Category Archives: Survival

Survivors—In Their Words

A picture tells a thousand words but never tells the full story. Following are the words of some of those who survived the worst crime ever committed, the Holocaust.

Toby Biber
“This one morning, orders – ‘get out, get out’ – and whatever. By then we only had a few bits belongings – you, we grabbed the belongings and lined up to march to Plaszow. Plaszow is the outskirts of Krakow, and it, in Plaszow children were not allowed, older people were not allowed and there were shot on the spot. But some people took a chance and smuggled in some children in the bag, in the rucksack, whatever way the could. Plaszow was a Jewish cemetery. When we got to Plaszow, as we arrived through the gates and it wasn’t even ready – it was no huts even built for us – we saw already three men hanging. Frightened, I, I just don’t know, and when I think back, we must have been completely already numb, without no feeling, we just obeyed and did what we had to do. There were inspections by the Gestapo. So the children had no right to be there, so for some, something happened that they decided, they knew that, they found out that there are children in the camp, so they decided to set up a nursery. So of course the parents were glad, the children would be able, will be looked after in the nursery, so of course the children were put there. And it didn’t take long, maybe two weeks after, we were standing on the appell, and the music was blaring – always in the most terrifying moments there was music. We see from a distance a lorry, an open lorry, with the children. Next to me was standing a mother with twins, two little girls, if there were 10, on the appell and they were going around looking – the Gestapo – if there was any children, or anybody that shouldn’t be there, and these two children clinging to their mother, ‘mother they’re coming, they’re going to take us away’. And so they did. And this lorry, while we were standing there on the appell, this lorry with the children drove off and never seen again. And that’s how those parents lost their children, with a trick that the children will be looked after. Well when I think back today – I don’t know – how can anybody survive? The first two years when we were still at home, with family, and knowing the peasants in our town, it wasn’t so bad, because the peasants were always helping, bringing us food, in exchange for other goods, but in the camps, that was impossible. And how we survived on this black water in the morning that was supposed to be coffee, or the grey soup at lunchtime with the little square of black bread that was like lime, and when we ate it, we didn’t feel any different. It didn’t satisfy in any way, and we were forever hungry…If you’re tired, you’re scared, you’re hungry, lack of sleep and always in fear from one minute to the next, we didn’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

Premysl Dobias
“When we came to the railway station in Linz, before we went, we were taken out, we were cuffed together, two and two. We were taken and lined up on the railway station. I recall vividly that there were mostly women sitting waiting for trains, when one of them came closer and ask one of the armed officers who was guarding us, who we were. And he told her in German, I remember that closely, because I was nearby: ‘Das sind die Feinde unseres Fuhrers’ – these are the enemies of our Fuhrer. The woman then came and spat on us and the others, the other women then star…asked her what happened, she told him them who we were, then about a dozen of them came closer to us and all of them were spitting on us and shouting abuse. The SS told us in German that they needed some prisoners who knew, who were from the farm who knew how to feed pigs, and they would then come every day from the camp direct to that farm to look after the pigs. Obviously everybody wanted to get away from the hard work in the camp and there were – all of them were volunteers. The SS told us he had to have only those who were from a farm and who knew, who spoke German. That eliminated a few Spaniards who were in the group, but we were mostly Czechs, and even some Czechs didn’t know German. So finally the SS guard selected about, oh twenty prisoners, lined them up and I overheard the other one telling him: ‘Du hast zu viele’ – you have too many. So he started to push back a few, he pushed back two Spaniards, then he came to me, he pushed me back, and I was hoping so much to be able to be working on a farm, I was so hungry I hoped that I could actually eat with the pigs. So I came forward and in German, at attention, I told him that I was born on a farm and all I did all my life was feeding pigs – of course it was not true. But he very cruelly kicked me, I still have the mark on my leg, and pushed me back. When he had finally selected about a dozen, I believe dozen to fifteen, he told them: ‘turn right, without step walk to that farm’. And both of them remained behind the group which was marching very happily to the farm. That part of the camp was separated by guards and the guards had machine-guns to guard the outlines of the camp. We were very upset that we were left behind, and looked with envy at those who were marching to that farm. But suddenly we heard machine-gun shooting from two sides and with horror we noticed that all the prisoners who were marching to that farm, crossed the so-called border and were gunned down dead. I could have been one of them. Then the SS turned back, laughingly came back to our Kommando, we again stood at attention and one of them laughingly said ‘who else knows how to feed pigs?’ That is an experience which will haunt me all my life. It’s a tremendous nightmare, nightmare to such an extent, that I could have never believed that a nation, civilized nation, which gave the world musicians, poets, experts in every field of science, how they could have been fooled by a maniac like Hitler is something which I will never understand.”

