Self-Portrait of a Holocaust Survivor [1 ed.] 9780822945079, 082294507X

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SELF-PORTRAIT HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR

Werner Weinberg, 1944 (Siegfried Emmering)

About the Frontispiece

In the spring of 1944, well before the epidemics became rampant, a hut in the Holländer compound of Bergen-Belsen was set aside for prisoners with contagious diseases. The Dutch physician, Dr. Siegfried Emmering, was put in charge of this “isolation barracks.” Dr. Emmering was a talented artist, who had brought in his rucksack drawing paper and pencils. He made sketches of the dread surroundings, and occasionally he drew portraits of his patients and fellow prisoners. I was taken to the isolation barracks with diphtheria. When I recovered and was about to return to the camp, Dr. Emmering drew my portrait. A year later I found myself among several thousand prisoners who were evacuated before the advancing Allies. On strictest orders, all papers and pictures a prisoner might still possess had to be left behind. I complied — except for diary notes sewn into my coat lining. The portrait was among the discarded papers on the barracks floor. Half a year after our return to Holland, a package arrived containing these abandoned papers. Regina Najman, who was not evacuated, salvaged them, took them home to Belgium, found out my new address, and mailed them to me. Between the pages, folded up, lay the portrait. In 1984, while preparing the material for this book, I set out to find Dr. Emmering, the artist. I succeeded in locating him — then eighty-three years old — in Amsterdam. He was very pleased when he received the photograph of his sketch, and wrote to me that this was the only one of all his Holocaust drawings that had found its way back to him.

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SELF-PORTRAIT HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR Werner Weinberg Introduction by

Alfred Gottschalk

Hebrew Union College Press University of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, oh, 45220 and the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, pa, 15260. Revised edition © 2017, Hebrew Union College Press. First published by McFarland Press, © 1985, Werner Weinberg.

Book design by Angela Roskop Erisman

This book is dedicated to my wife, Lisl. Everything described in it as happening to me happened also to her. The same as myself, she has been tormented by the search for meaning ever since the events. We have shared and mutually sharpened our memories and insights at every stage of the book. In a true sense she is my coauthor.

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Table of Contents Publisher’s Preface xi Preface xv Introduction by Alfred Gottschalk xxi

Prologue 1 Survivor of the First Degree 3 Hometown 17 Tale of a Torah Scroll 19 My Affair with Rheda 37 Jüdischer Lehrer: Germany, 1936–1939 53 Crystal Night 69 Hannover Happening 71 A Delayed Kaddish 81 Concentration Camp 85 A Revelation in Bergen-Belsen 87 The Shame of Bergen-Belsen 91 The Great Novel About Bergen-Belsen 95 An Uvechein and a Dayeinu for Bergen-Belsen 101 Pilgrimage to Bergen-Belsen 105 Retraining for Life 111 The Lost Transport 113 Search for Meaning 159 Unveiling a Synagogue Monument in Germany 161 The Crack in the Dam 179 Why I Did Not Leave Nazi Germany While There Was Still Time 189

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“I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You” 201 Contending with Guilt 217 Epilogue 233 A Dutch Couple 235 Glossary of Hebrew, German, and Yiddish Terms 257 Index 263

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Publisher’s Preface Werner Weinberg was a professor of Hebraica at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (1961–1984). The breadth of his scholarship was prodigious, yielding monographs on ancient Hebrew epigraphy and biblical exegesis, the syntax of rabbinic Hebrew, medieval grammars, and numerous studies on various aspects of Modern Hebrew. Among his most frequently cited scholarly works are his unique Des Reste des Jüdischdeutschen (1973), which documents the historical infiltration of Yiddish words into mainstream German, and his studies of and contributions to the critical edition of Moses Mendelssohn’s collected works. To many generations of rabbis and doctoral students, Professor Weinberg was a beloved mentor. His gentle voice guided a learner through the intricacies of medieval texts with encouragement and kindness. Whether in the classroom or delivering reflections in the Scheuer Chapel, Professor Weinberg’s voice was one of calm and humility. Both Werner and Lisl Weinberg survived internment at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Immediately after the end of the war, Weinberg wrote a novel, believing fiction was the only literary form capable of lending sense to his experience. That manuscript came with him to the United States, but by the time he thought to translate it into English and find a publisher, he began to question its adequacy. In the meantime, documentation of the Nazi horrors was being collected in archives, narrated in textbooks, and depicted in both documentary films and historical fiction. Only at the very end of the 1970s did Weinberg

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begin to speak publicly about his Holocaust experience. To do this, he chose the venue and modality with which he was most comfortable: the synagogue’s bimah or dais. In the Scheuer Chapel in Cincinnati, with a small, quiet voice, Weinberg revealed his soul. Those of us who were present for those commemorations of Kristallnacht, or Holocaust Remembrance, were indelibly touched by his presentations. The documentation of the horrors, the details of internment, were left by him for other contexts and authors. Weinberg spoke about the unspeakable, but it was an unspeakable that was distinct from what was found in other Holocaust survivors’ narratives. What Weinberg shared were his feelings of vulnerability as a witness, his fear of inadequacy as a survivor, his guilt: why him and not someone else? His talks seamlessly integrated biblical and rabbinic verses, liturgy, and poetry. His reflections were at once theological and existential. His questions overwhelmed the listener; his answers were painful to himself and to those of us hearing what we would not — could not — otherwise imagine. The collection of essays republished here, a little more than three decades after it first appeared, conveys Weinberg’s ongoing struggle to put into words something that might offer understanding to post-Holocaust generations. But these essays are also about a survivor’s own desire for meaning and sense in a senseless world. Most essays are framed around a series of questions. These questions constitute Weinberg’s “prison,” and each time he attempts to pass through its portal, he finds himself “held back at the threshold.” The essays fuse together the most personal of reflections with the careful analysis of an erudite theologian — theological questions are not permitted to remain abstractions. Weinberg moves between resisting and acquiescing to the implications of Bergen-Belsen, never shying away from

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the most painful questions about God, morality, virtue, and the individual’s potential to do good. Lisl Weinberg died in 1993; Werner Weinberg died in 1997 at the age of 81. During the last years of his life, his illness profoundly affected his voice, but he continued to produce scholarship until it was no longer possible, aided by student assistants and friends. For preparation of this edition, Ms. Susie Konicov, Werner and Lisl’s daughter, made available Weinberg’s own copy of the first edition, which had markings indicating corrections (about a dozen) he hoped would appear in future printings. We have deciphered these markings to the best of our ability and complied with his wishes to the extent possible. A few other minor editorial changes have been introduced to provide stylistic consistency among the essays, some of which were first published in a number of different periodicals. The original volume contained some sixteen pages of photographs, illustrations, and documents. Sadly, we have not been able to locate a number of the originals, making reproduction difficult. Images which could be scanned adequately as they appear in the original edition have been included. Researchers should be aware that additional documents and photographs were deposited by Weinberg with the Leo Baeck Institute Archives; these are available online at https://archive.org/details/wernerweinberg. An endowed fund in support of the publication of scholarship by the Hebrew Union College Press was bequeathed to huc-jir by Lisl and Werner Weinberg. Ms. Konicov has asked that proceeds from this volume be contributed to the endowment established in her parents’ names. David H. Aaron, Director, Hebrew Union College Press Cincinnati August 2016

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Preface I would like to comment briefly on the texture and the structure of this book. As told in the story “The Great Novel About BergenBelsen,” I had hoped to bring to the reader my account of the Holocaust in the form of literary fiction. While still in the camp, I outlined the plots for several novels and, after the war, I actually wrote them. I believe that a good historical novel can be the best vehicle to convey to the reader the essence of past events. I did not find a publisher though, which does not diminish my faith in the principal effectiveness of the literary approach, and the work of a very few gifted writers confirms my view. The academic approach, on the other hand, rational, disciplined, sine ira et studio, is not for me. My obviously unfair notion of a Holocaust scholar is of a person who is detached, who can steer clear of emotional involvement and suppress compassion and empathy while engaged in his research. When I try to put to use my own academic training to achieve the necessary state of objectivity with regard to the Holocaust, a favorite ss maxim reverberates in my ear: eiskalt muss man sein können, “you must be able to be ‘ice cold.’” Well, I am not able: I have earnestly tried. I failed the academic test worse than the fictional one. My own contribution must be of a different kind. Let me try a simile: For many years, the Holocaust has stood in my way like a towering question mark hewn from granite. All I could do was walk around it. After three decades, though, the image appeared to have undergone a change. It seemed as if a number of smaller question marks, made of less stern stuff, were emanating from

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the immovable one. I felt I could cope with some of those small question marks, always aware that taking on several small ones would not amount to removing the one that remains as large as ever. I think that my writing is most useful in the form of a memoir, a narrative, an unpretentious essay. Whatever insights and conclusions I may have to offer are based on my actual experiences and my psychological, emotional, and conceptual reaction to them. Thus, all pieces contained in this book are, and ought to be, subjective. The ratio between the elements of communicating an experience and trying to analyze it is hard to quantify; the elements themselves are not always neatly separated in my writing. Sometimes a reflection is contained in what seems to be straight narration; then again, an article that has all the characteristics of an analytical essay may include a tale, a highly personal story. Thus the literary genres vary; unity is provided only by the person of the author. The eighteen pieces in this collection deal with three distinctive themes: my suffering during the Hitler years, nostalgia for my life in Germany before the Nazi regime, and glimpses of cautious hope for the future. Regarding the suffering — I have stayed away from explicit descriptions because these have long since become counterproductive. I did not avoid them completely, but I treated them as known matter, referring to them incidentally, as it were. As to the stories dealing with my youth and the country of my birth, I am well aware that they reflect a romantic and sentimental streak in my personality. In these stories the role of the Holocaust is mainly that of an evil force which snatched away what was dear to me. And so are those sparks of hope part of my nature. I am pessimistic by temperament, but now and then I do experience deeply rewarding moments of love and of faith. In my teaching and on speaking engagements, I have noticed that such

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moments were usually triggered when I have been addressing young people, and this includes the youth of Germany. A word about the editorial history of this book is in order. Most of its pieces were first orally delivered at memorial services and symposia or as papers and lectures. Whenever a given item was considered for publication in a periodical or a collection it underwent a process of editing and rewriting. The venture of uniting a selection of those pieces in a volume required another thorough editing and rewriting process. This need arose mainly from my intention to produce a book on the Holocaust whose segments could be read either in sequence, amounting to an integral whole, or as separate units, each with its own focal point and emphasis. Selection of items was determined by their relevance to any of the three themes named above; rewriting and supplementary writing arose from the need for consistency, progression, and synthesis. Most of the editing dealt with the problem of repetition. Why should the elimination of repetitions form a problem? Because there was more to it than the deletion of redundancies. Since all these memoirs and ruminations deal with autobiographical matter, certain basic elements of my personal history must reappear in several stories and articles that, otherwise, deal with quite divergent topics. When they first appeared separately, years and continents apart, repetition was hardly an issue. In a book, however, it must be dealt with sagaciously. I have tried to handle this editorial task by stressing a different aspect of each such “basic element” when it recurs, paring it down to leave only the information demanded by the new context. In continuous reading, however, such an element will progressively gain in substance. This, at least, has been my intention. My apologetics should tell the reader how important I consider certain basics in the following pieces, an incidental effect which is not unwelcome.

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U I acknowledge permission to use published material from the following, and I thank the respective editors for their professional assistance: The American Jewish Archives, The Christian Century, European Judaism, The Hebrew Union College Press, the board of the ilba Memorial Volume, The Journal of Reform Judaism, and Yad Vashem Studies. I owe thanks especially to Linda Maria Delloff and Livia Rothkirchen, and to Abraham Peck, for friendly attention to language and style. I will always remain grateful to Sylvan Schwartzman and Elinor Grumet for their help and encouragement in the difficult early stages of this enterprise. Very special thanks go to my disciple, Susan Warshell, who turned out to be a gifted editor, and who spent countless hours, with full devotion and strict discipline, forging a book out of individual memoirs and essays. My wife, Lisl, who has been “a helper fit for me” in all my literary and scholarly endeavors, has carried on this tradition also with the present work. Deeply involved, working untiringly, she has lent both her understanding heart and her critical eye to the emergence of this book. Werner Weinberg Cincinnati April 1985

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[When Rabbi Yishmael, one of the ten martyrs killed that day under Caesar Hadrian, died of unspeakable torture] the angels ministering before the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He cried out, saying: “Is this the Torah and this its reward?” The Holy-OneBlessed-Be-He answered: “It is a decree, none shall disturb it!” And a Heavenly Voice went out, saying: “If I hear another word, I shall turn back the world to Tohu Vabohu.” — Midrash Eleh Ezkerah

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Introduction I Each year, for the past several years, Professor Werner Weinberg has thoughtfully climbed the steps to the bimah of the synagogue of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati to speak to our college community. He has done this on Yom Hashoah, “Holocaust Day,” and on November 9 or 10, the anniversaries of the “Night of Broken Crystal,” an orgy of killing and destruction in the year 1938 visited upon every Jewish community in Germany. I have anticipated Professor Weinberg’s lectures on these occasions with eagerness and with trepidation. I have been eager because I know that his is one of the most eloquent and most profound voices among those who seek to understand that which we call the Holocaust and those whom we have labelled its survivors. I have felt trepidation because I, too, am a survivor of the Holocaust, and Professor Weinberg evokes in me as well memories long suppressed. I, too, know firsthand the incredible events of the night and day of November 9 and 10, 1938. As an eight-year-old child in Germany, I saw my synagogue defiled and its sacred objects despoiled. I watched my grandfather wade into a freezing brook to recover the carved up pieces of a Torah parchment. My entire world was carved up as well, and I do not know if it will ever be whole again.

