"OUR WILL TO HELP THE PERSECUTED"

Perhaps the most spectacular example of the rescue of Jews occurred in Denmark in October 1943. When the country’s resistance movement learned that the Nazis intended to deport Danish Jews, it organised their passage to neutral Sweden in an improvised flotilla of fishing boats, rowing boats and even canoes. Aage Bertelsen was one of the organisers of the rescue effort.

The small crowd that gathered in Lyngby on the night of 2 October, the night of the raids, with the decision to send the endangered Jews to Sweden, knew nothing about resources or options, and what they thought they knew turned out to be wrong… We lived inland, far from suitable harbours. We had no special knowledge of the coast, knew nothing of sailing, had no connections with the fishermen and skippers, had no money to pay with, and had not as much as a dinghy to sail with, since the Germans had long since ordered all boats not used for commercial purposes away from the coast. The legal government had been ousted, all of the organs of executive authority were under German control, and despite their best will, we could only count on limited support from the police. Our only real asset in the fight against the Gestapo, the world’s cruellest and best organised police force, was our will to help the persecuted... The Jewish transports, at least in the first days, were a chain of improvisations, coincidences, misunderstandings and amateurish errors...But one thing is certain...: If the helpers of Jews had no other assets, we had the wish to help these people..

More than 7,000 Jews, along with 700 of their non-Jewish partners, were ferried to safety in Sweden. The Nazis were only able to find 481 Jews, who were sent to the Terezín Ghetto where most of them survived.

Photo: Danish Jews travelling by fishing boat to Sweden, October 1943; Frihedsmuseet (public domain)

Testimony:  Aage Bertelsen, “Oktober 43.” Oplevelser og tilstande under jødeforfølgelsen i Danmark (Jydsk Centraltrykkeri's Forlag, 1952)

 

"HIS DEEP LOVE FOR HUMAN BEINGS"

Most of the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust were ordinary people who made extraordinary choices. One was Anton Sukhinski, from Zborów in Poland (now in Ukraine). Anton had a reputation for being a loner and an eccentric, and was often ridiculed by his neighbours for what they saw as his unconventional lifestyle. However, he saved the lives of six Jews by hiding them for more than a year. One of them was Eva Halperin.

He was a bachelor and lived alone in a small and very poor house… The neighbours... would come every night and threaten us and ask for money... One night in October they came with guns to the bunker and killed an old woman that was also with us. I was slightly wounded. We managed to escape thanks to Anton's intervention…

We continued to wander until we decided to return to Anton's place... It was a joyful moment when we reached his home. He received us warmly, opened his arms, crying with joy and kissing us. He whispered... "Dears, I am so happy that you came to me. From now on I will not permit anyone to harass you. From now on no one will be able to discover you." … We were happy to be under his care, but for Anton this presented a terrible burden, and he was alone to bear it with his angelic patience, his deep love for human beings and his determination to save our lives.

They were looking for us again... First the Ukrainians came looking for us. They threatened Anton... The SS came and held a gun to his chest and ordered him to denounce the Jews. But he stood firm...

Anton also had the difficult task of feeding us. He was so poor that he himself hardly had enough to eat... Many times he gave us his own food and would go to bed hungry.

As shown in the photograph, Anton Sukhinski was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations, the honour given to those who risked their lives to save Jews, by Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial museum and remembrance authority, in 1974. 

Photo: Anton Sukhinski with two of the women he saved laying a wreath at Yad Vashem, 1970s; Yad Vashem

Testimony: Yad Vashem Archives

 

70 VOICES PODCAST: REACTIONS OF NON-JEWS

 

In our ninth weekly podcast, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws and Education Officer Martin Winstone discuss the reactions of non-Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe to the Holocaust and how this challenges traditional understandings of the term 'bystander'.  

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast. 