Magdalena Kusserow
One of 11 children, Magdalena was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. When she was 7, her family moved to the small town of Bad Lippspringe. Her father was a retired postal official and her mother was a teacher. Their home was known as “The Golden Age” because it was the headquarters of the local Jehovah’s Witness congregation. By age 8 Magdalena could recite many Bible verses by heart.

1933-39: The Kusserow’s loyalty was to Jehovah, so the Nazis marked them as enemies. At 12 Magdalena joined her parents and sister in missionary work. Catholic priests denounced them. Her father was arrested for hosting Bible study meetings in their home; even her mother was arrested. The Gestapo searched their house many times, but Magdalena and her sisters managed to hide the religious literature. In 1939 the police took her three youngest siblings to be “reeducated” in Nazi foster homes.

1940-44: Magdalena was arrested in April 1941 and detained in nearby juvenile prisons until she was 18. She was told she could go home if she signed a statement repudiating her faith. But Magdalena refused and was deported to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. After a harrowing trip with common criminals and prostitutes, she was assigned to do gardening work and look after the children of the SS women. Within a year, her mother and sister Hildegard were also in Ravensbrueck; with God’s help, the Jehovah’s Witnesses stuck together.

During a forced march from Ravensbrück in April 1945, Magdalena, her sister, and her mother were liberated. When the war ended, they returned to Bad Lippspringe.

“They told us, they said, my father especially, he teached us, he said ‘Look, Heil Hitler’ means the salvation comes by Hitler, but if we learned by the Bible that the salvation comes from, by Jesus Christ and so my father say you yourself has to choose. I don’t say you must say ‘Heil Hitler’ and you must not say. You have to do like you want it. But he said, he teached us what happened, and he said also by the Bible, the Bible tells us the real Christian will be persecuted. So my father said ‘We have to count’, he said, ‘that one day maybe they will persecute us also and the Bible say some will be killed because of the faith, belief in Christ’ – but I thought it will not be killing, it will not be in our own families, or I never was thinking about it until it came. My brother Wilhelm, it was about one year ago, he got a letter then and he wrote ‘I’m condemned to death, please visit me’ and my mother and I, we went to Munster to the prison – we visit my brother Wilhelm and he was so strong and my mother nearly cried. She said ‘I would like to die for you’ and he said ‘No mother I will make it, I want it’, it was already over – and then he wrote a last letter to us and this makes us more strong. We thought if Wilhelm is so strong in his faith, he will make it, because there’s nothing wrong to believe in the Bible. And before they brought me to concentration camp, in Bielefeld, my other brother Wolfgang, he got then the invitation to go to the milli, to the military, to the war and he visit, it was the last visit. He visit me in Bielefeld and he said ‘Look Magdalena I, I have now the letter to go to the war, but of course I will refuse, I will not go’. And, then this was the last time I saw him. And I reached in concentration camp in February and he was beheaded in March, one month later. But the police, the woman of the wife of this police in Bielefeld, she said ‘Oh crazy, your brother, the Gestapo offered him to, to bring him in the concentration camps and maybe he could save his life, but now for sure they will kill him’ and ok, they killed him later on.”

Jan Imich, from Krakow in Poland, was nine when he was arrested, separated from his family, and imprisoned in a succession of concentration camps. He was reunited with his father in the UK after the war.

