Posts tagged Yom HaShoah

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19, 1943): Part III

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“God, why do we have to suffer all this?” Diary of Mary Berg, June 15, 1943

Warsaw Ghetto burning.

I have previously written about the Warsaw Ghetto several times already—primarily as seen through the eyes of teenage diarist Mary Berg.

Part I described the establishment of the Ghetto in September 1940; the lethal living conditions which consigned thousands of inhabitants to death by disease or slow starvation; the start of Grossaktion Warschau on July 25, 1942, sending many inhabitants to their death at Treblinka, a Vernichtungslager (death camp), a process that murdered 250,000 to 300,000 Jews within the space of 60 days.

The deportations to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto were suspended for a brief time (September 21, 1942 – January 18, 1943).

Part II explained how the resumption of deportations was met for the first time with concerted resistance on the part of the Ghetto’s remaining inhabitants, now numbering approximately 63,000 men, women, and children.  Unlike the initial wave of deportations, where the Germans promised—and the inhabitants believed—”resettlement” to labor camps “in the East,” by 1943 the existence, and purpose, of Treblinka was well known.  According to Berg, “Many Jews barricaded themselves in their houses and fired at the manhunters.”  Others deliberately infiltrated columns of rounded-up Jews, and, at a signal, stepped out and attacked the Nazis.  After a few days, the Germans had only been able to collect 5,000—6,000 Ghetto dwellers for transport, at considerable cost to their own forces, and the Germans elected to withdraw from the Ghetto.

The Ghetto’s remaining population now engaged in feverish activity in anticipation of renewed German efforts to collect and deport the remaining inhabitants.  These survivors had no illusions.  According to Berg, “They knew that their fate was sealed, that the Nazis had decided to exterminate the Jewish population completely.”  Water, food, and medicines were stockpiled; bunkers prepared; arms smuggled in from the outside.  It was only a question of time before the Germans would return, more determined than ever.

That day arrived 80 years ago today, April 19, 1943, a date chosen by the Nazis because it was the eve of the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

The Germans came with tanks, heavy artillery, flamethrowers.  They employed members of the police, Wehrmacht, Gestapo, and Waffen-SS, among others.  When the defenders refused to surrender, the German’s commander, Jürgen Stroop* ordered all structures in the Ghetto to be systematically burned and/or destroyed, block by block.  Berg observes that, “For many nights, the fire of the ghetto could be seen for miles around Warsaw.”  The suppression of the uprising officially ended May 16, 1943, although sporadic skirmishes with holdouts continued as late as June 5, 1943.  In the end, all but eight buildings in the Warsaw Ghetto were destroyed.  Approximately 7,000 Jews were killed during the uprising, many via suffocation from smoke inhalation or from being burned alive.  The remaining population (50,000) were captured and deported to the death camps of Treblinka and Majdanek.

In this iconic photo, women and children evacuate their bunker and surrender to German authorities

Today, with the memory of Yom HaShoah fresh in our minds, it is fitting to reflect on those who fought and died for the honor of the Jewish people.  As eloquently commemorated by Mary Berg:

“The Battle of the Ghetto lasted for five weeks.  Its starved, exhausted defenders fought heroically against the powerful Nazi war machine.  They did not wear uniforms, they had no ranks, they received no medals for their superhuman exploits.  There only distinction was death in the flames.  All of them are Unknown Soldiers, heroes who have no equals.  How horrible it is to think of all this—so many relatives and friends among them. . . . I have been standing at my window for the last few days [in an internment camp in France] talking with the newly arrived internees [from the Ghetto].  I drank in their words avidly, and my thoughts carried me over there, to the burning houses of the ghetto where I had lived for three years with all these heroes.  Every now and then I felt faint, as if my very heart had withered. . . . “

Diary of Mary Berg, June 15, 1943

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.

TO BE CONTINUED

* Stroop was hanged for his crimes in Warsaw’s Mokotów Prison on March 6, 1952.

Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Today marks Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.  We vow never to forget, and never to let it happen again.

Today also happens to be the 77th anniversary of the final entry in Odd Nansen’s diary, From Day to Day:

“What on earth am I to write?  It’s as impossible today as on all the other days that have passed in one long whirl of unreality and fairy tale.  I am no longer in Germany!  I am in Denmark, at a country house; Møgelkær is its name, outside Hortens, and I’ve already been here more than a week!  It’s unbelievable.  And what have I not experienced in that week? Only it seems so hopelessly impossible to describe.  Where am I to begin, where am I to stop, what am I to write?”

Only a week earlier Tom Buergenthal experienced his own liberation, although he approached it much more cautiously:

“I saw some soldiers get off a military vehicle and walk towards the center of the Appellplatz [roll call plaza] in the direction of the big gong.  They did not look like the SS and wore uniforms I had never seen before.  But I was still afraid to move.  Then I heard the sound of the camp’s gong.  One of the soldiers was striking it as hard as he could, while another was yelling: ‘Hitler kaput! Hitler kaput!’ They threw their caps in the air and performed what looked like a wild dance.

…..

