Innocence – History of Sorts

I am

eva

I am a child

I am innocent

I am a daughter.

I am a primary school pupil

I am a young girl.

I am a human being

I am human

I am a child with a whole future ahead of herself

I am a potential future painter,decorator,dentist, neurosurgeon,homemaker,artist,musician,dancer,actress, virologist, someone who finds the cure for cancer, a mother, wife,girlfriend, I am all that and more.

I am a product of love

I am someone hated by an evil regime.

I am someone who was murdered ,maybe by someone who had a daughter the same age as me.

I am murdered by someone who maybe goes to church every sunday and prays to the same god tat I believe in ut in a different way.

I am murdered in Auschwitz in a gas chamber as are my parents.

I am Eva Gersch aged 7 or 8, daughter Rudolph Gersch and Elisabeth Grunfeld Gersch.

I am

A single rail track.

73323488_10220738785319621_217477086372167680_n

I took the picture above this morning at about 11:00 am . It is a rail track just around the corner of my home. When I looked at that rail track this morning several thoughts came to mind.

Firstly I thought how the railways made such a big change in the lives of ordinary citizens. It connected cities and also countries. People were no longer bound by the location they were born in. To this day it still fuels the imagination of children. Shows like Thomas the Tank engine are immensely popular as are the books. Even my own children when they were growing up loved to read those books and watch the show. My oldest son first learned to read from a book entitled “My first book of trains”

My second thought when I looked at the tracks and at the picture after I took it,was that it looked like a picture of a rail track to any of the concentration camps, be it Auschwitz,Treblinka, Bergen Belsen. It occurred to me that the Holocaust really could have happened any period in history. The picture could have easily been taken in 1942.

I also realized that for the survivors and their children and grandchildren the Holocaust is still a daily reality. For those who survived they still relive that train journey every day.

The one thing that was built to connect people was used to facilitate the mass murder of millions. 1.5 million of which were children. Children who would have been in awe of the technology,

Train journeys were supposed to be pleasant but there was nothing pleasant about their journeys.Often a hundred or more people would be cramped in a cattle car with no windows , no sanitary facilities, nowhere to sit and many would not even survive the journey.

Below is a picture of some children who survived. Who they are I don’t know. All I know is that they were liberated from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp in April 1945.

survivors

They were some of the lucky ones, but I say lucky reluctantly because even though they survived their nightmare still went on in their minds for years to come,sometimes coupled with the insult by those who claimed the Holocaust never happened. The Holocaust would forever be a part of their lives.

1.5 Million were killed,although I do believe that number is higher.

Here are just some of their names

Harry Knöpfelmacher Murdered age 9

Hedwig Zander Murdered age 12

Frederika Borstrock Murdered age 4

Ester Kwint Murdered age 12 or 13

Peter Czeisler Murdered age 2

The scary thing is that it appears we haven’t learned from our mistakes and the one thing I fear most is that a Holocaust is very likely to happen again and it could happen to any group of people.

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Poor,poor Ivan

ivan

I can never understand hate.

I can’t understand hating a human being I don’t know.

I just can’t and I never will.

I understand love

I understand love but can’t describe that warm feeling when you are close to someone you love.

I can understand that feeling when you look at a baby, so pure and innocent, that feeling of wanting to become a better man.

Love is what I understand

Yet so many have no notion about the concept of love. All they see is hate,death and destruction.

It is because their own life is so pathetic and insignificant that the only way they feel they can make a mark is by destroying everything that is pure and innocent.

Poor,poor Ivan Rozenbaum you were only 8 months when you were killed in Auschwitz.WHY,WHY,WHY????

You will never.

Milch

You will never know how it feels like to fall in love, and wake up every morning next to the love of your life.

You will never know the anxiety of school exams.

You will never know that nervousness of a first working day.

You will never know how it feels like to have your teenage heart broken, by your first love.

You will never know how to hate.

I will never know why someone could be so evil and kill you cold blooded.