“As far as I can see from meeting others nowadays, since the exhibition opened, since I met quite a few people, it was a determination to go on, irrespective of what had happened to all of us before. Us, I see the world now; very few lessons have been learned by the, by, by the whole of the, of the world, no matter what religion people are, what nationality. And we now have a rise in anti-Semitism, racism, anti, whatever, everything, anti-everything, and we simply have to make sure that the young people know what happened in those days, and indeed what is happening nowadays, of course. And simply hope against hope, sometimes I feel, that it will stick in their minds and that they will remember. I always tell that the school children, saying that I hope that some of, that most of you will remember what I said and try to bear it in mind in the future.”




Sources

https://southwarknews.co.uk/news/holocaust-survivor-to-speak-at-international-war-museum

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/holocaust-survivor-jan-imich-and-how-life-goes-on

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/concentration-camp-survivors-share-their-stories

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My Interview with Jackie Young—A Holocaust Survivor

My interview with Jackie Young, a Holocaust survivor:

Jackie Young (born Jona Spiegel) was born in December 1941 in Vienna, Austria, but raised by adoptive parents in England. He talks about slowly learning about his own past, which his adoptive parents had kept from him despite his own faint memories and hints mentioned by relatives.

Young, adopted by a Jewish couple from North London, never spoke about his past. But, when he was nine, he discovered he was adopted. It did not matter until, when he was a teenager, his grandmother told him he was born in Austria.

Young miraculously survived as an orphaned infant for two years and eight months at the Terezin (Theresienstadt) camp ghetto in Czechoslovakia. The Nazis deported him when he was an infant to Maly Trostinec, near Minsk, where his mother, Elsa Spiegel, was deported and murdered.

Elsa Spiegel handed her baby, named Yona Jakob Spiegel, born at the Rothschild-Spital (Jewish hospital) on December 18, 1941, to an orphanage before her deportation. Young found two accounts of this, one saying he was three and a half months old and another saying he was five and a half months old.

Young was deported to Terezin in September 1942 and was interned there between the ages of nine months and three and a half years. He has been able to establish that he was the sole survivor among the 15 children without parents who were together with him on the same transport to the camp. He survived the camp. After the war, and sent to the UK as part of the Windermere children.

After a while, he was in the care of a young family who adopted him when he was nine years old.

Taken from his memoirs, Lost and Waiting to be Found:

“I gradually began to understand what being adopted meant, and it now became clear to me why I had always had a feeling of being different from other children. I could remember back to when I was five years old, playing with lots of boys and girls, and one day some of us were ushered forward to meet two people—a young man and a woman. They wanted to take us out for a ride in the country. One day I was to go alone with these people to stay with them for a few days, and obviously, that visit was to lead to my being adopted.

Every so often, I tried to question my parents where was I born, and where were my real parents. But they usually fobbed me off with the statement that they loved me very much, and that was all that mattered. In retrospect, my adopted parents were behaving protectively, they did not want me to be hurt, but I started to become increasingly frustrated. I noticed that at school—if I were naughty, the teachers would tell me off in the nicest possible way and even apologise for hitting me. This seemed very strange, and I quickly began to realize that I possessed a lever which enabled me to get my own way with my parents, providing I didn’t ask questions. Looking back I can see that I was thoroughly spoilt.”

Below is the interview with him.




Sources

https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-man-who-survived-concentration-camp-as-baby-finally-learns-his-familys-identity

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jackie-young-yom-hashoah

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn69538

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/28/a1955928.shtml

My Interview with Lynn H. Friedman—Daughter of Holocaust Survivors

Lynn is a psychotherapist and clinical social worker. She is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. In the interview, we discuss the mental impact her parents’ ordeal had on her and also how that translated into her work as a psychotherapist. She was voted The Best Therapist of 2008 by the Main Line Times newspaper in Pennsylvania, USA, and she specializes in anxiety, trauma, PTSD, and grief.

The story of her parents isn’t just a story of survival. It is a story of kindness and bitterness, a love story, a story of perseverance. It is also a tale of despair and disappointment but in equal measure—a story of victory and hope.

