Tag Archives: Auschwitz
When the International Committee of the Red Cross was Fooled
Although the Red Cross does important work, it often got it wrong in the past, and arguably in the present, when it’s about political positions. They appear to take one side—usually the side that controls the data.
One infamous example is the visit by the International Red Cross to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in 1944. The Nazis orchestrated a deceptive façade, presenting the camp as a model settlement to the Red Cross inspectors, who were not allowed to speak with the inmates freely. This visit resulted in a misleading report that downplayed the true nature of the camp and the Holocaust.
An inspection was demanded by the King of Denmark, following the deportation of 466 Danish Jews to Terezin in 1943.
In February 1944, the SS embarked on a “beautification” (German: Verschönerung) campaign to prepare the ghetto for the Red Cross visit. Many “prominent” prisoners and Danish Jews were re-housed in private, superior quarters. The streets were renamed and cleaned; sham shops and a school were set up; the SS encouraged the prisoners to perform an increasing number of cultural activities, which exceeded that of an ordinary town in peacetime. As part of the preparations, 7,503 people were sent to the family camp at Auschwitz in May; the transports targeted sick, elderly, and disabled people who had no place in the ideal Jewish settlement.
Maurice Rossel was a Swiss delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who visited Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in June 1944. His report on Theresienstadt has been a subject of controversy and criticism. Rossel’s report portrayed Theresienstadt as a “model ghetto” where Jews were supposedly well-treated, with adequate housing, food, and cultural activities. However, this depiction was highly misleading and failed to capture the true horrors of the Holocaust. Rossel admitted that he gave Theresienstadt a clean bill of health and would probably have done so again and that he was also given a tour of Auschwitz, which he did not realize was a death camp despite the sullen, haunted looks he received from the inmates.
Two delegates—from the International Red Cross and one from the Danish Red Cross—visited the ghetto, accompanied by Theresienstadt commandant SS First Lieutenant Karl Rahm and one of his deputies. The facility had been “cleaned up” and rearranged as a model village. Hints that all was not well included a bruise under the eye of the “mayor” of the “town,” a part played by Paul Eppstein, the Elders’ Council member representing German Jews. Despite these hints, the International Red Cross inspectors were taken in. This was in part because they expected to see ghetto conditions like those in occupied Poland with people starving in the streets and armed policemen on the perimeter.
For the Red Cross visit, even the SS Scharfuhrer [squad leader] Rudolph Haindl was nice to the children for the benefit of the camera…he posed for the camera, smiling, and not insisting that he be greeted by Jews from a distance of three steps, as he had demanded just the day before.
The visitors were suitably impressed, and the reports after the visit were positive. Pleased with their success, the Nazis decided to create a “documentary-style” film about Terezín in the summer of 1944. Kurt Gerron, an inmate who had been a well-known actor and director, was put in charge of the filming of The Führer Gives a City to the Jews, but he was not allowed to edit the film or even view the developed footage.
Two weeks after the movie was completed, he and other participants were sent to Auschwitz. Gerron was gassed soon after his arrival.
On December 19, 1996, the International Committee of the Red Cross today released copies of its World War II files, some of which provided verification that it knew of the persecution of Jews in Nazi concentration camps but felt powerless to speak out.
The files, 25,000 microfilmed pages, were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Red Cross said its knowledge about the treatment of Jews during World War II had been written about by Jean-Claude Favez in his book ”Une Mission Impossible.” The book was published in France in 1988 and later translated into German but never appeared in English. Some American scholars and Holocaust survivors in the United States were also aware of the Red Cross’s knowledge, but generally, it was not known more widely.
The Red Cross has long acknowledged its awareness of the treatment of Jews during World War II, maintaining that if it had disclosed what it knew, it would have lost its ability to inspect prisoner-of-war camps on both sides of the front.
