book business. We were assured by contacts that D ¼sseldorf was an ideal place to begin trade. We were young and eager to explore the world. The so-called ‘new Germany’ – a Germany that was being reconstructed by progressive, tolerant ideologies – seemed a great place to start the exploration. We rented a little shop just off the main street. Business did not boom in those first few years, but we had plenty to live on and we managed to start saving. How we enjoyed those years!! D ¼sseldorf, like other German cities came alive … culture and the arts received patronage; new cinemas opened up. People talked openly about left-wing politics. We encountered people from all over Europe. The night life flourished – restaurants, jazz bands and night clubs appeared in all the cities. We had never travelled so much before. The future seemed bright; the political experiment seemed to be working. But then came the Depression.

After the November 1929 Wall Street Crash, the world-wide Depression bit hard into German life.4 Little did we realise then, that this was to be the beginning of a battle for survival. Our business, like many others, stagnated. Beggars appeared in the streets. During the early 1930s we had never witnessed so much poverty and distress. One day we caught a beggar stealing books from our shop. He was going to use them that night to help make a fire to warm himself. There were endless queues outside stores, soup kitchens and factories. In the winter of 1930, Samuel was born, just as unemployment had reached three million and was continuing to rise.5 Our business now ran at a loss. Fortunately, I was able to get some part-time maintenance work at the horse stables of some wealthy Jewish acquaintances.

For us our German life symbolically ended on the 10th May 1933. One of our regular patrons, Rabbi Zichske, burst into the shop. I can still see the look on the old man’s face. A face as pale as death screamed, “The world has gone mad – have you heard? They’re burning books in Berlin!”6 This time it was not beggars trying to warm themselves. Books are almost sacred objects to me. Books, I have always maintained, are humanity’s repository of wisdom, passed on and added to by each successive generation. Yet here were these Nazi ‘bullies’ destroying the world’s great writers. On the 30th January 1933, we Jews began to fear for the future as this already known anti-Semite, Adolf Hitler, became Chancellor. At the same time most of us hoped that Hitler would be a temporary phenomenon. Anyway, we were a people used to struggling against various forms of racial discrimination. For generations Jews had survived and flourished in spite of the most violent progroms. This kind of rationale kept many of us in Germany until it was too late. We were also a proud and stubborn people, determined to maintain our dignity despite the growing discrimination and humiliation.7 Even after September 1935 when anti-Semitism became institutionalised8 we vainly hoped that as in other historical periods, the injustices would all soon end. How could anyone predict what was to happen; after all, the world had never before encountered a Hitler and a Nazi ideology of Race.

Considering the increasing persecution of Jews, we fared quite well. We managed to disguise our racial identity behind our Polish name. However, shattering news reached us on the 6th of October 1938. The Polish Government had revoked all passports belonging to Polish Jews if they had lived abroad for more than five years. The Nazis did not want to be left with a large number of stateless ex-Polish Jews.9 So they began a massive hunt, in their usual methodical and merciless manner. We na ¯vely thought we might continue to avoid detection. On the 27th of October the SS came to check our passports. Our cover was blown. Someone had undoubtedly informed on us. We were ordered to leave Germany the following night.10 The life we had worked hard to create was suddenly wrenched from us. The shock was too much. Haunted by our ancestral ghosts, on the night of the 29th of October, special trains deported thousands of Polish Jews back to Poland; we were a people again “…wandering and running, looking for a safe place.”11

A sharp jolt bought me back to the torturous reality of what was supposed to be the journey to a new life in the Ukraine.12 The carriage felt as if it had just slammed into the one in front. I suddenly felt a wave of sorrow as I recalled that train journey when we were herded like animals and deported from Germany. At least then I was with my Anna and Samuel. But this time I was on my own, a non-entity, without my loved ones. It was pitch black and the night air was freezing. My fingers slid over a frozen surface … the communal urine in which we all sat had frozen over. A number of people had woken. The moaning began again. People started to panic and scream. Then the train came to a grinding halt and our carriage door slid open. The freezing night air rushed in. I was still alive! We were packed in like sardines. Some who had been sitting by the door fell out. They were punched and kicked by the SS guards. Our black uniformed tormentors yelled orders at us, “Raus! Raus! Get out you filthy swine.” We pushed like crazy to escape the carriage. I dropped onto the soft white snow. I went blind from the bright searchlights. For two hours I was blind and deathly cold. A loud rattle of machine gun-fire pierced my brain like hail stones puncturing a hot-house. The guards were shooting those trying to escape or some who were too sick to get out of the train. My mind whirred, trying to think rationally. My senses felt beaten. I was so weak from hunger and thirst. A thought slowly emerged through the numbness. Why were we here in the middle of nowhere? Were we all going to be shot?