Lynn sent me a number of documents relating to her father, Wicek Friedman, which changed to Victor Friedman. That fact on its own is a good indication that after the Holocaust, the struggle continued—changing your name is not something you do lightly. I presume he changed it to make it easier for the people in his adopted land to be able to pronounce his name. I say adopted land because that is what struck me when I saw the document of the Displace Persons registration (photo at the top), which says, “Does not want to return.” He was born in Krakow, Poland on October 5, 1925.

Victor survived Auschwitz (where he escaped), Sachsenhausen, and Dachau. Lynn received the following information about her father from the International Tracing Service.

“Your father was in Auschwitz Concentration Camp where he had two prisoner numbers, 110225 and 199815. At the beginning of May 1944, he was arrested in Kolozsvár, Hungary, and sent by the Security Police in Budapest to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany. On November 17, 1944, Wicek was transported to Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. His Dachau prisoner number was 127009.”

Lynn’s mother, Ella, had also been in Dachau. She was born in Berehova, Berkstad, Czechoslovakia in 1927. After she saw how Victor had been tortured for stealing potato skins to give to those who were starving, she told a friend, “Do you see that brave man—if he survives, I will marry him.”

They did get married in 1950.

Victor and Ella had different outlooks after the war. Victor, although he survived, had many medical complications due to the torture he received in Dachau. Victor’s aim was to replace the horrors he witnessed with acts of kindness. Sadly, he passed away in 1974, just before his 49th birthday. What saddened me to hear is that Victor knew that the hate against the Jews had not disappeared after the Holocaust. He advised his daughter to always be ready to leave.

Ella was basically always in survivor mode as she didn’t show love towards her children. That is not uncommon with survivors—and in a way—it is understandable because she had lost many of her family. She probably was afraid to get too attached again.

She had lied about her age when she was taken to Dachau, giving her year of birth as 1929, but in fact, it was 1927. She reckoned she would have a better chance of survival if the Nazis thought she was younger. Her younger sister had been murdered by the Nazis when she was at the train station—they shot her. Ella passed away in 2017.

This is Lynn speaking about her parents, and it’s just as important as her own experiences.




Source

https://www.ancestry.com.au/genealogy/records/victor-friedman-24-4svr3p

Mother and Baby—A Miracle Upon a Miracle

There is no bond stronger than that between a mother and child. The photograph above appears to be of a mother showing off her beautiful newborn cosily wrapped in a blanket and the smiling, doting mother.

However, there is more to this photo. It really is a double miracle—giving birth is a miracle itself is a miracle—giving birth on a train journey in an open coal car is a double miracle, for lack of a better word.

The mother is Anka Nathanová. She arrived at the gates of Mauthausen. She gave birth to her daughter, Eva, on a cart there. Anka weighed less than 80 pounds and had managed to hide her pregnancy long enough to keep her and her unborn child safe from the Nazi gas chambers. The Americans arrived six days later, and an Army Signal Corps cameraman filmed the human wreckage as evidence of Nazi atrocities. He also filmed Anka with her new baby.

Despite the miracle of Anka Nathanová and her daughter being alive—more suffering was yet to come for them. Upon arriving home in Prague, she discovered that all 15 members of her immediate family were murdered during the war. That included her husband, who had been shot on a death march.

Anka did find love again, remarried and moved to Wales with her new husband and daughter, Eva.

Her daughter, Eva Clarke, did describe her mother as an eternal optimist. It always amazes me so many kept a positive mindset despite all the horrors they witnessed.





Source

A Mother, a Baby, a Name: Identifying One of the Youngest Survivors of the Holocaust

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Remembering Elie Wiesel—On His Birthday

Life is only a sequence of events and accidents, often determined when and where you are born. When I was 15, as a young man in the 1980s in the Netherlands, my main interest was girls and trying to get beer. When Elie Wiesel was 15 and a young man in Romania (or then Hungary) in the 1940s, his interest was survival.

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet (in Transylvania, now a part of Romania, but part of Hungary between 1940 and 1945) on 30 September 1928 and grew up in a Chassidic (an Orthodox Jewish) family.