No one at the museum has had the opportunity to study the material, said Radu Ioanid, the museum’s specialist on Holocaust survivors. But Mr. Ioanid said documents that he had briefly seen disclosed that the Red Cross, which is supposed to maintain neutrality, had rescued thousands of Jews in Hungary and Romania and had assisted Jews at a concentration camp in Ravensbruck, Germany.
For the most part, however, the Red Cross’s assistance came late in the war and beneficiaries were relatively few compared with the millions of people who died in the camps.
”The International Committee of the Red Cross has shared responsibility for the silence of the world community,” Georges Willemin, the organization’s archivist, said today. ”Could we have gone further? Could we have done more? I don’t know.”
The documents are in two groups, one dealing with Jewish prisoners and the other with hostages and political detainees. Mr. Willemin said both groups of files contained many first-hand accounts and reports on the persecution of Jews and political prisoners from 1939 to 1945.
Asked why it had taken more than 50 years for the organization’s information to be released, Mr. Willemin replied, ”Because it takes time to face your own history.”
Miles Lerman, chairman of the Holocaust Museum, said lives could have been saved if the Red Cross had spoken out during the war, but Mr. Lerman also cautioned against condemning the organization.
”There is no question about it,” he said. ”People, good people, decided to look the other way, including people in the Red Cross in Britain and the United States.
”Always when people speak out, lives are saved. ”I wouldn’t describe them as villains but as part of the world that found it more convenient to remain silent.”
Another scholar at the museum, Randolph L. Braham, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the City University of New York, wrote in his book, ”The Politics of Genocide” (Columbia University Press, 1994): ”The International Red Cross feared that intervention in support of the Jews might jeopardize its traditional activities on behalf of prisoners of war.”
Mr. Ioanid said, ”There is no doubt that the Red Cross let itself be used by the Nazis.”
He gave as an example the ”positive reports” that Red Cross inspectors wrote about the concentration camp at Terezin, Czechoslovakia, and said the organization had been ”clearly manipulated.”
To all outward appearances, Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt, was an unthreatening, model camp that even had its own symphony orchestra. In reality, it was a way station for Jews and other prisoners headed to the death camp at Auschwitz.
To its credit, Mr. Ioanid said, the Red Cross took 3,000 to 3,500 Jewish orphans from Romania to Palestine on ships in 1944 when the Romanians realized their German allies were going to lose the war and relaxed their anti-Jewish campaign. By then, however, half of Romania’s 760,000 Jews had already been killed.
Mr. Willemin said the Red Cross’s decision to release its wartime records ”was an important change for an organization that through its history has been inclined to protect the privacy of its records so as not to run any risk of impairing its humanitarian work and its reputation for impartiality and neutrality.”
The camp became a model city for six hours while International Red Cross delegates visited on June 23, 1944. Unfortunately, the International Red Cross seems not to have learned from the past.
Sources
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/terezin-site-deception
https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/23-june-1944-the-red-cross-visits-terezin-concentration-camp/
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/icrc-wwii-holocaust
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/theresienstadt-red-cross-visit
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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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Auschwitz Birkenau
In the shadows of history’s darkest hour,
Lies a place where hope lost its power.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, silent and stark,
Bears witness to humanity’s deepest mark.
Within its fences, anguish did reign,
As innocent souls felt the tormenting pain.
Their cries echoing through the chilling air,
Beseeching a world that seemed not to care.
In barracks cramped, they huddled in fear,
Their dreams shattered, their future unclear.
Families torn apart, their bonds severed,
In the grip of hatred, they endured forever.
Yet amidst the despair, a flicker of light,
As they clung to memories, holding them tight.
Love transcending barbed wire and hate’s decree,
A testament to the strength of humanity.
Though they may be gone, their voices still rise,
A haunting reminder of the ultimate price.
We vow to remember, to honor and mourn,
The souls of Auschwitz, forever reborn.
Let their stories be told, let their names be heard,
May their legacy inspire, their memory preserved.
For in our remembrance, they shall never be lost,
The victims of Auschwitz, forever embossed.
These are just a few.
