"Testimony of the Human Spirit" Chapter 3: Genocide
Transcript
Speaker 1
Hope that is born with each human being is always there, never lost. The hope? My family, it was small. My father, my brother, my mother and I.
Friday nights were absolutely incredibly beautiful. I still remember that when my mom lit the candles and that white, starched tablecloth was reflecting on her face. My father would say, “Your mother is still the most beautiful woman. She's my bride.” I don't forget this. My father, with so-called little words, he explained life to me. I think he taught me how to love. That night, before we were taken away to the ghetto, a Romanian peasant came to my father and said, “This girl is like my daughter. Let her stay with me. I'll bring her up as my own daughter”, my father was thinking “Maybe you want to go because we didn't know what will happen to us”. And I said, “No, where my family goes, I go too.” I would never regret this action. I was happy in the ghetto because I was with my family.
Speaker 2
I had a friend from the Jewish Council in Delft. He said I'll warn you when they come to get you. “You got the warning”, he said. “The Germans in town, in trucks and he said you better get the hell out.” And we took off the stars of our jackets and we walked out in little groups, not all together. My father and maybe up ahead and my mother with the two brothers after. They decided to follow my grandfather's advice. I was 16 years old when I went into hiding. The 23rd of October. When we walked out of our home. When I lost our home. My family then.
Speaker 3
Brother and father were taken to the labor camp. They tortured them. They starved them, they beat them. Somehow, my mother and I managed to sneak into the camp. My father, he told me that Polish peasant is going to come and take us to hide. I'm saying, what about you and my Michael, my brother. And he says, well, we we we're not going now.We'll go later. I said, what do you mean later? I said you're going to die here. You want us to be saved and you're going to die. I said I'm going to die here with you and I'm not going. I didn't want to be alive without my father, and I knew if he stays behind, he's never going to survive. He said no, you go. I promise you I will survive as well. He kept saying that always. There was no other way. This was it, about to be liquidated. I finally agreed to go with this person.
Speaker 2
Margaritis Oscom, Dutch police officer, the head of the Resistance also. The only good member of a family that was all Nazi, anti-Semitic, dangerous. He was the only good one. My mother talked with him and said, “You know, I have a son and he's hidden on the farm and he's so desperate, so lonely and frightened.” He said he had a place for me, but it was very dangerous. Took me to a parcel of woods outside of his village. There was secret path that led to a Hut. And in the hut this group of intellectual Christians who had decided to resist the Germans. Somebody came to the hut and said, listen, we've intercepted a message. Germans have become suspicious. I was given a weapon 9mm, mouser with another man. One of the resistance men. About 5:00 in the morning and we heard noise is coming up the road, truck wheels crunching the gravel. That had German commands, there was equipment and the machine guns. We ran back to the hut. We warned them and pulled the blankets of them, and screamed and yelled. And they're here to assess, wake up, save yourselves. And we saw that they were all up, we ran and we ran and we ran and we ran and ran until we, you know, we couldn't run any longer.
Speaker 4
The transport was going in June of 1942 to Belgium. Versus was a death camp.
Speaker 4
When the first transport started, the ghetto was surrounded by the Germans and Polish police, and nobody was allowed to get out. Whoever didn't have a valid paper was supposed to go in on this transport. I received the papers to stay with my mother. She was 46 years old at the time and she didn't get the papers. I was scared. My mother, they might take her. So, we hid. I say you're not going nowhere you're staying right here. Some of us believe the same going to live another day, and especially when my mother was still with me. I am going to protect her as long as I can until the last minute. In Belgium, over 600,000 Jews lost their lives.
Speaker 3
We came into this little peasant’s house. A chicken coop. Chicken started flying around. And then he opened up a trap door to a hole about 10 to 13 feet under the chicken coop. Dark, just clay, clay all around, sort of clay and a ladder. And the wooden ladder, he says, “Just go down that ladder and that's where you're going to be.” And we came down, we saw the six other people, this family. I started looking around and I saw two holes. Which were dug to allow oxygen to come in. That night was the last night I saw the outside world outside of this this hole in the ground or grave in the ground. I can't describe this feeling of fear and hopelessness. I had never thought we would survive. I was convinced we're never going to make it. So that's where we spent nine months.
Speaker 5
I shall determine with what means the ghetto will be cleansed of Jews, said Hans Biebow. Nazi official of the Lodz Ghetto. In the end, we must burn out this bubonic plague. In the spring of 1942, the Nazis ordered over 400 ghettos to be liquidated.
Speaker 3
Few weeks after we entered the bunker, the peasant came down the ladder one day and gave us this horrible news, said the camp was liquidated. My father was there, my brother, my uncle. There's no one left. All the Jews remaining Jews in the camp, they were still alive. Were taken to the town graves and shot.
