"WE ARE THE LAST WITNESSES"

The murder of millions of people in the camps was accompanied by plunder on an unprecedented scale. All of the possessions of victims were exploited, either for the personal enrichment of the perpetrators or for redistribution amongst the German population. When Majdanek concentration camp in Poland was liberated by the Red Army in 1944, thousands of pairs of shoes were discovered, prompting this reflection from the Yiddish poet Moses Schulstein.

I saw a mountain
Higher than Mt. Blanc
And more Holy than the Mountain of Sinai.
Not in a dream. It was real.
On this world this mountain stood.
Such a mountain I saw — of Jewish shoes in Majdanek.

Such a mountain — such a mountain I saw.
And suddenly, a strange thing happened.
The mountain moved…
And the thousands of shoes arranged themselves
By size — by pairs — and in rows — and moved.

Hear! Hear the march.
Hear the shuffle of shoes left behind — that which remained.
From small, from large, from each and every one.
Make way for the rows — for the pairs,
For the generations — for the years.
The shoe army — it moves and moves.

“We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers.
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam.
And because we are only made of stuff and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.

We shoes — that used to go strolling in the market
Or with the bride and groom to the chuppah,
We shoes from simple Jews, from butchers and carpenters,
From crocheted booties of babies just beginning to walk and go
On happy occasions, weddings, and even until the time
Of giving birth, to a dance, to exciting places to life…
Or quietly — to a funeral.
Unceasingly we go. We tramp.
The hangman never had the chance to snatch us into his
Sack of loot — now we go to him.
Let everyone hear the steps, which flow as tears,
The steps that measure out the judgment.”

I saw a mountain
Higher than Mt. Blanc
And more Holy than the Mountain of Sinai.

Approximately 59,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered in Majdanek. Their shoes survived because they were valued more highly by the Nazis than the lives of their owners.

Photo: piles of victims’ shoes at Majdanek, discovered after liberation, 1944; Yad Vashem

Poem: Michael Berenbaum (ed.), From Holocaust to new life : a documentary volume depicting the proceedings and events of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Washington, D.C., April 1983-Nissan 5743 (American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, 1985)

 

70 VOICES PODCAST: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CAMPS

 

In the sixth of our weekly podcasts, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws talks to archaeologist Dr Caroline Sturdy Colls about her pioneering research on Nazi camps and its implications for our understanding of the Holocaust. 

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast. 

 
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"AN UNWRITTEN AND NEVER TO BE WRITTEN PAGE OF GLORY"

One of the most challenging questions raised by the Holocaust is that of what made someone a perpetrator. The SS leader Heinrich Himmler, shown here with his daughter Gudrun, was the chief organiser of the Holocaust. In October 1943 he delivered a speech to senior SS officers in Poznań in Poland.

I also want to speak to you here, in complete frankness, about a very grave matter. We can talk about this openly amongst ourselves, yet we will never talk about it in public...

I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people... Most of you will know what it means when 100 corpses lie together, when 500 lie there or when there are 1000. To have seen this through, and – except for cases of human weakness – to have remained decent, that has made us hard. This is an unwritten and never to be written page of glory in our history, since we know how difficult it would be for us today if – with the bombing raids, the burdens and deprivations of the war – we still had the Jews in every city as secret saboteurs, agitators and troublemakers…

Overall, we can say that we have fulfilled this most difficult of tasks for the love of our people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character.

The fact that Himmler and other leading Nazis who orchestrated the Holocaust genuinely believed that they were serving the cause of humanity through mass murder is one of the most challenging and troubling aspects of the history of the Holocaust.

Photo: Heinrich Himmler with his daughter Gudrun, 1932; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of James Blevins

Speech: Trials of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, XXIX (International Military Tribunal, 1947)

 

"TODAY SUNDAY, EXCELLENT LUNCHEON"

The murderers of the Holocaust were not simply ideological fanatics or uneducated thugs. Dr Johann Paul Kremer was a professor of anatomy who served with the SS at Auschwitz-Birkenau in late 1942. He performed selections of prisoners, choosing who was fit to work and who would be sent straight to their death. Alongside these Sonderaktions, he extracted organs from victims. He recorded these activities in his diary alongside descriptions of everyday events. The diary offers a powerful insight into the psychological mentality of a perpetrator.