Panic again erupted in my body. We stood in the freezing cold for an eternity. Why we had stopped would always remain a mystery. Then the orders came. We were herded back in with blows and abuse. I was still alive. At least there was more room now. After a while, in the dark, I noticed a little boy and his mother alongside me. For one endless moment I thought he was Samuel. Uncontrollable emotions stirred. I wept and then from sheer exhaustion fell asleep; my dream world now the only force resisting the train’s looming, inexorable destination.

I was with Anna and Samuel again in the dilapidated apartment in the Warsaw Ghetto. As for most of the thousands of families in the ghetto, our conditions were extremely overcrowded. We had been amongst a large contingent of refugees to be ferried in by truck from the outlying provinces in December 1940, some two years after our deportation from Germany.13 We had been staying with Anna’s family at the time. I found out only after the war that my mother, father and two sisters had been shot by a squad of Einsatzgruppen14 in the following January. Using their Polish family name and false papers they had apparently eluded the earlier raids. However, the Nazi bureaucracy was not as easily fooled as the pogroms of old.

As refugees we were at a distinct disadvantage compared to the established Jews of Warsaw.15 We were literally left standing in the street upon our arrival in the Ghetto. After having reported to the Judenrat16 we were on our own. We were far more fortunate than most refugees. I had some money and valuable items; a legacy of our business ventures. With this we secured half of an apartment, sharing the other half with our defacto landlords, the Gruszeckis. I had never seen people so desperate for extra money for food and clothing. There were twelve of us living in this one apartment. There were five of our family – Anna’s mother and father, Anna and myself, and Samuel. The toilet and shower no longer worked. In fact the only running water came from a communal tap in the basement of the block. Often the water smelt putrid and had to be boiled.

While life was tough in the apartment block, on the streets of the ghetto it was far worse. As new arrivals, we were struck by the grey forlorn masses of people. A sense of deep despair seemed to emanate from every face. There was no open space, not even a park or a tree.17 The air was filled with the sounds of an oppressed people and the smells of a humanity diseased and polluted. The smell of death on the streets was a constant reminder of the spectre of the Swastika that stood over us all. Refugee children starved to death on the streets. Old people froze to death. In the mornings new corpses materialised on the sidewalks. Towards the end of 1940 many of us began to realise that the Nazis were doing their best to destroy us within the ghetto. Others did not wish to believe this. The Nazis isolated us as completely as was humanly possible.18 During 1941 food and medicines were in critically short supply. Our staple diet was potatoes supplemented at times with stale bread, ersatz fat, and, when things were very bad, soup made from straw.19

The mixture of anger, fear, humiliation and sorrow I felt in the first few weeks of ghetto life began to diminish. At least, they were not continuous emotions as they had been soon after our arrival. They would erupt to the surface at times. For instance, a patrol of SS searching the apartment building would introduce a feeling of fear beyond description. The SS were unpredictable. They would often indiscriminately shoot people. In retrospect I think our feelings had to be somewhat suppressed. We had to develop a psychological ‘outer shell’ that would not feel, while at the same time hold on to a stubborn hope that we could survive the war. ‘Getting on’ with the practicalities of life helped overcome the natural feelings of depression and anxiety. Anna and her mother became very involved with the local House Committee.20 By the winter of 1941 many such committees had formed in the ghetto to make sure the poorest tenants had food. However, obtaining surplus food was the main problem. We relied on much that was smuggled in. Samuel became part of a group of young activists smuggling food and medicine from outside the ghetto.21 We completely disapproved, whilst he became accomplished at the task. Apprehension by the Nazis frequently occurred and being caught mean certain death. It was a constant worry for us. Despite the harsh reality, we created a sense of normality. We established order within the chaos. Thus, our human dignity was not completely suppressed. Yet some still committed suicide or went mad.

