Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  Friday, 29 October 1943

  My dearest Kitty,

  Mr Kleiman is out again: his stomach won’t give him a moments’s peace. He doesn’t even know whether it’s stopped bleeding. He came to tell us he wasn’t feeling well and was going home, and for the first time he seemed really down.

  Mr and Mrs van D. have had more raging battles. The reason is simple: they’re broke. They wanted to sell an overcoat and a suit of Mr van D.’s, but were unable to find any buyers. His prices were much too high.

  Some time ago Mr Kleiman was talking about a furrier he knows. This gave Mr van D. the idea of selling his wife’s fur coat. It’s made of rabbit skin, and she’d had it for seventeen years. Mrs van D got 325 guilders for it, an enormous amount. She wanted to keep the money herself to buy new clothes after the war, and it took some doing before Mr van D. could make her understand that it was desperately needed to cover household expenses.

  You can’t imagine the screaming, shouting, stamping of feet and swearing that went on. It was terrifying. My family stood holding its breath at the bottom of the stairs, in case it might be necessary to drag them apart. All the bickering, tears and nervous tension have become such a stress and strain that I fall into my bed at night crying and thanking my lucky stars that I have half an hour to myself.

  I’m doing fine, except I’ve got no appetite. I keep hearing: ‘Goodness, you look awful!’ I must admit they’re doing their best to keep me fit: they’re plying me with dextrose, cod-liver oil, brewer’s yeast and calcium. My nerves often get the better of me, especially on Sundays; that’s when I really feel miserable. The atmosphere is stifling, sluggish, leaden. Outside, you don’t hear a single bird, and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over the house and clings to me as if it were going to drag me into the deepest regions of the underworld. At times like these, Father, Mother and Margot don’t matter to me in the least. I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage. ‘Let me out, where there’s fresh air and laughter!’ a voice within me cries. I don’t even bother to reply any more, but lie down on the divan. Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly, helps pass the time, since it’s impossible to kill it.

  Yours, Anne

  The last entry in Anne Frank’s diary is dated 1 August. Three days later the eight people hiding in the Secret Annexe were arrested by the SS and Dutch Security Police following a tip-off. Of the Frank family, only Anne’s father survived the Holocaust. Anne Frank herself died in a typhus epidemic in Bergen-Belsen in February or March 1945.

  ‘Now you’re going to the bath house’: The Extermination Procedure at Belzec, August 1942

  RUDOLF REDER

  After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters in May 1942, the SS instigated ‘Aktion Reinhard’, by which Jews were sent to their immediate death at Sobibór, Treblinka and Belzec. Unlike Auschwitz, where there was a selection on arrival between those who would work and those who would die, at these extermination camps almost everyone was sent straight to the gassing room. Only a very small number of Jews were kept alive at Belzec to perform essential tasks as part of the ‘Death Commando’. Rudolf Reder was one of only two Jews to survive Belzec.

  About mid-day the train entered Belzec, a small station surrounded by small houses inhabited by the SS men. Here, the train was shunted off the main track on to a siding which ran for about another kilometre straight to the gates of the death camp. Ukrainian railwaymen also lived near the station and there was a post office nearby as well.

  At Belzec station an old German with a thick, black moustache climbed into the locomotive cab. I don’t know his name, but I would recognize him again, he looked like a hangman; he took over command of the train and drove it into the camp. The journey to the camp took two minutes. For months I always saw the same bandit.

  The siding ran through the fields, on both sides there was completely open country; not one building. The German who drove the train into the camp climbed out of the locomotive; he was ‘helping us’ by beating and shouting, throwing people out of the train. He personally entered each wagon and made sure that no one remained behind. He knew about everything. When the train was empty and had been checked, he signalled with a small flag and took the train out of camp.

