Auschwitz Revisited

It was 70 years ago today at Auschwitz concentration camp  (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) that the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red (Soviet) Army entered the death camp and “liberated” the remaining 7,500 prisoners in the camp. (In January 1945, Heinrich Himmler had ordered the evacuation of all death camps. The order included: be sure that not a single prisoner from the concentration camps falls alive into the hands of the enemy. On January 17^th, 58,000 Auschwitz detainees were evacuated under guard, most walking). Ten of thousands of the prisoners died in the subsequent death march).

I wrote and published the following combined posts in 2005. I believe today is a day that I should again post them.

A few months ago I was tired enough that I thought I’d finally get a good night’s sleep. However, after about three hours, I awakened and turned on the TV in my bedroom. Of course, the channel was PBS and what I saw was the final chapter of the series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State was on. I watched it and then I really couldn’t sleep!

History has always been a major interest of mine. The first “long,” adult book I ever read was William L. Shirer’s The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. I think that I was about twelve years old when I began to read it. I remember that at some point in my reading, I became very angry. I somehow understood that it was the Third Reich that took my father into World War II and that the war had somehow negatively impacted his life. Since he only spoke of his war experiences to me once—and he was very intoxicated and crying during that conversation—I really did not know what the war had done to him. I now believe that with his death at age 63, he was a delayed casualty of the war. But that’s another story.

In college I specialized in Twentieth Century European history. I perceive now that I was still trying to get my head around the horror and evil of the Second World War. I learned that its roots were in World War I and the roots of World War I perhaps went back to the Napoleonic Wars. But studying history did not answer the questions that perturbed me—questions that I never really had formulated but that were somewhere in my mind.

Through the years I have read a good deal of history and commentary on Germany and World War II. I have also seen quite a few films. The horror of the Holocaust always generated within me anger—and sometimes tears, as when I have watch the film, Schindler’s List. But there was something about watching that final chapter of Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State that brought both anger and tears to the point that I had to do something.

Since I felt there was no way in which I could sleep, I went to my computer and wrote an essay simply entitled Auschwitz. I emailed it—I was not blogging then—to most of my friends and the results were not what I had expected. For example, one friend, who is a pastor in Michigan, requested permission to reprint it in his congregation’s newsletter. But the real surprise came in an email from my sister. Her message and suggestion answered personal questions for me and, in some ways, changed my life.

After I wrote and emailed my essay following the final chapter of the series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State on PBS, my sister sent me a surprise email. In it she described a brooch that had been in my mother’s family for several generations. My mother had given it to her and her daughter had recently worn it. The surprise came when my niece pointed out that the jewels in the center of the brooch formed a Star of David.

My grandmother had come to the United States from Germany at the end of the 19th Century. She had been given the brooch by her mother who had received it from her mother. No one knows who first owned it.

After my sister pointed out the Star of David in the center of the brooch, I began making connections. I had been only four years old and my sister had just been born when out maternal grandmother died. Most of what I knew came from stories told by my aunts and uncles. None of those stories, however, concerned my grandmother’s life prior to coming to the United States.

One story, however, made me wonder. In 1937 or 1938 my grandmother returned to Germany for her one and only visit. When she returned, she said that, if there were a war, she did not think any of our German relatives would survive it. Supposedly after the war, she attempted to contact her family and Germany and could not.

The question arose in my mind: did my maternal grandmother have Jewish ancestry? I called my mother and talked to her about the brooch. She said that she had long thought that there was “Jewish blood” in her mother’s family but no one ever talked about it.

I began to remember things, among them my own mother’s fears of authority and “them.” The “them/they” were never identified, but you had to avoid “them” or “they” would hurt you. From what I can determine, this was something she learned from her mother. Could it not have been a defense developed by those whose ancestors had experienced the hate and destruction of pogroms? And, personally, what about my own reaction to the books I have read, or the series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, or films such as Schindler’s List? My unknown Jewish ancestry is confirmed.

The impetus for writing the precious article and this one was another film I saw on PBS last night, Frontline’s Memories of the Camps, made from newsreels made as Allied troops entered Hitler’s death camps. As with my watching Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, both anger and tears came to me. This time, however, as picture after picture of the dead flashed on the screen, I began to wonder if I were seeing the remains of my ancestors. And so I did what I did before: I sat done and wrote and you have just read the results.