I became very involved with other men from our block in organising and running a newly created bread mill in the basement of the building.22 Constant food shortages and the demand of the House Committees had resulted in many groups doing the same in the ghetto. It was undertaken with the highest degree of secrecy. The Jewish secret police23 had now become an insidious force within the ghetto. Their role was to infiltrate ‘subversive’ activities such as our mill. How we hated and dreaded them. “Our own turned traitors… they’re worse than the Nazi bastards,” my father-in-law would often hiss under his breath. This kind of reaction was precisely what the Nazis wanted. The Jewish secret police worked directly for the Warsaw Gestapo. There is no hatred like the hatred toward a traitor. It was a useful deflection for the real tormentors – to divide and conquer; to pit our own against us.24

Much anger and frustration was directed at the Judenrat also.25 The Council was responsible for the overall government of the ghetto. One of its major tasks was to make selections for the SS supervised labour gangs. This program the Nazis euphemistically called ‘resettlement’. Officially we were told that the resettlement entailed deportation to work camps in the East where conditions would be better. However, rumours soon circulated that the trains were bound instead for death camps.26 But most of us could not believe such stories. I did not believe them. Most of us felt that such lies were put about to further paralyse us with fear.

Even as we stood in rows beside the endless carriages, guarded by ‘trigger-happy’ SS at 6.00 am on 10th February 1943, I could not really believe the stories. Without my family, I stood like a statue, unable to think or feel the obvious. I was at least grateful to be out of the hellish carriage and in the open air. I oscillated. We’re done for. No, surely the rumours could not be true … surely not humanly possible. Basic humanity denied the obvious. I felt too tired, too broken inside, weak from thirst. The first leg of our train journey was over we were told. Treblinka was apparently to be the final stop before changing over to another train for the Ukraine. Signs around read:

TRAINS FOR BIALYSTOK

TRAINS FOR BARANOVIGI

TRAINS FOR VOLKOVVYSK 27

Soon we were bustled along by the guards with not enough time to realise that the whole station, including the ticket office, restaurant and clock were all a facade. So were the shops and little zoo that we passed.28 I suddenly realised that the railway tracks did not continue on anywhere. The guards seemed almost civil compared with our strange stop in the middle of nowhere. Here no one was shot. They just moved us along quickly, giving orders: ‘Raus! Raus! Schneller! Schneller!’ We passed another re-assuring street sign that read: TO THE GHETTO 29 A strange, sickly smell permeated the air; a smell to which I would grow accustomed. We had arrived at some barracks. “Men, over here,” rang out the SS officer, “Women and children undress in the barracks here on the left.” An SS doctor inspected us as we filed past.30 Most were ordered to the barracks to undress. Out of the men, the SS doctor chose a dozen of the youngest and fittest for work detail.31 I was one of them, even though I hardly felt in a state for hard work. As we were marched off, my confusion compounded. My confusion was soon to be abruptly swept aside by an eternal moment of truth.

We were made to march to a different section of the camp. Sinister black SS uniforms seemed to be at every corner. For a moment we had to wait outside an administration hut. We filed in. We were registered in the camp books and then a serial number was tattooed on our right forearms. We were given faded striped prison-type garb. We were marched to our huts, ordered to change and immediately put to work. I was now virtually just a number. This number became for all inmates, a powerful symbol and reminder that we would not only be treated as sub-human, but more profoundly if we were to survive, we would have to learn to become numbers. We had to become automatons. Feelings, thoughts and emotions had to be put on hold. Obedience would be required one hundred percent of the time.