 
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"AS WE HAVE NO RACIAL PROBLEM"

The world’s reaction to the Nazi persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews has long been controversial. Even before the war, democratic governments were criticised for not doing enough to help Jews in Germany. At the initiative of Franklin Roosevelt, the President of the USA, 32 countries met in the Hotel Royal, shown in the photograph, in Évian in France in July 1938 to attempt to agree measures to help the growing number of Jewish refugees trying to leave Germany and Austria. However, the attitude of most delegates was perhaps best expressed by Australia’s representative, Colonel T.W. White.

The Government of the Commonwealth of Australia welcomes the initiative of the President of the United States in calling this Conference for so humanitarian a motive …

The United States and Australia owe their development to migration from the Old World. This is so, and in Australia's case such migration has naturally been predominantly British; nor is it desired that this be largely departed from while British settlers are forthcoming.

Nevertheless, the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia has had very much in mind the problem of foreign migration as well, and a proportion of new arrivals during recent years has been from foreign sources. Realising the unhappy plight of German and Austrian Jews, they have been included on a pro rata basis which we venture to think is comparable with that of any other country...

Under the circumstances, Australia cannot do more, for it will be appreciated that in a young country man power from the source from which most of its citizens have sprung is preferred, while undue privileges cannot be given to one particular class of non-British subjects without injustice to others. It will no doubt be appreciated also that, as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.

As a result of this unwillingness to take in large numbers of refugees, the conference achieved little. 

Photo: the Hotel Royal, site of the Évian Conference, 1938; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (public domain)

Speech: Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee Evian, July 6th to 15th, 1938: verbatim record of the plenary meetings of the committee, resolutions and reports (Imprimeries réunies de Chambéry, 1938)

 

"EMOTIONS WERE AT BREAKING-POINT"

Following the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, the British government changed its immigration policy to allow Jewish children to enter the country, providing that charities could pay a £50 bond for each child as a guarantee that they would leave the country when the situation improved. The children’s parents were not allowed to join them unless they had the financial means to support themselves, so most children travelled alone on what became known as the Kindertransport (‘children’s transport’). Steven Mendelsson travelled from Breslau with his brother Walter.

The departure soon followed – emotions were at breaking-point. For us, two young lads, it seemed like an exciting adventure, a long journey by train and boat into a land of enormous opportunities. The rest of the family – all of whom came to the station to see us off – felt quite the opposite. I remember the tears and agony on their faces – parents, grandparents and others – waving us goodbye as the train pulled out of the station. The memory is still as vivid in my mind today as if it happened only yesterday…

In Harwich we were greeted by a band of ladies who hugged us, kissed us and embraced us for what seemed an eternity... The train from Harwich to London Liverpool Street station, the last leg of our tiring journey, took us through the East End of London. On either side we saw rows and rows of derelict houses with caved-in roofs. Some houses, apparently still occupied, had broken or boarded-up windows... We started to long for our parents to comfort us. But they were no longer there to take care of us: they were left behind in Nazi Germany.

This tremendous culture shock, the absence of our beloved, caring parents, the odd ‘refreshments’, the new, strange language, and, yes, even the differing weather, presented huge obstacles at first that we would have to overcome.

Steven and Walter were fortunate that their parents were able to raise enough money to come to Britain; they arrived just 36 hours before Britain declared war on Germany. However, most of the almost 10,000 Kindertransportees never saw their parents again.

Photo: Kindertransportees arriving at Harwich, 1938; Wiener Library

Testimony: Wendy Whitworth (ed.), Survival: Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Story (Quill Press, 2003)

 

"THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE CRIMES SHALL NOT ESCAPE RETRIBUTION"

Throughout 1942, the Allied governments received detailed reports from the Polish resistance movement of the murder of millions of Jews in Poland. At first, many ministers and officials refused to believe them. However, on 17 December 1942, the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden read the following statement in the House of Commons on behalf of all Allied governments.

The attention of the Belgian, Czechoslovak, Greek, Jugoslav, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Soviet, United Kingdom and United States Governments and also of the French National Committee has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended, the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.