Related Nick's Bytes posts:

01-27-2010 Lest We Forget: International Holocaust Memorial Day http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2010/01/lest-we-forget-international-holocaust.html

01-27-2007       Remembering the Holocaust http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2007/01/remembering-holocaust.html

01-28-2014      Lest We Forget: Holocaust Remembrance http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2014/01/lest-we-forget-holocaust-remembrance.html

06-16-2011 My Conversation with Elie Wiesel http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-conversation-with-elie-wiesel.html

05-15-2008 Elie Wiesel: If We Forget the Story, It Will Happen Again http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2008/05/elie-wiesel-if-we-forget-story-it-will.html

04-14-2013 A Fundamentalist Danger to Modernity http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-fundamentalist-danger-to-modernity.html

05-11-2005 Auschwitz http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2005/05/auschwitz.html

05-11-2005 Auschwitz Continued http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2005/05/auschwitz-continued.html

09-20-2005 In Memory of Simon Wiesenthal http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2005/09/in-memory-of-simon-wiesenthal.html

09-22-2005 On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2005/09/on-possibilities-and-limits-of.html

05-25-2005 A Fundamentalist Is a Fundamentalist http://saintnicksbytes.blogspot.com/2005/05/fundamentalist-is-fundamentalist.html

Other Resources That I Recommend:

Days of Infamy

in·fa·my

ˈinfəmē/

noun

1. the state of being well known for some bad quality or deed.

   "a day that will live in infamy"

   synonyms:

   notoriety, disrepute, ill fame, disgrace, discredit, shame, dishonor,ignominy, scandal, censure, blame, disapprobation, condemnation More

   • an evil or wicked act.

     "one of history's greatest infamies"

December 7, 1941

While President Roosevelt's words, a date which will live in infamy, are well known the world over, I should like to suggest that there are quite a few days of infamy in history. Here are just a few recent ones:

September 11, 2001

April 19, 1995

July 11, 1995

April 6, 1994 

April 19, 1993

August 9, 1945

August 6, 1945

These are just a few days of infamy over the past 73 years. Throughout human history there have been many, many more. 

On this Second Sunday of Advent, let us look forward to a time when there will be no more days of infamy to add to the list.

Lest We Forget: Holocaust Remembrance

I did not forget: I am a day late in posting:

Holocaust Memorial, Miami, Florida 

Yesterday (January 27th) marked the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD), an annual day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. Every member nation of the U.N. has an obligation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide. The U.N. resolution that created IHRD rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity.

• Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century. ~ Elie Wiesel
• If we forget the story of the Holocaust,, it will happen again. ~ Elie Wiesel
  

And, it has: 

Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 (2,000,000 Deaths)

Kurdistan (Iraq): 1988 (182,000 Deaths)

Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 (200,000 Deaths)

Rwanda: 1994 (800,000 Deaths)

Darfur: 2003-present (600,000 Deaths and counting)

 

Below are a few of the previous posts from Nick's Bytes that I believe are relevant:

• Auschwitz (May 11, 2005)
• Auschwitz Continued (May 12, 2005)
• In Memory of Simon Wiesenthal (September 20, 2005)
• Elie Wiesel: If We Forget the Story, It Will Happen Again (May 15, 2008)
• Them October 18, 2008
• My Conversation with Elie Wiesel June 16, 2011

In Fourteen Hundred Ninety-Two…

Christopher Columbus made a big boo-boo.

Columbus, who was as confused as anybody who has been seen for a long time, called the first people he saw “Indians.” It is not known what they call Columbus.

~ It All Started with Columbus by Richard Willard Armour 

About 50 years ago or so I read a marvelous little book entitled It All Started with Columbus. The author, Richard Willard Armour (July 15, 1906 – February 28, 1989) was an American poet and author who wrote over sixty-five books. Armour’s history is unlike any other history I had ever read—except, perhaps, William Gilkerson’s From Rocks to Rockets: Gilkerson on War Arms and Armies Through the Ages (about which I shall write in some future blog post). It is a tongue-in-cheek satire of American history: a delightful read for anyone knowledgeable enough about the subject not take take his words seriously.

Although I may be putting myself at risk of retribution from the Italian-American Anti-defamation League or perhaps the Mafia, I want to make it plain that I do not subscribe to the notion that Christopher Columbus discovered America or even that he was a "good" human being.

To begin with, what we call North and South America were never lost. Nor was the New World new. The Americas (also, misnamed) were inhabited by many peoples with advanced and divergent cultures, including for a short period visitors from Northern Europe who came to North America at least 400 years before Columbus is arrival in the Caribbean.