Many of my experiences at Treblinka have been concertinaed into that first day of shocks.32 After this day, I am certain that my personality became irretrievably changed. We joined another twenty or so prisoners, the Kapo33 and SS guards, in front of a large tastefully designed stone building with wide ornamental doors. We stood in straight lines and to attention while the Kapo leader explained the work to us new arrivals. “This is an extermination camp. In a moment the latest arrivals will be brought here. There will be approximately one thousand people. We run a fast smooth operation. If anyone steps out of line they’ll be shot! So listen carefully. When we are given the signal you open the doors. You will stand aside and let the guards drive the people in. As the chamber fills, you will help push them in. You may see relatives, friends and family amongst the crowd. But there must be no contact! You must remain silent. Any hint of communication and you will join them! You will all be needed to get the doors closed. The gassing takes thirty minutes, during which you will clean up this area and the funnel. Afterwards you will take the bodies over to the pits. That is all.”

The moment of truth had come. What we had for so long thought impossible and the result of fiendish attempts to terrorise Jews, was true. I remember literally biting my lip and drawing blood to see if I was alive. I glanced upward as if wanting to find heaven, but instead saw the final deception inscribed above the double doors in German, Polish and Yiddish: “BATH-HOUSE”.

The order was given and we swung open the massive doors. Simultaneously, an unforgettable noise arose from the “funnel”. The funnel, as the inmates called it, was a long path about thirteen feet wide with huge palisades on either side. It began just past the cashier’s booth where everyone had to deposit all valuables. A mass of naked men appeared, running, being driven by SS guards. The SS whipped them and screamed at them. Guard dogs tore the flesh of some on the edge of this wide column of men. Then came the women, elderly and children. All were naked. Some women clutched their babies, others pleaded for their children. The noise was incredible – a mixture of moaning, wailing, abusing and screaming. Near the end of the column, one woman with two small children tried to run the other way. They were gunned down. These were the people with whom I had travelled. Except for a stroke of luck, I would have been amongst them. It was all so efficient and systematic. There was no escape. Then, the doors were forced shut. The diesel motors began their demonic song and the screams echoed from the chamber in one unearthly chorus.

After ten minutes the screaming had stopped and I knew they were all dead. We were ordered to clean up the piles of excrement from the funnel where the women had been waiting.34 Many of them must have suddenly realised that death lay ahead. After half an hour, when the fumes were considered no longer lethal, we opened the doors and began to disentangle the masses of twisted and distorted bodies. I, like other new arrivals vomited, but fear of our guards kept us to the task. We carried a never-ending stream of bodies to the pits. They were blue, clammy, covered with urine, menstrual blood and excretion. Such a hellish sight could never have been imagined. Until my witness to this mass murder, I thought I had been exposed to the worst of inhumanity in ghetto life. But here, beside the gas chamber, something inside me died. The notion of innate human goodness disappeared. At this God-forsaken place evil had overcome good. The stubborn hope I had held on to so dearly was obliterated.

For the next two months, during conscious hours, I lost all sense of human dignity. Any sense of justice or compassion was squeezed from me. Survival became the primary motivational force of my psyche. There was no future, yet instinctively I survived from day to day. All of us knew we had only a matter of months.35 We watched indifferently as fellow workers dropped dead one by one. They were quickly replaced and so on went the cycle. Sleep was hard to achieve in our overcrowded hut. We received three watery bowls of soup per day. Each day we became more emaciated. Hunger was our constant companion. The quest to appease the hunger overshadowed all else. Nothing else mattered. Morality did not exist. Many times I stole the rations of fellow inmates. The sadism of the SS, the suffering of my fellow inmates and the insatiable appetite of the gas chambers formed merely the backdrop for my daily act of survival. I hardly noticed the cruel games played by the SS – the beatings, the rape, the people who randomly disappeared, the constant smell of rotting and burning flesh and the reports each morning of the numbers gassed the day before. One day I watched our commandant, SS Hauptsturmf ¼hrer Von Eupen play a game. He rode madly around the camp on his great white stallion trampling to death as many men, women and children as he could.36 I felt nothing. I had passed my apprenticeship. My enemy held captive my soul. When I was able to find sleep, dreams were the only source of finding any sense of release. Though often the dreams turned to nightmares.