Speaker 4
The 12th of March 1943, there was an order. The ghetto will be liquidated. 4500 was shipped to Auschwitz and went straight to the gas chamber. Commander gave an order for his men to select 150 men and girls to clean. We were standing there and waiting all 150 of us. Then the men in charge of the deportation, whose name was Hans. Hans said, “Don't you know the transport went already?”, the commander said, “But I kept those men so they can clean up the ghetto.” Hans looked at us again. He said, “Too many cut it in half.” We were ordered every second person to step one step forward. The first line 5 at a time, went around the corner. The name of the corner of the street was Vita Skwatsha. Five at a time, they were shot. The whole front row of 75 people were shot. The rest of us were ordered to undress the other 75 and throw their bodies on the throat. And surrounded by about a dozen Germans. We were walked to class.
Speaker 1
In the cattle train. We were taken away from the castle. Old people, young people. Somebody had to stand and we alternated. Not my father. My father never sat in these three days. Day and night he would look out in the window, the only window. He lifted me one time on his shoulder to have some fresh air. And he said, “The war will be over soon. And we'll be together.” The last words. That was the last conversation, what he said.
Speaker 4
My mother got sick. I gave money to one of my friends. I said bring me oranges. Oranges, you couldn't get in Plaszow. He got me oranges for my mother. Four oranges. And I squeezed it in her mouth. I thought maybe this is going to help her when she was practically dead. My mother died 8 days after we were in Plascow. But I had the privilege of burying her.
Speaker 4
In the mass grave, we buried her in her clothes, not naked, buried her the best that we thought. This was the most difficult day that I had in my whole life until today. From the day I was born for the 79 years, this was the worst day of my life.
Speaker 1
We arrived to Auschwitz. The wood doors opened of the wagon. And I heard terrible noises left, right, left, right. The minute he stepped out from the back and we saw a guy like a conductor with a button left, right, left, right.
Speaker 1
Men and women separated. Different direction. My father he stayed his one arm around my brother and he saved my brother, never looked back. My father, my brother, they will put next day to work. My brother, they shot him in front of my father. Somebody else had to take him away. Pull him away. And my father went on working. He had to. I never believed that I will not come home. And I really, truly believed that my father would come home. One week before the legal ending of the Second World War. He died. We got typhoid fever and he was gone.
Speaker 5
Jews who were fit enough were sent to slave labor camps where they were worked to death. The majority of Jews were sent to death camps and went directly to the gas chambers.
Speaker 1
We saw the old people and the young people who had a child going to the left. Immediately we were dragged to the right. And then we went directly to a shower while we went really to a shower. The others went to the gas chambers and we didn't notice. We had no idea.
This was the final solution of the Hungarian. Jews.
Speaker 5
Up to 2500 people at a time were packed behind hermetically sealed doors and gassed. Their bodies were taken to the crematorium to be burned.
Speaker 1
We saw the women cutting hair. My mother looked at me after I was shaved and said, “Where is my child?” And then we picked up our shoes and the dress, a long Gray dress. I had a number on my left arm. 55571 and my mother has 5572. From there on, we didn't have names, only numbers, like animals.
Speaker 2
My mother was caught. She was inspected by Gestapo on the train, and he recognized specialist, recognized tiny little fault, her identity card and harassed her. You sent to Westerbork Dutch transit camp. In the prison and she sent a little picture of herself to me. It said for my big son, for my big son.
Speaker 2
She disappeared. We didn't know. There was the last sign of life.
Speaker 3
The trap door opens up and that chicken coop and down the ladder comes. My father and my brother.
I thought I was seeing things. I mean, I thought it was some miracle, I said, “How did you make it? That camp was liquidated. Everybody was shot”. They told us the story they were taken to the exclude of the town. They were asked to dig their own graves, and they were about to be shot. My father was standing in front of his own grave and next to him was his brother in law. This SS man made an announcement. All of the Jews who were tailors, barbers and shoemakers should step aside and walk across to the other side of the road. My father, being none of these things, realized this was opportunity to save himself, raises his hand and says I'm a baker. But before he left, he started to tug on his brother in law's back to say, like, come with me. Just cross the road with me and his brother-in-law was like stone to the ground, completely incapable moving. He was in such a state of fear that he couldn't move to save his life. And he was. My father went across by himself and then saw all the other Jews shot in front of him. And fall into the grave right in front of them.
Speaker 5
This is not a sanitarium, but a German concentration camp, Karl Fritz, camp manager of Auschwitz, told his prisoners upon arrival. There is only one exit through the crematorium chimney. 90% of all Jews arriving in Auschwitz were gassed within hours. For those surviving the selection process. The average lifespan was less than three months. Prisoners were savagely beaten to work faster. Anyone attempting to relieve themselves during work was executed. Prisoners were made to carry the dead back to camp. Even corpses had to be present at roll call. At Birkenau, crude wooden barracks built to hold 48 horses housed 800 human beings.
Speaker 4
And we're sleeping, each man between the legs of another man.
Speaker 1
Five in a row. Close to each other. If anybody wanted to move the whole row had to move.
Speaker 4
If we wake up the next morning and somebody was dead next to you, you could hardly move. But you have 5-6 people going to his pocket to look for a piece of bread.
Speaker 1
There were so many who died, you know next to us from one day to another from. Paratyphoid or malnutrition. My mother, she used to wake me up at night. “Are you sleeping? Are you breathing?” She would wake me up. “Mom, let me sleep.” “But I want to know if you are alive.”