Ester Wouthuijsen-Ricardo, born in Amsterdam, on 8 August 1887—was murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau, on 14 August 1942. Reached the age of 55 years.
Alexander Waterman was born in Amsterdam on 20 March 1937. Murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau on 2 August 1942. He reached the age of 5.
Esther Eveline Werkenda was born in Borgerhout on 13 September 1933. Murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau on 2 August 1942. She was 8 years old.
Abraham Schuit was born in Amsterdam on 19 September 1907. Murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau, on 30 September 1942. He reached the age of 35 years. Occupation: Diamond polisher
Sara Mol-Pam was born in Amsterdam on 23 June 1904. Murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau on 26 August 1943 at the age of 39.
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/218806/ester-wouthuijsen-ricardo
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/177238/alexander-waterman
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/32143/esther-eveline-werkendam
Holocaust—A Solemn Cry
“In shadows deep where nightmares dwell,
A chapter etched in history’s spell.
Holocaust, your bitter tale,
Of anguish, loss, and skies so pale.
From ghettos choked with sorrow’s breath,
To camps where darkness met with death,
The human spirit, tested, tried,
Yet hope, a flicker, never died.
In ashes rose a solemn vow,
To never forget, to honor how
The brave souls fought, the martyrs bled,
Their legacy, a light ahead.
Though time may blur the lines of pain,
Their stories echo, clear, remain.
For in their memory, we find
The strength to heal, the will to bind.
Holocaust, a solemn cry,
A testament to those who lie
In fields of silence, never rest,
Their voices echo, we attest.
So let us stand, and let us vow,
To keep alive their sacred now.
In remembrance, let us strive
For peace, for justice, to revive.”
The photograph adorning the beginning of the blog captures a poignant moment in the life of Herman David Santcroos. He was born in Amsterdam on 10 June 1943, and tragically passed away in Meerlo, the Netherlands, on 19 October 1944, just reaching the age of one.
Under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Nabben, he was one of the Jewish foster children during a tumultuous period in history. Herman’s mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, endured unspeakable suffering, only to return from Auschwitz in search of her beloved child. Her heart-wrenching anguish persisted as she learned of her son’s passing, and the anguish of the Holocaust haunted her every waking moment. Each new day began without her precious son by her side, a reminder that for her, the scars of the Holocaust would never truly heal. Every breath was a testament to the enduring pain and loss that no passage of time could ever erase.
“Where horrors scarred both heart and hand,
Amidst the shadows, dark and deep,
A fragile bloom dared rise from sleep.
In soil stained with tears of pain,
Where memories of loss remain,
A flower bloomed, a symbol bright,
Defiant ‘gainst the endless night.
Its petals, soft, a whispering grace,
A tender touch in desolate space,
A beacon of hope, though frail it seemed,
In a landscape haunted, where nightmares teemed.
With each petal unfurled, a silent plea,
For remembrance, for humanity,
To never forget the lives once lost,
Nor the innocence at such a cost.
For in that flower, Auschwitz’s bloom,
Lies a story of resilience in gloom,
A testament to the human will,
To endure, to survive, against all ill.
So let us cherish this Auschwitz flower,
A symbol of hope, of strength, of power,
And vow to keep its memory bright,
In the darkest of days, in the blackest of night.”
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/181236/herman-david-santcroos
Holocaust Art by David Olère—A Survivor
David Olère was a Polish-French artist known primarily for his powerful and haunting artworks depicting the Holocaust. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1902, Olère survived internment in several concentration camps during World War II, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
After the war, Olère settled in France and began creating art that bore witness to the atrocities he had experienced. His works often depicted scenes from the camps, capturing the brutality and inhumanity of the Holocaust. Olère’s art served as a form of testimony and remembrance, ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust would not be forgotten.
One of his most well-known works is a series of paintings and drawings depicting the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, based on his firsthand experiences. These works are particularly striking in their stark portrayal of the grim realities of the Holocaust.
Olère’s art continues to be a significant contribution to Holocaust remembrance, offering a unique perspective from someone who survived the horrors of the camps and felt compelled to document them through his art.