I remember waking from one such nightmare in the early hours of the morning. When it was I cannot tell because the days of camp life have largely compacted into one long nightmare. I was back in the ghetto again. It was the winter of 1941 and a typhus epidemic had run wild throughout the ghetto.37 Anna’s mother was seriously ill. Anna too had become sick. I had suddenly been enlisted by the Judenrat for a labour gang. Sometimes we had to leave the ghetto to do maintenance work on Gestapo houses or facilities.38 On one such occasion we were gone for over a week. Upon returning, I vividly remember opening the door of our apartment and finding not familiar faces, but complete strangers! Anna and her mother had died. My father-in-law and the Gruszeckis had all been arrested by the Jewish police for running an illegal mill. They had disappeared forever. Samuel had gone on one of his nightly forays to try to get medicine for his mother. He never returned. The seething anger that I had felt then and which had driven me to join the ghetto resistance39 was now all gone. I awoke abruptly and maybe I was hallucinating. The faces of my wife and son appeared before me. Fleetingly a crack had appeared in my emotional shell. That morning, between two other prisoners in the one bed, I allowed myself to weep.

The problem is that the ‘cracks’ have recently been appearing again. I have lived in Melbourne, Australia, for the last 45 years. After my liberation, I went back to D ¼sseldorf for two years and then finally through the sponsorship of an uncle, obtained a visa to emigrate to Australia. I remarried, had a family and built up a second-hand book business. For these intervening years, I have kept the past hidden. The ‘hard shell’ of survival has stayed with me.40 I felt as though I had been spared against all odds and therefore had a duty to continue to survive. I have assumed for many years that I could not afford the luxury to remember the pain of the past. There has always been a deep-seated fear that if I begin to talk about the annihilation or re-live the events I will go mad or give up the struggle to succeed. However, now that I am old, the nightmares have become worse and the memories are triggered off easily.41 At times the events of Warsaw and Treblinka seem as if they happened yesterday.

The other day my grandson brought his wooden recorder home from school. I wept uncontrollably. A little boy with a white recorder saved me from Treblinka. I had been in Treblinka for nearly three months. I was sure it would not be long before I was selected for the gas chamber. On a bright sunny day in June 1943, I carried the corpse of a little boy to the pits. He had died on the train journey. I noticed he still clutched a descant recorder. I snatched it and thrust it down my shirt. I had become quite proficient on the recorder as a youngster. Soon I was entertaining the guards with German tunes I had learned. Luck again was in my favour as I could play ‘by ear’ and did not need sheet music. From then on I received more rations and was given chocolate and cigarettes for obliging the SS with their musical requests. Before long I found myself in the camp orchestra.

My strength and hope slowly returned. Due to my place in the orchestra I was given lighter duties during the day such as sweeping and cleaning.42 In August 1943 an armed revolt broke out at Treblinka.43 It was violently put down. Within a couple of weeks the camp was closed down and most of us in the orchestra were deported to the KZ44 at Majdanek. I survived another year. Then in August 1944, we were liberated by the Red Army. Just now and then as I look at the face of my grandson, the morphed image of another little boy’s face appears on his. It is the twisted, distorted, lifeless face of someone’s child whom in death saved my life.

Life in Australia was difficult at first. Like all survivors I have had to build my life again. I struggled to do everyday things amidst learning a foreign language and trying to assimilate. Sometimes I felt like screaming out what we had been through; what we had endured. In Australia it seemed as if the Annihilation had never happened. Yet how could I blame anyone here, it was something that happened far from the isolated shores of this wide land. At the same time I was so grateful that Australia had given refuge to survivors. I have become a proud Australian. The freedom in this country seemed incredible. That is why most of us have stayed. This freedom, the freedom to be Jewish, is so precious to us. Too many Australians take their freedom for granted.

I write this account because there is in within me so much that is unfinished. Painful thoughts and uncontrollable feelings well to the surface even as I write. It is as if my Nazi tormentors have risen up from a long period of incubation. There have been times I must admit when I contemplate suicide … 45 Over the years I have been racked with guilt. The question still confronts me: was my survival worth the cost? You see, in surviving I sold my soul to the Nazis. To survive I had to collaborate with the very machinery that was destroying my race. To survive I had to give up all that one associates with being human. Have I really survived? Can one survive the debris of a systematically traumatised soul?

