Holocaust Forgotten - Five Million Non-Jewish Victims

by Terese Pencak Schwartz

  April 19th, 1945, we had gained a little more strength so they walked us to the airfield of Nordhausen. There Dakotas (Airplanes) brought supplies to the Front. American military set up tents. There is on tables some beautiful white bread, but nobody to care for us. Maybe to avoid diseases? But also because of the war they didn't have time for us. They let us sleep outside, fortunately, it didn't rain. I lay down on the workshop of a demolished building.

  On April 2Oth, 1945 a Dakota took us from Nordhausen to "Le Bourget" Airport near Paris, where Parisian people discover what deportation is. On April 2lth, 1945 I returned to my house in Noyon by train. I am very tired. It will take me several months to recover. For more than 15 years I had nightmares every night.

  I got married on December 19, 1946. We had four children, two died. We have today Jean-Marc, and Sophie, who married a U.S. Marine from in Oceanside, California. Today, I'm 72 years old. I'm retired after working 50 years. 37 and a half years in Civil Service (Travaux Publics de l'Etat).

  Thank you for the courageous and brave American Soldiers who came to rescue us. Without them I would not be able, 54 years later, to write these lines. Honors to those who gave their life to make this possible.

  Chapter 10 - Righteous Gentiles - Heroes and Heroines of the Holocaust

  "In front of you the Righteous I bow." Chaim Chefer

  No other event in current history created so many stories of atrocities and horror as the Holocaust. Much has been written on the victimization of millions and the senseless murder of 11 million human beings. It is rare to find any sliver of goodness during that horrible time in history. Yet there are incredible stories of courage and humanity that are just beginning to be told. For many reason the heroes of these stories have not talked about their experiences. Only now, as many have aged to near extinction, they are beginning to talk -- coerced by second generation survivors who crave to hear their stories of valor.

  Just as we should never forget the horrors of the Holocaust, we should also never forget the heroes of the Holocaust. There is perhaps more of a lesson in the story of the rescuers -- the heroes than even in the atrocities. Most of the victims unfortunately had no control -- no choice in their destiny. The rescuers, on the other hand, had choices. They could have chosen to have looked the other way -- as many around the world did. But not the heroes. The heroes made a decision. They chose to risk their own lives, their family's, and they often risked their homes and their own comfort to help save thousands of Jews.

  At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem, there is a section called: Righteous of the Nations, set up in 1953 to honor the rescuers. As of January 2011, Yad Vashem has recognized 23,788 Righteous Among the Nations from 45 countries. This in no way represents the entire list of rescuers. Some countries will not allow names of rescuers to be reported. Yad Vashem will only accept names of Righteous Gentiles, as they are called, when there are witness testimonies to prove the rescue. Yad Vashem admits that many times the Jewish person died even with the assistance.

  For every rescuer there were many anonymous accomplices -- people who helped, but who chose to remain anonymous. The anonymous accomplices would leave packages of food or supplies on a doorstep in the middle of the night. The anonymous accomplices would give a signal when a Nazi soldier approached. Many were accomplices just by remaining silent -- by not saying anything, even when they knew that their punishment could be torture or execution.

  Chapter 11 - Zegota: Polish Secret Organization

  Zegota, also known as the Konrad Zegota Committee, was the cryptonym for the clandestine underground organization that provided assistance to the Jewish people living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Rada Pomocy Żydom, as it was called in Polish, was run by the Polish Government in Exile and was organized by both Jews and non-Jews from numerous underground political parties.

  Zegota helped to save about 4,000 Polish Jews by providing food, medical care, money and false identification documents. Zegota played a large part in placing Jewish children with foster families and orphanages and church institutions. In Warsaw, Żegota's children department was run by Irena Sendler, who managed the placement of approximately 2,500 of the 9,000 Jewish children smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto.

  Many members of Zegota were memorialized in Israel in 1963 with a planting of a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.