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Yet I am deeply honored to introduce this extraordinary book. I know of no other memoir of the Holocaust which has searched so deeply for meaning, which has subjected the author to so much self-scrutiny, and which has contained so complete a chronicle of the chapters that make up the earth-shattering events we have named the Holocaust.

II “There are wounds that defy healing, and the reason is that they must not be allowed to heal.” The imagery and the truth of these words of Werner Weinberg define the very essence of this volume. The imagery suggests a wound of some kind that continues to bleed or remain infected. The imagery also suggests doctors and nurses making an effort to treat the wound and being hampered, on purpose, in their efforts. In the Holocaust world, Werner Weinberg’s world, Jewish prisoners were often used as experimental guinea pigs. In many cases, open wounds of the most horrible nature were deliberately left untreated by Nazi doctors in order to record the “scientific” consequences. That is one truth of this image. A second truth is that the Holocaust was a revaluation of all moral values, a clear sign that, as Weinberg finds, “mankind overestimated the progress it had made since its dawn” and that now “you could do the absolutely unthinkable with absolute impunity.” The Holocaust was a clear sign that Western civilization had failed and that the illusion of order, of scientific progress, of religious tolerance was merely that — an illusion. When and if we understand that, we will understand that we can no longer fully trust the intentions of those scientists and bureaucrats who present

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us with the latest technological “advances” in modern warfare. When and if we understand that the two great “wounds” of our time, the Holocaust and nuclear destruction — one real and the other the push of a button away — are but two sides of the same phenomenon, we will understand that one marked the end of Western civilization’s innocence and the other will mark the end of our world. In Werner Weinberg’s imagery, the open wound of the Holocaust will serve to educate us and to deter the even greater wound of our self-destruction. Werner Weinberg did not understand any of this in 1936 when he graduated from the Hebrew Teachers Seminary in the German city of Würzburg with the exalted title of jüdischer Lehrer or Jewish teacher. Three years after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 and a year after the Nuremberg Laws had effectively removed German Jewry from the social, political, and economic life of Germany, Werner Weinberg entered what was for him a “normal” world of teaching Jewish students, delivering sermons, and generally trying to walk a balanced tightrope of relations between a spiritual leader and his or her congregation. He did not realize that the insanity of such a situation was becoming the norm, that what Robert Jay Lifton has termed an “ultimate moral inversion,” where “living and dying were divested of moral structures,” had already made its appearance. It would find its crystallization in the “counterfeit universe” of the concentration camp.

III Emerging from this “counterfeit universe” where wrong was right and life was death, what could Werner Weinberg know of life? What can he teach us today?

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For Werner Weinberg, his wife Lisl, and for the few survivors of the camps, liberation in 1945 was a physical liberation. From the harrowing experience of being an “individual in the concentration camp,” the survivor found himself the victim of “the concentration camp in the individual,” a situation where stress and suffering over a sustained period very often left survivors emotionally damaged. The isolation of captivity in the camps also manifested itself in some survivors as an inner isolation, leaving them unable to respond normally to a “normal,” postcamp experience. Werner Weinberg is not free from these consequences of life in the “counterfeit universe.” But like some survivors he considered it his duty “to let the world know about Nazi inhumanity and the suffering of the Jewish people.” This is what Professor Weinberg can teach us about the world, about what he calls his “sacred mission.” But as one views this self-portrait, one can see certain feelings emerge about Werner Weinberg’s relationship to the “world,” that vast body of humanity, Jew and non-Jew, which knew of the relentless Nazi drive to annihilate European Jewry. “That sense, that the world knew,” writes Dorothy Rabinowitz, who has interviewed many survivors, “coexisted side by side with the survivors’ perception that people [in America and elsewhere] rejected the facts about the Holocaust which had been published after 1945.” Weinberg expresses this realization when he observes that for him the Holocaust has become “the process of taking a back seat in people’s consciousness, of getting sanitized, of being adapted to fit schoolbooks.” The fact that the world did not wish to know about or refuses to believe the Holocaust has been, I suspect, even more of a blow in Werner Weinberg’s life then the eerily prophetic vision in Bergen-Belsen which he describes in his book. At that time he had

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foreseen a period “thirty years from now [when] people will say, ‘if you cannot forgive, at least forget,’ and ‘life must go on.’” But Professor Weinberg has not forgotten and he will not allow us to forget. He has not forgiven, but he has entered into a dialogue with a new generation of Germans, trying to help them overcome the burden of their past, even if he cannot, by the virtue of its enormity, overcome his own. The enormity of that burden is made clear in this book. Weinberg wonders whether he should have written it. He envies those survivors “who do not speak out. Their silence demonstrates that the unspeakable has remained unspeakable, while my discourses might make it appear as though the unfathomable enormity [of the Holocaust] could be reduced to finite proportions.” I do not presume to know the answer to such a dilemma. But I do believe that in speaking out to mortals of finite dimensions, he is helping us to live with the meaning of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen for our social and our religious beings. Finally, we must ask if there is a message of hope in Werner Weinberg’s book. I would answer yes. For what else can one see but hope in the beautiful story of Wim and Jennie, the heroic Dutch Christian couple who hid the Weinberg’s daughter, Susie, for over two years. There is hope, too, in the amazing story of the Weinberg family Torah, dedicated in 1845, which was destined to become a display piece in the planned Nazi museum of the “extinct” Jewish people. That Torah survived the “thousand year Reich,” as did the Jewish people, was found by Werner Weinberg and today is used anew to teach in the Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion. In Wim and Jennie’s courage, in the odyssey of the Torah scroll, there is what Professor Weinberg refers to as the still small voice. I believe that voice exists in all of us who profess to believe in a God of love and mercy and in the idea of the innate dignity of

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human beings. We must never stop searching for that voice or lose sight of its meaning. It is for us, as a human community, our hope and our future. Alfred Gottschalk, President Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Cincinnati April 1985

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PROLOGUE “Are you done now, Tonio Kroeger?” “No; but I’ll say no more.” — Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroeger

Survivor of the First Degree Personally speaking, I have counted seven separate phases in my survivorship from the Holocaust. Some of them overlap. Others have left vestiges throughout several or all of the subsequent phases. Only during the last two have I been conscious — or more precisely, been made conscious — of the fact that a Holocaust survivor is a distinctive kind of person, not just a person who underwent a special experience, but almost a person sui generis. The reason is that the Holocaust itself was sui generis. The seven phases are those of catharsis, of self-deceit, of enjoying the limelight and sobering up, of denied traumas, becoming a resource person, functioning as “the Survivor-in-Residence” and, last, the postsurvivor era. First, in the camp we inmates regarded what was happening to us as a novum in recorded history. When I returned to Holland, I strongly felt the need to tell the enormities I had witnessed, and I was certainly no exception in that respect. Eyewitness reports filled the newspaper columns and radio programs. Within a few months, returnees had committed their stories to writing, and pamphlets describing the atrocities appeared by the dozens. People were eager to learn from authentic sources the gruesome details of what had been unconfirmed rumors during the war years. Liberated prisoners like myself, on the other hand, needed an audience. Seeing our listeners shudder at the abominations we reported, knowing that they believed us (for the Dutch had learned from their own experience to expect the worst from Teutonic fury), the very triumph of being alive to tell the story — all

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these brought some comfort to our shattered egos. This phase of sensationalism was understandably short. The public was soon fed up with the topic — they had heard it all. We, too, grew weary of repeating our tale — but we had not told all of it, not nearly all. Second, self-deceit. As the pitiable postliberation euphoria faded and we regained some of our strength, our lives were totally filled with picking up the pieces. The implications of starting life ab ovo were not all that different for returnees from the camps than for others who had outlasted the war in a more conventional way. Their normal lives, too, had been interrupted — albeit not so radically as ours; they, too, had suffered — though not as much as we; they, too, had lost dear ones — we had lost many more. Numbers of burghers who had never left Amsterdam had sustained greater material loss than we. The difference between us seemed to be a matter of degree, not of kind. The common task of reconstruction and rehabilitation became an equalizer. Since we had not died, we had to live and, under the circumstances, the business of living required the whole person. But the past had not loosened its grip; it was there in our dreams: sometimes veiled, sometimes making us start and scream. Nor did it leave us in our waking hours; every activity — eating, walking, talking, working — took place not so much in its given context but rather as a variant of the way things had been in the camp. It was as though camp life continued to be the norm. The freedom variants seemed to lack reality; they were like performances that could be called off at any time. Yet we thought that we could wean ourselves from the dependency on the camp experience by an act of will and adjustment. An attitude of concentrating on the task at hand and looking ahead to the future, we thought, was bound to produce an inner liberation from the Holocaust and bring about our physical and mental recovery. This period of self-deceit began while we were still in Europe,

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waiting for our visas. When we immigrated to the United States and started to rebuild our lives from scratch for the third time the illusion was extended by another few years. Third, enjoying the limelight and sobering up. By the time we had achieved a seemingly normal atmosphere of living and working, our middle-American neighbors discovered that we had actually experienced the Nazi horror about which they had only heard and read and seen pictures. It began with invitations to individual homes, genuine American hospitality to make the stranger welcome, my wife and I being the center of interest. We willingly answered questions about life and death in the concentration camps; but the situation was entirely different from that of the first phase. What had been a catharsis, a compulsion to pour out all that obsessed us, now was a catering to other people who were both curious and sympathetic. Soon there followed newspaper interviews and lectures with question-and-answer periods for many organizations: pta, Rotary, the Historical Society, but mostly church groups. We were in the spotlight and it warmed us. During this period, for the first time, we began to hear the question: “How can you bear to talk about the terrible things that happened to you?” There were other escapees from Nazi persecution who steadfastly refused to speak of their experiences, and this difference in attitudes was troublesome to my wife and me. Had they suffered more than we? Were they by nature more reserved? Was their silence the “normal” or the healthier response, compared to our readiness to communicate? Whatever the answer, we considered it our duty, as eyewitnesses, to let the world know about Nazi inhumanity and the sufferings of the Jewish people. This, basically, remains our attitude, though it tends to discredit those fellow-sufferers who will not speak out. Be that as it may, two further observations about this period should be mentioned. One is that invitations to speak about our

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experiences came almost exclusively from Christian groups; Jews were considerably more guarded — almost as though they did not want to know. The second observation is that the public appearances were not repeated when we moved after a few years to another middle-American town. Once again, we were generously greeted and welcomed as newcomers to the community, but beyond that, we were not awarded any special attention, and were not encouraged to talk about past events. In fact, on occasion we had the impression that we were distrusted because of them. I will not attempt to analyze these different manifestations, one of commanding the limelight and the other of being yesterday’s celebrity during this phase of my survivorship. People and locales differ, and accident and coincidence are determining forces in life. Fourth, a time of denied traumas. About ten years after the liberation — our lives having run for some time on a pretty even keel — I began to experience a variety of physical disabilities as well as mental/emotional afflictions; sometimes the two were difficult to distinguish. A long period of medical treatment ensued during which some symptoms disappeared, others remained or worsened, and new ones developed. Slowly I came to suspect that I was suffering from the delayed effects of persecution. Quite aside from hard-to-measure traumas such as the drawnout anticipation of an impending catastrophe, the incarceration itself, the dehumanization, the sustained fear of death, I could point to some very tangible assaults upon my health in the concentration camp. Among them were prolonged starvation and exposure, being worked beyond my endurance and strength, every cut and bruise turning into festering wounds accompanied by high fever; diphtheria, dysentery, hepatitis, and a bout with typhus that very nearly killed me. I had entered the fourth phase of survivorship, which was characterized perhaps less by

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the health problems themselves than by the fact that my maladies were not properly ascribed to a post-concentration camp syndrome. Many years and five or six physicians later, I was worse off than at the beginning of that period. Today I realize that physicians, including those who had themselves been in the camps, were at first totally baffled by the medical consequences of the Holocaust. I also recognize that my expectations from the medical profession were unreasonable. At that time, however, my “failure to respond to treatment” (a phrase which, to me, had an accusatory overtone) was added to the afflictions for which I sought treatment, and I was devastated. Later on, the special medical situation of survivors was recognized, new therapies were devised, and some physicians even specialized in the phenomenon. But for me this development occurred too late; I was unwilling to risk yet another disappointment. Slowly I learned to live and function with an unexorcisable piece of the Holocaust within me, doubtlessly aided by effective medication and my comparatively sheltered position. I often fancy that I have discovered the secret formula for living with the burden of the Holocaust: utilize as much of one’s strength as necessary to keep the inner turmoil subdued and to put up an appearance; the remaining energy will, in most situations, suffice to meet the demands of life. Possibly, such a philosophy is in itself a symptom of the postcamp syndrome. Fifth, becoming a resource person. Two decades after the war, a whole new generation had grown up some of whose members have not even secondhand knowledge about the Holocaust; many of the old generation had forgotten or repressed the details. However, people were still curious enough to ask questions when they met someone who had actually been in a concentration camp. My wife and I experienced such curiosity, for example, when we took

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vacation group tours in the sixties and early seventies. In a tour bus, the travelers rapidly become a close group and soon know each other’s essential data. In our case, an inescapable chain of events would have us telling about our Holocaust experience, even though we no longer wanted to be distinguished by our past suffering and would have preferred to be recognized for whatever we had achieved in spite of it. Our German accents invariably prompted questions of whether we were “originally from Germany” and how long had we been in the States. In answer we felt compelled immediately to volunteer the information that we had been victims of Nazism, in order to dispel any suspicion that we might have been Nazis ourselves (and our coming to the States only after the war could well contribute to such a conclusion). In addition, we had to forestall any spontaneous expression of sympathy with the Nazis by someone in the group, which would have been most embarrassing. I think that it was on such occasions when keeping alive the memory of the Nazi horror began to mean more than the duty of the witness to testify, turning into something of a sacred mission. For then we observed that the horror was in the process of retreating to the back of people’s consciousness, of becoming sanitized, of being adapted to fit schoolbooks. Further, at this stage the people who wanted to hear the facts directly from an eyewitness now appeared oblivious to the pain their questions might cause a survivor. There were other settings for our being cast, against our will, in the role of resource persons. In our social circle, where the Holocaust had not normally been a topic of conversation, we were now frequently asked about our experience. At my College, both students and faculty seemed to have rediscovered the Holocaust, together with the fact that I had been caught up in it. This growing desire to be reminded could well have sprung