Despite my deepest fears and reservations I am telling my story. I hope in the telling I can exorcise these demons. I also write this story to add to the many stories that bear witness to the Annihilation.46 These stories must become part of a larger canon; a living canon that records the ‘holocausts’ perpetuated against other peoples.47 This canon must ever remain an antidote to a world that so easily forgets its past and consequently its susceptibility to racism and neo-Nazis and other forms of totalitarianism.48 In telling my story and the stories of the countless who did not survive, I hope to remind future generations that humanity must remain forever vigilant against its ability to plumb new depths of evil; perhaps herein lies the key to regaining my sanity and purpose. No race, including Jewish, is immune from this mysterious, latent evil, that given certain circumstances, can emerge with a cathartic rush to destroy the ‘other;’ that is, those who seem different or foreign. Telling the stories of the Annihilation is, at the very least I have decided, a moral duty49 to the millions murdered who cannot speak. The Annihilation is their story. If their story, their suffering and their courage is remembered and passed on, then maybe Yahweh’s rainbow still exists. I could never have said this once, but if their story enables a tolerance of the ‘other’ to emerge from the twilight of the twentieth century, then at least my sisters and brothers did not die in those chambers totally in vain. I think I must decide for this faith and hope. I still have my doubts, but to abandon hope, I know, is to allow evil the victory! “Where was Yahweh in the Annihilation?,” I cried for years.50 Slowly I am beginning to ask an equally valid question: “Where was humanity?”

* * * * *

This story is fictitious, yet it is true. It is based upon historical research and eye-witness accounts of the attempted Shoah (annihilation) of European Jewry. The story is also kept at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick, Victoria. Ruth Adler, Education Officer for the centre, after critically evaluating the story wrote: ‘Kim has succeeded in constructing a fictitious story finely woven around the dates and places which marked the Nazi’s gradual progress towards a “Juden Frei” Europe. The protagonist experiences the fears and anguish appropriate to each stage of the journey. There is a pervasive atmosphere of authenticity throughout the story…. It might please Kim Thoday to learn that his story is much more plausible than most things produced by the “Holocaust Industry”.’

This story has become part of an important journey for me. Most importantly this story is offered as just one small piece in the mosaic of reconciliation between Christians and Jews. I am a Christian. As a Christian I stand in a long tradition. One of the longest shadows that has fallen upon human existence has been cast by my tradition’s heavy hand in tilling the soil of anti-Semitism. By 1941, after millennia of preparation, the soil was ripe for Adolf Hitler to launch his Final Solution. The shadow still lingers, at times menacingly. Of this part of my tradition I am ashamed. The story is partly a way of trying to deal with this sense of shame. Moreover it is a way of offering (albeit too late and too minuscule) an apology to our many Jewish neighbours whose lives are still acutely affected by the Shoah. I believe that there can be little real hope of reconciliation if Christians are not at least prepared to try to see the Shoah from the point of view of those who suffered it. The story is an attempt to do just that. If nothing else it is an appropriate starting point for dialogue. How can we address injustice in our world unless we are prepared to side with those to whom injustice has been done? According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth always sided with the oppressed. It is a monumental irony that while Christianity has often engaged in anti-Semitism over the centuries, its founder was a Jew.

KIM THODAY, HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

http://www.hewett.org.au

Endnotes

1 Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London, 1988. See also Shirer’s description of the Republic’s heyday: 1925-29. Shirer, William L, The Nightmare Years 1930-40, vol. 2, Toronto, 1984, p.117.

2 A pogrom was the intentional massacre of Jewish communities. These occurred throughout the history of Jewish settlement in Europe. See Arnold Zable’s excellent description of the consequences of the uncertain existence of Jews in European history. Zable, Arnold Jewels and Ashes, Melbourne, 1991, pp.11-14. See also Saaroni, Sarah Life Goes on Regardless, Melbourne, 1989, p.viii.