  The whole area of Belzec was occupied by the SS – no one was allowed to approach; any individuals who stumbled accidentally into the area were immediately shot. The train entered a yard which measured about one kilometre by one kilometre and was surrounded by barbed wire and fencing about two metres high, which was not electrified. Entry to the yard was through a wooden gate covered with barbed wire. Next to the gate there was a guard house with a telephone, and standing in front of the guard house were several SS men with dogs. When the train had entered the yard the SS men closed the gate and went into the guard house.

  At that moment, dozens of SS men opened the doors of the wagons shouting ‘Los!’ They pushed people out with their whips and rifles. The doors of the wagons were about one metre above the ground. The people, hurried along with blows from whips, were forced to jump down, old and young alike, it made no difference. They broke arms and legs, but they had to obey the orders of the SS men. Children were injured, everyone was falling down, dirty, hungry, frightened.

  Beside the SS men stood the so-called ‘Zugsführers’ – these were the guards in charge of the permanent Jewish death commando in the camp. They were dressed in civilian clothes, without any insignia ...

  The old, the sick and the babies, all those who could not walk, were placed on stretchers and taken to the edge of the huge mass graves. There, the SS man Irrman shot them and then pushed them into the graves with his rifle. Irrman was the camp expert at ‘finishing off’ old people and small children; a tall, dark, handsome Gestapo man, with a very normal-looking face, he lived like the other SS men in Belzec – not far from the railway station in a cottage, completely alone – and, like the others, without his family and without women.

  He used to arrive at the camp early in the morning and meet the death transporters. After the victims had been unloaded from the trains, they were gathered in the yard and surrounded by armed Ukrainian SS men, and then Irrman delivered a speech. The silence was deathly. He stood close to the crowd. Everyone wanted to hear, suddenly a feeling of hope came over them. ‘If they are going to talk to us, perhaps they are going to let us live after all. Perhaps we will have work, perhaps …’

  Irrman spoke loudly and clearly: ‘Ihr geht’s jetzt baden, nachher werdet ihr zur Arbeit geschickt.’ ‘Now you’re going to the bath house, afterwards you will be sent to work.’ That’s all.

  Everyone was happy, glad that they were going to work. They even clapped.

  I remember those words being repeated day after day, usually three times a day – repeated for the four months of my stay here. That was the one moment of hope and illusion. For a moment the people felt happy. There was complete calm. In that silence the crowd moved on, men straight into a building on which there was a sign in big letters: Bade und Inhalationsraume, Bath and inhalation room.

  The women went about twenty metres farther on – to a large barrack hut which measured about thirty metres by fifteen metres. There they had their heads shaved, both women and girls. They entered, not knowing what for. There was still silence and calm. Later, I knew that only a few minutes after entering, they were asked to sit on wooden stools across the barrack hut, and Jewish barbers, like automatons, as silent as the grave, came forward to shave their heads. Then they understood the whole truth, none of them could have any doubts any more.

  All of them – everyone – except a few chosen craftsmen – were going to die.

  The girls with long hair went to be shaved, those who had short hair went with the men – straight into the gas-chambers.

  Suddenly there were cries and tears, a lot of women had hyster
ics. Many of them went cold-bloodedly to their deaths, especially the young girls.

  There were thousands of intelligentsia, many young men and – as in all other transports – many women.

  I was standing in the yard, together with a group left behind for digging graves, and was looking at my sisters, my brothers and friends being pushed to their deaths.

  At the moment when the women were pushed naked, shorn and beaten, like cattle to the slaughter, the men were already dying in the gas-chambers. The shaving of the women lasted about two hours, the same time as the murder process in the chambers.

  Several SS men pushed the women with whips and bayonets to the building housing the chambers; three steps led up to a hall, and Ukrainian SS men counted 750 people to each chamber. Those who did not want to enter were stabbed with bayonets and forced inside – there was blood everywhere.

  I heard the doors being locked, the moaning, shouting and cries of despair in Polish and Jewish; the crying of the children and women which made the blood run cold in my veins. Then came one last terrible shout. All this lasted fifteen to twenty minutes, after which there was silence. The Ukrainian guards opened the doors on the outside of the building and I, together with all the others left over from the previous transports, began our work.