6 September 1942
Today Sunday, excellent luncheon: tomato soup, half a chicken with potatoes and red cabbage (20 g fat), dessert and wonderful vanilla ice-cream. After the meal the new medical officer, Obersturmführer Wirths, who comes originally from Waldbröl was welcomed. Sturmbannführer Fietsch in Prague was his former regimental doctor.

I have now been in the camp for a week but I still have not completely got rid of the fleas in my hotel room despite all the counter-measures with Flit (Cuprex) etc…In the evening at 8.00 went to another Sonderaktion outside.

9 September 1942
This morning received excellent news from my lawyer in Münster, Prof. Dr Hallermann: from the first of this month I am divorced from my wife. I can now see life in all its colours again. A black curtain has risen from my life! Was later present at corporal punishment of eight prisoners and an execution with a small-bore rifle.

Kremer was captured after the war, as shown in the photograph. He was sentenced to death for his crimes in Auschwitz by a Polish court in 1947 but this was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1958 and died peacefully of natural causes in 1965.

Photo: Johann Paul Kramer following his arrest, post-war; Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu

Diary extracts: Ernst Klee et al. (eds.), “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Konecky & Konecky, 1991)

 

"MY CHANCES OF PROMOTION WOULD BE SPOILT"

The majority of those who murdered Jews were regular German policemen, such as those shown in the photograph. After the war, many claimed that they would have been shot if they had refused to take part. However, this was not true. As the following post-war testimony from Werner Schwenker, a low-ranking detective who took part in the shooting of Jews in Kołomyja in Poland, makes clear, other factors influenced their decision to become murderers.

The reason I did not say to Leideritz [his senior officer] that I could not take part in these things was that I was afraid that Leideritz and others would think I was a coward. I was worried that I would be affected adversely in some way in the future if I allowed myself to be seen as too weak. I did not want Leideritz or other people to get the impression that I was not as hard as an SS man ought to have been...

I carried out orders not because I was afraid I would be punished by death if I didn’t. I knew of no case and still know of no case today where one of us was sentenced to death because he did not want to take part in the execution of Jews... I thought that I ought not to say anything to Leideritz because I did not want to be seen in a bad light, and I thought that if I asked him to release me from having to take part in the executions it would be over for me as far as he was concerned and my chances of promotion would be spoilt or I would not be promoted at all.

Schwenker’s testimony is one of many which reminds us that the perpetrators had choices and illustrates how eminently human motives, such as ambition and peer pressure, could lead someone to become a murderer.

Photo: German policemen in Poland, 1941; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Michael O’Hara/Bernhardt Colberg

Testimony: Ernst Klee et al. (eds.), “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Konecky & Konecky, 1991)

 

"I COULDN'T CARE LESS IF HISTORY REMEMBERS US AS BARBARIANS"

The perpetrators of the Holocaust were not only Germans. For example, the nationalist governments of two allies of Germany, Romania and Croatia, both murdered Jews themselves without any prompting from the Nazis. In the case of Romania, Mihai Antonescu, the foreign minister and deputy prime minister, set out the ideology behind the terror at a cabinet meeting in July 1941.

At the risk of being misunderstood by certain traditionalists who may be among you, I am all for the forced migration of the Jewish element of Bessarabia [Moldova] and Bukovina [now in Ukraine], which must be dumped across the border... You must be merciless to them... I do not know how many centuries must pass before the Romanian people shall again encounter such total freedom of action, such opportunity for ethnic purification and national revision... This is a time in which we are masters of our territory. Let’s use it. If necessary, fire the machine gun. I couldn’t care less if history remembers us as barbarians... I take formal responsibility in telling you there is no law... So, no formalities, complete freedom.

In the months and years which followed, more than 200,000 Jews, including those shown being deported in the photograph, were murdered by the Romanian army and police in modern Moldova and Ukraine through a combination of mass shootings, use as slave labour and starvation.