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Survivor of the First Degree

from a sense of danger inherent in losing the feel for the immediacy of the catastrophe. Sixth, functioning as “Survivor-in-Residence.” Slowly, and at first unrecognized, my eyewitness reporting on the Holocaust became formalized. Where I had originally answered questions and occasionally volunteered a memory, I was now asked to lead discussions or address groups. The change in my status was brought about largely by the institutionalizing of the Holocaust, both as a field of academic study and as a fixed day of mourning in the Jewish religious calendar. This was Yom Hashoah, Day of the Holocaust. It seemed natural that I should be the one to deliver the address on that day, year after year. This was extremely difficult for me, but I would not have it otherwise. In the inscrutable ways of language, it often occurs that a concept which has not yet sufficiently crystalized acquires a name, and then the name, in turn, alleviates the continued clarification of the concept. This had happened with the word “Holocaust” and the process was being repeated with the term “survivor.” In both cases existing language was applied to a specific, recent phenomenon, after which closer definition could be left to future scrutiny. We need to ask: who exactly is a “survivor” of the “Holocaust”? Only a person who had been one of the skeletons, still breathing when the concentration camps were liberated and had not died in the aftermath? Are Jews who had lived in hiding during the Nazi years “survivors”? Do, perhaps, all European Jews whom Hitler did not have time to seize constitute “survivors”? What about the Jews who had emigrated? And finally, don’t American Jews — in fact, World Jewry — whom Hitler surely would have destroyed, had the outcome of the war been different — also fall into the survivor category? Obviously, there exists a hierarchy of survivors. No corresponding terminology has (as yet) entered the language, but

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Prologue

it exists in my conceptualization of such a hierarchy, which is based on the terminology used with the “Nuremberg Laws.” These laws distinguished between Mischlinge (“bastards”) “of the first, second, and third degree,” depending on the number of each individual’s Jewish and “Aryan” grandparents (with a few other criteria thrown in). In terms of this analogy, I doubtlessly am a “survivor of the first degree” and, because of this distinction, the principle of noblesse oblige applies to me. Within my general “mission” to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust, I began to see as my special task the preservation of its reality in my academic environment — a resolve strengthened by my observation that each new entering class knew less about it. This was true of Christian and Jewish students alike. Another reason was the metamorphosis of the Holocaust event into an academic subject, which I followed with uneasiness and distrust. The advent of this phase was marked, for example, by invitations to symposia on the Holocaust “to represent the viewpoint of the survivor.” Then I became what the “native informant” or “consultant” is to the linguist: someone born into a given language, uneducated about its structure, history, and workings, yet useful to the expert for providing him with raw data. I feared the Holocaust would be theorized and depersonalized; and perhaps most of all, I feared its incorporation as one more instance in the long series of catastrophes in Jewish history, from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem to the pogroms in Russia. And this “historicization” was occurring while there were still living people able to provide the sense of immediacy that is missing from historical abstraction. I could not help resenting this development, because to my thinking the Holocaust is a phenomenon that must not be incorporated into — not even classified together with — anything else.

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Survivor of the First Degree

Another reason for my “mission” centers on the question which has now become a cliché: Can something like the Holocaust happen again? Whether one likes it or not (and I do not), the idea of “doing all in one’s power to prevent a recurrence” (another cliché) is, in one form or another, the most frequently cited reason for survivors to tell their tale. I admit to having used the phrase myself occasionally for its rhetorical value, to give my endeavor a respectable educational appearance, or to frighten my audience into participation. But do I really believe that such an educational effort will produce results? Can I conceive that my story or that of a few thousand people like me could prevent another Holocaust? The answer has to be no, if certain conditions all came together again: an economic and political situation as desperate as it was in Hitler’s Germany, the rise of a new evil genius with Hitler’s demagogic powers, virulent and allpervading antisemitism, use of the “Big Lie” with mastery, and an entire nation’s being stricken by megalomania and arrogance, by the curse of pseudoscience, and by the deadly combination of sentimentality and cruelty. Then mankind could stumble into another Holocaust, no matter how convincingly the horrors of the last are retold. And yet, I continued to feel the obligation of speaking out, of sharing my personal knowledge, of not permitting my listeners to forget. It is quite possible that my motive is irrational, going back to the time when we thought that no Jew would be left alive to tell the story. And I face an unresolved dilemma: the intimation that I might have been spared in order to tell the story collides with the question, “why me?” I feel I should not be obliged to do anything special in exchange for the fact that I had not perished like the others, since that would only bring into sharp focus the question, “why them?”

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Prologue

Out of this dilemma grew a rather weak rationalization: I like to think that living means having a task, and by surviving the Holocaust I was provided with both life and a task. However, in a way, I admire and envy those survivors who do not speak out. Their silence demonstrates that the unspeakable has remained unspeakable, while my discourses might make it appear as though the unfathomable enormity could be reduced to finite proportions. In the course of time, my role as a survivor became well structured. It was almost as if I had specialized in the field of “survivorship” in addition to my official academic discipline. Indeed I began to publish memoirs and essays dealing with the Holocaust. At all times, though, I remained conscious of the fact that I was not a “Holocaust Scholar,” and I began, with honest self-irony, to refer to myself as the “Survivor-in-Residence.” Strangely, this seldom evoked mirth. Seventh, the postsurvivor era. In reassessing my status, I have come, not at all surprisingly, to the conclusion that whatever real or imagined function I was fulfilling as a survivor has run its course, and that the era of the survivor itself is drawing to a close. These are the reasons: The Holocaust, whether or not sui generis, was a single event. How long after any historic catastrophe, Jewish or general, have its survivors been around to tell their story and claim special status? In each case, the day came when nobody wanted to listen to them anymore, and another day when the last of them had vanished. In this respect, the Holocaust is not different from other catastrophes. Ever since the end of the war, one frightful event has followed another. Economic, sociological, military, technical, and natural catastrophes are the order of the day; the earth’s resources are being exhausted or despoiled; old-time morality has become a

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Survivor of the First Degree

laughing matter and crime rules the streets; people lose sleep worrying over their jobs, their life’s savings, their marriage, their children, and the fear of a nuclear war is an ever-present reality. Further, everybody is fully occupied with living his or her own day-to-day life. Is it fair of me to expect that people sustain a genuine interest in the Holocaust, which happened long ago? When witnesses to an event have given their testimony and been cross-examined — even repeatedly and in all courts of appeal — their role as witnesses is played out. They disappear in the milling crowd, and their part in the event is gone with the wind. The academic discipline of Holocaust studies has progressed well beyond the stage of collecting eyewitness reports, long since entering the phase of analysis, abstraction, and the drawing of conclusions. To that community of scholars, a still living survivor has become supernumerary. Any further repetitions, variations, illustrations only delay the classifying and indexing, the storing, retrieving, and evaluating of phenomena whose outward circumstances and effects on the victim have been stated ad nauseam. In general, a continuance of the survivor era is not so much a question of how the public views the survivor, but rather how the survivor sees his or her own role in relation to the public. There are people to whom the word “Holocaust” mainly signifies a certain genre of television shows, movies, or reading matter featuring violence and horror. In relation to them, survivors must feel that their experience scarcely carries any meaning. There are others, especially young people, who see in the Holocaust a massive failure of humankind, causing in them feelings of sadness, anger, or guilt. Badly shaken, they comprehend that there can be neither true understanding nor a guarantee of nonrepetition, and they keep wrestling for meaning. They need to know how it really was, and I am one who can tell them. A

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survivor’s response to this group will depend on his or her own sensitivities. My feeling is that I must be gentle with them, for they, too, are in a sense victims. But I cannot tell them the truth and spare them at the same time. It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to be a living reminder to them, burdening their consciences with my disturbing knowledge. I must conclude that the era of the survivor has come to an end, when the few thousands of us who are still around and still aching must observe that it has been possible for a vicious revisionist movement to spring up which denies that there ever was a Holocaust. It produces a literature and finds followers and, despite such nonsuspect witnesses as the liberating armies, can openly fling the obscenity of “The Great Hoax” in a survivor’s face. The “vision” I once had in Bergen-Belsen that within a few decades our monstrous experience would have become an episode among historical episodes — this “vision” has already turned out to be trite. It could not have been otherwise. There is a time for everything under the sun, but there is also an end to that time. Certainly, the Holocaust will not be forgotten. People will continue to be dumbfounded as to how it could have happened, and the fate of the victims will continue to haunt mankind. And the surviving survivors, what should they do? The Hebrew poet, Hayim Nahman Bialik, suggested an answer after Kishinev, the pogrom of 1903 in which forty-nine Jews were slain: And you, man, what are you still doing here? Up and flee to the wilderness! Carry with you there the cup of grief, Tear there your soul into little shreds, And feed your heart to your impotent wrath. There shed your big tears on the naked rock, Let out your bitter roar, It soon will be lost in the storm.

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HOMETOWN Once I had so fair a fatherland . . . it was a dream. — Heinrich Heine, In der Fremde

Tale of a Torah Scroll On October 13, 1975, in Cincinnati, during a service convoking the Centennial of Hebrew Union College, I presented a Torah Scroll to the College synagogue. The faculty dressed it in a rich red velvet mantle bearing the symbol of the Centennial, the students adorned it with a filigree pointer, the staff crowned it with silver bells. It is a special Torah, and I want to tell its story, which is intertwined with my own. I was born on May 30, 1915, in the small town of Rheda, located in the Province of Westphalia, Germany. With its surroundings it originally formed one of the many tiny principalities ruled by dynasties of counts and princes whose medieval castle, complete with moat and towers, is still the prominent feature of its landscape. There are records of Jews having lived in Rheda from the sixteenth century on. They were Schutzjuden, tolerated and protected Jews, whose number, residence permit, and occupations depended on the changing favor of the ruling count. Thus, in 1684, one count, being pressed by the Shopkeepers’ Guild, banned the Jews from Rheda, while, in 1781, another allowed his Jews to form a congregation and even granted them free use of a house in the princely gardens for their prayer meetings. Long before, they had acquired a cemetery plot. In 1807, again another count ceded them a corner of the garden for a synagogue and a schoolhouse. However, he disguised this friendly act by first selling the plot to the mayor who, in turn, resold it to the Jews — both transactions at nominal prices.

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Dr. Werner Weinberg presents Torah to HUC at Opening Centennial Convocation, October 13, 1975. Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio at americanjewisharchives.org.

Tale of a Torah Scroll

The synagogue was completed in 1808, a modest structure, on the outside not very different from the private homes of the time, but it had a vaulted ceiling, on which was painted a blue sky with white clouds and golden stars. Only a few inside photographs of that synagogue have survived, in which I am seen chanting the Kiddush (the picture was posed) and another showing one of the antique brass candleholders that used to hang on the walls. The one-room school building was added some years later. Eventually the Jewish families of the neighboring communities of Wiedenbrück and Herzebrock joined up with Rheda, and a jüdischer Lehrer was engaged to teach the children, chant the service, read from the Torah, preach, marry the young people, visit the sick, bury the dead, and comfort the bereaved. My grandfather, Leffmann Abraham Weinberg, left his native Borgholzhausen, another small Westphalian town, where he was born in 1828, to marry Rosa Stern of Herzebrock. They had seven surviving children, and my grandfather — but especially my grandmother, so the family annals have it — through hard work and extraordinary thrift made enough money from their tiny dry goods store and a horse and cattle business to buy each son and son-in-law a house and set him up in a business of his own. My grandmother’s father, Isaak, must have been a well-todo man. I do not know what the occasion was, but he ordered a Torah Scroll to be written for him and his wife, Leah, by the scribe Meir Danziger. On June 21, 1845, this Sefer Torah was dedicated in the Rheda synagogue. Two parchment ribbons attached to the lower disks of the wooden rollers tell the story in Hebrew. The first reads in translation: This Torah Scroll belongs to the wealthy householder, His Honor Isaak, son of His Honor Eliezer Stern the Levite of Herzebrock, and to his spouse Madame Leah, daughter of

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His Honor Eliyahu. May the merit of the Torah stand by them and their offspring forever. Amen, Selah.

The second inscription reads: Given to the Synagogue on the Weekly Portion of Behaalotecha,* 605 according to the small count.† It was written by one who occupies himself with sacred work, the insignificant Meir, son of His Honor Rabbi Jacob Danziger, cantor and scribe of scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzot in Rheda.