From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invader are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children

The above-mentioned governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They reaffirm their solemn resolution to insure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end.

The declaration contained a lot of accurate information, although it hugely underestimated the number of Jews who had been murdered by this time. Many felt that, at this point in the war, there was little that the Allies could do to help Europe’s Jews. However, when the war began to turn in 1943, some observers believed that they could have done more.

Photo: Allied propaganda poster, United States Office of War Information, 1943; public domain, courtesy of Northwestern University Library (images.northwestern.edu)

Declaration: Hansard, 17 December 1942

 

"THEY HAVE BECOME ACCOMPLICES TO THE CRIME"

Szmul Zygielbojm was a Jewish socialist politician who was a member of the Polish government-in-exile, which was based in London. He had played a leading role in trying to make western governments and the public opinion aware of the Holocaust when detailed reports emerged from Poland in 1942. However, he grew frustrated with what he saw as the indifference of the Allies. On 12 May 1943, during the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he committed suicide in London, leaving this note.

The latest news from the homeland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with wholly unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this unprecedented tragedy is currently taking place.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish people in Poland rests first of all on the perpetrators, but it is also indirectly borne by the whole of humanity, on the peoples and governments of the Allied nations, who up to this day have not taken any concrete action to put an end to this crime. By passively observing this murder of millions of defenceless and tortured children, women and men they have become accomplices to the crime...

I cannot be silent and I cannot live while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered.

My comrades in the Warsaw Ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle.

I was not able to fall like them, with them. But I belong with them, to their mass graves.

By my death, I wish to express my deepest protest against the inaction with which the world watches and allows the destruction of the Jewish people...

My life belongs to the Jewish people of Poland, so I give it to them.

It can be argued that the Allies were in no position to help the Jews of Warsaw in the spring of 1943. However, it is also true that there were politicians and civil servants in Britain and the USA who disbelieved the reports of the murder of Jews or who did not see it as a major priority.

Photo: memorial plaque to Szmul Zygielbojm, London; Holocaust Educational Trust

Letter: Halina Czarnocka (ed.), Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, 1939–1945, III (Wydawnictwo Errata, 1989)

 

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"SOMETIMES ONLY BY REASON OF THEIR NATIONALITY OR RACE"

The reaction of the Christian churches to the Holocaust was ambiguous. Thousands of ordinary priests, monks and nuns sheltered Jews across Europe but almost all church leaders failed to publicly condemn the Holocaust. Pope Pius XII was regularly pressed by Allied governments and many Catholics to make a public statement. He finally addressed the issue in his Christmas radio broadcast in 1942. Towards the end of his lengthy speech, he called for a renewal of peace and Christian values in Europe.

Mankind owes that vow to the countless dead who lie buried on the field of battle: the sacrifice of their lives in the fulfilment of their duty is an offering for a new and better social order.

Mankind owes that vow to the infinite host of grieving mothers, widows and orphans who have seen the light, the solace and the support of their lives wrenched from them.

Mankind owes that vow to those numberless exiles whom the hurricane of war has uprooted from their native land and scattered in foreign lands; who can lament with the Prophet: "Our inheritance is turned to aliens; our house to strangers."

Mankind owes that vow to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.

Mankind owes that vow to the many thousands of non-combatants, women, children, sick and old, from whom aerial warfare – whose horrors we have from the beginning frequently denounced – has without discrimination or through inadequate precautions, taken life, property, health, home, houses of charity and prayer.

Mankind owes that vow to the flood of tears and bitterness, to the accumulation of sorrows and torment, emanating from the murderous ruin of the dreadful conflict and crying to Heaven to send down the Holy Spirit to liberate the world from the inundation of violence and terror.

Pius felt that he had clearly condemned the Holocaust in the fourth paragraph. However, he failed to make it clear that he was talking about Jews or Nazis, spoke of “hundreds of thousands of persons” rather than the more than 3 million Jews who had already been murdered, and spoke of them as just one group of the many casualties of the war, comparable to fallen soldiers or victims of air raids.