Photo: Moldovan Jews are deported to Transnistria by Romanian forces, 1941; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Speech: Jean Ancel (ed.), Documents concerning the fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust, VI (Beate Karlsfeld Foundation, 1986)

 

"THE QUESTION OF JEWISH CHILDREN DOES NOT INTEREST HIM"

Although only the governments of Germany, Romania and Croatia murdered Jews as state policy, other states actively participated in the Holocaust. On 16-17 July 1942 more than 13,000 Jews without French citizenship were arrested by French police in Paris; the victims included more than 4,000 children. Most of the arrestees were held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, an indoor cycling stadium, before being transferred to transit camps. The idea of arresting the children came from the French Prime Minister Laval, as this telegram sent by Theodor Dannecker, the SS representative in France, a few days before the round-up makes clear.

6 July 1942
The negotiations with the French government have so far yielded the following results:
All stateless Jews from the occupied and unoccupied zones will be readied for deportation.
Premier Laval has proposed that, in the process of deporting Jewish families from the unoccupied territory, children under 16 years of age should be included. The question of Jewish children remaining in the occupied zone does not interest him
I therefore request that an urgent decision be made by telegram whether, perhaps beginning with the 15th transport from France, children under 16 should also be deported.

Whilst the Nazis decided whether or not to agree to Laval’s request to deport the children, their parents were sent to Auschwitz. Eventually, approximately 3,500 children, some of them so young they could not even remember their names, were deported on seven transports with unrelated adults; not a single child survived. The photograph shows a modern memorial at the site of the Vélodrome d’Hiver. 

Photo: memorial to the victims of the Vélodrome d’Hiver round-up, Paris; Holocaust Educational Trust

Report: Joseph Billig, Le Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (1941-1944), I, (Éditions du Centre, 1955)

 

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"DRESSED IN THE CLOTHES OF THOSE WHO HAD BEEN SHOT"

The non-German perpetrators of the Holocaust included not only governments and policemen but also ordinary citizens who volunteered to assist the Nazis. On 29 July 1941, Lithuanian nationalists working for the Germans murdered 125 Jewish men working in a forced labour camp in Kelmė. One of the few survivors from Kelmė, Yakov Zak, described what happened next.

That same night, at about 9 p.m., the eight men were again removed from the camp and forced to carry beer from a nearby warehouse and bring it up to the second floor in the hall of the Lithuanian gymnasium [school], where the killers had organised a ball in honour of the shooting of the Jews.

In the hall, long tables were set decoratively, with the best of everything, in the style of a lavish wedding. At the table the drunken killers sat with their families, dressed in the clothes of those who had been shot to death. The entire Lithuanian intelligentsia of the town arrived at the ball, led by the mayor, Česnys. The stench in the hall was foul and thick with smoke. Everyone sang Lithuanian songs and kept on drinking and gorging. The hall was filled with drunken voices and the playing of the phonograph and radio. The Jews were required to bring beer to the murderers and shooters of those who were near and dear to them. One of the drunken partisans, upon seeing the Jews coming, cried out, “Look there are still Jews!” He grabbed his revolver. His friends calmed him down and forced the local Jews to drink a big glass of beer. Tears poured from the eyes of the eight Jews. At this the drunken crew roared with laughter.

It is possible that a majority of victims of the Holocaust in the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia were murdered by local people, such as the Lithuanian men escorting Jews to their deaths in the photograph, rather than the Nazis.

Photo: members of a Lithuanian militia unit prepare for a mass shooting action, 1941; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Instytut Pamięci Narodowej/Lietuvos Nacionalinis Muziejus, courtesy of Saulius Beržinis/Mrs. Bukowska

Testimony: David Bankier (ed.), Expulsion and Extermination: Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania (Yad Vashem, 2011)

 

"SELF-DEFENCE IN THE GHETTO HAS BECOME A FACT"

It has often been asked why Jews did not resist the Holocaust. Although there were indeed many obstacles to armed resistance – including the demoralisation and deprivation caused by ghetto life, an overwhelming imbalance of military forces, lack of advance knowledge of German intentions, and fear that loved ones could be victims of reprisals – there was in fact significant Jewish resistance. The most prominent example was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April-May 1943; this was the last letter of its leader Mordechai Anielewicz.

It is impossible to put into words what we have been through. One thing is clear, what happened surpassed our boldest expectations. The Germans fled twice from the ghetto... I feel that great things are happening and that what we have dared do is of enormous significance...