The Torah Scroll is quite tall, the rollers measuring forty-two inches. Its thirty-seven parchment sheets sewn together with linen thread and reinforced by three butterfly-shaped pieces of parchment glued across each seam have retained their whiteness, and the lettering is still black and clear. It was our custom to hold the scroll together with a wide strip of linen called a wimpel, wrapped tightly around the Torah in a rising spiral, thus fulfilling the requirement that “one moves upward with regard to holy things.” The ends of the sash were tucked into the place between the two parchment rolls and the layers of linen. This ceremony was performed after every reading of the Torah by the golel, the man who rebound the scroll after the magbiah, “the one who lifts up,” had raised it high, holding the rollers apart and displaying the sacred text to the congregation. I remember how, as a child, I used to admire the strength and dexterity of these men. We children were permitted to roll up the wimpel and place it on the balustrade that surrounded the platform, ready for the golel to use. Wimpels, many of which are now found only in Jewish museums, were something to which Jewish artists could devote their talents, for they were fancifully lettered and colorfully decorated. * Numbers 8–12 † i.e., in the Jewish calendar year of 5605

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Tale of a Torah Scroll

The wimpel was made from the linen sheet used at circumcision. The cloth, cut into strips, was sewn together and then inscribed, painted, or embroidered. When the little boy was first carried to the synagogue, his wimpel was presented to the congregation. A Jewish house painter in Rheda prepared the wimpels; he traced stencils of the letters and then added certain traditional ornaments by hand. He did each word in a different color, and the inscription gave the boy’s Hebrew name (in a later period, the German name was introduced as well), followed by the words “born to good fortune” in Hebrew and the birth date according to the Jewish calendar. The rest of the linen runner was covered with an invocation adapted from the circumcision service, which reads in translation: May God let him grow up to attain Torah, Marriage, and Good Deeds. Amen, Selah.

Certain traditions evolved for the decoration of a wimpel. The letter lamed of the word nolad, “was born,” with its long neck, was given a red beak and made into a stork standing on one lamedleg. The lamed-neck of yegadlehu, “let him grow up,” was used for a much more serious, a patriotic, purpose. It was transformed into a flagpole from which streamed the black, white, and red banner of the Kaiserreich. The word le-Torah, “to attain Torah,” was fitted into the image of an open Scroll, and next to the word ule-chuppah, “Marriage,” a bridal canopy was drawn. The quotation marks used in writing the Jewish date, and the small strokes after the letters that signified numerals, were designed as flowers or birds. Whether these had any symbolic meaning, or were the result of artistic freedom, or simply developed by happenstance — I cannot say. In the course of years, hundreds of wimpel rolls accumulated in the big cupboard underneath the Ark in the Rheda synagogue.

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The idea was to rotate them, giving each a turn at holding the two halves of a Torah together, and especially on the occasion of the particular boy’s Bar Mitzvah. But most of them simply gathered dust in the cupboard, where as children we loved to rummage during school recess, reading the names on old wimpels, on the inside covers of dilapidated prayerbooks, and on velvet bags for talit and tefilin worn thin with age. We paraded around in threadbare prayer shawls, some with crumbly and blackened silver borders; we tried out the shofar and unrolled tightly wound tefilin straps which had lost their shiny black lacquer and reverted to the color of the original leather. While nobody invited us to play with these things, nobody actually forbade it. But we never would have dreamed of opening the aron hakodesh, the “Holy Ark,” above it, for the sacred Torah Scrolls stood in it! Playing with the old tefilin in their storage place was our only acquaintance with them. Putting on tefilin was no longer practiced in Rheda. This practice had been abandoned together with the strict observance of the Sabbath laws and those of kashrut. Jewish cooking, however, managed to survive, complete with such delicacies as kugel, shalet, lokshen, and pastert, which we knew had to be “Jewish” because our Christian neighbors did not serve them. In blissful ignorance we freely combined the best of both fleishig and milchig cuisine in one and the same meal. My father, Eli, was born in 1868 in Herzebrock, and had to walk daily the five kilometers to school in Rheda. Only on the Sabbath and holidays would the family set out with horse and buggy to attend synagogue services, a regular practice because by this time a liberal form of Judaism had long existed in that part of Germany. When Jerôme Napoleon, the emperor’s brother, had been made King of Westphalia in 1808, he immediately had the Jews assume family names and granted them civil liberties. Rheda became part of the Grand Duchy Berg, and its Jews partook

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Tale of a Torah Scroll

of the new freedom, so much so that the orthodox in other parts of Germany used to refer to emancipated Westphalia as die treifene medine, “the apostate province.” None of our infractions of religious law stemmed either from Reform or aus tsehachlis (“out of spite”), as we would have said in our Jewish German. Rather, assimilation had made its inroads and we had grown unaware of much of tradition, though by no means indifferent to Judaism. We were strongly motivated to observe our religion, but in our own fashion. So at services, the Alenu prayer was read in German instead of Hebrew. We began with the repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei, the “Prayer of Eighteen Benedictions,” without first reciting it silently, and we concluded it prematurely with the Third Blessing, the Kedushah. We read only a part of the weekly Torah portion. Some said that we were following a “Three-Year-Cycle,” but I would not be surprised to learn that the Lehrer read the same selection every year. The abbreviation of the Torah reading did not really shorten the service and the wait for the shabbeskugel. Every person called to the Torah had the Lehrer recite mishebeirachs for practically everybody else in the community except for those with whom he happened to be at odds at that time. The men wore hats in the synagogue, even high silk hats on the Holy Days: mere skull caps were not tolerated. A fine example of the gemütliche mixture of superficial knowledge and traditionalism that prevailed in Rheda was our custom of eating grosse Bohnen — a kind of lima bean — cooked milchig on Tishah Be’av, “the Ninth of the Month of Av.” We knew from our Jewish calendars that it was the “Remembrance of the Destruction of the Temple,” but we were not aware that it was also a fast day. (Our religious textbooks used to begin many statements of the commandments with the phrase, “Die eigentliche Pflicht des Juden ist zu . . .,” which may be translated, “A Jew is supposed to . . .,” but

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we were never given to understand that “die eigentlichen Pflichten” referred to us personally.) Deriving from the traditional “dairy days” that began on the first of Av, the memory of a requirement that one should eat only milchig during that season lingered on. The fact is that in the summer, around Tishah Be’av, the grosse Bohnen, the favorite dish of all Westphalians, both Jews and non-Jews, were at their best. Normally the beans were cooked together with smoked dried beef and potatoes, but on the anniversary of the Destruction of the Temple, we omitted the meat. I remember actually considering Jewish families who did not eat milchig grosse Bohnen on Tishah Beav religiously lax. Nazism came to Rheda as it came to other rural communities. A small band of sadistic men and youngsters from the riffraff of our town tyrannized and abused the Jewish families, which, in 1933, including those from Wiedenbrück and Herzebrock, numbered about fifty. Because these Jews were so deeply rooted in their small towns and were willing to accept what they thought were only temporary losses of political rights, property, and dignity, most of them preferred to stay put, at least in the beginning. When I graduated from the Hebrew Teachers Seminary in Würzburg in 1936, the jüdischer Lehrer of Rheda had already emigrated, and so I became the religious leader in my own home congregation. Within the year Nazi terror increased sharply. By now the stained-glass windows of the synagogue had been shattered, and walking to services could mean running the gauntlet through oral and physical abuse. At night, outside our windows, the Nazis sang their chants of Jewish blood spurting from their knives. Sometimes they would also break into Jewish homes, force the families out to the forest or to the river, and torment them for entertainment. The vast majority of the Christians in Rheda condemned all this as “private actions of which the Führer did not approve,” but their sympathy alone did not help us. It

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Tale of a Torah Scroll

was at this time that Jews began to move from the small towns into the big cities where the terror was less personal and they could lull themselves into believing that they were more secure. I accepted a position in Hannover where there was still a large Jewish elementary school, and I commuted on weekends to Rheda to conduct services, adult courses, and the religious school for the rapidly shrinking congregation. Studying Torah in Würzburg had, naturally, enriched my life in many respects, but it also robbed me of my inherited naiveté in matters traditional. From my knowledge of Jewish law, for instance, I could no longer comfortably eat milchig beans on Tishah Be’av. So when I returned to the congregation of my fathers and grandfathers, I came with missionary fervor, determined to restore the community to proper religious observance. I remember that my first target was the small pedal-operated organ that had been used in our synagogue for generations. But the congregants did not take any of my reforms too seriously; wasn’t I Werner, the son of Eli, son of Leffmann Abraham, Isaak Stern’s son-in-law? Besides, each of them was much too preoccupied with his own plans for emigration. They let me do my preaching but went on in the ways that they had followed since the days of Israel Jacobson, King Jerôme’s consistorial president, content with their maxim, Jeder macht sich seinen eigenen Shulchen Orech (“each according to his own Code of Laws”). In the course of my ministry, I discovered that my great-grandfather’s Sefer Torah was no longer fit to be read from because some of the letters were cracked, linen threads were broken, and the parchment was damaged in several places. Sadly I had to retire it. My sister was then engaged to Robert Werner, who had been born in Cologne, though his parents originally came from Poland. When Jews with Polish passports were being rounded up in October of 1938, Robert fled to us in Rheda for safety, since no Polish

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Jews lived in the area. (The irony of it is that a few months later my mother fled from Rheda to Cologne, which was considered safer because it was a big city.) It turned out that my brother-inlaw was very dexterous; he could touch up the broken letters of our Torah Scroll, refasten the sheets and replace the damaged parchment. One night, either on the very eve of Crystal Night or a few days before, he took it out of the Holy Ark and brought it to our house. When the Rheda synagogue went up in flames, my great-grandfather’s Torah was saved. Meanwhile in Hannover I phoned Rheda and was advised not to come that weekend. I did not return for twenty-seven years. Lisl and I were married shortly after Crystal Night. Lisl Halberstadt, born during World War I and patriotically named Viktoria Luise after the Kaiser’s daughter, was brought up in Nuremberg. We met at the Seminary and graduated together. She taught in Pforzheim, Baden, till she came to my school in Hannover, in turn replacing a teacher who had emigrated. In the spring of 1939, after innumerable attempts to secure a visa, we eventually were admitted to Holland. Holland was uncomfortably close to Germany, but at least it was a temporary haven. Our entry into that country had been made possible by the Hachsharah (training of young Jews for Palestine). I had been engaged to teach Hebrew and Jewish History there. Despite the times, Robert Werner, still in Rheda, had managed to complete his repairs of the Torah Scroll. Since parchment was not available, he replaced the frayed edges and missing “butterfly” seals with white linen. He then packed the Torah among my books and arranged for the crate to be shipped to Holland, together with our other possessions. It remained crated. I sounded out the synagogue of Apeldoorn, where we then made our home, about placing it in their aron hakodesh, but they seemed more

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Tale of a Torah Scroll

concerned about the safety of their own Torah Scrolls and the synagogue itself. In May of 1940, the German army invaded Holland. Our first child, Hannah, was born among bombs and cannon fire. The Gestapo followed in the footsteps of the Army, and anti-Jewish measures began accelerating. Eventually there came the razzias, the bestial roundups of Jews, first in the large cities, then in the country; first only of Jewish men, then of entire families. It began under the pretense of “resettlement in the East,” then proceeded with unconcealed sadism. In Apeldoorn there was an institution for the Jewish mentally ill called Apeldoornse Bos, with its own synagogue and a joodse leeraar, the equivalent of the jüdischer Lehrer in Germany. One day, after the community synagogue of Apeldoorn itself had already been burned with all its contents in one of those “private actions of which the Führer did not approve,” the leeraar told me about a plan to save the remaining Jewish ceremonial objects and valuable books. Apparently some influential Dutch burghers or authorities had persuaded the Nazis to grant monument status to three Amsterdam synagogues from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as specimens of Aryan architecture. Therefore, they seemed good places in which to hide sacred objects without sufficient material value to warrant German confiscation. In November of 1942, the Torah from Rheda, together with the Scrolls of the Apeldoornse Bos, was secretly brought to Amsterdam and stored in a basement room of the large Ashkenazic synagogue on the Jonas Daniel Meyer Square. As an extra precaution, a wooden partition was put up to hide the many Torah Scrolls, old books, shofarot, megilot, and other sacred objects collected from all over Holland. I put as little faith in the false wall as in the German promise to preserve the synagogue. But the Great Ashkenazic Synagogue of Amsterdam seemed less fragile than

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our small rented house in Apeldoorn, and, strangely, the idea of many Torah Scrolls huddled there together offered some comfort. Only a few days after we had given away the Torah, our little Hannah — we called her Hannele — died of a disease for which, under the circumstances we had to endure, she could not be properly treated. Soon thereafter, for her own protection, we also parted with our baby daughter, Susie. A kind and brave Christian family, active in the Dutch resistance, took her into their home. We had little reason to be optimistic about ever again seeing either Susie or our Torah. Now we were constantly on the move from place to place, hiding out in haylofts, and unsuccessfully attempting to go underground. In one of the last razzias in Amsterdam, Lisl and I were apprehended. For reasons just as unfathomable as the entire Nazi horror, we survived the concentration camps and were reunited. In July of 1945, we returned to Apeldoorn. Our old home was occupied, so we were assigned to the house of former Jewish neighbors, a family of five, not one of whom had returned. In a few weeks, we located our daughter, Susie, now four years old, safe and well adjusted. Our furniture and my books were restored to us by Christian friends and neighbors who had hidden them in cellars and barns. I still have several books which bear the marks left by gnawing mice and rats. As for the Torah Scroll, we learned that the cache at the Amsterdam synagogue had been raided and that everything, even great Jewish libraries, had been taken to Frankfurt-am-Main (probably in December of 1943), where the Nazi “philosopher” Alfred Rosenberg had established his pseudo-Institute for Research on the Jewish Problem. Here, by concentrating Jewish books and ceremonial objects brought from all over Europe, he would produce “scientific proof” of the evil designs of the decadent Jews, as well as prepare exhibits of their relics. Somewhat later it became known that most of the