Photo: Pius XII; public domain

Broadcast extract: Vatican Archives (w2.vatican.va)

 

"THE DICE ROLLED"

For Jews living beyond Nazi-occupied Europe, the Holocaust often created a sense of impotence, especially as they generally did not wish to criticise the Allied governments who represented the only hope of ending the Holocaust by defeating Germany. However, some took action by enlisting in the armed forces. Hannah Szenes was a Hungarian-born paratrooper from British Mandate Palestine who was dropped into Yugoslavia in an attempt to help the Jews of Hungary. However, she was arrested when she tried to enter Hungary. Hannah was a talented poet; this verse was later found in her prison cell.

One – two – three... eight feet long,
Two paces across –
Life hovers over me in question.

One – two – three... maybe another week.
Or the next month may still find me here.
But oblivion hangs over my head.

I shall be twenty-three this July...
In a daring game of numbers I gambled,
The dice rolled.
I lost.

As a Hungarian citizen, Hannah was tried for treason; she was executed in November 1944.

Photo: Hannah Szenes; Yad Vashem

Poem: Hannah Szenes, Napló – Levelek – Versek – Szépirodalmi kísérletek – rövidebb írások, ed. Anna Szalai (Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1991)

 

70 VOICES PODCAST: REACTIONS OF THE WORLD

 

In the tenth of our weekly podcasts, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws and historian Professor David Cesarani discuss how the world beyond Nazi-occupied Europe, including Britain, reacted to the the Holocaust.

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast. 

 
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"THAT'S HOW YOU'LL END TOO"

As Germany and its allies retreated in 1944, Jews were forcibly marched from the camps towards those areas of central Europe still under Axis control. Miklós Radnóti was a Hungarian Jewish poet who had been forced to serve in a slave labour battalion in Ukraine and Yugoslavia. As his battalion was driven back to Hungary, he scribbled poems in a notebook. This was his final entry.

I fell beside him and his body turned over,
taut already as a string before it snaps.
Shot in the back of the head.  – "And that's how you'll end too" –
I whisper to myself – “just lie quietly”.
Patience flowers into death now.
“This one still twitches," I heard above me.
Through the filthy blood drying on my ear.

Days after writing this poem, Miklós Radnóti suffered the fate he had foreseen. His last poems were discovered in his coat pocket when his mass grave was exhumed after the war. The photograph shows a modern memorial to him in Budapest.

Photo: memorial to Miklós Radnóti, Budapest; Holocaust Educational Trust

Poem: Miklós Radnóti, Összes versei és műfordításai (Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1969)

 

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"HUMAN CREATURES DRAG THEMSELVES ALONG IN THE SNOW"

The largest wave of so-called death marches began with the evacuation of almost 60,000 prisoners from Auschwitz-Birkenau in mid-January 1945. One of them was Raizl Kibel.

In a frost, half-barefoot, or entirely barefoot, with light rags upon their emaciated and exhausted bodies, tens of thousands of human creatures drag themselves along in the snow. Only the great, strong striving for life, and the light of imminent liberation, keep them on their feet.

But woe is to them whose physical strength abandons them. They are shot on the spot. In such a way were thousands who had endured camp life up to the last minute murdered, a moment before liberation.

Even today I still cannot understand with what sort of strength and how I was able to endure the ‘death march’ and drag myself to Ravensbrück camp, and from there, after resting a week, or two, to Neustadt.

Thousands of people died on the death marches as a result of starvation, exhaustion, exposure to the freezing cold, and, as this extract suggests, the brutality of the guards.

Photo: camp inmates on a death march, 1945; Yad Vashem

Testimony: Yad Vashem Archives, quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (HarperCollins, 1989)

 

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"LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A HORROR FILM"

As the evacuation of Auschwitz and other camps in the East began in late 1944, tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners were transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. The resulting overcrowding and lack of food, water and sanitation led to the deaths of more than 35,000 prisoners between the start of 1945 and the camp’s liberation by British troops on 15 April. Norman Turgel was one of the first soldiers to enter the camp.