3 In the history of Poland, pogroms against Jews were sporadic and localised. Generally, Jews and Poles co-existed relatively peacefully for centuries. See Lukas, Richard C The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944, Lexington, Kentucky, 1986, p.122.

4 Kolb argues that the Republic’s appointment of the first presidential Cabinet (which led to an explicit political crisis) coincided with the Wall Street Crash, causing the stability of the government to come to an abrupt end. Kolb, op.cit, p.96.

5 Ibid, p.106.

6 This event symbolised the beginning of the Nazification of German culture. Under the direction of Hitler’s propaganda minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels, thousands of German students held a torch-light parade and book burning ceremony opposite the University of Berlin. Books perceived to be at odds with Nazi ideology were thrown in to the flames. That night thousands of books by the world’s great writers were destroyed. Nazi ideology would soon be forced upon all the cultural spheres of German life. See Shirer, William L, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, London, 1969, p.300.

7 This determined attitude was held by most Jews in Germany, especially those who were seen to be loyal and productive citizens. In WW1, 100,000 Jews had served the K ¤iser. Assimilation of the Jews into German society had been widespread (including intermarriage). For these Jews, Germany was their home. It is little wonder that they did not wish to leave. See Gilbert, Martin Final Journey, New York, 1979, pp.11-12. About the failure of Nazi emigration policies see Carr, William “A Final Solution? Nazi Policy towards the Jews,” History Today, Nov 1988, p.31.

8 Dawidowicz, Lucy S The War Against the Jews 1933-45, London, 1990, p.203. At this point in time the NSDAP introduced new anti-Semitic legislation known as the Nuremberg Laws. These laws resulted in the total disenfranchisement of German Jews.

9 Gilbert op.cit, p.18. The number of Polish Jews in Germany at the time was approximately 15,000.

10Ibid, p.18.

11 Saaroni, op.cit, p.viii.

12 Gilbert, op.cit, p.117.

13 Poliakov, Leon Harvest of Hate, London, 1960, p.86.

14 Krausnick, Helmut and Broszat, Martin Anatomy of the SS State, London, 1973, pp.77- 83. The Einsatzgruppen were specially trained assault squads, organised by Himmler and Heydrich. Their task was to follow the German troops into Poland in 1939, round up the Jews and force them into ghettos. Two years later they were retrained into death squads and played an important role in both Hitler’s war on Russia and his Final Solution. See Shirer, op.cit, p.1141. See also Speilvogel, Jackson J, Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History, New Jersey, 1988, pp.273-5.

15 Ibid, p.286. The Jews of Warsaw were a closely knit and highly established community. This only intensified in the ghetto. Many of these saw the Jewish refugees as a threat to their already overcrowded and oppressive conditions.

16 Judenrats were established in all the ghettos. They were Jewish councils whose members were chosen by the tax-paying Jews in the ghettos. In November 1939 the Nazi authorities took control of them. See Rothchild, Sylvia (ed) Voices from the Holocaust, New York, 1981.

17 Poliakov, op.cit, p.86.

18 Ibid, p.88.

19 Ibid, p.87.

20 Ibid, pp.92-3.

21 Eisen, George Children and Play in the Holocaust, Amherst, 1990, p.24. See also Poliakov, op.cit, p.90.

22 Ibid, p.93.

23 Trunk, Isaiah Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation, New York, 1972, pp.43-60. In November 1940 after the ghetto had been sealed off, a 3,000 strong order of Jewish police was created by the Nazis, to replace Polish police in the ghetto precincts.

24 Ibid, p.475. The Nazis also promoted the rumour that the Jewish ghetto police was an initiative of the Judenrat.

25 Ibid, p.528. Sources, contemporary to the events or post-Holocaust, point to the negative or hostile attitude of ghetto Jews to the Judenrats.

26 Poliakov, op.cit, p.89. and p.99.

27 Gilbert, op.cit, p.119.

28 Ibid, p.120.

29 Ibid This was actually the road to the gas chamber. The SS referred to it as Himmelstrasse – the road to Heaven – and the end of it – Himmelfahrt – the Ascension.