I will never know you personally

Yet I will never be able to forget you.

You are Lunek Milch, killed by cowards when you were age 3.

They buried you alive during a mass murder in your hometown of Tłuste in 1943.

Source

Ancient Faces

I miss you.

Marianne

I miss you , even though I don’t know you and we’ve never met.

I miss you ,because you could have been the composer who composed my favourite piece of music.

I miss you, because you could have been the poet who wrote my favourite poem

I miss you ,because you could have been the painter who painted my favouite painting.

I miss you, because you could have been the author who wrote my favourite book.

I miss you, because you could have been the comedian who maked me laugh the most.

I miss you, because you could have been the director of my favourite movie.

I miss you, because you could have been the teacher who taught me right from wrong.

I miss you, because you could have been the chef whose recipes I like the most.

To me it doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish,Catholic,Protestant,Muslim,Buddhist or Atheist. All that matters to me is that you are a human being. Just like me, like the words of a song, from flesh and blood you were made.

But there were those who had a different opinion on that, A twisted, evil opinion. They did not want you to live, They killed you brutally.

In my thoughts I see you.

In my prayers I remember you.

I miss you Marianne Nunes Vaz, born 31 May 1935 in Amsterdam. Killed 5 Feb 1943 in Auschwitz.

I miss you although we never met, but in my heart I have a place for you.

Do you dream of me at night?

Henny

Yesterday it would have been my 80th Birthday. Henny Sophia Frank, born on February 23,1939 in Amsterdam. My name is Henny Sophia but people call me Henneke.

But alas I was not allowed to celebrate my 80th birthday. Nor was I allowed to celebrate my 70th or 60th, in fact I wasn’t even allowed to celebrate my 5th birthday.

You see, you killed me in Sobibor when I was 4. All the things I could have been never came to pass. In the end I became a number, a statistic. But I am so more then that.

I am a child who had many dreams, dreams of becoming a teacher, a nurse, a doctor or just simply someone that works in a shop, a boutique where they sell the lastest fashion from Paris and Milan.

My dream were cut short by you and the regime you so admired, a regime of hate and greed.

My dreams were cut short, but do you see me in your dreams?

Do you ever think of me or all the others you killed, the ones you lied to. You told them not to worry, they’d be fine after they had a shower, but they did not get water but death.

Do you ever see my eyes in your dreams? My eyes that only displayed innocence.

I doubt you dream at all.

There is nothing more beautiful then the smile of a child.

ema

Being a Parent is the hardest job in the world. The sleepless nights, the dirty diapers, the countless times being peed on.Also the worries when your baby has a bit of a temperature, the millions of scenarios of what could go wrong with your child.

But all of that is forgotten the second you see that very first smile. Nothing on this earth is more valuable or could replace its beauty.

A smile so pure and full of innocence and unconditional love, it could melt every one’s heart.

Yet there are those who saw this token of purity and innocence as a threat to their very existence.

The love was answered with hate.

The pureness was answered with filth.

The innocence was answered with death.

How could anyone look at a smiley face like that of Emma Zilverberg and feel compelled and righteous enough to destroy that life?

It breaks my heart to think that the last minutes of this 18 month old girl were filled with pure evil. Evil in its most barbaric, inhumane form.

The really disturbing aspect of this that those who killed her possibly had young children themselves, or may have been an uncle or aunt to a niece or nephew.

Emma Zilverberg was killed in Sobibor she was still a baby. If we forget Emma and all those countless children who died in the Holocaust and other genocides, we will have failed as a society.

Source of picture

Ancientfaces.com

A Child is born with no state of mind

The title is actually from a Hip Hop song but it is so true. A child is a blank canvas and is open to all experiences. He or she will listen to adults and will trust them blindly because they are innocent and don’t know better then to trust.

When their parents are taken away or killed they will turn quickly to other adults put in charge. During the Holocaust these other ‘adults’ were often indoctrinated by evil and would see the children,mainly Jewish but also others, as parasitic vermin who needed to be destroyed.