  We pulled out the corpses of those who were alive only a short time ago, we pulled them using leather belts to the huge mass graves while the camp orchestra played; played from morning ’til night.

  The pace of extermination increased in 1942. As many as half a million Jews were killed in that year.

  The Deputy Commandant Kicks a Baby to Death, Treblinka Railway Station, 1 September 1942

  FRANCISZEK ZABECKI

  The writer was a railwayman at Treblinka railway station. Fugitives from the death camp and from the trains waiting to enter, frequently hid in the thicket alongside the track.

  One of the SS men who had arrived at the station that day – he was Kurt Franz, Deputy Commandant of the camp – came out with his dog along the road. The dog, scenting something, pulled the SS man after it into the thicket. A Jewess was lying there with a baby; probably she was already dead. The baby, a few months old, was crying, and nestling against its mother’s bosom.

  The dog, let off the lead, tracked them down, but at a certain distance it crouched on the ground. It looked as if it was getting ready to jump, to bite them and tear them to pieces. However, after a time it began to cringe and whimper dolefully, and approached the people lying on the ground; crouching, it licked the baby on its hands, face and head.

  The SS man came up to the scene with his gun in his hand. He sensed the dog’s weakness. The dog began to wag its tail, turning its head towards the boots of the SS man. The German swore violently and flogged the dog with his stick. The dog looked up and fled. Several times the German kicked the dead woman, and then began to kick the baby and trample on its head. Later, he walked through the bushes, whistling for his dog.

  The dog did not seem to hear, although it was not far away; it ran through the bushes whimpering softly; it appeared to be looking for the people. After a time the SS man came out on to the road, and the dog ran up to its ‘master’. The German then began to beat it mercilessly with a whip. The dog howled, barked, even jumped up to the German’s chest as if it were rabid, but the blows with the whip got the better of it. On the ‘master’s’ command it lay down.

  The German went a few paces away, and ordered the dog to stand. The dog obeyed with order perfectly. It carefully licked the boots, undoubtedly spattered with the baby’s blood, under its muzzle.

  ‘Blood flows in the streets’: A Diary of the Deportations from Łódź, 4–6 September 1942

  JOSEF ZELKOWICZ

  Friday, 4 September 1942

  The deportation of children and old people is a fact.

  This morning the ghetto received a horrifying shock: what seemed improbable and incredible news yesterday has now become a dreadful fact. Children up to the age of ten are to be torn away from their parents, brothers and sisters, and deported. Old people over sixty-five are being robbed of their last life-saving plank, which they have been clutching with their last bits of strength – their four walls and their beds. They are being sent away like useless ballast.

  If only they were really being ‘sent away’, if only there were the slightest ray of hope that these ‘deportees’ were being taken somewhere! That they were being settled and kept alive, ever under the worst conditions, then the tragedy would not be so enormous. After all, every Jew has always been ready to migrate; Jewish life has always been based on a capacity for adjusting to the worst conditions; every Jew has always been prepared to fold up his tent at command, to leave his home and country, and all the more so here in the ghetto, where there’s no wealth, no property, no peace of mind, and where he is not attached to anything. Jewish life has always relied only on faith in the ancient Jewish God, who, the Jew feels, has never abandoned him. ‘Somehow or other, everything will turn out all right. Somehow or other, we’ll manage to survive, with our last bit of wretched life.’

  If there were the slightest assurance, the slightest ray of hope they were being sent somewhere, then the ghetto would not be in such a turmoil over this new and unwonted evil decree. There have already been so many new and unwonted evil decrees and we have had to put up with them and, whether or not we wanted to, we had to go on living, so that we might somehow or other swallow this one too. But the fact is that no one has the least doubt, we are all certain that the people now being deported from the ghetto are not being ‘sent’ anywhere. They are being taken to nowhere, at least the old people. They are going to the scrap heap, as we say in the ghetto. How, then, can we be expected to make peace with this new evil decree? How can we be expected to go on living whether or not we want to?

