Tag Archives: Hungary

Holocaust Diaries

A diary is the most personal possession someone might have. It is a journal of their wishes, fears and often their secrets. It is therefore extremely important when a diary becomes public it is treated with the utmost dignity and respect, especially those that were written during the darkest era of mankind.

Diary of Susi Hilsenrath

Susi Hilsenrath was barely ten years old when her parents decided to send her and her younger brother to France from their native Bad Kreuznach in Germany. This happened in the aftermath of the nationwide anti-Jewish violence organized by Nazi leaders in November 1938, which has often been referred to as Kristallnacht.

As the Germans invaded and defeated France in the summer of 1940, Susi’s father hired a guardian to evacuate Susi and her brother from Paris to Broût-Vernet, a small town in Vichy France. There, they were helped by the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a French Jewish organization that was helping Jewish refugee children. The organization housed them with several other Jewish children in a local château, where they awaited emigration. Susi and her brother soon received immigration visas with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an American humanitarian organization that helped European Jewish refugees to immigrate to the United States. Travelling via Spain and Portugal, they arrived in New York City in the fall of 1941. There they were reunited with their parents and their youngest brother, who had managed to escape to the United States separately.

While housed at the château from the summer of 1940 until the late summer of 1941, Susi kept a diary. She described her life as part of the larger group of children and their uncertainty about the future. The diary captures a range of her moods and emotions, from childish musings to profound anxiety and sadness. Like many other child authors of Holocaust diaries, Susi expressed her awareness of the extraordinary and perilous situation she was in even though she may not have fully understood the specific threats that she was facing.

Sunday, August 3, 1941


“Oh, how happy I was, and now how many tears I’ve shed. I am not leaving. The others left an hour ago. Weichselbaum, Feuer, and Fellman aren’t leaving either. Oh, now I can’t stand it anymore, the day seems twice as long. Strange, everything is all turned around. Edith is leaving and Adolf and Alexander are leaving. Oh yes, Helga is also staying. With whom shall I go now? With Helga, impossible. In the end, she would drive me crazy. I don’t want to go with Sabine, and with Susi W., I don’t know whether we get along. The house will be empty, but I think 40 new children are going to come. […] I don’t know how long I can stand it here. I want so much to travel after them on a bus, to eat the good things, and travel so long on the train, through a whole country. Then by ship across the big ocean and then, best of all, to see my dear parents again. My dear, dear parents. But often I get quite a strange feeling, I think that my parents have separated and don’t want to be together anymore, but I don’t know why, the thought just comes to me on its own.

Today is Tisha b’Av.1 We fasted until 2:30, and I was terribly hungry. I thought I would be in Ganal by this time, and where am I now—in this miserable house? But one thing you can say, if we had gone with this transport, then we would have to thank the Directress for almost everything. Because she is on the telephone all day, she says, Hilsenrath and Feuer have to leave; she repeats it every time. One can certainly say that since Herr Weichselbaum left, she has become much nicer and more decent. She doesn’t shout as much anymore, and when she does shout, there’s a reason for it. She is much more engaged with us, too. I am extremely angry with Herr Cogan. If he had not phoned today, and the Directress had phoned instead, she would have accomplished more. It was like this: he spoke to Frau Salomon about the children who left (Flora and Gustel almost wouldn’t have gone, if the Directress hadn’t been there). He talked about Flora and someone asked him her age, and he said she was 15, and Gustel 12. The children who were over 12 couldn’t go, for the most part. I think Frau Salomon was about to say they couldn’t go, but the Directress spoke insistently […] After a lot of mulling it over, he got the words out. Then she told him [to say] a lot of other things, but he just would not say them. She spoke about us, too, she said, ask about Hilsenrath and Feuer. Not a word came out. “About Hilsenrath and Feuer,” the Directress said. Not a word. Finally, it came out. Madame Salomon said it was impossible, he said “Fine, fine,” and once again, “fine.” He doesn’t care whether we go or not. I’m sure that if the Directress had had the telephone in her hand, she would have accomplished something. But he, the dumb fool, or even better, idiot, can’t do anything. Then the Directress took the phone in her hand for a minute and asked about Hilde and Otto, because they couldn’t go either, and she accomplished it. Oh, if you only knew how angry I am at Cogan.