  Irena Sendler a.k.a, Irena Sendlerowa

  Zegota appointed Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, the head of its children's department. When the Nazis began destroying the Warsaw ghetto when the Nazis began destroying the Warsaw ghetto, Irena Sendler started a large-scale campaign to rescue the children who lived there. A total of 2,500 children were saved, brought out of the ghetto and hidden in Polish families, orphanages and monasteries. They received false identities and other help. In 1943, the Gestapo arrested Sendler, tortured her and sentenced her to death.

  The Zegota council managed to bribe German guards and have Sendler released, and until the end of the war, she lived under a false name. After 1945, she worked at the social welfare department of Warsaw, contributing to the establishment of orphanages and rest homes for those who had lost their families in the war. Sendler also managed the department of medical education at the Ministry of Health, where she put forward an initiative to open high schools for girls who wanted to become nurses.

  In 1983, the Israeli Yad Vashem institute honored Sendler with the Righteous Among the Nations medal, and in 2003 Sendler received the Order of the White Eagle. In 2006, the Children of the Holocaust association and the American "Life in a Jar" foundation, with the Polish foreign ministry's support, established the Irena Sendler Award "For Healing the World." In 2007, Irena Sendler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  Chapter 12 - She Hid Jews in a German Officer's Mansion

  By: Curtis M. Urness, Sr.

  Irene Gut-Opdyke was a teenager when the Nazi attack on Poland changed her life forever. She was separated from her family, escaped twice from incarceration, and captured and raped by Soviet soldiers. Her most difficult predicament was also her noblest: she saved the lives of 16 Polish Jews, hiding some of them literally beneath the noses of the German officers.

  The actions of rescuers during the Holocaust not only placed them into danger but also forced them to seek help from unlikely sources. Young Irene Gut showed did not plan to become a heroine. She found herself in a situation in which she could help and utilized that situation. To say that her behavior was atypical of the Polish community is a generalization that overlooks the complex situation that existed in occupied Poland.

  Irene's activities as a rescuer began ironically with her own capture by the Germans to serve as a slave laborer. She had just returned to Radom, in Nazi-occupied Poland, from Ternopol, under Soviet occupation, where her ill treatment by the Soviet military had occurred. She was arrested one day while at church in a lapanka, a roundup of Polish citizens. German soldiers actually interrupted Mass and herded the parishioners into the streets. Irene was selected for labor and loaded in a truck with other prisoners. She was sent to work in a munitions factory, where she fell ill. A German officer, Major Eduard Rugemer, felt pity for her and gave her a position in the kitchen of a hotel for Nazis.

  It was at the hotel, which was located next to the Glinice ghetto in Radom, that Irene observed firsthand the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. One day, while setting tables, she heard gunfire. Looking through a window to observe what was happening, she saw soldiers shooting the unarmed ghetto inhabitants and turning attack dogs on them. Just as she was about to scream, Schulz, the German chef, held his hand over her mouth. "Don't cry--they will think you are a Jew-lover," he warned. It was after this terrible mass murder that Irene began helping Jews. She would put leftovers in box and leave them just inside the ghetto fence. She did this despite proclamations that anyone caught aiding a Jew would be put to death.

  In April of 1942, Major Rugemer's unit was moved to Lwów. The month before the mo
ve the Glinice ghetto was liquidated and bulldozed under. Radom had been proclaimed "Jew-free." In Lwów, two things happened that set Irene closer to her course as a rescuer. There she befriended Helen Weinbaum; a Polish Catholic married to a Jewish man. Helen's husband, Henry, was an inmate at a nearby Arbeitslager, a work camp. After receiving word that the SS was holding all Jews from the Arbeitslagers and the neighboring ghettoes in village, Irene, Helen, and Irene's sister, Janina, went to the village to find Henry. There they discovered the SS rushing the Jews out of houses and shooting those whom did not run fast enough. Elderly Jews and women with children were their principle targets. Undoubtedly, the most gruesome act that Irene witnessed was a German officer tossing an infant into the air like a clay pigeon and shooting the child. He then shot the grieving mother. The surviving prisoners were then marched out of the village.