Speaker 3
My mother, she wanted to give all the food to me and my brother. She knew we were younger, we needed food more and she starved herself to death. Almost. No, I didn't take any of the food. I would not accept it. But my brother was starving so much he took food from her. And so, she became more and more emaciated as time went on. And by the time we left the bunker, she was not able to walk.
Speaker 1
They starved us. They gave us just as much as we needed for keeping us alive. And you know, you forget completely that you are a human being. You live from one meal to another. Maybe that will be enough. To cope with hunger.
Speaker 1
Hunger is a terrible thing. You can only think of survival of one hour to another.
Speaker 4
We arrive in Gross-Rosen. And then we were asked to undress. It became very cold this night. We were standing there for better than two days. We were standing and freezing and warming up, and one body against another. Standing naked couldn't sit down. Then we were marched over a man-made lake. We saw people floating and swimming in the lake. The floating one were not alive anymore. They were making probably some experiments on them. We were told the lifespan in Gross-Rosenfor you. Is 21 days. In the 18th day. By Sherlock. The deportation of Gross Rosen begun because the Russians were not far away.
Speaker 1
It was completely white Christmas or white. And the call started. This girl tried to steal a piece of bread and the guard caught her. They got the water on her. It froze on her. We were already in our tents. We just heard what's going on. And when this happened. One more girl and I got out from the tent and begged the guy let her come home. We bring her own. We asked just to let her in just to save her life, not to freeze, he said. You don't know what this girl did. She ruined all the German discipline and reputation. Let her die right here.
Speaker 4
About 20,000 Jew were killed in Plaszow. We had to dig out all the bodies from mass grave. Put them on a stack of wood. And burn them. When we took them out from the grave, the smell was incredible. The bodies fell apart. But we have to do the job under a watchful eye of assess who had masks on their faces. They did not want to leave any trace of the atrocities they committed.
Speaker 1
The Russians are coming. They evacuated the camp because they didn't want to show what happens in Jewish prisoners camp. It was January 19th, 1945. That's my birthday. I was 18, and we were standing in road, selecting people who would be able to walk. We call it death march. When my mother told me, “Darling, this is your birthday's 18th birthday. I have a little present for you.” And she handed it to me a little package. Wrapped in an old newspaper. I took it in my hand. Opened it. I saw three slices of bread put together in layers like a birthday cake. With margarine. So I asked right away, “Mom, where did you get the bread?” Well, we, we didn't eat it and we have it here.” I will never forget that present of my life, the most precious. And the most dear to me how she saves from her own ration and gave it to me to have a birthday present. Pretty soon I couldn't think too much of this, we started the Death March.
Speaker 4
We were on a March. We were marching from town to town. I had to push the wagon of food for the Germans. Every few minutes I was being hit with a butt of a gun in my back. And I couldn't take it any longer. I saw a barn. and I said to this friend, I am going to hide in the bar. Come with me. We went and we had in the eaves. Of the barn. Another girls and guys had in the same barn and the Germans, they started looking at the barn with pitchforks, with bayonets. They found them, they beat him without mercy. They killed them. Then they started hollering out. We give you our German word of honor. Whoever comes out, we won't kill. Then we just gonna shoot him. And a few others came out 12 were killed and buried in Ploughman.
Speaker 1
Out of thousand women probably 150 were able to walk, leaving behind the dead ones and the very sick ones. Who could not walk? They didn't have to shoot them. If they couldn't work, they dropped dead on the walk.
Speaker 5
Behind barbed wire fences, stripped of human dignity. They were murdered. Mothers and fathers, children thrown into fiery pits. They these tattooed with numbers. Made to vanish from the earth. The Nazis committed the greatest mass murder in human history. They slaughtered over 14 million people. 1/4 of a million Gypsies, 2 and a half million Poles. 3,000,000 Soviet prisoners of war. And over 6,000,000 Jews. The Nazis murdered two out of every three Jews in Europe. In the small towns of Poland just one out of every 100 Jews lived through the war.
Speaker 4
How could anybody desecrate those people who died? The children, who never had a life for themselves, the mothers and fathers who look for their future, who saw them being killed.
Speaker 1
Each loss that we felt was worse, worse. They died next to us, these people. They said don't let us die without speaking up. Whoever survived this massacre. This terrible, cruel world. If you survive, speak up.
Speaker 6
We have lived in numberless towns and villages and in too many of them we have endured cruel suffering. Some we have forgotten, others are seared into our memory a wound. That does not heal and so many, so many at Dachau, at Deffenbaugh, at Piaski at Auschwitz, the list is endless.
Speaker 7
On the empty place surrounded the barbed wire, shoes are being assembled. Men's shoes, children shoes, women's shoes. The shoes are growing into a mountain. The mountain is gonna hit the sky and ask God why?
Why?
Speaker 4
If you forget your history, you are condemned to repeat it again.
Speaker 6
We all say Shalom. They are gone, but we who remain must never forget them. That a million prayers rise wherever righteous people worship together in peace and let 1,000,000 candles glow against the darkness of those unfinished lives.