I’m not at all sorry about the children who left, only Edith. How we came together, I really don’t know. How happy I would be if I had gone with her. I would have enjoyed the trip twice as much. Oh, that would have been so nice, and now everything is over, all over. Never, I think, will I feel really good here”

Susi survived the Holocaust

Eva Heyman was a Jewish girl from Oradea. She began keeping a diary in 1944 during the German occupation of Hungary. Published under the name The Diary of Eva Heyman, her diary has been compared to The Diary of Anne Frank. She discusses the extreme deterioration of the circumstances the Jewish community faced in the city, offering a detailed account of the increasingly restrictive anti-Jewish laws, the psychological anguish and despair, the loss of their rights and liberties and the confiscation of property they endured. Heyman was 13 years old when she and her grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz.

She started writing in her diary on her thirteenth birthday 13 February 1944.

February 13, 1944

I’ve turned thirteen, I was born on Friday the thirteenth. From Grandpa, I received phonograph records of the kind I like. My grandfather bought them so that I should learn French lyrics, which will make [Mother] happy because she isn’t happy about my school record cards except when I get a good mark in French I do a lot of athletics, swimming, skating, bicycle riding, and exercise. I’ve written enough today. You’re probably tired, dear diary.

March 19, 1944

Dear Diary,
You’re the luckiest one in the world, because you cannot feel, you cannot know what a terrible thing has happened to us. The Germans have come!

May 10, 1944

Dear Diary,

We’re here five days, but, word of honour, it seems like five years.

The most awful thing of all is that the punishment for everything is death. There is no difference between things; no standing in the corner, no spankings, no taking away food, and no writing down the declension of irregular verbs one hundred times the way it used to be in school. Not at all: the lightest and heaviest punishment—death.

sources

https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/ceremonies/diary.html

https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/diary-of-susi-hilsenrath/collection/holocaust-diaries

Doctor Erno Vadasz-Gynecologist in Kaufering-Dachau

I know that some people will see the title of the post and will get the shivers. They will think it is going to be a story of indescribable horrors of cruelty. Perhaps a tale of experiments on women in Dachau. They might not even read the rest of the post, because they will not be able to stomach it.

However, this is not such a story.

Erno Weisz was born in 1890 in the small Hungarian town of Nagykallo The son of the local butcher, he completed high school in 1908. Weisz then changed his name to Vadasz, to help avoid exclusion from his studies due to the “numerus clausus” code restricting Jewish students. He excelled in his studies and continued his education in the Medical Faculty of the University of Budapest, graduating in 1913.

By 1930, he was well established as an obstetrician/gynecologist and raised two children with his strictly Orthodox wife. In 1944, the family was deported to Auschwitz.

In February 1945, when the tide of war was turning against the Third Reich, several pregnant Jewish women managed to survive in the concentration camps, together with their newborns.
A very special example was the “Pregnancy Unit” (Schwanger Kommando) in the Kaufering subcamp of Dachau. Malnourished, exhausted, and low
in weight, seven women with growing abdomens had not hidden their secret. Surprisingly, they were not murdered. Instead, they were housed in a barrack and fed by a Jewish Kapo, David Witz, in charge of the kitchen. He recruited Dr. Erno Vadasz, who was a prisoner in the men’s camp, to perform the deliveries of the babies. The heroism of the mothers was complemented by the heroism of Dr. Erno Vadasz

Vadasz was so weak and hungry that he needed a prop to stand up. He asked for soap, a knife, hot water, and towels, as for any delivery. The mothers had been well-fed before the deliveries, and within a few weeks, Vadasz had successfully brought all seven babies into the world even though two of the births were complicated.

Following the deliveries, one of the mothers developed pneumonia. Vadasz sat next to her as she lay, semi-conscious for two weeks, and cared for both mother and child, sharing his food until she recovered. He also managed to save a young girl from the crematorium, whom he recognized from his town. The last baby he delivered was born one day after the demolition of the crematorium, on April 29, 1945.