30 Speilvogel, op.cit, p.279. This was standard procedure in most of the extermination camps.

31 Poliakov, op.cit, p.172. It was rare for a selection to be made from deportees from the Warsaw ghetto.

32 The following description of existence in Treblinka is based upon the following sources:

Gilbert op.cit, pp.27-36. and pp.117-125. Grunsberger, Otto Choice of Profession, Melbourne, 1990, pp.96.

Lanzmann, Claude Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust – The Complete Text of the Film, New York, 1985, pp.107-171. Poliakov, op.cit, pp.167-178 and pp.187-192. Spielvogel, op.cit, pp.289-292.

Steiner, Jean-Francois Treblinka, London, 1967, pp.161-171.

33 Kapos were Jews who had been appointed by the SS as supervisors in the camps.

34 This was a common feature caused by “death panic”.

35 Poliakov op.cit, p.189.

36 This was an actual event. See Gilbert op.cit, p.122.

37 This outbreak of typhus killed 15, 749 people in the Warsaw Ghetto during 1941. See Poliakov op.cit, p.87.

38 Ibid, p.87.

39 For a description of the resistance movement in the Warsaw Ghetto, which eventually caused the 1943 Uprising, see ibid, pp.193-201.

40 Gill, Anton The Journey Back from Hell, London, 1989, p.9.

41 Ibid, p.15.

42 Ibid, p.9. Is a person was lucky enough to be given one of the rare light duties in the camp this greatly increased the chance of survival.

43 Steiner op.cit, pp.315-333.

44 KZ was the German acronym for concentration camp. Hundreds of such camps existed throughout Germany and Poland. Although thousands of Jews and others perished in these camps they were not technically death camps, but rather functioned as labour camps.

45 Gill op.cit, p.8.

46 Shoah in Hebrew.

47 It is of the utmost importance to realise, however, that the Jewish Holocaust is, in a number of ways, unique in human history. Most profoundly of all, this was the first time in recorded history that a nation state systematically used its powers – bureaucracy, technology, judiciary, scientific, arts, media, police, military – to attempt to eliminate every single person designated a Jew. The Holocaust was not, therefore, one genocide amongst many. Genocide is the project of eliminating a nationality or race usually for ideological or strategic reasons. Genocide means the destruction of a race through attacking its culture and heritage or through assimilation or deportation. The main strategy of genocide is to eliminate the opponents’ leaders and intelligensia. The Holocaust plumbed the depths of an evil that for the most part defies explanation. It was not genocide; it was annihilation. The assertion, ‘you have no right to live amongst us’ became, ‘you have no right to live.’ To further conclude that the Holocaust was the end product of the Jews yet again being the ‘scapegoats,’ is a fundamental misunderstanding of the event (and to some extent the phenomenon of anti-Semitism throughout history). The Holocaust was the product of the deeply entrenched traditions of anti-Semitism and Hitler’s adoption of Social Darwinism and his own ideology (?) of Race.

48 Hitler was no madman, as people often na ¯vely conclude. He astutely realised that his own demise would not curtail that latent human evil which desires the destruction of the ‘other.’ Not long before his suicide he wrote: ‘Centuries may lapse, but from the ruins of our cities and monuments will rise a new hatred for that people to whom we owe all this, they who are ultimately responsible: international Jewry and its acolytes!’ See Fleming, Gerald Hitler and the Final Solution, Oxford, 1986, p.186.

49 I borrow this expression from the text of Paul Ricoeur’s address on the Holocaust given at the Interfaith Memorial Service in Chigaco on Yom Ha-Shoah in 1989. Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination, Minneapolis, 1995, p.209.

50 This is an appropriate question and must never be diminished. Perhaps the most powerful context I have ever read where this question is raised is in Elie Wiesel’s haunting account of the hanging of a child in the Buna camp. Elie Wiesel Night, London, 1981, pp.75-7. Paul Ricoeur rightly argues, ‘Whoever accuses God is far less godless than the one who does not care at all about God.’ Ricoeur op.cit, p.292.