In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary (extending the Holocaust into Northern Transylvania). Elie Wiesel was 15, and he, with his family and the rest of the Jewish population, was placed in one of the two confinement ghettos set up in Máramarossziget (Sighet), where he had been born and raised. In May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish community to Auschwitz, where 90 per cent of the people were murdered upon arrival.

When Elie Wiesel and his family arrived at the camp, he was separated from his mother and sisters when he heard eight quietly, emotionless spoken words, ”Men to the left! Women to the right!”

Elie Wiesel was 15 years old and was tattooed with inmate number A-7713 on his left arm. He had lied about his age, claiming to be 18, the advice he received from another inmate.

After being held at Auschwitz I, Wiesel and his father were transferred to Monowitz (Buna) Workcamp, part of the extensive Auschwitz camp complex. There, he was put to work as a slave labourer. The loss of his mother and sister and the daily brutality of the camp led Wiesel to question his faith. “My eyes had opened and I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy, I was nothing but ashes now.”

Elie and his father were later transported from Auschwitz to Buchenwald. His father died while imprisoned at Buchenwald. His younger sister had been murdered together with his mother in Auschwitz. After the war, he was reunited with his older sister, Beatrice.

I could write more about Elie Wiesel—instead, I will finish with his own words.

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the centre of the universe.”

“The survivors had every reason to despair of society; they did not.
They opted to work for humankind, not against it.”

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

“In any society, fanatics who hate don’t hate only me – they hate you, too. They hate everybody.”

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

—Elie Wiesel’s speech, “The Perils of Indifference”
Recorded April 12, 1999

Elie Wiesel sadly passed away on 2 July 2016. He was 87 years old.




Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/elie-wiesel

Click to access elie_wiesel_life_story_hmd.pdf

https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/elie-wiesel-hmd-2017/

My Interview with Michael Ruskin—Author of “The Vow: A Love Story & The Holocaust”

The vow:

David whispered in Dora’s ear.

“No matter where they take us, we will meet back here in the Square, when this is over. Stay strong my Love, and know my thoughts and prayers are with you.”

​Dora replied with tears in her eyes.

“I love you David and I will pray every night that God keeps us safe and brings us home to each other.”

I had the privilege to talk to Michael Ruskin last night. We talked about his book, The Vow: A Love Story & the Holocaust and how it came about.

It is the truly amazing story about his parents and how they survived the Holocaust, after being persecuted in Lithuania and later on in Dachau and Stutthof. Like so many other Holocaust stories, there was unimaginable horror. Michael’s sister was murdered when she was only 3.5 years, taken from her mother after a struggle, where she was knocked out by a butt of a gun.

It is also a story of hope, courage and faith and the miraculous reunion.

Michael only discovered the documents describing his parents ordeal, decades after the Holocaust.

The book is available on

https://www.thevowalovestory.com/

This is the interview:



Source

https://www.thevowalovestory.com/

The Holocaust in Thessaloniki, Covid 19 Vaccine and Viagra.

Some people will probably accuse me for using specific words in the title as ‘clickbait’, and to an extend that is true. But anyone who writes a blog, and especially one with an extraordinary story, want readers to click on that link to read that story.

I make no excuse for the use of the title, basically because all the words are linked.

There were an approximate 50,000 Jews in Thessaloniki ,Greece, before World War 2. Only 2000 of them survived.

In the summer of 1942, the persecution of the Jews of Thessaloniki started. All men between the ages of 18 and 45 were conscripted into forced labor, where they stood for hours in the hot summer sun and were beaten and humiliated. The Jewish community was depleted of its wealth and pride. Jews were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David and forced into an enclosed ghetto, called Baron Hirsch, adjacent to the rail lines.

On March 15, 1943, the Nazis began deporting Jews from Thessaloniki. Every three days, freight cars crammed with an average of 2,000 Thessaloniki Jews headed toward Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the summer of 1943, the Nazi regime had deported 46,091 Jews.