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materials had been destroyed in an Allied air raid on Frankfurt in March of 1944. Though we mourned the loss of the Torah from Rheda, we considered ourselves singularly fortunate, watching the few survivors who now surfaced, bereft of kin, reeling from their hiding places in Holland, or returning, staggering from the camps. Then one day a letter arrived from Amsterdam, asking me to pick up my Sefer Torah at the synagogue on the Jonas Daniel Meyer Square. We learned that the American Military Government had come upon remnants of the Rosenberg Institute in and around Frankfurt and brought them to a depot in Offenbach where officials set about trying to sort them out by countries of origin. A mission of archivists and librarians was formed in Holland to assist them, and they were able to identify books and ceremonial objects, most of them still in their original crates. I will never quite remember the exact details of what happened next. I recall a dimly lit room, which at first seemed empty. The worn-down boards of the floor were set in parallels reaching into gloomy infinity. It was only after a time that I spotted many Torah Scrolls at the far end, dozens upon dozens, perhaps hundreds, propped upright, tightly fallen against each other. Actually there may only have been ten or twenty. But there among them was mine! The mantle was missing; in fact, all the Torahs were stripped of their covers. The terrible textile shortage prompted this theft, not sacrilegious or antisemitic motives. But there was the wimpel still firmly in place, wound spiralling upward, ascending in holiness, and affixed to it was the original note, saying in Dutch: “This Sefer Torah belongs to Werner Weinberg, living at Cereslaan in Apeldoorn, 5th of November 1942.” There was no doubt that this was my Torah. Even the wimpel that happened to be on it when it was taken from the synagogue

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before the Crystal Night confirmed it. It bore the name of Walter Weinberg, birthdate: the Ninth of Av, 1905. Walter and his wife, Ruth, had been passengers on the ill-fated ship, the “St. Louis,” with a cargo of some nine hundred German-Jewish passengers who had purchased landing permits for Cuba. They reached Havana in May of 1939, but were refused entry. The “St. Louis” remained anchored in the harbor for several days, then slowly sailed up the coast of Florida, while the Joint Distribution Committee feverishly negotiated with Cuban authorities and the American State Department for asylum. But time ran out, and the “St. Louis” had to return to Europe, where the passengers were, in the end, doomed to the fate they had tried to escape. Three years after the war, we received our visas to the United States. The Torah which had remained at home in a closet was once again crated with my books, and we — Lisl, Susie, and myself — together with the remnants of our possessions, embarked on the “Nieuw Amsterdam” for New York, where we arrived on April 3, 1948. But we continued to be transients, residing first in Grand Rapids, Michigan; then in Louisville, Kentucky; Albany, New York; and Dayton, Ohio. After the Holocaust it seemed that the malediction of Deuteronomy, “There shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot” (28:65), still pursued us. And uprooted every time with us was our Torah. I had an uneasy feeling about keeping the Scroll in our house. One of the local sisterhoods had provided it with a new mantle and it now rested attractively between my bookcases. But the thought troubled me that a Sefer Torah should not be kept in a private home unless used for regular worship. Moreover, I saw myself as its guardian only, and now that the emergency was over, personally responsible for returning it to its rightful owner. But to whom?

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The congregation of Rheda was gone forever, completely obliterated. I had visited Rheda in 1965, and the place where the synagogue once stood had become part of the vegetable garden of the next-door German neighbor. No plaque memorialized the site, only my own painful recollections of our rootedness once in German soil; of the nobleman who wanted his Jews to worship in a synagogue, the innocent meals of Tishah Beav, and the zeal of the young jüdischer Lehrer who banned the organ from the synagogue. Except in memory, the Jewish Congregation of Rheda, its synagogue and schoolhouse, had utterly vanished among the cabbages and gooseberry shrubs. Who then had a claim to that Torah Scroll? Should I turn it over to a congregation in any one of our new American homes? In a universal sense, some such synagogue was a fitting successor to Rheda. But would it not soon become simply one Sefer Torah among many, with its story quickly forgotten? If I sent it to Israel, there too it would undoubtedly have become anonymous. I felt an overwhelming need to keep alive the story of this Sefer Torah’s particular fate. It was the symbol of both the agony of the Holocaust’s victims, and the imperative of memory crying out to the survivors. It bore witness to what had been lost; it also was an inseparable part of me and my own story. So for the time being, I told myself that the compulsion to “restore the Torah to its rightful owner” or to its “legal or moral successor” simply meant that my home was its home. Nevertheless, I hoped that some day it would find an honored place in a proper aron hakodesh . . . The Torah did not go unused during the eleven years I spent in serving American congregations. It was read at many youth services, and I used it regularly to show the younger children how a Sefer Torah is written and made. I still remember with a smile a first-grader asking why the Scroll was pieced together

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and not made from one long roll, and the answer of his friend that sheep didn’t come any longer. When I joined the huc family as a teaching Graduate Fellow in 1959, I inquired about giving the Torah to the College Museum, but the Museum had no room for it. Truthfully, I was not unhappy about this, and I set about building a regular aron hakodesh for my study at home. Lisl made the curtains, using old velvet from a dress of her mother’s, sewing on it the golden collar of her father’s talit and embroidering it with the traditional symbols and lettering. For sixteen years the Torah Scroll stood in our private aron hakodesh. In time, Lisl renewed the wimpel, embroidering over the water colors that had faded, adding beautiful ornamentation and verses to the figures of the Torah and the chuppah. Walter Weinberg’s birthdate, the Ninth of Av, she embroidered in black. Every time colleagues or students visited our home for the first time, I showed them the curtain, the wimpel, and the Scroll and related some of its story. People were deeply moved, and more than once they suggested that the Scroll be made available to the huc community. In 1975 I made the decision. This was the year that saw the observance of the huc-jir Centennial and the reconstruction of the College chapel in which an antique European aron hakodesh harmonized with modern American design. Cincinnati was my home and the huc Chapel my synagogue. This was where my Sefer Torah belonged. The Ark of the College was the “rightful successor” to Rheda. So in the hundred and thirtieth year of my great-grandfather’s Torah which was miraculously saved from the synagogue of Rheda, and in the year of my sixtieth birthday, its flight, together with my own, finally came to an end. The Scroll from Rheda was last used as a family Torah by our granddaughter, Stephanie, for her Bat Mitzvah on October 10, 1975. From it she read the story of Noah — about the ark, about

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the flood which all but destroyed the world, about the first dove that found no rest for the sole of her foot, and the second that returned at eventide carrying an olive branch. Three days later, in the presence of the entire Cincinnati School community, I formally presented the Sefer Torah to the Hebrew Union College. Now, that Torah Scroll forms a visible bridge between a perished Jewish civilization and a flourishing one, from one century of huc’s existence to its next. In this rabbinical seminary, it recalls the story that must never be forgotten. May it bear constant witness to what is so precious to our folk and our faith: the study of Torah, religious observance, and ethical conduct.

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My Affair with Rheda No, Rheda is not a woman. She is a rural town in Westphalia, Germany. My capricious affair with her began at birth and has not ended even now, although I left her more than forty years ago. How so at birth? On the day I was born, a contingent of British pows was brought into Rheda. This was seen as an omen that the war would soon be over and that unsere Krieger (“our warriors”) would be home for Christmas. For years I was nicknamed der kleine Engländer (“the little Englishman”). How so even now? Because there are connections and commitments that require my continued attention, that necessitate correspondence and even an occasional visit to Rheda. In fact, I will be engaged with Rheda affairs for a long time to come. A Jewish childhood such as mine, so harmoniously spent in a German milieu, without the slightest wish or compulsion to assimilate, was possible only in small towns. Rheda then had five thousand inhabitants, one church and school each for its Catholics and its Protestants, and also a synagogue and school for its Jews. There was no separation of Church and State and nobody missed it. It is true that there were two or three resho’im (“evil-doers”) in town. (In our Jewish German, roshe and its derivative, rishes, referred to antisemites and antisemitism in particular rather than to evil-doers and evil in general.) They would shout invectives at me and the other Jewish youngsters, Stinkjude (“smelly Jew”) being their favorite. But I saw this in the light of the intolerance of each of the three religions against the other two, which was

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mostly verbalized on the children’s level. Some of my Catholic and Protestant contemporaries called each other considerably worse names and told weird stories about their comrades’ religious beliefs and practices. Within my group of friends, my Jewishness was a matter of course, mixed with some curiosity which abated after they had tasted matze, a gift which my mother had sent to our Christian neighbors in exchange for their Easter eggs; it dwindled even further after I explained to their satisfaction why Hebrew was read the wrong way and people wore hats in our church. On Chanukah my best friends also received a Teller voll, “a filled plate,” the Rheda term for nuts, apples, and home-baked cookies arranged on a plate. I, in turn, enjoyed exactly the same delicacies under the Christmas trees in my friends’ homes. Further parallels, such as fasting on Yom Kippur and during Lent (though I considered the Jewish idea of total fasting superior), decorating the synagogue with young birch trees on Shavuot and the Catholic church on Pentecost, our lulav and their palm branch, allowed us to see more common than separating features in our respective religions. Each one of us must have considered his religion just superior enough to judge the other two with magnanimity and benevolence. The first mild case of estrangement between Rheda and me occurred when, after completing four of the eight grades of the Rheda elementary school, I went on to the höhere Schule in the city of Bielefeld. This meant commuting to school by train and spending the greater part of the day in the big city. The time factor was one of the reasons that Rheda began to lose some of its hold on me; the second was the formation of a new circle of friends in Bielefeld; and the third, a beginning awareness of the social gap between most of my Rheda friends and children like myself who learned foreign languages and took piano lessons.

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The second phase of drifting apart from my Rheda friends set in when many of them became apprentices after finishing their eight years of grammar school and were busy all day. However, it did not really mean a break. We still spent evenings and weekends together, and the one overriding concern of the next few years — girls — was distributed equally between my Bielefeld and Rheda circles. It was not really the advent of Nazism that estranged me from Rheda. Together my friends and I looked at the flags and uniforms, listened to the songs, slogans, and threats, witnessed the initial acts of violence as something utterly alien to the spirit of Rheda. No, my estrangement came about when I had left both Rheda and Bielefeld after the Abitur (“matriculation exam”) and continued my studies at the Hebrew Teachers Seminary in Würzburg. When I graduated, there were enough job openings for my class because Jewish children had to leave German schools and because Jewish teachers were beginning to emigrate. One of these openings was in Rheda. I shall not try to analyze this, but I was the only one of the forty-one graduates of my class who accepted a position in his home town. Thus I became jüdischer Lehrer at the synagogue where my forefathers had worshipped and at the school where several of the children were my relatives. Three things had changed my attitude to Rheda as I returned to it: I had become a committed and reasonably knowledgeable Jew; together with the teachers and clergy of the Christian schools and churches, I found myself in the social class of notables; and the Nazi grip on Rheda had tightened, as it had on the rest of Germany. The Rheda Nazis were basically our old resho’im, augmented by a strange coalition of the scions of arch-conservative families, a few renegade communists, and the trash of the town.

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Together they amounted to no more than a few dozen, but they were backed by a mighty power; they were unrestrained, and the streets belonged to them. In 1936 some stalwarts of the old order had not yet caved in to Nazi terror and Nazi mentality. Among socialists and Catholics, among clergymen, teachers, police officers (Rheda had three), town and county officials, merchants and professionals, there were still what we called anständige Leut’ (“decent people”) which, in context, meant the opposite of resho’im. These people were not so much resisters (though some of them were), but they lived under the illusion that, even in a totalitarian political situation, they could preserve respectability in private and civil life. The total destruction of this vestigial decency occurred only at a later date. The “unreliables” among the Christians were boycotted, terrorized, and some were taken to concentration camps. Jews could no longer expect protection from the police or from the mayor, and even though some of my old friends were still around and anständig, I made it a point of not becoming an embarrassment and danger to them. I turned entirely to my task of ministering to the dwindling congregation, trying to numb myself to the hostility around us. I continued holding services in the synagogue after its windows had been broken; I walked to synagogue and school in spite of flying stones and toughs who pushed me from the sidewalk. Even pots of paint and roof tiles “fell down” as Jews walked beneath scaffoldings. At night the Nazis sang blood-curdling songs in front of our house, banging on the window shutters and shouting obscenities in chorus. When they were drunk enough, they would force their way into a Jewish house, drag out the inhabitants, and chase them through the streets, into the woods, and into the shallow river. The Nuremberg Laws saved our women from rape.

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My Affair with Rheda

Late one night I returned by train from a place where I had conducted a Purim service. In my briefcase I carried the Estherscroll and a small one-volume Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (abridged code of Jewish laws). The station was empty except for two of the most vicious Nazis, who had lain in wait for me. I started running, but they caught up with me and beat me unconscious. A few days later, I was summoned to the town hall, where my briefcase was returned to me. Its contents were entered on the receipt: Antike Pergamentrolle 1 Hebräischer Talmud 1

I signed the receipt. The Jews of Rheda could no longer earn a livelihood. By 1937 half of them had left town. Some emigrated, others moved to large cities in Germany. As for myself, I joined the staff of the Jewish school in Hannover, attending to the needs of the Rheda congregation on weekends. November 10, 1938, Crystal Night found me in Hannover. Having escaped that horror personally unharmed, I was naive enough to telephone Rheda, announcing that there would be services as usual the coming Friday night and Shabbat, and school for the children on Sunday. I learned that there was no more synagogue, no more congregation, no more school. All Jewish men had been taken away; I would have been the first to be arrested. Rheda was now off-limits for me. Our wedding in December of 1938, took place in Hannover, and all preparations for our emigration were made there. When we went to Holland in March of 1939, my belongings in Rheda were packed by others and shipped from there. My last connection with Rheda was broken when all attempts failed to get my

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mother out to join us in Holland. We had a one-year breathing spell there; then the Germans came. We entered upon the darkest years: merciless raids on Jews, trying to outwit the pursuer, and eventually capture and concentration camps. Rheda was as far from my mind as was everything belonging to my former life. One thing only mattered: surviving another day. I had a fleeting encounter with Rheda shortly after war’s end. We had been liberated by the Russian army while on transport from Bergen-Belsen to an unknown destination in the East. Because of a typhus epidemic among us, the Russians kept us quarantined, but eventually we were put on a train back to Holland. I realized that — as the crow flies and the railroad lines ran — we would pass through Rheda, and I braced myself against an onslaught of emotions that came from depths I could not fathom. The train did pass through Rheda and, to add to my perplexity, it stopped there. Perhaps the engine had to take on water or coal. People of our transport started to venture out on the platform. Suddenly a familiar sound wafted through the window into the train. It was Saturday evening, and the bells of both churches were pealing to announce the Christian Sabbath. Being an ardent Goethe lover, like most German Jews, I could only think of the line when, after the night’s despair, the sound of the Easter bells make Faust remove the cup of poison from his lips: “My tears gush forth, the Earth takes back her child.” I stepped down from the train and caught a glimpse of the red roof of my father’s house between the chestnut trees. Almost immediately a uniformed man rushed toward me, and my heart skipped a beat. But it was only the station master, and he exclaimed, “Is it you? — Mensch, Werner, are you back?” It was a former classmate of mine, one of the anständige people.