The scenes which greeted us were like something out of a horror film. People everywhere were dying. In some cases they were so far gone that you couldn’t tell whether they were young or old, woman or man…

As a young soldier who had witnessed the killing of soldiers and animals on many occasions, I found this a shocking experience. I had seen my share of battle casualties... But to see thousands of innocent people in a camp (or prison, as the Germans used to call it) being starved to death, murdered, poisoned, was beyond belief…

We were trying to save lives, but people blamed the British for killing some of the inmates by giving them too much food. This was quite possible. None of us knew what to do until we started getting doctors in. We had no instructions…

We had all been inoculated against typhus and other diseases; so far as possible we were safe. But on April 18, three days after our arrival, I woke up and could not get out of bed. I was paralysed. That happened to two or three of our chaps. We simply could not walk. When the doctor came and stuck pins in our legs, we felt nothing. This lasted for 24 hours, and they put it down to the shock on our nerves from the horrific sights we’d seen.

Norman subsequently fell in love with one of the prisoners, Gena Goldfinger. The couple married in October 1945.

Photo: British soldiers and survivors at Bergen-Belsen, April 1945; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of George Stein

Testimony: Gena Turgel, I Light a Candle (Vallentine Mitchell, 1995)

 

"I WANTED SOMEONE TO LOOK AFTER ME"

The liberation of the camps in the spring of 1945 did not necessarily produce the joy that might have been expected from those who had survived them. As Eva Lux Braun – a Slovak Jew who survived Auschwitz and was, like the women in the photograph, liberated in Salzwedel camp – recalled, reactions were ambiguous.

All through the war we had prayed for liberation, and here it was suddenly. You are free! But after I had digested the idea of freedom I realized that actually the whole time I had been hoping to see my father, and I even dared to hope that I might possibly see my mother, in spite of everything. I knew in my heart that this was almost completely unrealistic, but I was sure I would see my father. But still, there were doubts, and I began to understand that it might not happen...

There was excitement, but our feelings were mixed. We were afraid. It's hard to describe and explain these feelings of simultaneous fear and joy. That was our next stage. Now, after liberation, what were we going to do? We had nothing. We were frightened that we might not have anyone left in the world.  We needed someone to look after us and take care of us. And to a great extent I was looking after my little sister and another girl. More than anything else I wanted someone to look after me and relieve me of the burden of caring for the girls, so that I wouldn't have to be responsible, so that I would be under an adult's protection... It turned out that freedom is relative to a very great extent.

As Eva’s testimony suggested, the challenges facing survivors of the Holocaust did not cease with the end of the war.

Photo: female survivors of Salzwedel eating after liberation, 1945; from Theodore Draper, The 84th Infantry Division in the Battle for Germany, November 1944-May 1945 (Viking Press, 1946)

Testimony: Yad Vashem Archives

 

"WHERE COULD WE BE 'PLACED'?"

A major challenge facing many survivors of the Holocaust was the question of where to go to when their homes and communities had been destroyed. Many who could not or did not want to return found themselves in Displaced Persons (DP) camps which were initially run by the Allies and then by the UN. One of the largest of these camps was at Bergen-Belsen, adjacent to the site of the former concentration camp. More than 10,000 Jews were still living there in late 1945. One of them was Anita Lasker (now Anita Lasker-Wallfisch) who had survived Auschwitz and Belsen.

My closest friends, Hélène Wiernik, Hélène Rounder and Violette Silberstein, and all the others who had countries to go back to, had left Belsen and gone ‘home’. No one had any idea what they would find on their return but at least they had somewhere to start searching. That was not the case with us. It would not have crossed our minds to consider Germany or Breslau, by then in Russian hands, as our ‘home’…

The complexities for our liberators in sorting out the unprecedented chaos were enormous; but it could not be expected of the average British army officer who had been sent to fight a war that he should be able to grasp fully the significance of the term ‘displaced person’. That was precisely what we were, displaced persons. The question was, where could we be ‘placed’?...