Following the camp’s liberation, the doctor learned that his entire family had been murdered. He was never rewarded or recognized for the lives of the babies he delivered. He returned to his hometown and restarted the practice he loved, marrying a nurse from Dachau – but he refused to have children for fear of what might happen to them, the authors wrote. He died in 1957 from prostate cancer. The picture at the top post-war picture of Dr. Erno Vadasz with the Daughter of a Patient.

sources

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Post-war-Photo-of-Dr-Erno-Vadasz-with-the-Daughter-of-a-Patient-Reproduced-with_fig5_326692426

file:///C:/Users/Dirk/Downloads/Managing_Pregnancy_in_Nazi_Concentration_Camps_The.pdf

https://europepmc.org/article/pmc/pmc6115479

If Anyone Would Have Told Us In 1945 That Certain Battles We Would Have To Fight Again, I Wouldn’t Have Believed It

I don’t think I have to tell anyone who Elie Wiesel is, but for those who don’t know him, I’ll provide a brief overview.

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 (and thus Orthodox Jewish) family.

After the Nazis had occupied Hungary in 1944, the Wiesel family was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Elie Wiesel’s mother and younger sister were murdered in the gas chamber there. In 1945, Elie and his father were sent on to Buchenwald, where his father died of starvation and dysentery. Seventeen-year-old Elie was still alive when American soldiers opened the camp.

Elie is the 7th on the 2 row of bunkbeds, I believe

After World War II, Wiesel became a journalist, prolific author, professor, and human rights activist. He was a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York (1972–1976). In 1976, he became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, where he also held the title of University Professor. During the 1982–83 academic year, Wiesel was the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in the Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University.

For any further information on Elie Wiesel, I will give you an assignment. We live in an era where nearly any information you want to get is at the reach of your fingertips. Do some research on Elie Wiesel on the internet or go into a library and find one of his books.

The title of this post is a quote from Elie Wiesel of an interview he had with Georg Klein, a fellow Holocaust survivor, in 1986. The clip below is appropriately titled “The world is not learning anything.”

It shames me to admit that Elie was so right, the world isn’t learning from its mistakes and history.

On this day, his birthday, I hope we all pause for a moment and contemplate what world we want to live in. Do we want hate to rule once more? Or do we want love to conquer? I know what I want.

Leaving you with some of Elie’s quotes:
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.

SOURCES

https://www.buchenwald.de/en/919/

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

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/facts/

Three People of the Holocaust.

There were three groups of people in the Holocaust. The criminals who tortured and murdered. The victims who were murdered and those who survived were scarred for life, mentally and physically. The helpers, the people who helped the Jews and others to escape and survive. .

These are just examples of each group.

The criminal

Hildegard Lachert was known to the prisoners as “Bloody Brigitte”; as she would always strike them repeatedly until blood was showing. She was a female guard, or Aufseherin, at several concentration camps.She became publicly known for her crimes at Ravensbrück, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the war, she was sentenced to a total of 27 years in prison for her brutal treatment of inmates during her camp service, but she only served 10.

In November 1947, she appeared in a Kraków, Poland courtroom, along with 40 other SS guards in the Auschwitz trial. Because of her war crimes at Auschwitz and Płaszów, the former guard and mother of two surviving children was given a sentence of 15 years in prison. Lächert was released in 1956 from a prison in Kraków. In 1975, the German government decided to put her and other SS guards from the Majdanek concentration camp, on trial again.

The testimonies heard in relation to Lächert’s sadistic behaviour were extensive and detailed. One former prisoner, Henryka Ostrowska, testified, “We always said blutige about the fact that she struck until blood showed,” giving her the nickname “Bloody Brigitte” (Krwawa Brygida in Polish). Many other witnesses characterized her as the “worst” or “the most cruel” Aufseherin, as “Beast”, and as “Fright of the Prisoners.” For her part in selections to the gas chamber, releasing her dog onto inmates and her overall abuse, the court sentenced her to 12 years’ imprisonment. But due to time served in custody and her time in Krakow, she was released.

The Victim

Frank Emanuel Polak was born on December 19.1941, in Amsterdam He would have been 80 today. But he was murdered age 2. In February 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after the selection. It looks like his parents and siblings survived.

His smiley face will haunt me for a long time.

The Helper

Carlos Sampaio Garrido was a Portuguese diplomat credited with saving the lives of approximately 1,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary while serving as Portugal’s ambassador in Budapest between July and December 1944.