It is impossible to describe the conditions under which the Jews of the ghetto are now living. Only a few will hold out. The remainder will perish sooner or later. Their fate is sealed. In almost all the hiding places in which thousands are concealing themselves it is practically impossible to light a candle for lack of air…

The fact that we are remembered beyond the ghetto walls encourages us in our struggle. Peace go with you, dear friend! Perhaps we may still meet again! The dream of my life has been fulfilled. Jewish self-defence in the ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and revenge have become a reality. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle.

Mordechai died two weeks after writing this letter. The poorly armed rebels knew that they could not defeat the Nazis but they managed to resist the Germans for a month in what was the first major civilian uprising anywhere in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the months that followed, there were revolts in dozens of ghettos across Poland and the Soviet Union.

Photo: Mordechai Anielewicz; Yad Vashem

Letter: [Maria Kann], Na oczach świata (KOPR, 1943)

 

"NEVER SAY THIS IS THE FINAL ROAD FOR YOU"

From late 1942 onwards, increasing numbers of young Jews escaped from ghettos and formed partisan groups which fought the Nazis. The largest groups of Jewish partisans were based in the forests of eastern Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. The following song became the anthem of these partisan groups. It was written in Yiddish by Hirsh Glik, a young poet in the Vilna Ghetto, after he heard news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Never say this is the final road for you,
Though leadened skies may cover over skies of blue,
As the hour that we longed for is so near,
Our step beats out the message – we are here!

From lands so green with palms to lands all white with snow,
We shall be coming with our anguish and our woe,
And where a spurt of our blood fell on the earth,
There our courage and our spirit have rebirth.

The early morning sun will brighten our day,
And yesterday with our foe will fade away.
But if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.

This song was written with our blood and not with lead,
It’s not a song that summer birds sing overhead,
This is a song a people sang amid collapsing walls,
With guns in hand they heeded to the call.

So never say the road now ends for you,
Though leadened skies may cover over skies of blue,
As the hour that we longed for is so near,
Our step beats out the message – we are here!

Hirsh Glik was murdered in Estonia in 1944. Some of the partisan groups who sang his anthem not only fought the Germans but also sheltered hundreds of Jews, including children and old people, who had escaped from ghettos.

Photo: Jewish partisans in Vilna after liberation, 1944; Yad Vashem

Song lyrics: Florian Freund et al. (eds.), Ess firt kejn weg zurik...: Geschichte und Lieder des Ghettos von Wilna 1941-1943 (Picus, 1993)

 

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"HE DIED, DELIBERATELY, FOR US"

Jewish resistance existed even in the extermination camps although the chances of success appeared minimal. On 2 August 1943, the few hundred Jewish prisoners who were forced to work in Treblinka extermination camp, either burning corpses or sorting the possessions of the victims, revolted. One of the key figures in the revolt was Rudolf Masarek from Prague. His fate was recalled by another Czech Jew, Richard Glazar.

Rudi was a sort of ‘golden youth’. You know what I mean? His had been the world of sports-cars, tennis, country-house weekends, summers on the Riviera. He was a half-Jew; there really was no reason for him to be there. Except that in 1938, after the Austrian Anschluss, he had fallen in love with a girl from Vienna who was Jewish... When she (though not he) was ordered to Theresienstadt, he went with her. And when she (not he) was ordered to Treblinka, he came with her there too. She was killed immediately. Rudi was an officer, a lieutenant in the Czech army, and he was later of decisive importance in the planning and execution of the revolt.

No one at all could have got out of Treblinka if it hadn’t been for the real heroes: those who, having lost their wives and children there, elected to fight it out so as to give the others a chance… tall blond Rudi… of all the men in Treblinka would have had the best chance of getting away; he looked more German than the most ‘Aryan’ of the SS; he was better looking than their most carefully selected elite soldiers. He had his mother in Czechoslovakia and could have gone back eventually, to a life of ease and plenty. He had come to Treblinka deliberately, because he loved someone more than himself. He died, deliberately, for us.

Around 400 of the approximately 850 inmates of Treblinka were able to able to escape although 200 were soon caught and shot. Up to 60 survived to the end of the war. In October 1943 there was a similar revolt in Sobibór extermination camp whilst the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled in October 1944 and blew up one of the crematoria.