Our worries about establishing where we were to go and how we might organise going anywhere at all, grew daily. We were in touch with our relatives and everyone had offered us hospitality. But how to translate these offers into action was another matter. Europe was in turmoil. Immigration policy was not a priority anywhere… There was no apparatus to deal with people like us. We were that new species, Displaced Persons; and, let’s face it, we were something of an embarrassment all round.

Anita was finally able to come to the UK in 1946. However, others remained in the DP camps for several years.

Photo: Jewish inmates of Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp, 1945-46; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hilde Jacobsthal Goldberg

Testimony: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth 1939-1945 (Giles de la Mare, 1996)

 

"LEAVE NOW, OR I'LL FINISH HITLER'S JOB FOR HIM!"

For many Holocaust survivors who chose to go home after liberation, return was a chastening experience. Not only did they typically have to confront the reality of the loss of their families and communities; many also had to face hostility from their non-Jewish neighbours. Josef Perl was a young Auschwitz survivor who returned to his family home in Veliky Bochkov, which had been in Czechoslovakia before the war and was in the Soviet Union after it.

Suddenly, my house came into view... I felt I was floating down the road, and stopped at the gate to my house full of hope and expectation, my heart pounding, my mind in a whirl, tears of joy rolling down my cheeks. I stepped through onto the garden path and walked up to the front door.

As I approached, the door opened. I recognised the man as one of our Christian neighbours who had worked for my father. He had known my family since before I was born and we had been good friends. But now, seeing me standing there, a wave of shock and hatred spread over his face. He pointed a shotgun at me.

"You are still alive? What do you want?" he shouted angrily.

"This is my home. I want to come in, I'm looking for my family", I pleaded.

"Get out of here. Get out!" he yelled. "This is my house now. Mine and my children's. Get out, there's no-one and nothing for you here".

"I'm so tired", I begged, "please let me at least sleep in the stable for the night".

He aimed his gun at me again.

"Leave now, or I'll finish Hitler's job for him!"…

I walked down the garden path and sat down on the grass by the road where I used to play as an innocent child and sobbed and sobbed for all that I had lost.

Many Holocaust survivors faced similar reactions; in some cases, they were murdered by former neighbours who feared that they would lose the possessions they had taken from or been entrusted with by Jewish families. The persistence of antisemitic violence after the Holocaust was an indication that its root causes had not been eliminated with the defeat of the Nazis.

Photo: Josef Perl; Josef Perl

Testimony: Arthur C. Benjamin, Faces in the Smoke: The Story of Josef Perl (Sylvia Perl, 2001)

 

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70 VOICES PODCAST: THE END OF THE HOLOCAUST

 

In our penultimate 70 Voices podcast, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws is again joined by historian Professor David Cesarani who discusses the last months of the Holocaust and the challenges which faced its survivors after liberation.

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast. 

 
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"WE THOUGHT WE HAD LANDED ON ANOTHER PLANET"

The impact of the Holocaust did not end with the Second World War. Its legacies have continued to shape the modern world in multiple ways. One of the most obvious is the presence of Holocaust survivors who, with nowhere else to go, often settled in western societies, including the UK. Amongst them was Roman Halter, who was, like the boys in this photograph, one of a group of 732 young survivors – nicknamed the ‘Boys’ – who were admitted to Britain in 1945.

The group of us known as the ‘Boys’ came to England by plane from Prague airfield. We were loaded up and I saw this very tall officer who was talking from the side of his mouth, emitting these very quick sounds and I thought: I will never learn that language, it sounds to me like boiling potatoes. He had a pipe in the corner of his mouth and this moustache and spoke terribly fast, but he was very nice and asked his crew to take off their caps and put them on our heads, and we all felt like pilots. There was a tea reception, not a single slice of black bread, all beautifully white. We hadn’t seen that before. I thought: we have come to a country of milk and honey. And all these lovely ladies were there who fussed about and gave us bread with jam and honey. They all smiled at us and we thought we had landed on another planet.