  In another ironic twist, the major's unit was sent to Ternopol, scene of Irene's trials with Soviets. There Major Rugemer was commander of a factory, called Harres-Krafa-Park (HKP). Irene resumed her work in the dining hall and kitchen. In the course of her duties, Irene met Jewish workers in the hotel laundry room. She began helping them by giving them extra food and blankets, and recommending them for work in the kitchen. Schulz, the chef, helped her provide these items, although he did not acknowledge what he was doing. Unfortunately, some of the Jews began to disappear. Irene's friend, Fanka Silberman, heard her family being taken away as she hid. Two kitchen helpers, Roman and Sozia, were sent away after being betrayed by a local girlfriend of the SS chief, Rokita. Irene overheard rumors of another raid from Germans eating in the dining hall. It was after these occurrences that Irene became an active smuggler and rescuer.

  Irene drove six of the Jews, including Henry Weinbaum, who had not been killed in the raid and now had the dubious job of valet for Rokita, in a dorozka, a wagon, to the forest of Puszcza Janowska. Once safe in the forest, her contraband passengers escaped into its dark reaches. In the nearby town, Irene met a sympathetic Polish Catholic priest, Father Joseph. Later she met a Polish forester, Zygmunt Pasiewski, a former partisan, who would help her care for two of the Jewish ladies, one of whom, Ida Haller, would have a baby at his cottage.

  The most ironic twist was yet to come. As the liquidation of the ghetto drew near, Irene determined to save her remaining Jewish friends. They hid behind a false wall in the HKP laundry room on the night of the raid. The next night she led to their next hiding place -- a heating duct inside Major Rugemer's apartment.

  The ironies did not end there. Major Rugemer decided that he would live in a villa in town. He requisitioned the former home of a Jewish architect and appointed Irene to oversee the work. The villa turned out to be the perfect hiding place. Servants' quarters were located in the basement and a bunker was accessible beneath the yard. What transpired afterward could have been the plot of a commedia d'el arte. A Nazi German officer -- a doddering old man--lived at ease without knowing that Jews were hidden beneath his feet. At one point, Irene had to interrupt the visiting Rokita, who was in-flagrante with a woman at the gazebo directly above the bunker.

  Finally she was found out by Major Rugemer. He came home one afternoon and discovered Fanka Silberman and Ida Bauer upstairs with Irene. He was angry but he was also trapped: it would not look good for a Nazi officer to have had Jews hiding in his own house. So Major Rugemer became an unlikely rescuer. However, he did demand a price for his silence. Irene was forced to become his mistress.

  When the advancing Soviet troops approached Ternopol, Irene was able to take her charges into the forest where they would be liberated. Through the efforts of one young Polish woman, who found herself in an unusual situation, Fanka Silberman, Henry Weinbaum, Moses Steiner, Marian Wilner, Joseph Weiss, Alex Rosen, David Rosen, Lazar Haller, Clara Bauer, Thomas Bauer, Abram Klinger, Miriam Morris, Hermann Morris, Herschel Morris, and Pola Morris were saved from the Nazi death camps.

  Chapter 13 - Fake Epidemic Saves a Village

  By: Ryan Bank

  In a time when innocent people were brutally murdered only for their nationality and religion, one soldier stands out among the rest. He defied the Germans, repeatedly risking his life to save the lives of thousands. Dr. Eugene Lazowski is considered a hero to many, but for him, saving others was his only option it was simply the right thing to do.

  Dr. Lazowski was a soldier and doctor in the Polish Army, Polish Underground Army and Red Cross during World War II. Based on a medical discovery by his friend, Stanislaw Matulewicz, he created a fake epidemic of a dangerous infectious disease, Epidemic Typhus, in the town Rozwadow, as well as surrounding villages.