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The address Mensch was in Rheda dialect an expression of great emotion. “You can be anything you want in Rheda,” he went on, “even mayor!” I shook my head: “Auf Wiedersehn, Rudolf, I must move on.” Then the whistle of our locomotive blew. In Holland our little family was reunited. The possessions which were left with Gentiles for safekeeping were returned. Later I also received back the Torah Scroll which had been on an Odyssey as amazing as our own. It took three more years after the war until we could immigrate to the United States. There we moved five times in pursuit of better jobs and academic degrees. In 1959 I received a fellowship from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and, two years later, my appointment to its faculty. For a long time after the war, German Jews would not think of stepping onto German soil, although a new generation of Germans was trying to make amends. The land was anathema. But after ten or fifteen years, time had performed its patient, ant-like work of gnawing bit by bit at memories, reality, and truth. Although nothing had changed, by 1960 German Jews began to visit Germany. The reason most often given was that they wanted to look after the graves of family and friends. As life around us became secure, even pleasant, as normal pursuits became once again our happy lot, I found myself occasionally musing about Rheda. Childhood and family scenes would rise up in my memory, and Rheda assumed an ever more prominent place in my dreams. One dream especially kept coming back: I was in Rheda, amazed at how precisely I remembered every detail. Suddenly it dawned on me, in my dream, that I was not dreaming at all, but that I was actually in Rheda. Curiosity about the town and some of its people plagued me. I heard that Rheda had grown to over twenty thousand people in the postwar boom. That was hard to imagine. I would have

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liked to know which of my boyhood friends had survived the war. And I tried to imagine the expression on the faces of certain townspeople, good ones and bad ones, when they saw that I was alive. Slowly, the curiosity became mixed with longing, unrecognized at first, then suppressed, but eventually unfolding into a full-blown case of homesickness. Because it was so utterly irrational, I fought it quite success‑ fully. Even when I learned that Anna, our loyal housekeepernursemaid-saleslady in my father’s store, was still alive in Rheda. I wrote to this beloved person, but visiting her was out of the question. Then the University of Münster expressed an interest in publishing my study on the language of German Jews and in 1965 invited me to use Münster as a home base from which to interview Jewish old-timers; I felt that I had to accept in the interest of scholarship (even though I had interviewed a sufficient number of old-timers in the United States and in Israel). Thus I would spend the summer in Münster. And since Münster is only an hour’s drive from Rheda, I decided to use that opportunity to have the tombstone of my father’s grave replaced, for I had heard that it was missing. This idea, quite of its own accord, spawned three or four follow-up ideas: to include on the stone the names of my mother and my oldest sister, victims of the Holocaust; to organize a meeting of the three surviving siblings at the unveiling of the new stone; to expand this occasion into a wider memorial service, the first Jewish worship meeting in Rheda since 1938, and to gather for this purpose all survivors and returnees from the neighboring places. Once in Münster I avoided taking the short train trip to Rheda, even though the Hebrew lettering on the new stone made meetings with the stonecutter in Rheda almost imperative. But one day a member of the tiny new Jewish congregation of Münster

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invited me on short notice to accompany him on an automobile trip to Rheda, where he had to conduct some business. Caught off guard, I accepted. As we approached Rheda, each tree and house, each field and meadow were uncannily familiar. It was the reverse of that dream: this could not be reality; I was having a dream! When we passed the country road that leads to the Jewish cemetery, I asked my acquaintance to be let out there; he could pick me up on his way home. The cemetery was in reasonably good shape. The wall needed repair; weeds and fallen branches had not been cleared away recently. Yet there were also signs of maintenance, apparently provided at irregular intervals by the city, at the request of Jewish visitors to the cemetery. I found my father’s grave without the stone. He had died in 1934, and I remembered how my predecessor in the Rheda pulpit had formulated the thought that was to become the refrain in all the eulogies I delivered in the following years: thank God that the departed had died a natural death and was being interred in sacred ground with a quorum for the Kaddish prayer, because nobody could say what was in store for us, the living. I could not concentrate on prayer or meditation. I was restless, conscious of the proximity of the town, chiding myself for my cowardice in avoiding the confrontation with it. When my travel companion returned, he took me again by surprise, announcing that he had some time left for a drive around the town. I could only nod. The nucleus of Rheda, then as now, can be circumnavigated by car in five minutes. My parents’ house stands along that route. The place of the synagogue is outside the nucleus and requires another five minutes. The Münster businessman was not the sentimental type. He whisked by my parents’ house with its

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unfamiliar new storefront and did not stop at the synagogue lot. I just had enough time to see that the wrought-iron picket fences which had formerly run along the adjoining properties had been connected so perfectly that it was no longer possible to determine the exact site of the synagogue and the school. Nothing indicated that the vegetable garden, stretching from one neighbor’s house to the other, had ever been anything else. For me this tourist approach to Rheda meant a severe strain. I was glad when we turned back onto the highway. At that moment the wish became unequivocal in me to spend a few hours in Rheda, soon and by myself, with no other purpose than walking slowly and unnoticed through its streets. Yet when I carried out that plan a few weeks later, I had added structure and purpose to it: going over the inscription with the stonecutter and visiting Anna. Only after I had attended to these tasks did I start my walk. I recognized a number of people, but I did not make myself known. I remember that I was secretly enjoying a feeling of superiority, as though I had achieved that cabbalistic aspiration of “seeing without being seen.” I leaned dreamily against the fence of a certain vegetable garden, and I watched the house of my birth and childhood from a safe distance. I also took a few photographs. Many of my acquaintances who had revisited their hometowns, on coming back, described how they had talked to the new inhabitants of their former home and how the present owners had given them a tour of the house. Such an idea was abhorrent to me. I returned to Münster on the same slow train on which our family, in the 1920s, had traveled on Sunday afternoons, journeying to a garden cafe for cake and lemonade. The unveiling of the new tombstone, which took place on August 11, 1965, was a remarkable event. A fairly large number of Jews had come together from as far as Holland and, of course, my sisters from England and Israel were present. As part

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of the service, I translated a section of the Union Prayer Book, the lines about the Holocaust victims whose “resting places in faroff forests and lonely fields are lost to the eyes of revering kin.” Every person in that gathering must have felt the weight of history resting upon him or her. For me it was as though time had stood still, and I was ministering to my old congregation. The event had not been publicized. Only one non-Jew was present, the stonecutter who accepted his well-deserved compliments after the service. Strangely, this memorial service gave me the strength to visit Bergen-Belsen, the place where my wife and I had suffered so much. Four years later, in 1969, the Institutum Judaicum at the University of Münster invited me to lecture. This time the side trip to Rheda was already taken for granted. Also, my program there was established: the cemetery, old Anna, passing by the house and standing still at the synagogue plot. However, a significant item was added: my wife and I stayed overnight in Rheda. We slept in the elegant old hotel, which I had never seen from the inside in all my years in Rheda. This was the fourth visit, and I still remained incognito. Summer, 1973: On our way to the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem we stopped “in Europe,” a routine which by now included as a matter of course England, Holland, Münster, Rheda, and Bergen-Belsen. The elegant old hotel in Rheda had closed for good, but the other hotel had been modernized, and we checked in. The owner recognized my name, and then me. On our stroll I noticed a new storefront with a large sign. I told my wife that this man had belonged to my old gang. The family had been devout Catholics, and my friend’s older brother had been persecuted by the Nazis. There ensued a short discussion: should I enter or not? It was at that moment that I abandoned my anonymity. I went into the

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store, and my friend and I embraced joyfully. That evening he brought a group of companions to the hotel. The theme of the conversation was “Mensch, Werner!” Yet I remained constrained; I did not know all of them well enough to exonerate them in my heart of the great guilt. The evening was sobering. We had planned to stay a few days, but we left Rheda the next morning. In preparation for my story, “Tale of a Torah Scroll,” I turned to the city archives of Rheda for some documents and, in recognition of their cooperation, I sent them a copy of the booklet. There followed an interesting chain of events. First, I received newspaper clippings about the American professor who had saved a precious Rheda Torah and bore his home town no grudge. Next, an English teacher at the Rheda Gymnasium (my God, there now was a höhere Schule in Rheda!) asked for copies in order to read the booklet with his class. Then the city manager (Rheda even had a manager!) asked for permission to have the booklet translated into German and published by the city. This was followed by an invitation from the director of the Gymnasium to address the students about the Holocaust from a local point of view. I was overwhelmed by all this, but most of all by the fact that the name of the new school turned out to be the Albert Einstein Gymnasium. Should I accept the invitation? Could I talk effectively to this new German youth? But most important: could I stand the stress of being in Rheda, no longer protected by anonymity but, on the contrary, in the very limelight of publicity? I pondered the situation carefully. I would probably still be pondering the question — Was it a mitzvah (“religious duty”) or was I unprincipled? Was it an act of courage or one of personal aggrandizement? — if events had not taken the decision out of my hands. It was the routine, the established cycle that made the decision for me. The summer of 1977 signified the next Jerusalem Congress, which, in

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turn, suggested the prescribed route: England, Holland, Münster, Rheda . . . Seldom in my life have I felt so elated as during my presentation and the question-and-answer period in the auditorium of the Albert Einstein Gymnasium. Three hundred young Germans — no, Rheda youngsters of the kind I once had been — were listening in rapt attention and then opening up with questions, the quality and urgency of which proved that this was indeed a new generation — free, bright, involved, and untainted to such an extent that they knew Albert Einstein only as a German scientist who had resisted the Nazis. When I revealed the news of his Jewishness, it did not add or subtract anything from their idea about the man. During the question-and-answer period, a young Protestant minister, a teacher of religion at the school, asked whether the Rheda clergy had not assisted the Jews in their plight. I felt sorry for him when I had to answer that the Catholic priest had occasionally, and only in private, expressed sympathy for his Jewish next-door neighbors but that the Protestant minister had remained completely aloof. We had considered him a roshe. The day after my talk at the Einstein Gymnasium, I was called to Anna’s deathbed. Her last smile was for me. We stayed for the funeral, and I gave a eulogy in which I alluded to the Hebrew origin of her name: bestowed with grace. All things considered, I decided that my sixth visit to Rheda had indeed been a mitzvah. The Jewish cemetery had a brand new wall. The graves and paths were well groomed. What was needed now, I thought, was an inventory of all tombstones, cleaning the inscriptions and photographing them for a book, a pinkas (“memorial book”) of the Kehillah Kedoshah (“Holy Community”) of Rheda — a task of historical dimensions that would keep me in Rheda for weeks on end. Moreover, a monument with plaque for the synagogue

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was promised as part of a general city renewal project, two or three years hence. A seventh visit was now inevitable: I had to be there for the dedication of the synagogue monument. For this occasion I would try to reach all Rheda Jews still alive in the countries of their emigration. An unexpected correspondence developed with the young clergyman who had asked that conscience-laden question about his colleagues of a generation ago. Once I mentioned to him the matter of the inventory of tombstones in the Jewish cemetery; he decided to make this a project for the combined Protestant and Catholic confirmation classes: getting official land registry maps of the cemetery, entering on them every grave and devising a numbering system, cleaning the tombstones and photographing them. After a few months, I received a package with professionally drawn plans and hundreds of photographs. I was awed, especially about one result of my initiative: Protestant and Catholic youngsters working close together; that would not have been possible in my youth. At the same time, I felt a trace of resentment: my excuse for a prolonged stay in Rheda on that “historical task” had been preempted. In the summer of 1978, this same minister wrote to me about elaborate plans for a whole series of events to memorialize the fortieth anniversary of the Crystal Night of November 10, 1938. He asked me to write an eyewitness report for the local press. I complied, ending the essay with a plea for a photograph of the synagogue “before, during, or after the burning,” for there was no picture, not even in the city archives. I did receive several prints, all from the same negative, showing the synagogue and the schoolhouse. One man, however, sent me a whole album with sights of Rheda taken in 1930: the medieval castle, the city hall, railroad station and post office; the Catholic and Protestant

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churches, schools, and hospitals; and the synagogue. The man wrote that he wanted me to see the picture in context; there had been a time when the synagogue was counted among the important sights in Rheda, just as the Jews had been considered respected citizens. Well, I knew this. Nevertheless I appreciated the gesture. In the album there were also photographs of the two Kriegerdenkmäler, war memorials. The “old” one erected in the 1870s and memorializing summarily the fallen of three wars: the DanoPrussian war of 1864, the Austro-Prussian one of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian one of 1870–1871. The “new” monument had only been a few years old in 1930; it memorialized the fallen of World War I, and it was the work of a Rheda Jewish sculptor not unknown in Germany, Wolfgang Meyer-Michael. This monument had been demolished and the pieces hauled away. The Nazis had been saying all along that Meyer-Michael had devilishly designed it to present half a Star of David. At my last visit, I had asked the city archivist what had actually happened to the new Kriegerdenkmal. He answered that he had unsuccessfully traced rumors which maintained that it had been hidden away or buried somewhere. I shall soon return to my affair with Rheda once more. I must trace the inscriptions on some of the tombstones that are illegible on the photographs; I must find a sponsor and a publisher for the pinkas of the Jewish cemetery; I must confer with the authorities about the landscaping for and the inscription on the synagogue monument. Really, I ought to press for a serious search after the “new” Kriegerdenkmal; I ought to initiate a movement to have it restored and returned to its place quite near the synagogue . . . in fact, it could be reerected on the place of the synagogue . . . it could be combined with the dedication of the synagogue monument . . . the Kriegerdenkmal, created by a Rheda Jewish artist could

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itself be the monument . . . the respected Jewish citizens who had been martyred could be inscribed on it . . . perhaps . . . really, there is still so much for me to do in that German town! Is there then no end to my affair with Rheda?