Photo: Rudolf Masarek; Yad Vashem

Testimony: interview in Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (André Deutsch, 1973)

 

"REMEMBER ME WITHOUT SORROW"

Many individual Jews resisted the Nazis. Youra Livchitz was a young doctor who was a member of the Belgian Resistance. On 19 April 1943, the same day that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began, Youra and two non-Jewish friends succeeded in stopping a train carrying Jews to Auschwitz. Youra was subsequently betrayed to the Gestapo and arrested. He was executed in February 1944, a week after his brother Choura who was also a member of the resistance. Youra wrote this last letter to his mother from his prison cell.

Dear Mother,

Although the words are powerless to express all that I feel, I leave this cell to go to the other side of life with calm – a calm that is also resignation in the face of the inevitable. To tell you that I regret all that has happened would serve no purpose. I very much regret not being there to help to support you in the first trial – that which you have already suffered: Choura. I wanted to be there so that the two of us could struggle with the world as it is. Dear Mother, do not cry too much thinking about your little one. My life has been full first and foremost of errors. I think of all our friends who are in prison and ask their forgiveness. Remember me without sorrow. I have had the best, most excellent companions until the end and even now I do not feel alone. My best wishes to all. Dear Mother, I have to say goodbye, time passes. Once again, it is not the last moments that have been the hardest. Have confidence and courage in life, time erases many things. Think of us as dead on the front, think of all the families, all the mothers affected by the war, the war that we had all believed would finish earlier.

Your loving son,

Youra

The train which Youra and his comrades stopped had been carrying 1,631 Jews from the Mechelen transit camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The three young men had been armed only with a pistol, a pair of wire cutters, and a lamp covered in red paper to make it look like a stop signal. Their actions helped 231 people to get off the train; 115 of these people successfully escaped. The youngest survivor was an 11-year-old boy.

Photo: Youra Livchitz; Yad Vashem

Letter: William Ugeux, Histoires de Résistants (Éditions Duculot, 1979)

 

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"MAY HISTORY ATTEST FOR US"

Jewish resistance to the Holocaust did not just involve fighting. Oneg Shabbat was a project organised by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum which attempted to record Jewish life in occupied Warsaw by collecting items such as diaries, newspapers, poems and even sweet wrappers. When deportations to Treblinka began in the summer of 1942, a section of the Oneg Shabbat archive was buried in metal boxes in the ghetto; two later caches were buried in 1943. One of the three men who buried the archives was David Graber, who was 19. He added this last letter.

I would love to live to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and shriek to the world proclaiming the truth. So the world may know all. So the ones who did not live through it may be glad, and we may feel like veterans with medals on our chest. We would be the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future… But no, we shall certainly never live to see it, and therefore do I write my last will. May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened and was played out in the twentieth century…

We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us.

Most of the Oneg Shabbat archive was discovered after the war; the photograph shows the recovery of the first cache. By recording Nazi crimes and Jewish experiences, and preserving Jewish culture, Oneg Shabbat can be seen as an example of resistance to the Holocaust.

Photo: the discovery of the first cache of the Oneg Shabbat archives, Warsaw, 1946; Yad Vashem

Last testament: Joseph Kermish (ed.), To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!... Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbath”) (Yad Vashem, 1986)

 

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"TODAY, THEY HAVE SOMEHOW GROWN AFRAID OF THE JEWS"

This photograph shows items used by religious Jews in prayer on display in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Physical resistance was not a realistic option for most people during the Holocaust. Nonetheless, many Jews found ways of asserting basic human dignity. One survivor, Yoysef Vaynberg, recalled what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in 1944. Kol Nidre is a ceremony performed as part of the Yom Kippur service.

After the evening roll call, we go to Kol Nidre.

For a long time already we have been promising each other to observe the Kol Nidre service this year. A Jewish block elder has allowed us to pray in his block. Someone has brought a tallis [prayer shawl] from the clothing warehouse. The seriousness of the moment is felt in the camp. It seems that the entire world is preparing for Kol Nidre.

In the morning the entire sky was clouded over. At midday the cloud rose and it rained. The sun hid somewhere behind the clouds. Heaven wept for an entire afternoon. Now, before Kol Nidre, it calmed itself a bit: the rain stopped. The world around lies desolate. The sun feels guilty and doesn’t dare to show its face.