“The Soviet soldiers who first entered Sachsenhausen had told us that we were free, that we had been liberated.  I could not quite grasp what that meant.  I had never really thought of liberation as such.  My sole concern had been to survive from one day to the next.

….

“After the Russians had left, all of us who had greeted them around the camp gong started for the SS kitchen.  I followed very slowly, some fifteen or twenty yards behind, always ready to take cover. I still could not believe this supposed liberation was real and not some trick concocted by the SS.  They probably staged this liberation in order to draw us out of our hiding places.

….

“Maybe we really have been liberated, I thought as I climbed on the desk and pulled down Hitler’s picture.  I threw it on the floor, shattering the glass and the frame.  I spat on it and stepped on his face so hard that my feet began to hurt, but still I went on until the picture was torn to pieces.”

For both Odd Nansen and Tom Buergenthal the last week of April marked the start of yet another journey before liberation would mean anything.  In Nansen’s case, it would still be several weeks before he was reunited with his family in Oslo (June 9, 1945).  Tommy’s purgatory would last much longer: more than 18 months before he was miraculously reunited with his mother (December 6, 1946).

Recently I was laid up for a while with a (thankfully mild) case of COVID.  I decided to spend the time curled up with a good history book, and I chose Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 by one of my favorite authors, Max Hastings.  If there is one theme that runs throughout the book, it was the German people’s collective belief, until the very final days of the war, and despite all evidence to the contrary, that Germany would still somehow emerge victorious.  As Hastings writes:

“At the summit of the Nazi leadership, fantasy still held sway.  At one of Hitler’s conferences in February [1945], [Albert] Speer drew [Admiral] Dönitz aside and sought to persuade him that the military situation was now hopeless, that steps must be taken to mitigate the catastrophe facing Germany.  ‘I am here to represent the Navy,’ responded the Grand-Admiral curtly. ‘All the rest is not my business.  The Führer knows what he is doing.’  Even at a much humbler level in the nation’s hierarchy, fantastic delusions persisted.  After Cologne fell [early March 1945], Sergeant Otto Cranz . . . was surprised to hear one of his comrades insist mechanically, yet with utter conviction: ‘My Führer must have a plan.  Defeat is impossible!’”

Indeed, Hastings is at something of a loss to explain how Josef Goebbels’s propaganda could “pervert[ ] the reasoning processes of one of the best-educated societies on earth.”  As of 1939 German doctors, chemists and physicists had garnered far more Nobel Prizes in their respective fields than any other country in the world. German culture was the envy of the world.

And yet, lest we scoff at the insanity described by Hastings, let us remember that people today deny the Holocaust—I’ve met them; that people deny the Sandy Hook school shootings—I’ve met them (and Alex Jones has yet to face the consequences of his actions almost 10 years later); people deny the efficacy of vaccines (my wife and I, fully vaccinated and boosted, recovered quickly.  A friend in our town—educated, successful—who was militantly anti-mask and anti-vaccine, was found dead in his home last fall, Ivermectin by his bedside); and the list goes on.

As Primo Levi was at pains to remind us:

“It happened.  Therefore, it can happen again.”

But it can only happen if we, like the majority of Germans in 1945, lose sight of the truth.

May 2: Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)

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Last week, while on a book tour through CT and NY, I was privileged to spend May 2—Yom HaShoah—at my high school alma mater, Notre Dame of West Haven, CT. In the morning I taught  23 Seniors in the school’s Holocaust class.  Notre Dame, a boys school run by the Brothers of the Holy Cross, has had a Holocaust course as part of its curriculum for over 30 years. The teacher, Matt Milano, had his students read selected diary entries from Odd Nansen’s From Day to Day, choose the most powerful sentence in the excerpt, and then come up with three questions based on his reading. I enjoyed spending time, however brief, discussing Nansen’s diary with the young scholars.

Addressing the Seniors and Juniors

 I then addressed the entire Junior and Senior classes. I drew a comparison between Anne Frank and Thomas Buergenthal, two children caught in the vortex of the Holocaust. Both arrived in Auschwitz at roughly the same time (August 1944). They never met so far as we know, which is not surprising considering that Auschwitz’s population at that point exceeded 60,000, or more than the entire population of West Haven, CT.

Anne was soon sent on the Bergen-Belsen, where she died in early 1945.  Tommy was later evacuated to Sachsenhausen, where he survived through the intervention of Odd Nansen. I compared the “what might have been” of Anne’s life—a gifted writer whose diary, composed when she was younger than many in the audience, has sold millions of copies and been translated into 60 languages, with the reality of Tom’s life and career—a distinguished career dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of human rights everywhere.

I challenged the students to follow Nansen’s example, and change a life for the better.  I reminded them that Notre Dame’s motto is “Character, Confidence,” and most importantly, “Compassion.”

Evening Presentation

Later in the evening I addressed parents, alumni (including some old classmates from ND ’72) and interested third parties. The evening began with a welcome by school President Robert Curis, and a prayer by Rabbi Alvin Wainhaus of Congregation Or Shalom.  Along with my many memories of that special day, I will cherish the yahrzeit candle that was lit for the duration of my talk.

yahrzeit candle

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