I did post some of his works before, the painting at the top is titled, “The Food of the Dead for the Living,” and below are more.
Admission in Mauthausen by David Olère.
The Experimental Injection by David Olère
The Oven Room by David Olère
Gassing by David Olère.
On 20 February 1943, due to his Jewish origin, he was arrested by the French police and placed in the Drancy Camp. On 2 March, he was deported from Drancy to the German Nazi Auschwitz Camp, where he was registered with number 106144. Throughout his entire stay at the camp, he worked in the Sonderkommando, a special work unit forced by the Germans to aid in the operation of the crematoriums and gas chambers.
“David Olère is the only prisoner of Sonderkommando who transferred his traumatic experiences from the shadow of the crematorium chimneys on paper and canvas.” — Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński
Sources
https://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/gallery/olere.htm#D54
Michael van West & Saartje van West-Goudsmit
Just two names of people who should have never been murdered. Micheal van West was a florist. There is no records of his wife, Saartje van West-Goldsmit’s profession, but I will presume she was a stay at home mother. They were no threat to anyone–just two people trying to get by.
Michael van West was the sixth of the nine children of Salomon van West (1859-1931) and Betje Lelie (1853-1935) and born in Amsterdam on 31 October 1887. Like all his brothers and his father, Michel was also a flower dealer. He married Saartje Goudsmit on 31 July 1912 in Amsterdam, a daughter of Levie Goudsmit and Hanna Vos, she was born on 6 October 1887 there. At the same time as Michael, his brother Jacob, married Saartje’s sister, Raatje Goudsmit.
Michael had five brothers and four sisters, all born in Amsterdam. On 1 December 1910, the still unmarried Michael van West left for Belgium and was registered there at the address Krijtstraat 8 in Berchem. According to the statement that Michael made to the Antwerp officials, he planned to stay there for more than six months.
After the marriage of Michael and his brother Jacob van West to Saartje and Raatje Goudsmit respectively, at the end of July 1912, the four of them left for Brussels on 6 August 1912, where they came to live at 31, Rue de L’Ascension.
Nothing is known about the period from August 1912 to 1944 about Michael and his wife Saartje, as well about Jacob and his wife Raatje. However, it is certain that Michael van West and Saartje Goudsmit were arrested in the early spring of 1944 and transferred to the transit camp in Mechelen, Kazerne Dossin. In March of that year, by order of the Central Bureau for National Security, an instruction was issued to urgently proceed to the arrest of Jews.
Michael and Saartje were deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz on 4 April 1944 with convoy 24, which arrived there on 7 April 1944 with 625 victims in total. Of these, 270 were murdered immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau; 355 people were registered in the camp, of which 147 were still alive when Auschwitz was liberated.
It is not known whether Michael and Saartje belonged to the group of 270 victims, or to the group of 355 people who were registered. However, it is clear that they did not belong to the 147 people who were liberated ,but were murdered in Auschwitz after 7 April 1944, or died due to exhaustion, abuse or diseases.
The 24th Convoy of 4 April 1944, was one of the many tragic transports during the Holocaust. It departed from Mechelen, Belgium, which was a major transit point for deportations of Jews during World War II. The destination of this convoy was Auschwitz.
The convoy consisted of Jewish men, women, and children who were rounded up by the Nazis and their collaborators as part of their systematic genocide of European Jews. The journey from Mechelen to Auschwitz was harrowing, with cramped conditions, lack of food and water, and the constant fear of the unknown awaiting them at their destination.
Michael and Saartje had two sons. Edouard Elias van West was murdered somewhere in Germany in February 1945. aged 17. The eldest son, Leo van West, was also murdered in February 1945 in Mauthausen. He was 31 years old.
Source
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/720814/michael-van-west
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/720813/saartje-van-west-goudsmit
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Music and Holocaust
From Zero to 102
I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust.