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Jüdischer Lehrer: Germany, 1936–1939 My first official act as a newly appointed teacher was to have a rubber stamp made: Werner Weinberg, Lehrer. My Jewish teacher had used such a rubber stamp, and the word Lehrer on it had always conveyed to me a sense of awe and authority. My own new rubber stamp affirmed not only my leadership position within the Jewish congregation — which happened to be the one in my home town — but also my social advancement within the community at large. Teachers, together with doctors, clergymen, the pharmacist, and some other notables, had always represented the intellectual elite of our town, demanding respect and obtaining it. They were Herr Doktor, Herr Pastor, et cetera, and I was now Herr Lehrer. I received my training as a jüdischer Lehrer at the Israelitische Lehrerbildungsanstalt (acronym: ilba) in Würzburg. What problems did we graduates face during the last turbulent years of German Jewry; how did we cope; how well were we prepared to meet them; and what was our philosophy about life in general and Jewish education in particular under the shadow of the approaching catastrophe? Let me begin by justifying my use of jüdischer Lehrer in this English-language setting. Obviously, I want the term to convey connotations and associations that put it apart from its English equivalent. Further, I want to exclude from this term just any teacher in Germany who happened to be Jewish. Jüdische Lehrer were trained and certified to be elementary school teachers for all subjects like their Christian colleagues. Beyond this they

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were teachers of the Jewish religion also in höheren Schulen and, finally, they were Kultusbeamte, professional religious leaders of Jewish congregations. With respect to the last function, a differentiation must be made between male and female teachers as well as between positions in a small town with a one-room school and in a city whose Jewish school featured several combined or even the full number of classes for separate grades. In the latter setting, the Jewish teacher’s function was actually little different from that of his Catholic or Protestant colleague. Let us recall that there was no separation of Church and State in Germany — next to secular government public schools, parochial government schools — likewise public — were common. If in smaller places a local religious minority — Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant — had too few children to form its own school, these children were integrated into the school of the religious majority. Religion was a subject taught like all the others. In the multiclass mixed schools, especially in the höhere Schule, the classes were divided up for the subject of “religion,” and either the priest, the minister, or the rabbi provided religious instruction to their respective charges. The Jewish teachers in the Jewish multiclass school taught “religion” to their classes as one of the subjects. Jewish women teachers had little choice but to seek positions in multiclass Jewish schools that existed only in larger towns. There, instead of teaching all subjects in one grade, they might also teach a special subject in several classes; outside the school they might give adult courses, lead youth groups, or guide social work activities within the Jewish community; but they could not perform the full range of functions included in the term jüdischer Lehrer. The curriculum and training at ilba (and at the other Jewish teachers seminaries that formerly existed) had exempted women students from subjects dealing with liturgical, homiletical, life

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cycle, and pastoral functions (instead they were trained to teach home economics). The classical jüdischer Lehrer position in Germany was for men only. It was found in the many smalltown Jewish congregations, where the Lehrer’s activity centered more around the synagogue than the school. Jewish elementary schools in small towns had begun to decline long before the rise of Nazism. It was a sociological phenomenon: the migration of young adults to the large cities was part of the general trend toward urbanization. In many cases the Jewish elementary school had shrunk to a handful of children or only a religious school was left, the remaining Jewish children attending the local Catholic or Protestant or secular grade school (which was possible in some places until 1938). The jüdischer Lehrer in such a case was cantor, Torah reader, preacher, and pastor (Seelsorger). He conducted weddings, funerals, and Bar Mitzvahs and fulfilled practically all rabbinic functions (only large congregations had a rabbi). The jüdischer Lehrer of a generation or two before ours had often also been a mohel (performer of circumcision), shochet (ritual slaughterer) and sofer (scribe for Torah scrolls, tefilin, and mezuzot); but in our progressive and specializing generation, the concept of jüdischer Lehrer had shrunk to embrace mainly the offices of Religionslehrer (religious and Hebrew teacher), Vorbeter (cantor) and Prediger (preacher). Still, we graduates of the 1930s were continuing a proud tradition, and proud I was when my rubber stamp arrived: Werner Weinberg, Lehrer. The name combined with a profession made it clear that I was not just a teacher, but a jüdischer Lehrer. The circumstances of entering upon my career were quite typical for the times. My own jüdischer Lehrer — the same who had advised me after my graduation from the Oberrealschule in 1934 to seek admission to ilba as the closest equivalent for study at a university, from which we were effectively barred — had moved

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to a larger city within the same year. His immediate successor, who attended to my hometown congregation part time on weekends while teaching at a multiclass Jewish school in a city, was preparing to emigrate in 1936, the year of my graduation from ilba. I applied and was accepted first because of local pull, if not outright nepotism, and second because there were no other applicants. This position was lacking in attraction to my classmates, not only because the congregation was small and getting smaller, but also because its religious tradition was liberal. I had to give a model lesson, though, which went very well, thanks to the fine preparation for this type of thing under Director Jakob Stoll, with the Jewish grade school of Würzburg as our training ground. My second trial performance, a sermon, was not quite as successful. However, I cannot blame anyone but myself for the yawns, the shaking of heads, and the not-so-stealthy glances at pocket watches, which I registered in growing panic. I had shown my sermon manuscript to Rabbi Hannover in Würzburg, and he had warned me that it was a typical beginner’s work, containing too much and too heavy material. (“You cannot tell them all you know the very first time!”) Be that as it may, the congregation suffered through the sermon and gave me a contract anyway. Not that they had a choice! My congregation comprised also Jews from a second small town and from a large village nearby. Jews living farther away, often single families in townlets and rural areas, were only loosely connected with it. They came to Rheda for the High Holy Day services, and the jüdischer Lehrer met with their children in central locations once a week for religious instruction. He also went to their towns for weddings and funerals. Even tiny hamlets that had never formed a congregation or built a synagogue had, as a rule, a Jewish cemetery. I think I was the first of my profession in that part of Germany who commuted to outlying districts by

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motorcycle, a feat that soon earned me the epithet der rasende Religionslehrer (“the racing teacher of religion”). Our school was a separate building on the synagogue grounds. When I was a student there in the early twenties it still had been an elementary school. Now it was reduced to the status of a religious school with classes held twice a week. Though a number of the children were my relatives, this was no license for laxity. I took my work extremely seriously, applying all techniques and principles we had learned in Würzburg. But it was not just the mechanics that determined my pedagogical pursuits; it was even more the spirit of ilba with which I tried to imbue my charges. This spirit can probably be described as love of God and love of mankind, knowledge of Judaism and living by its precepts. It was an educational program, actually, and it was along these lines that we, the graduates of 1936, at a reunion in Würzburg that same summer, formulated the essence of our task ahead. As one rereads the reports about that meeting, one cannot fail to observe this fact: a full three years after the Nazis’ coming to power, well after the Boycott Day, the Nuremberg Laws and a whole string of other legal and illegal crimes against the Jews, with a large percentage of Germany’s Jewry already emigrated, we saw our main task as educating our children — the children of a people in the throes of death — to be good Jews. Were we then blind? Were we unfeeling? Were we stupid? Were we — at best — unrealistic idealists? It is quite easy to arrive at such a judgment forty years later. It might be closer to the truth to conclude that we had no choice but to ignore, as well as we could, the crumbling of our world, barring to the best of our abilities the mortal danger from our consciousness and concentrating our entire will and skill on securing and strengthening in Jewish children the one asset that could lighten up the darkness around them, that they could easily carry with them in their emigration

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luggage, and that could, perhaps, even assist them in a moment of extreme anguish — their Judaism. Is it too presumptuous when I conclude today that we were trying to lay the foundation of a new Yavneh while our Jerusalem was being destroyed? My understanding of my personal task was not different just because my congregation was liberal. It did not disturb me that I had to begin from scratch: tefilin, kashrut, the Sabbath. I was not fazed by parents’ complaints that I was using their children unfairly to overturn family traditions that had become hallowed, Jewishly hallowed, to them. I was full of religious fervor, thundering from the pulpit about teshuvah (“repentance”), removing the organ from the synagogue, withdrawing a damaged Torah scroll from active service till it could be repaired and trying to enforce fast days of which most members of the congregation had never even heard the name. But unless my memory extenuates circumstances, or an inner censor does not allow me to see myself, earlier in life, as a person without mellowness or compromise, it will seem to me in retrospect that, somehow, I knew how to combine tolerance and understanding with missionary zeal, avoiding the creation of hardships and injury. It is also very well possible that my congregants — my aunts and uncles and others who had watched me grow up — let me teach and preach and continued to express their Judaism the way they had seen their parents and grandparents express it. I remember that I mollified my congregation by chanting the service, using the Lewandowski melodies and recitatives rather than the outlandish music by Naumbourg or Scheuermann, which I had learned with such a great effort. I ignored the troubling fact that worshippers who lived out of town drove to the synagogue on Sabbath and Holy Days. They had come by carriage since the days of Israel Jacobson, reformer under Napoleon’s brother Jerôme, Roi de Westphalie. Without such

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a leniency in interpreting the Law, this congregation for Jews from several localities would probably never have been founded in the first place. Another concession was that I maintained the local custom of reading only about one-third of the weekly Torah portion on the Sabbath. I would never have succeeded in enforcing the full, long Torah reading. But, then I had learned that the Three Year Cycle of reading the Torah was well established in rabbinic literature. I certainly did not read the same third twice; but neither was I granted to complete the full cycle even once. Of one thing I am sure, even after all this time. My compromises in leaning toward the lighter side did not stem from convenience, nor did they signify backsliding into the very liberal observance of Judaism with which I had grown up. Rationalizing now, I would say that I was motivated by an expanded interpretation of the principle of pikuach nefesh, preventing the endangering of life. Perhaps even David Frishman’s story, “Three Who Ate,” had a direct influence on my attitude. In it the rabbi and his court make the congregation eat on Yom Kippur during a cholera epidemic, based on their interpretation of the verses, “It is time to act for the Lord (or: for the Lord to act); they have made void Thy Law” (Psalm 119:126) and “You shall keep My statutes and My ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them” (Leviticus 18:5), to which our sages added: “and not die by them” (Yoma 85b). Even the dictum, “One does not bring a decree on the congregation, unless the majority of the congregation can bear it” (Bava Qamma 79b) demands to be associated with my present reasoning. Be that as it may, my lenience could do nothing to avert the crushing reality around us, but I may have had a vague notion that, to my flock, their religion in those times should not appear as a stern father but as a merciful mother in whose arms they could hide from fear.

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No conflict of conscience arose with the service in general. On the contrary, attempts on my part to be more selective when it came to piyutim and selichot (poetical prayers inserted at special occasions) met with determined resistance from some old timers. My restoring the “Prayer of Eighteen Benedictions” to the unabridged form was achieved without too much grumbling. With regard to minyan, the prayer quorum of ten men, my congregation had been wont “not to count so precisely” (man zählt nicht so genau). But here I could not be trifled with. I would wait before Barechu, the call to prayer, as long as it took for the quorum to be complete, deaf to mumblings behind my back such as, “and what if the tenth is some hergelaufener Scherenschleifer (‘vagabond scissor-grinder’)” or voices coaxing me to continue with hackaul jauduche (hakol yoducha, “all shall thank Thee”), the next prayer that could be said without a quorum. One memory stands out in my mind as an example of my youthful ardor. My first funeral happened to be in one of the neighboring Jewish congregations that for a long time had not had a jüdischer Lehrer. As we had been taught at ilba, I made inquiries about the deceased, in this case an old lady who had lived by herself and had not had much contact with the other Jews. Since it was Pesach time, I paraphrased the verse about the Egyptians embittering the lives of the Jews (Exodus 1:14) to “they embittered her life,” chiding the assembled for ostracizing the poor woman and not seeing to her material and spiritual needs. After the service a man drew me aside, assuring me that it was only due to the deafness of their parnes (“president”) that the congregation would not sue me for libel, for the deceased had been a shrew, a nail in the flesh of the congregation, whose poisonous tongue had spared nobody and nothing . . . During my first year in office, the newness of my work, together with my sense of mission and with the weight of self-importance,

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caused me to focus my attention and to concentrate my energies much more on my professional activities than on the growing terror around us. I added an Oneg Shabbat to the children’s program on Shabbat afternoons and established an entire curriculum of adult courses: Modern Hebrew, Jewish History, Rashi, and Mishnayot (the last two never heard of in this congregation) — even though there were few adults left to take advantage of them, and it became ever more dangerous to be on the street at night. It was the period when the Nazis tolerated, and in a way even encouraged, Jewish cultural activities, especially when these could be presented as constituting in some way a preparation for emigration. But permission had to be obtained from the Gestapo office and an exact schedule of classes deposited there. Soon we became accustomed to the presence of a Gestapo officer at our study meetings. He had to make sure that we were not plotting to overthrow the Third Reich but, in addition, participated in our discussions and, in a way, caused me to paint all facets of Judaism in the rosiest colors. Once, at dusk, we were assembled near the school entrance before the beginning of class, and a latecomer — not noticing the Gestapo man — greeted us with a loud “Heil Moses!” It was one of those moments when life seems to hang in the balance. But the latecomer had the presence of mind as well as the nerve to calmly explain to the officer: “It is a Jewish custom to mention the name of our Führer in greeting, just as you do with yours.” Meanwhile our living conditions deteriorated fast. Nazi atrocities increased, and my fast-diminishing congregation could no longer support a jüdischer Lehrer. It was, therefore, agreed that I should apply for an opening at the Jewish Day School in Hannover while ministering to my home congregation on weekends. What strikes me now as downright anachronistic is the fact that, in 1937, a Jew in Germany still could make a new beginning