A further 2,000 or so survivors were allowed to come to Britain in the years after the war because they had relatives in the country. They built new lives and families here and made immense contributions to British society. Many have chosen to share their testimony in schools, through the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Outreach programme, as a means of educating young people about the continuing relevance of the Holocaust.

Photo: child survivors eating after arrival at Windermere, 1945; Pictorial Press

Testimony: Lyn Smith (ed.), Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust (Ebury Press, 2006)

 

"MY CONSCIENCE WOULD NOT ALLOW ME TO LEAVE MY POSITION"

The fate of perpetrators, like that of survivors, has remained an issue of great relevance long after the war. In November 1945, the trial of 23 senior Nazi leaders opened in Nuremberg in front of the International Military Tribunal established by the Allies. One of the defendants was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who from 1943 had been the head of the Security Police, an organisation which played a central role in the Holocaust. When Kaltenbrunner testified in April 1946, he was repeatedly asked about his knowledge of and attitude to the Holocaust.

I had no knowledge of Hitler's order to Heydrich regarding the final solution of the Jewish problem at the time I took up my office...

On the basis of all information which accumulated during the summer and autumn of 1943, including reports from enemy broadcasts and foreign news, I came to the conviction that the statement regarding the destruction of Jews was true, and that, thus convinced, I immediately went to see Hitler, and the next day Himmler, and complained to both of them saying that I could not for one single minute support any such action...

I repeatedly asked to join troops at the front, but the most burning question which I personally had to decide was: Will conditions be thus improved, alleviated? Or will anything be changed? Or is it my personal duty in this position to do everything necessary to change all these sharply criticized conditions?

Upon repeated refusals to my request to be detailed to the front, I had no other alternative than to try myself to alter [the] system... All that I could do was to try to modify these methods while striving to have them abolished altogether...

When I considered the possibility of exerting again and again influence on Hitler and Himmler and other persons, my conscience would not allow me to leave my position. I thought it my duty to take, personally, a stand against wrong.

The court was not convinced by Kaltenbrunner’s claims that he had opposed the Holocaust and had only stayed in office to try to stop it: he was sentenced to death and executed in October 1946. However, many other perpetrators used a similar defence in trials in the years that followed and were often believed by courts, especially in West Germany where most were given lenient sentences or acquitted. In fact, the majority of perpetrators never faced justice; thousands are still alive today.

Photo: Ernst Kaltenbrunner pleading ‘not guilty’ at Nuremberg, 1945; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (public domain)

Testimony: Trials of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, XI (International Military Tribunal, 1947)

 

"BUT SHE WAS"

Perhaps the most important reason to continue to remember the Holocaust is to honour the memory of the millions of innocent people whose lives were cut short. In this poem, written in August 1942 in response to deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp, Władysław Szlengel encouraged readers to remember the humanity of the victims by focussing on the fate of an apparently unremarkable Jewish mother.

Monument

For heroes – poems, rhapsodies!!!
For heroes the homage of posterity,
their names engraved on plinths
and a monument of marble.

For valiant soldiers – medals!
For soldiers’ deaths a cross! 
Conjure the glory and suffering
into steel, granite and bronze.

Legends will remain after the great,
that they were colossal,
The myth will congeal and – become
The Monument.

But who will tell you, future generations,
not about bronze or mythic themes –
but that they took her – killed her,
and that she is no more …

Was she good? Not really –
she often quarrelled after all,
slammed the door, scolded…
but she was.

Pretty? She was never pretty,
even before her hair silvered.
Wise? Well, quite ordinary, not stupid…
But… she was. 

Understand – she was, and now when she is not,
every corner here has evil eyes
and immediately sees that she is no more.
 

Władysław Szlengel was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

Photo: a Jewish woman during a deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leopold Page Photographic Collection

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