In 2010 he became the second Portuguese to be recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

“Ambassador of Portugal in Budapest, from October 1939 to June 1944. When Hungary was conquered by Germany in March 1944, the neutral countries did not recognize the new government. Responding to the request of the Allies, the dictator of Portugal, António de Oliveira Salazar, reduced the level of diplomatic representation in Hungary, and Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido was called back to Portugal. Until his departure from the city in June, Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido dedicated his efforts to helping Jews. The presence of the SS in Budapest in those days accelerated the persecutions of all residents, without excepting diplomatic representations. Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido granted asylum in his home to a dozen persecuted, mostly Jews, without notifying his ministry. On April 28 at 5 in the morning, his residence was raided by agents of the political police of the Hungarian fascist regime and his protégés were taken to the central prison in Budapest. Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido resisted the arrest of his guests and presented an official protest to the government, demanding his release, the investigation of those guilty of the affront and an official apology for the violation of the extraterritoriality of the Portuguese embassy. With this attitude, he achieved the liberation of those people but was declared Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido resisted the arrest of his guests and presented an official protest to the government, demanding his release, the investigation of those guilty of the affront and an official apology for the violation of the extraterritoriality of the Portuguese embassy. With this attitude, he achieved the liberation of those people but was declared Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido resisted the arrest of his guests and presented an official protest to the government, demanding his release, the investigation of those guilty of the affront and an official apology for the violation of the extraterritoriality of the Portuguese embassy. With this attitude, he achieved the liberation of those people but was declared persona non grata in Hungary. Faced with this situation, he had to inform the Foreign Ministry about the diplomatic projections of his performance: the ministry had already warned him, on May 11, about the “irregularity” of it. Carlos de Almeida Afonseca de Sampaio Garrido moved to Switzerland on June 5, from where he continued to send instructions to his successor in charge of the embassy, ​​Alberto Branquinho, to continue helping persecuted Jews.”

sources

https://www.yadvashem.org/es/holocaust/encyclopedia/sampaio-garrido-carlos-de-almeida-afonseca-de.html

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/174871/frank-emanuel-polak

https://www.stewartandel.co.uk/hildegard-laechert

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_L%C3%A4chert

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What if?…The Rockers That May Have Never Been—A Story of Kiss

I am passionate about music, especially rock. One of my favourite bands is Kiss. When we hear one of their songs on the radio, songs like “I Was Made for Loving You” or “World Without Heroes,” I just sit back and enjoy. I don’t even give it a second thought.

However, these songs and so many of their other classics may have never been written or composed. The two lead men of Kiss, Gene Simmons (aka Gene Klein and originally named Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (aka Stanley Bert Eisen) are both lucky they were born.

Paul’s parents are Jewish. He was the second of two children. His mother came from a family that fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then to New York City. His father’s parents were from Poland.

His mother was born in Berlin, Germany on 16 November 1923, and fled the Nazi uprising. She lived briefly in Amsterdam, the Netherlands with her mother and stepfather before moving to New York City in 1939. If they had stayed in Germany, as so many others did, they definitely would have been subjected to the cruelty of the Nazi regime.

Gene Simmons’s start in life could have been even more uncertain. He was born on 25 August 1949, in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish immigrants from Hungary. His mother, Florence Klein (née Flóra Kovács), was born in Jánd and survived internment in Nazi concentration camps. She and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust.

Florence/Flora was 19 when she was liberated on the 5th of May 1945 from the Mauthausen concentration camp by American troops.

I have written blogs about the Holocaust, contemplating how many talents were destroyed by this evil ideology and regime. Thankfully some people did survive, and their legacy produced talented people like Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

For some people, the Holocaust may seem like a distant bit of history, but this is how close the Holocaust still is.

Finishing up with my favourite Kiss song, I have chosen a video with the lyrics because of the song, “A World Without Heroes.” It has a powerful message that is still so poignant today.

Donation

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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Sources

https://www.thesound.co.nz/home/music/2020/05/kiss-gene-simmons-shown-his-mother-s-nazi-victim-impact-statement.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gene-simmons

https://www.geni.com/people/Eva-Eisen/6000000002765905416

Klara Boda – A child with 2 fluffy toys.

Klara Boda- just a child

Klara Boda, just a child with 2 fluffy toys.

Klara Boda, just a child who wanted to go to school

Klara Boda, just a child who wanted to be a princess.

Klara Boda, just a child whose live was really not complicated.

Klara Boda, all she needed was love and care.

Klara Boda, just a child who received that love and care from her parents.

Klara Boda,Klara Boda,Klara Boda. I put down the name Klara Boda several times to mke sure it gets ingrained in your mind.

Why?