Two of the survivors were the parents of Albert Bourla. For many of you the name Albert Bourla will mean very little. However is the CEO of a company which will have made an impact to millions ,and possibly billions, of people across the globe. The company if Pfizer, the first company ,the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was the first approved vaccine used to provide protection against infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to prevent COVID-19. Of Course Pfizer is also known for Viagra, initially used as a treatment for heart-related chest pain. But is now primarily used as a treatment of erectile dysfunction (inability to sustain a satisfactory erection to complete sexual intercourse). Its use is now one of the standard treatments for erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Albert Bourla joined the Sephardic Heritage International on January 28th for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where he shared his family’s story of tragedy and survival during the Holocaust.

Below is an excerpt of his speech.

“My father’s family, like so many others, had been forced from their homes and taken to a crowded house within one of the Jewish ghettos,” recounted Bourla. “It was a house they had to share with several other Jewish families. They could circulate in and out of the ghetto as long as they were wearing the yellow star.”

“But one day in March 1943, the ghetto was surrounded by occupational forces and the exit was blocked. My father and his brother (my uncle) were outside when it happened. Their father (my grandfather) met them outside, told them what was happening and asked them to leave the ghetto and hide because he had to go back inside as his wife and two other children were home. So later that day, my grandfather, Abraham Bourla, his wife Rachel, his daughter Graziella and his youngest son David were taken to a camp outside the train station and from there, left for Auschwitz. My father and uncle never saw them again,”

“When the Germans had left, they went back to Thessalonki and found that all of their property and belongings have been stolen or sold.”

Bourla’s mother was well known which caused her to hide at home “24 hours a day” out of fear of being recognized on the street and turned over the Nazis . She left the house very rarely, but it was during one of her rare ventures outside that she was captured and taken to a local prison.

“My Christian uncle, my mother’s brother-in-law, Costas de Madis approached a Nazi official and paid him a ransom in exchange for a promise that my mother would be spared,”

“However, my mother’s sister, my aunt, didn’t trust the Germans. So she would go to the prison every day at noon to watch as they loaded the truck of prisoners. One day, her fear had been realized, and my mom was put on the truck. She ran home and told her husband, who then called the Nazi official and reminded him of their agreement – who said he would look into it. That night was the longest night in my aunt and uncle’s life because they knew that next morning, my mom would likely have been executed.”

“The next day, my mom was lined up with other prisoners. And moments before she would have been executed, a German soldier on a motorcycle arrived and handed some papers to the men in charge of the firing squad. They removed my mother from the line. As they rode away, my mom could hear the machine gun slaughtering those that were left behind. Two or three days later, she was released from prison after the Germans left Greece.”

Eight years later Bourla’s parents met by way of matchmaking, through which they agreed to get married.

I fully respect anyone’s decision whether to take or not to take the vaccine, or any vaccine for that matter. Once this decision is based on sound, verified and peer researched information, and not by social media memes or sources which can’t be traced or verified.

However I will never condone the current vaccinations being compared to the Holocaust, it is absolutely vile and disgusting.

Just imagine i

sources

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/pfizer-ceo-shares-his-familys-tragic-story-during-the-holocaust-658818

https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/holocaust-in-greece/thessaloniki

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-familys-story-why-we-remember-albert-bourla/

Alexander Zwaap AKA Lex van Delden

Lex

Although he was born as Alexander Zwaap, for most of his life he would be known as Lex van Delden. He was a truly remarkable man, despite hardships he never gave up.

He was born  in Amsterdam on September 10, 1919, as the only child of Wolf Zwaap, a school-teacher, and his wife Sara Olivier-Zwaap, Lex started taking piano-lessons from an early age, initially from  from Martha Zwaga and later from the celebrated pianist, Cor de Groot.

In 1938 he enrolled at the University of Amsterdam to study medicines, he wanted to become a neuro-surgeon, but he did not lose his love for music and composing.

In 1942, two years into German occupation of the Netherlands he was  forced to interrupt his studies,because he was Jewish. He had no other choice then  to go into hiding. Refuge and a hiding place was arranged at the home of a former colleague of his father, who was a headmaster at the penitentiary in Veenhuizen, In 1943, his parents who were also in hiding, were betrayed and deported to Sobibor, where they were murdered. Lex never saw them again. It was only in 1980, when he discovered a  postcard written by his  parents  to him from the Hollandse Schouwburg( a theater which was used as a deportation centre)   while awaiting their deportation.

schouweburg

While in hiding Lex  decided to take the pseudonym “van Delden”

Due to the fact he could not make any noise, leave alone play piano and had to hide under the raised floor of a basement closet.,he became depressed.His hosts eventually included him in their daily family life.