  Injection of Bacteria Saves Lives

  The doctors discovered if they injected a healthy person with a "vaccine" of killed bacteria, that person would test positive to Epidemic Typhus. In secrecy, Dr. Matulewicz tested it on a friend who was on special leave from a work camp in Germany. He desperately needed a way to avoid going back to face death in the work camp and becoming just another number. He injected the man with the bacteria and sent a blood sample to the German laboratory. About a week later, the young doctors received a telegraph informing them their patient had Epidemic Typhus, which prohibited the man's return to the work camp. It worked.

  He repeated this process on anyone who was sick, creating an epidemic. The Germans were terrified of the disease, not to mention very susceptible to it--they hadn't been infected with it in many years. With each case of Typhus, the Germans would send a red telegram a few more lives were saved. When the disease reached epidemic proportions, the Germans quarantined the area. No additional people were sent to concentration or work camps. Also, no Germans entered the area.

  It looked promising for the young doctor until the Germans sent a medical inspection team into the region to verify the disease. The team comprised of a few doctors and several armed soldiers, met Dr. Lazowski just outside the city, where a hot meal awaited the team. They started eating and drinking with the young doctor. The lead doctor was having fun drinking, and thereby sent the younger two doctors to the hospital. Fearing for their own safety, they only drew blood samples and left. Dr. Lazowski knew he had succeeded.

  He saved 8,000 people from certain death in Nazi concentration camps. It was his private wara war of intellect, not weapons. Dr. Lazowski followed in his parents footsteps, which helped save the lives of Jewish people during the holocaust. His parents, later named Righteous Gentiles, hid two Jewish families in their home. While Dr. Lazowski didn't hide families, he did help many Jews medically against German orders.

  Medical Help for Jews in the Ghetto

  He lived next to a Jewish ghetto in Rozwadow; his back fence bordered the neighborhood. The Jews needed medical attention, so he arranged a system with them. Since it was punishable by death to help any Jewish person, he had to be secretive. If any Jews needed his help, they were to hang a white piece of cloth on his back fence, where he would help them in the safety of the night. Every night the white cloth would fly; lines formed waiting for his help they trusted him. He aided anyone who needed help, creating a system of faking his medicinal inventory to conceal his help of Jews.

  Dr. Lazowski also faced death several other times in the war. He was working on a Polish Red Cross train, caring for injured soldiers. With the train stopped, he left to find food for the wounded, only to return to total chaos the Germans used the red crosses as bombing targets. The injured on their way home would never see their families again.

  Dr. Lazowski also spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp prior to his arrival in Rozwadow. Determined to find a way out, he started to size up the security. A 3 meter wall with barbed wire surrounded the camp. He noticed a break in the barbed wire and took off. With a thief's leap, whereby he took a running start and two steps on the face of the wall, he was over. Sure the guard heard him, he ran to a nearby horse and cart, whose driver was missing. Dr. Lazowski started to pet the horse and adjust the bridle, as if it were his own animal. The guard looked over a
nd Dr. Lazowski simply smiled and said a kind word to him. The guard thought nothing of it, and Dr. Lazowski was off to safety.

  Towards the end of the war, Dr. Lazowski left Rozwadow when a German soldier, whom he had helped several months earlier, warned him that the Germans were going to kill him. They were on to his scheme. His wife and young daughter at his side, Dr. Lazowski ran out through their back fence for Warsaw. As he looked down the street, he saw that same soldier killing Jewish children. It sent chills down his spine. Dr. Lazowski left the town he personally saved forever.

  Chapter 14 - Dutch Doctor and Member of the Underground

  Julda was a girl of 12 in Amsterdam and when she witnessed one of her father's courageous actions to save the Jewish family living in the apartment above theirs. When the Gestapo came to take the family to a concentration camp, her father lied, saying that one of the boys had scarlet fever and was quarantined for six weeks. As a member of the Dutch underground, Zubli later arranged for the family members to hide on a Dutch farm.

  A medal and certificate were posthumously awarded recently to Dr. Julius Zubli, a Dutch physician who's heroic and humanitarian actions saved several Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.

  Zubli himself was later sent to a German concentration camp for giving medical aid to an underground leader. However, it was the quick reaction of her mother that saved her father s life immediately after his arrest, Julda said.