Because Klara Boda was seen as a threat. This child with two fluffy toys would cause the breakdown of society according to that sick and twisted policy adhered to by the Nazi regime.

Klara Boda was only 5 when she was murdered she didn’t even get the chance to go to school.

I want you to feel uncomfortable. I want you to sit down for 5 minutes and look at the picture of Klara Boda and her 2 fluffy toys. I want you to realize that it was perfectly legal for this child to be murdered . I want you to even try to fathom that the murder of this child was probably carried out by someone who may have a child of that age himself or would at least have a niece of that age, yet to him it was perfectly justified to kill Klara.

And if you can fathom that then please tell me. Because I can’t. All I can do is cry because my heart is broken.

There was no reason for Klara to be murdered , nor was there any reason for all the other 1.5 million children to be murdered or any of the millions of adults for that matter. It was all because an idea some people had, an idea that they were superior. A notion that they were a master race. But they were not. They were just evil and indifferent, filled with hate.

Klara Boda born 16 October 1938,Tamási járás, Tolna, Hungary. Murdered July 1944 in Auschwitz.

source

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/199766373/klara-boda

A happy baby who had to die.

Capture

There is nothing more beautiful and rewarding then the smile of a baby. Nothing comes even close to it.

When you see a happy baby you cannot help but smile.

When you see a happy baby you get a warm feeling and a sense of peace and serenity.

The beauty of sound of a laughing baby surpasses the most beautiful song.

No one should feel any sense of hate when they are in the presence of a happy baby.

This happy baby however had to die.

She had to die, why?

That is a question that puzzles me. Why did any baby had to die? I know there are those who mean well and try to explain to me that the Nazis even saw innocent babies as a threate, because they though the Jewish bloodline would go on though them.

But I don’t care much for that explanation. The fact is that we all have a choice, The ones who murdered this baby also had a choice, they choose hate over love, bad over good, compassion over indifference,

Zsuzsanna Gerstl, a Hungarian Jewish Girl, would have celebrated her 79th birthday on August 8, but she was murdered aged 2, or maybe eve younger  in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, in 1944. This happy baby  had to die.

How evil must you be to consider a baby an enemy.

baby

I took a break for a few days in writing about the Holocaust, basically it was getting a bit too much for me and I needed a break.

However I do realize that if I stop writing about the Holocaust it means one less person to tell the stories and opportunity to keep that history alive.

But this break gave me a possibility to approach the Holocaust from a different vantage point. a fresh new perspective as such.

The picture above was a picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob.  It is a picture of the arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia,  Hungary, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland.

I do not know how often I have seen this picture but it must have been hundreds of time, but only this morning I noticed  for the first time the woman holding the baby in  front of the line on the left. It is clear to me that this line was selected to be marched straight to the gas chambers because it consists of women,children and elderly people.

I did crop the picture to focus more on the mother and baby, she is looking to the line on the right, as is the boy behind her. Maybe they are looking at family members. The woman looks concerned. The baby though seems calm. What is so heartbreaking about this picture is the fact that anyone could consider that baby to be an enemy or a threat to anyone. The evil of that thought pattern is just beyond any logic.

Donation

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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Source

The Holocaust in a few pictures, 1939-1945

The Smile of an Angel

Capture

The Smile of an Angel has the power to warm your heart. It gives comfort to a weary soul.

The Smile of an Angel makes you want to become a better person, the manifestation of the best version of you.

The Smile of an Angel spreads joy ans and love.

Then why did the The Smile of this Angel cause hate?

The innocence in the The Smile of this Angel is so evident, how was that not seen?

The Smile of an Angel was destroyed by evil.pure evil.

This little Angel is Ishtvan Blankenberg . He was only 22 months old when he was  murdered in Auschwitz  on May 21, 1944.

 

My smile will last forever.

evaMy smile will last forever.

Your hate will disappear.

My smile only brings joy.

Your hate brings nothing but fear.

My smile warms people’s hearts.

Your hate brings nothing.

My smile is pure

Your hate is filth.

My smile is that of an Angel.

Your hate is pure evil.

Your hate killed me ,Eva Bruszt, aged 2. Born May 13 1942. In Budapest, Hungary.

Killed in June 1944 in Auschwitz.

But

My smile will last forever

Your hate will disappear.

 

 

++

Source of Photo

Find a grave