And the children would often just follow their ‘guardians’ just to be killed by them, for a child is born with no state of mind.

He or she knows no hate but yet experiences it. He or she trusts unconditionally but that trust is betrayed.

Children were killed when they arrived in killing centers; others were killed immediately after birth or in institutions.The older children were sometimes worked to death or they died of starvation.

Every death during the Holocaust is terrible but the death of children is particularly sickening. Innocent and defenseless were they led to the slaughter.

And for those who survived they had to live with the horrors they had witnessed for the rest of their lives, and even with that so many were able to live without being bitter, where many of my generation complain about trivial things.

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A tear rolls down my face

Henio

A tear rolls down my face because you made me cry, not because you hurt me.

A tear rolls down my face because you made me sad, not because you did me wrong

A tear rolls down my face and I wonder why, because I don’t know you.

A tear rolls down my face although I have never met you.

All I see is a young boy aged 9 with a happy smiley face, full of life .

This last picture of you, taken outside the entrance of a bank. is all that remains of you.

On the same day day you started 1st grade in school, September 1,1939 an evil force swept through your land and declared you an enemy.

An ‘enemy’ that was all in their twisted mind, for how could a 6 year old be a threat.

There was no room anymore in your own land for people like you, so the evil force gave you a new ‘home’., called Majdanek concentration camp.

You and your family had to go through a selection in this new home, in spring 1942 you survived.

On November 9th 1942 you were killed in a Gas chamber, you were 9. Your name is Henio Zytomirski

A tear rolls down my face because now I know your name and age.

A tear rolls down my face because I know I was 9 once.

A tear tolls down my face for I know the pain you felt was real.

A tear rolls down my face, knowing you died innocent.

A tear rolls down my face.

The Children of WWII -part 5

children-sitting-on-luggage

A child is born with no state of mind,blind to the ways of mankind.

During WWII,as in any other war, all the children were victims,without exception.Of course the degree and severity on how they were victims had a significant difference. Some lost their lives,while others lost their innocence. Many of those who lost their innocence had to live with the emotional scars for the rest of their lives, for they had been forced to do things no child should ever have to do.

The only ‘crime they committed was being born at the wrong time,in the wrong place and sometimes to the wrong parents.

The picture above is of three young evacuees sit on their suitcases ready for their journey away from the danger of the city. England. 1940.

An elderly woman and several children walk to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland. 1944.

jewish-mother-and-children

A horde of children wearing gas masks carry out a practice evacuation of a school in Kingston, Greater London, after a canister of tear gas was discharged. 1941.

children-wearing-gas-masks

Jewish children, survivors of Auschwitz, stand with a nurse behind a barbed wire fence. Poland. February 1945.

children-in-camp

Two little girls read a board advertising carrots instead of ice pops. Wartime shortages of chocolate and ice cream made such substitutions a necessity. Location unspecified. 1941.

child-looking-at-a-sign-for-carrots

A group of London children inspect bomb damage outside their front door. 1944.

children-looking-outside

American Supply Sergeant Ralph Gordon kneels in a street to give a piece of gum to a barefoot German girl during the Allied occupation after the war. Scheinfeld, Germany. October 1945.

soldier-and-a-girl

A young “Sergeant Major” inspects some British schoolboys who have been evacuated to Kent at the start of the war. The “soldiers” are carrying carry wooden guns. 1939.

children-playing-pretend

Pre-school children on the way to their barrack homes from morning class at a Japanese-American intern camp.

preschoolers

London children wear their gas masks as they skip in the park at their temporary homes on the south coast of England. 1940.

girls-wearing-gas-masks-playing

A young child named Freddie Somer cries upon arriving at King’s Cross Station in London for wartime relocation. 1939.

child-crying

Mothers and their children step out of the train at Auschwitz concentration camp. Poland.

train-to-camp

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