He helped by translating all kinds of literary works and also by helping  his host’s daughter with her homework. Via  a contact with the student resistance movement,  Lex joined the resistance he was sent to the province of Brabant, where he forged identity papers at the Personal Identification Card Centre. On a daily basis he visited, by bicycle, a family with a piano and even managed to give house concerts. Unfortunately his hopes of becoming a neuro-surgeon were dashed during this time due to an exploding carbide lamp, which virtually blinded him in his left eye while in hiding.

When peace came he hurled himself under the name Lex van Delden wholeheartedly into the world of music. Apart from composing he worked as a music journalist for Het Parool; later he was chairman of the Dutch authors’ rights association Buma Stemra.

Buma

He was a prolific composer  and during  the 1950s and 60s he was one of the most frequently played composers of his generation. Van Delden wrote for orchestras such as the Noordhollands Philharmonisch Orkest (North Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra), the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble (Dutch Wind Ensemble). He has won many prestigious music awards.

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His  music radiates an idealistic longing for life. The structure is tight; he often includes sharp contrasts between dramatic and lyrical passages.

Despite his plans of all his set backs and losing his parents,, he did not give up.He died on July 1, 1988 in Amsterdam.

His son also took the name Lex van Deldden became an actor and starred in movies such as A bridge too far and Soldaat van Oranje(Soldier of Orange).

Finishing up with one of Lex’s compositions.

 

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Sources

Leo Smit

forbiddenmusicregained.org

gramophone.co.uk

YouTube

 

 

Desperation and Survival

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I have often wondered how the Sonderkommandos coped with their  work.

Sonderkommandos were  forced labour units made up of  Nazi death camp prisoners. usually Jews.They were forced to help with the disposal of gas chamber victims among other duties. Sometimes even removing family members.

It is not like they had a choice, it was either work and have a chance to survive or get killed themselves. I have heard people call them traitors but I don’t subscribe to that point of view, The basic instinct of any human being is to survive.

How hard it was for these victims, for they to were victims, is illustrated in the testimony of Filip Müller, a Slovak Jewish member of the Sonderkommando.

Muller

Filip had become so desperate that he tried to commit suicide by smuggling himself into the gas chamber.

Below are some excerpts from his testimony taken from his book ‘ Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers’

“In the great confusion near the door I managed to mingle with the pushing and shoving crowd of people who were being driven into the gas chamber. Quickly I ran to the back and stood behind one of the concrete pillars. I thought that here I would remain undiscovered until the gas chamber was full, when it would be locked. Until then I must try to remain unnoticed. I was overcome by a feeling of indifference: everything had become meaningless. Even the thought of a painful death from Zyklon B gas, whose effect I of all people knew only too well, no longer filled me with fear and horror. I faced my fate with composure.Eyewitness

Inside the gas chamber the singing had stopped. Now there was only weeping and sobbing. People, their faces smashed and bleeding, were still streaming through the door, driven by blows and goaded by vicious dogs. Desperate children who had become separated from their parents in the scramble were rushing around calling for them. All at once, a small boy was standing before me. He looked at me curiously; perhaps he had noticed me there at the back standing all by myself. Then, his little face puckered with worry, he asked timidly: “Do you know where my mummy and my daddy are hiding?” I tried to comfort him, explaining that his parents were sure to be among all those people milling round in the front part of the room. “You run along there,” I told him, “and they’ll be waiting for you, you’ll see.”

The only reason he survived is because he was approached by a few girls.