Second, there is much about Columbus and Columbus Day that is not known to most Americans. For example:

• Most educated Europeans in 1492 were aware that the world was round, but did not know that the Pacific Ocean existed. Thus Columbus and his contemporaries assumed that only the Atlantic lay between Europe and the riches of the East Indies
• The first Columbus Day was celebrated in 1792, when New York's Tammany Hall sponsored a celebration of the 300th Anniversary of Columbus' landing in the Bahamas.
• It was not until 1937 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, primarily due to intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus.
• Prior to that, Italian and Catholic communities in various parts of the country held annual religious ceremonies and parades in the honor of Columbus.
• The first major Opposition to Columbus Day began in 19th century by anti-immigrant groups who rejected the Columbus Day celebrations due to their association with Italians and especially Roman Catholicism.
• In recent years, Native Americans and other groups have protested the celebration of Columbus Day as an event that indirectly resulted in the colonization of the Americas and the death of millions of indigenous peoples. 

Today I am not celebrating Columbus Day. Not necessarily because of any of the above; rather, because I do not picture old Chris as a likable or moral historical figure.

• Endless testimonies...prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then... The admiral (Columbus), it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians. ~  de las Casas, Bartolome (1971). History of the Indies. New York: Harper & Row.
• ...husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides. . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. ~ de las Casas, Bartolome (1971). History of the Indies. New York: Harper & Row.
• October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered that the islands were inhabited by friendly, peaceful people called the Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks...Columbus was so impressed with the hard work of these gentle islanders, that he immediately seized their land for Spain and enslaved them to work in his brutal gold mines. Within only two years, 125,000 (half of the population) of the original natives on the island were dead. ~ Eric Kasum

In fourteen hundred ninety-two,

Columbus sailed the oceans blue.

In fourteen and hundred and ninety-three, 

Columbus stole all that he could see.

A few of many Internet references:

• Christopher Columbus (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
• Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery
• Christopher Columbus Day Is a Crock
• Christopher Columbus & His Crimes Against Humanity
• Columbus and Columbus Day

For further reading:

If every reader of Nick's Bytes donated to Sometimes Saintly Nick and his kitty kids just $1.00 a month to supplement their small pastor's pension and Social Security, we would finally be able to make our financial ends meet. Thank you.

Elie Wiesel: If We Forget the Story, It Will Happen Again

Human Rights is a term that many people seem to take seriously. My research informs me that the best explanation of what the term means is found in the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in part:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood [sic.]

Many years ago, when I was a seminary student, I had the unique opportunity to join with a half dozen of my fellow students in a sit-down conversation with a man who had all of his human rights stripped from him—a man who had been dehumanized in the most horrible ways. His name is Elie (Eliezer) Wiesel and, if you aren’t familiar with him, I pray that you do.

I don’t want to take up space recounting his story. If you’ve not heard it, may I suggest that you go HERE? Briefly, Elie is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald and Gleiwitz. He tells his story in many of the books he has written.

The first of his books that I read is perhaps the most powerful: Night. It is biographical and covers the period from 1941, when Elie was twelve years old through the years during which his family and neighbors discounted the dangers posed by the Nazis into 1944 when the Jews of the town are transported to German concentration camps. What follows is the horror of dehumanization:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. Chapter 3, pg. 32

I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time. Chapter 4, pg. 50

When they (the guards) withdrew, next to me were two corpses, side by side, the father and the son. I was fifteen years old. Chapter 7, pg. 96

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me. Chapter 9, pg. 109

Prisoners liberated from Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April, 1945

In April of 1945 Elie was liberated from the Buchenwald Concentration camp, where his father died shortly before the camp was taken by Soviet soldiers. After the war he became of journalist and has dedicated his life to telling the story of the Holocaust because he believes that, with out the story, the horror will happen again and again.

During out conversation with Elie Wiesel back in 1985, I was struck by his humility and gentleness. This man who, as a child, had been stripped of his human rights—of his basic humanity—spoke softly of the past and of a future in which all humanity must be on guard to combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice—all of those things that lead to dehumanization and the denial of human rights. He said, “If humankind forgets the story of the Holocaust, it will happen again.”

Perhaps not enough of us have heard Elie’s story. Perhaps we have forgotten the evil and horror of the Holocaust. Perhaps we have been so centered on our own comfort that we’ve looked the other way when human rights have been denied our brothers and sisters—when genocide after genocide has occurred since the Holocaust:

Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 (2,000,000 Deaths)

Kurdistan (Iraq): 1988 (182,000 Deaths)

Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 (200,000 Deaths)

Rwanda: 1994 (800,000 Deaths)

Darfur: 2003-present (600,000 Deaths and counting)

I've gone everywhere, trying to stop many atrocities: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia. The least I can do is show the victims that they are not alone. When I went to Cambodia, journalists asked me, “What are you doing here? This is not a Jewish tragedy.” I answered, “When I needed people to come, they didn't. That's why I am here.” ~ Elie Wiesel

Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century. ~ Elie Wiesel