From every block, people assembled at the barrack of the Jewish block elder. People stretch out on the pallets, stand pressed next to one another. Everyone who feels a Jewish heart beating inside has come, even the block elders and kapos [prisoners who were chosen by the SS to oversee other prisoners]. They are always the grand aristocrats. Now they are standing among the ordinary ‘prisoners’. They are possessed by dread. Even the German block elders and kapos, those terrible murderers are silent. They avoid the barrack, moving in a large semicircle around it. Today, they have somehow grown afraid of the Jews.

The rabbi prays.

Some have seen this preservation of religious practices in the most unimaginable of circumstances as a form of what has been termed ‘spiritual resistance’, a defiant defence of the Jewish traditions which the Nazis were seeking to destroy.

Photo: Jewish religious objects taken from victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau; Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu

Testimony: Jack Kugelmass & Jonathan Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (Indiana University Press, 1999)

 

70 VOICES PODCAST: RESISTANCE

 

For our eighth 70 Voices podcast, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws is again joined by Education Officer Martin Winstone and historian and educator Jeremy Leigh of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, this time to discuss the often overlooked issue of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust.

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast. 

 
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"OH NONSENSE, IT IS ONLY THE GAS"

The Holocaust was not an event which could be entirely hidden from the people of Europe. Wilhelm Cornides was a German army officer who was travelling by rail through Poland in August 1942. On the train, he got talking to a German policeman and the wife of another policeman. They promised to show him Bełżec extermination camp when the train passed it. Cornides recorded his experiences in his diary.

31 August 1942
We travelled for some time through a tall pine forest. When the woman called, “Now it comes!” one could see a high hedge of fir trees. A strong sweetish odour could be made out distinctly. “But they are stinking already”, said the woman. “Oh nonsense, it is only the gas”, laughed the railway policeman. Meanwhile – we had gone on about 200 metres – the sweetish odour was transformed into a strong smell of something burning. “That is from the crematory”, said the policeman. A short distance further the fence stopped. In front of it, one could see a guard house with an SS post. A double track led into the camp. One track branched off from the main line, the other ran over a turntable from the camp to a row of sheds about 250 metres away. A freight car happened to be standing on the table. Several Jews were busy turning the disk. SS guards, rifles under arms, stood by. One of the sheds was open; one could distinctly see that it was filled to the ceiling with bundles of clothing.

Cornides’s diary reveals that the Holocaust in Poland was an ‘open secret’: the camp was visible from a major railway line whilst the fact that there were Germans, like his fellow passengers, who were willing to tell others about Bełżec suggests that many people must have known about it. Their reactions also suggest that not all non-Jews reacted sympathetically to the plight to the victims.

Map: Karl Baedeker, Das Generalgouvernement (Baedeker, 1943)

Diary extract: Raul Hilberg (ed.), Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry 1933-1945 (W.H. Allen, 1972)

 

"LET YOUR HANDS RUMMAGE THROUGH JEWISH THINGS"

Across Europe, there were many non-Jews who did not directly take part in the murders but still assisted the Nazis. Zuzanna Ginczanka, a young Jewish poet in the Polish city of Lwów, was betrayed to the Nazis in August 1942 by Zofia Chocim, the caretaker of the building she was hiding in. Zuzanna was able to escape and wrote this poem in response to her experience. ‘Non omnis moriar’ means ‘not all of me shall die’.

‘Non omnis moriar’

Non omnis moriar — my proud estate,
Table linen fields, staunch wardrobe fortresses,
Acres of sheets, precious linens
And dresses, bright dresses will survive me.
As I leave no heir,
Let your hands rummage through Jewish things
Chomin, woman of Lwów, brave wife of a spy,
Swift informant, Volksdeutscher’s mother.
May they be useful to you and yours, not some strangers.
“My dear ones” — it’s no song, nor empty name.
I remember you as you, when the Schupo came,
Remembered me. Reminded them of me.
So let my friends sit with goblets raised
To celebrate my memory and their own wealth,
Rugs and tapestries, candlesticks, bowls –
Let them drink all night, and at dawn,
Let them begin to search for gemstones and gold
In sofas, mattresses, quilts and rugs.
Oh, how they’ll make quick work of it,
lumps of horsehair and sea grass stuffing,
Clouds of torn pillows and eiderdown quilts
Will coat their hands and turn their arms to wings;
My blood will tie these fibres with fresh down,
And transform these winged ones to angels.