“Suddenly a few girls, naked and in the full bloom of youth, came up to me. They stood in front of me without a word, gazing at me deep in thought and shaking their heads uncomprehendingly. At last one of them plucked up courage and spoke to me: “We understand that you have chosen to die with us of your own free will, and we have come to tell you that we think your decision pointless: for it helps no one.” She went on: “We must die, but you still have a chance to save your life. You have to return to the camp, and tell everybody about our last hours,” she commanded. “You have to explain to them that they must free themselves from any illusions. They ought to fight, that’s better than dying here helplessly. It’ll be easier for them, since they have no children. As for you, perhaps you’ll survive this terrible tragedy and then you must tell everybody what happened to you. One more thing,” she went on, “you can do me one last favour: this gold chain around my neck: when I’m dead, take it off and give it to my boyfriend Sasha. He works in the bakery. Remember me to him. Say ‘love from Yana.’ When it’s all over, you’ll find me here.” She pointed at a place next to the concrete pillar where I was standing. Those were her last words.”

Burning bodies

Müller first testified during his recovery in a post-liberation hospital and subsequently in several trials. His testimonies were included in “The Death Factory” written by two fellow Holocaust survivors, Erich Kulka and Ota Kraus. He was also interviewed for the 1985 French documentary Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, who himself had been a Holocaust survivor and French resistance fighter.

Müller died on November 9, 2013. In my opinion there is only one word to describe him. Hero.

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The positive attitude of Robert Clary that kept him alive.

Hogan's_Heroes_Title_Card

It’s amazing how ignorant someone sometimes can be. Although I wasn’t a great of fan of the shows I did watch Hogan’s Heroes and the Bold and the Beautiful on a regular basis,especially the latter one in the period of 1990-1992.

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The reason why I mention these 2 shows because it starred Robert Clary. In Hogan’s Heroes he played Corporal Louis LeBeau .

Robert_Clary_Cynthia_Lynn_Hogans_Heroes

And in 1990-1992 he played a character called  Pierre Jourdan, The owner of a restaurant as far as I can recall.

What I didn’t realize is that Robert Clary born Robert Max Widerman did  survive the Holocaust.

Born in 1926 in Paris, France, Clary was the youngest of 14 children.At the age of twelve, he began a career singing professionally on French radio and also studied art at the Paris Drawing School. In 1942, because he was Jewish, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Ottmuth, in Upper Silesia (now Poland). He was tattooed with the identification “A5714” on his left forearm. He was later sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

At Buchenwald, he sang to an audience of SS soldiers every other Sunday, accompanied by an accordionist. He said, “Singing, entertaining, and being in kind of good health at my age, that’s why I survived. I was very immature and young and not really fully realizing what situation I was involved with … I don’t know if I would have survived if I really knew that.”

Writing about his experience, Clary said, “We were not even human beings. When we got to Buchenwald, the SS shoved us into a shower room to spend the night. I had heard the rumors about the dummy shower heads that were gas jets. I thought, ‘This is it.’ But no, it was just a place to sleep. The first eight days there, the Germans kept us without a crumb to eat. We were hanging on to life by pure guts, sleeping on top of each other, every morning waking up to find a new corpse next to you. … The whole experience was a complete nightmare — the way they treated us, what we had to do to survive. We were less than animals. Sometimes I dream about those days. I wake up in a sweat terrified for fear I’m about to be sent away to a concentration camp. But I don’t hold a grudge because that’s a great waste of time. Yes, there’s something dark in the human soul. For the most part human beings are not very nice. That’s why when you find those who are, you cherish them.”

“In October 1944 we got a new SS lieutenant obersturmbahn fuhrer, who upon his arrival made a speech telling us not to despair, not to give up hope, that we were human beings and one of these days we would be free,” Clary writes in the chapter Blechhammer No. A-5714, the identification number tattooed on him by the Nazis.

“We couldn’t believe our ears. We had heard a German officer saying things nobody in his position would dare to say without being shot instantly for treason. It was a remarkable, brave thing for him to do.”

Clary was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.

BuchenwaldGate

Twelve other members of his immediate family were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp; Clary was the only member of his family to survive the camps.When he returned to Paris after World War II, he learned that three of his 13 siblings had not been taken away and had survived the Nazi occupation of France.

Amazing to think that after that he could still play in a comedy about a concentration camp be it a prisoner of war camp.

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