  There is simply no word, no power, no art able to transmit the moods, the laments, and the turmoil prevailing in the ghetto since early this morning.

  To say that today the ghetto is swimming in tears would not be mere rhetoric. It would be simply a gross understatement, an inadequate utterance about the things you can see and hear in the ghetto of Litzmannstadt, no matter where you go or look or listen.

  There is no house, no home, no family which is not affected by this dreadful edict. One person has a child, another an old father, a third an old mother. No one has patience, no one can remain at home with arms folded awaiting destiny. At home you feel forlorn, wretched, alone with your devouring cares. Just run into the street. Out there you don’t feel so blind, you don’t feel so abandoned. Animals, too, when they feel some sorrow, supposedly cling together, animals have mute tongues which cannot talk away their sorrows and their grief. How much more so human beings.

  All hearts are icy, all hands are wrung, all eyes filled with despair. All faces are twisted, all heads bowed to the ground, all blood weeps.

  Tears flow by themselves. They can’t be held back. People know these tears are useless. Those who can help it refuse to see them, and those who see them – and they too shed useless tears – can’t help themselves either. Worst of all, these tears bring no relief whatsoever. On the contrary. It’s as though they were falling on, rather than from, our hearts. They only make our hearts heavier. Our hearts writhe and struggle in these tears like fish in poisoned waters. Our hearts drown in their own tears. But no one can help us in any way, no one can save us.

  No one at all? No one in the whole ghetto who wants to, who can save us? Could there be someone after all? There must be someone who wants to, who’s able to! Perhaps we still don’t know who that someone is? Perhaps he’s hiding somewhere, because he can’t help everyone, he can’t save everyone!

  Maybe that’s why people are scurrying all over the ghetto like poisoned mice. They’re looking for that ‘someone’. Maybe that’s why the ghetto Jews are clutching at straws, maybe this straw is the ‘someone’ they’re looking for. Maybe that’s him over here, maybe that’s him over there. Everyone is lookin
g to revive old acquaintanceship with those who can help, everyone is looking for pull. Perhaps God will help.

  And the children who don’t yet understand, the little children who have no way of knowing about the Damoclean sword hanging over their innocent heads, perhaps subconsciously sense the enormous threat hovering over them, and their tiny hands cling tighter to the scrawny and shrunken breasts of their fathers and mothers.

  Son of man, go out in the street. Look at all this, soak in the subconscious terror of the infants about to be slaughtered. And be strong and don’t weep! Be strong and don’t let your heart break, so that later on you can give a thoughtful and orderly description of just the barest essentials of what took place in the ghetto during the first few days of September in the year 1942.

  Mothers run through the streets, one shoe on, one shoe off, their hair half combed, their shawls trailing on the ground. They are still holding on to their children. They can clasp them now tighter and closer to their emaciated breasts. They can still cover their bright little faces and eyes with kisses. But what will happen tomorrow, later on, in an hour?

  People say: The children are to be taken from their parents as early as today. People say: The children are to be sent away as early as Monday. They are to be sent away – where?

  To be sent away on Monday, to be taken away today. Meanwhile, for the moment, every mother clings to her child. Now she can still give her child everything, the very best thing in her possession – the last morsel of bread, all her love, the dearest and the best! Today the child doesn’t have to wait for hours on end and cry until his father or mother figures out how much to give him from the half-pound of bread. Today they ask the child: ‘Darling, would you like a piece of bread now?’ And today the piece of bread that the child gets isn’t dry and tasteless like always. It there’s just a bit of margarine left, they spread it on. If there’s any sugar left, they sprinkle it on. The ghetto lives recklessly today. No one weighs or measures. No one hordes sugar or margarine to stretch it for a whole ten days until the next ration. Today in the ghetto no one lives for the future. Today one lives for the moment and now, for the moment, every mother still has her child with her; and wouldn’t she, if she could, give it her own heart, her own soul? …