This is how evil the Nazi regime really was. It is also why their industrialized way of murder was so effective. It is in human nature to always find the good in our fellow human beings, even animals. No one could really fathom the level of cruelty by the Nazis. It was unprecedented.
Suzanne Kaminski was born on 11 March 1943, in Brussels, Belgium. On 19 April 1943, she was deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival on 22 April, she was murdered by the Nazis that same day. She was only 45 days old and considered the youngest Jewish child to be deported from Belgium.
Klara Engelsman was born on 30 April 1842 in Amsterdam as the daughter of Salomon “Samuel” Abraham Engelsman and Saartje Hartog Cosman. Klara Engelsman married Daniel Brush on 24 May 1865. As far as we know, the couple had no children. Daniel Brush died at 76 years old on 9 July 1918 in Amsterdam.
At the time of her 100th birthday, Mrs. Klara Brush-Engelsman lived at the home of the Morpurgo family. Later she stayed in the Jewish care home. In March 1944 she arrived in Camp Westerbork, where she was nursed in the camp hospital. There she still experienced her 102th birthday. She was taken on a stretcher to the train on 4 September 1944, which went to Theresienstadt, where she was murdered on 12 October 1944.
The murder of a 45 days old baby and a 102-year-old lady, is the clearest indication that the Nazis’ ideology was based on hate and hate only. Anyone who condoned this or still condones it, subscribes to that same ideology.
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/228136/klara-borstel-engelsman
Buchenwald Liberated
Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established by the Nazis, located near Weimar, Germany. It was operational from 1937 until its liberation on April 11, 1945, by American forces.
When the American soldiers arrived at Buchenwald, they were shocked by the appalling conditions they encountered. The camp was overcrowded, with thousands of emaciated prisoners subjected to forced labor, starvation, disease, and brutal treatment by the SS guards. Many inmates were on the brink of death, and mass graves dotted the landscape.
The liberation of Buchenwald was a moment of both relief and horror. For the survivors, it meant freedom from the daily torment and the hope of rebuilding their lives. However, it also revealed the extent of Nazi atrocities to the world. The images and testimonies from Buchenwald played a crucial role in documenting the Holocaust and holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes.
As American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp–including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true.
Among the camp’s most gruesome characters was Ilse Koch, wife of the camp commandant, who was infamous for her sadism.
Witnesses claimed “she wore clothes which were deliberately chosen to be inciting for the prisoners”,. They accused her of whipping prisoners for daring to look at her and of having “a desire to own certain objects made of human skin”, such as lampshades, a cover for a family photo album, and gloves.
Various objects made from human skin were found in Buchenwald when it was liberated. Despite the testimony of former prisoners who were forced to make such grisly objects, prosecutors could not conclusively prove her involvement in committing such crimes.
On April 11,1945, around 2:30 pm the tanks of the Fourth Armoured Division rolled through the SS complex without stopping. The SS fled. Armed inmates took control of the camp and overpowered the last remaining SS soldiers. By 4:00 pm they had taken control of the camp. Buchenwald was freed from within and without. About one hour later, scouts from the Fourth and Sixth Armoured Divisions were the first American soldiers to reach the camp. 21,000 inmates were liberated on that day, among them some 900 children and youth.
In the aftermath of liberation, efforts were made to provide medical care, food, and support to the survivors.
Many displaced persons would face a long road to physical and psychological recovery. The liberation of Buchenwald stands as a reminder of the horrors of genocide and the importance of never forgetting the lessons of history.
Among those saved by the Americans was Elie Wiesel, seen in the photo at the top of the blog-seen in the second row, seventh from left-who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His mother and the youngest of his three sisters were murdered in Auschwitz, while he and his father were moved to Buchenwald where his father died of starvation and dysentery just months before it was liberated by Allied troops. Seventeen-year-old Elie was barely alive when American soldiers opened the camp.
I’ll finish with some of Elie Wiesel’s quotes:
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
Sources
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175448
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-u-s-army-liberates-buchenwald-concentration-camp
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ilse-Koch
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