As the poem suggested, greed was often a powerful factor in causing people to denounce Jews. Zuzanna Ginczanka fled to Kraków where she was caught by the police and shot in 1944.

Photo: Zuzanna Ginczanka, 1938; Muzeum Literatury/East News

Poem: Michał M. Borwicz (ed.), Pieśń ujdzie cało... Antologia wierszy o Żydach pod okupacją niemiecką (Centralna Żydowska Komisja, 1947)

 

"THE POPULATION HAS NOT BEHAVED CORRECTLY"

Szczebrzeszyn is a small town in eastern Poland. Its Jewish community was destroyed in October 1942. Some Jews were deported to Bełżec extermination camp; many were shot in the streets of the town and in its Jewish cemetery which is shown in the photograph. The reactions of the non-Jewish population were recorded by a local doctor, Zygmunt Klukowski, in his diary.

21 October 1942
Throughout the day, until nightfall, incredible things have been happening. Armed gendarmes, SS and blue police chased through the town, tracking down and searching for Jews... Captured Jews were shot on the spot, without any mercy. The Polish population was forced to bury the dead. How many of them there are is difficult to say. They reckon from 400 to 500.

22 October 1942
Jewish homes have been partly sealed, in spite of which there has been widespread looting. In general, the Polish population has not behaved correctly. Some have taken a very active part in the hunting of Jews. They pointed out where Jews were hiding, lads even chased small Jewish children, who the police killed in front of everyone.

23 October 1942
The Gestapo worked with the local gendarmes, blue police and the active participation of various citizens of the town... civilians eagerly helped to search for Jews, driving them to the town hall or the police station, beating and kicking them, etc.
 
24 October 1942
Jews were brought to the cemetery incessantly, carts brought corpses throughout the day, and threadbare possessions were taken from Jewish homes to the market hall. A fair number of townspeople shamelessly plundered whatever they could.

Klukowski’s diary demonstrates how ordinary people in eastern Europe could not avoid contact with mass murder within their communities. Historians have suggested various reasons why so many ordinary non-German people behaved ‘incorrectly’ towards their neighbours, as Klukowski put it. These include antisemitism, fear of the Germans and the breakdown of moral restraints brought by the war. However, as these entries make clear, greed was also a powerful factor. 

Photo: Jewish cemetery, Szczebrzeszyn; Holocaust Educational Trust

Diary extracts: Zygmunt Klukowski, Dziennik z lat okupacji Zamojszczyzny (1939–1944), ed. Zygmunt Mańkowski (Lubelska Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1958)

 

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"WHOEVER DOES NOT CONDEMN, CONSENTS"

Whilst many non-Jews exploited the Holocaust for personal gain or reacted with indifference, a courageous minority took action. One of them was Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a writer and a member of the Polish resistance movement. Kossak-Szczucka was a strong Polish nationalist and was widely regarded as an antisemite. When the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp began, she published a pamphlet entitled ‘Protest!’ in which she condemned the passivity of the world in the face of mass murder. These are some extracts from ‘Protest!’.

The world looks upon this murder, more horrible than anything history has ever seen, and stays silent… This silence can no longer be tolerated. Whatever the reason for it, it is vile. In the face of murder it is wrong to remain passive. Whoever is silent witnessing murder becomes a partner to the murder. Whoever does not condemn, consents.

Therefore, we – Catholics, Poles – raise our voices.  Our feeling toward the Jews has not changed. We continue to deem them political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland... Awareness of this fact, however, does not release us from the duty of damnation of murder.

Whoever does not understand this, and whoever dares to connect the future of the proud free Poland, with the vile enjoyment of your fellow man’s calamity – is, therefore, not a Catholic and not a Pole.

Kossak-Szczucka inspired the creation in late 1942 of Żegota, an agency of the Polish underground state which provided money and hiding places for Jews in Poland. Her example – an antisemite who inspired the biggest rescue operation of the Holocaust – shows that pre-war attitudes and behaviour did not necessarily determine how someone reacted to the murders and therefore cautions against the danger of stereotyping groups of people or nations.

Photo: Zofia Kossak-Szczucka; copyright unknown

Pamphlet extracts: Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Protest! (Front Odrodzenia Polski, 1942)

 

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