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in a Jewish setting which had all the trappings of normality. Here was a Jewish grade school with several hundred children and a full faculty on which a vacancy had occurred — through natural death, not through emigration — a vacancy for which there were several qualified applicants. The classes were normal-sized, the curriculum was prescribed by the state, and during recess those teachers who were not on duty in the schoolyard met in the teachers’ lounge and talked about pedagogical matters. They received their salaries on time, and the contributions for their old-age pensions were deducted together with the taxes. The students were respectful, did their homework, had to stay after class — a regular school life! I do not remember at all any feeling that the place in which we were teaching German, music, gymnastics, Heimatkunde (knowledge of the closer geographical region) and religion was situated on top of a volcano. Perhaps the only concession to reality was that we taught a subject called Auswanderungskunde (“science of emigration”). This was a combination of the geography and sociology of “emigration countries” with foreign language instruction. One activity in the framework of Auswanderungskunde stands out in my memory as if it had some kind of symbolic meaning: I was reproducing a full-size wall map of Brazil because our school did not possess a map of that “emigration country.” The project took several months, my ambition being to deliver a map of professional quality with green for the valleys, brown for the mountains, red dots for the cities and blue for the Atlantic and for the long, long Amazon River. Whenever a student and his family emigrated, the event was duly noted with a little farewell speech, but I do not think that either students or teachers envied those who had found an escape from Germany; rather, they wondered just a little and perhaps

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even felt sorry for those who had pulled up their roots and were setting out for unknown shores. At any rate, such events were only interruptions of the routine and not the significant events they appear to be in historical hindsight. At the time it was normal and important to spend an afternoon drawing a picture relating to one of the next day’s lessons or stories with colored chalk on the blackboard, as we had learned to do from Baron von Manstein (brother of the German field marshal and a convert to orthodox Judaism), our art teacher in Würzburg. It was normal and important to get material from city hall to prepare teaching the water and sewer system of our city. To be normal meant to think of a way to connect organically geography with the German lesson, drawing with the lesson in biblical history, applying the concept of Gesamtunterricht (“interdisciplinary approach”) which had been stressed at ilba in Würzburg. In this connection, I remember how I once deviated from still another educational concept, that of free expression in art. During a drawing lesson, following one in biblical history, where we had covered the Ten Plagues, I had the entire class draw the identical picture: Pharaoh at the Nile as the latter turns to blood. A blue sky bordered on the right hand by pyramids, beneath it a wide band of red Nile, in the foreground Goshen-green pastureland, with Pharaoh and his court in the left wing. The widths of the blue, the red, and the green were prescribed in centimeters. Why such an uncreative conformity? To make all the water color sheets into a continuous frieze as a classroom decoration for our open house. Yes, we still had open house evenings for parents in 1937 and even in 1938! All in all, and in the face of historic reality, I believe I am telling the truth when I say that I never enjoyed teaching more — and I still am teaching as I write this — than when I taught those

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seven- and eight-year-old, bright-eyed Jewish children in the years of 1937 and 1938. And I do not think that I am exaggerating when I further state that never have I received a greater compliment about my effectiveness as a teacher than when the parents of my second graders got together in the spring of 1938 to petition the principal that I should advance together with my class and teach them again in the third grade. On the morning of October 29, 1938, a good third of our school children were missing from class. The night before, they and their parents had been dumped on a strip of no-man’s land between Germany and Poland. The Crystal Night, two weeks later, put an abrupt end to our fool’s paradise. As everyone knows, it formed the watershed between a still-possible continuation of Jewish life in Germany and its total breakdown. Beginning with that night, the wellunderstood need to emigrate turned into a desperate run to get out of Germany. The school continued to operate after the Crystal Night, but there was a clear difference. Until that night, staying on the job could have expressed an individual teacher’s belief that to continue Jewish education in Germany constituted an option. This kind of ideology vanished overnight. Emigration had now clearly become more important than education. There was no longer deep regret when educational programs had to be altered or scrapped because the classes grew smaller and had to be combined. Nobody considered it a breach of professional ethics when teachers grabbed at the first opportunity for emigration and quit on short notice. During the months following the catastrophe, Jewish schools, assisted by the department of education of the Reichsvertretung, did an admirable job of adjusting to adverse circumstances while maintaining an orderly educational process.

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Small schools were the first to fall by the wayside. Until the Crystal Night, I still made regular weekend trips to my congregation at home and upheld my functions as a jüdischer Lehrer. These visits ended abruptly. I never went another weekend. Never again was the Barechu chanted or a Hebrew letter taught in Rheda. Lisl and I were engaged to be married. Of the many rumors that were rife after the Crystal Night and added to our misery, one had it that Jews would be forbidden to marry. We had planned our wedding for the time when our emigration was assured, which was then somewhat of an equivalent to the old-fashioned custom of marrying when the man was able to support a family. But now we advanced the date and were married the next month. The ceremony took place in a classroom, under a canopy that had been rescued from the synagogue and was singed at the edges. We were married by the district rabbi; the city rabbi had already emigrated. After the wedding, Lisl retired from teaching; her class was to be combined with another one anyway. She devoted all her time and energy to “preparing our emigration.” This is written easily; it was quite a hopeless task at that time. We had neither relatives in the United States nor the money for a “capitalist certificate” to enter Palestine. Thus Lisl wrote at random to organizations, to consulates, to prime ministers, and even to a queen. We studied maps and followed up any reports on distant corners of the globe where one could go without a visa. Lisl travelled to the American consulate of our district just to receive a quotawaiting number. That number’s turn would have to come up several years from then. All in all, our “preparing for emigration” was a hectic and increasingly disheartening effort to escape before the closing of the gates. In those days I wrote a short story. It had what I considered an original plot, and I hoped the Israelitisches Familienblatt might

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print it, if and when it resumed publication. (All Jewish newspapers had been suspended in the orgy of evil decrees that followed on the heels of the Crystal Night.) It was a love story, and the happy ending led to marriage, founded on the rock of two visas to New Zealand. Today it seems to me that my writing that story and my drawing the map of Brazil form two outlets for the same font of desperate creativity, one before and one after the Crystal Night. The map was still put to good use, but the Israelitisches Familienblatt never resumed publication. By the spring of 1939, all gates for immigration seemed closed indeed. Those who had not succeeded in getting out would have to come to terms with the thought of staying in Germany, of leading a life of pariahs. An eery calm settled over the remaining Jewish community and over our school. And since the reality was more than anyone could live with, we set out, once again, to conduct our school as though we lived in normal times. I remember that I prepared for my classes as meticulously as for a Lehrprobe (student teaching by a teacher-in-training) which Director Stoll of ilba would personally evaluate. Miraculously, our salaries were still paid punctually, taxes withheld and “stamps pasted” toward our old-age pensions. There were a number of Jewish teachers in the first stage of their careers, who industriously prepared themselves for the second state examination (actually no longer open to them) that would confirm their professional status forever. As for myself, I still taught school with the high sense of importance and of mission that, three years earlier, had inspired me to have that rubber stamp made. How, exactly, in the spring of 1939 did we imagine the continuation of a Jewish school, of Jewish life, of our bare lives in Germany? I am drawing a blank with regard to this question. I do not remember. I cannot even imagine to what illusions

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and delusions, to what frantic hopes and depths of despair our unprecedented situation might have led us at that time. One day in March of 1939, out of the blue sky and no longer expected, Lisl and I received an invitation to report immediately to duty as teachers at the Hachsharah in Holland. We left a few days later. We were anxious about the fate of our school in Germany and were worried because Holland was not far enough away. We were right on both counts. But these are two other stories whose endings, alas, are known.

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CRYSTAL NIGHT Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? — Haggai 1:4

Hannover Happening At the time of the Crystal Night, Lisl, my fiancée, and I were teachers at the Jewish elementary school of Hannover. Among the Jews with Polish citizenship deported from the city two weeks before the event had been the family Grynszpan. One of their sons, Herschel, seventeen years old, had earlier fled to Paris. Upon learning about the desperate situation of his family through a smuggled-out postcard, he bought a pistol, entered the German embassy on a pretext, and shot the official who received him. The fatally wounded victim was Ernst Freiherr vom Rath, third secretary of the embassy — the date of this act: November 7, 1938. Headlines screamed it out, the radio shouted bloodcurdling threats, Göbbels himself was heard: “Woe to you Jews — if he dies.” Vom Rath succumbed to his wounds on November 9. We were paralyzed by fear. It was not just a normal fear of reprisals. The year 1938 had been the worst so far, one anti-Jewish decree had followed on the heel of the other. Everything pointed toward a cataclysmic event. But there was something else behind the realistic apprehension of a looming catastrophe. It had to do with the date. The date of November 9 had assumed an almost mythical character. Hitler had given this day a solemn and — for us Jews — ominous significance on the Nazi calendar. It was the anniversary of the German revolution of 1918, the “dagger thrust into Germany’s back” (by Jews, of course) which ended World War I so ignominiously for Germany. On the same date, in 1923, Hitler staged

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his abortive coup d’état in Munich and, since then, November 9 had become a memorial day for the Nazi party. It was the day for promotions in the party ranks and for consecration of new banners by touching them with the “blood standard” of Munich. Every November 9 Hitler assembled his old guard, carriers of the “blood order,” in the Munich Bürgerbräukeller and reminisced with them. It was at these occasions that he would emit his vilest threats against the Jews. And now vom Rath had died on November 9, from the bullets of a Jewish assassin. Fate itself had turned against us! At that time my fiancée and I roomed with Jewish families. In my case it was a Polish-Jewish family, and the last two weeks I had lived alone in their large apartment. That evening I went to be with my fiancée. Together with her landlords, an elderly couple, we sat in the living room, listening to the radio for news. Much shouting was going on about the murdered German diplomat, about his Jewish murderer, about the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and about the intolerable situation of Jews still residing on German soil, gloating, no doubt, over the successful assassination. But no concrete threat was uttered, no new antiJewish decree announced. The expected speech by the Führer from Munich did not materialize. Everything that we heard and did not hear made our vigil more terrifying. Our guesses concerning the fate awaiting us included: total removal of Jews from business and other sources of income; deportation of all remaining Jews (— but where to?); transportation of all ablebodied men to concentration camps; street riots with beatings, possibly killings. Actually, our fantasies moved along comparatively conservative lines; even the idea of concentration camps meant “only” maltreatment, hard labor, starvation, cruel punishment, and death sentences for small transgressions (at that time ash-urns were still being sent to next-of-kin from Dachau,

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Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen). Yet the general dread of “the Ninth of November” and the apprehension of the “lesson” Göbbels and his consorts promised to teach us weighed more heavily upon us than any definite fear. The association of that calendar date with calamity was so strong that, as the evening progressed and nothing happened, our mood grew cautiously optimistic. Still, when I kissed Lisl good night at about eleven o’clock, both our hearts were heavy. On my way home, I avoided the light circles of the street lamps. Individual sa and ss men in uniform were on their way to places of assembly. I lay on my bed, fully dressed, without even removing my shoes. This precaution was essential; it was a rare storm trooper who, during nightly arrests, gave you a few seconds to finish dressing: their raus, raus! (“out, out!”) calls made the element of utter haste a part of the terror. That night I discovered that the cliché of “being bathed in cold sweat” can have a very literal meaning. I thought of packing a few belongings, but I could not summon the energy. The light was out; all my senses strained to detect the first signs of danger in the street. Being alone in the rambling apartment made the situation even more sinister. About one o’clock in the morning it started: the thud of hobnailed boots on the pavement to the staccato rhythm of their marching songs. Most of the sa and ss songs were drawn from the rich well of old German folk songs. “Im Wald, im grünen Walde,” they sang, “in the forest, the green forest.” Soon there followed the sounds of breaking windows, of banging on doors, of yelling and shouting. This continuous noise was punctuated by occasional pistol or rifle shots. After a while the strip of sky visible between the heavy draperies turned a flickering orange. I discerned that the events outside happened in different parts of the city at the same time. Some of the shattering of glass,

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splintering of wood, shouting of orders, came from far away, but it also went on around the next corner. I could even hear the crackling of fire. I lay on my bed, motionless, waiting. The pogrom sounds drew closer, moved away again, came from right under my window, and once more echoed from a distance. It was as though someone was playing a cat-and-mouse game with me. My fiancée, I knew, was comparatively safe: women and the elderly were, as a rule, not included in Nazi terror actions. Between four and five o’clock in the morning a tremendous explosion occurred. I did not doubt for a second that it was the synagogue. The Central Synagogue was a vast, imposing building. Said to be the largest church building in Hannover, it was built as for eternity, and its lower walls were many feet thick. Preparations to blow it up took the Party demolition teams all night. My apartment was far away from the synagogue, yet my windows clattered. When morning dawned, flocks of crows circled low over the city, their plaintive caw-caw filling the air — the birds’ nests had been in the synagogue spires. I got up, put my head under the faucet, and then ventured a look through the slit between the window drapes. November 9 had come and gone, yet the pogrom noise continued in the distance. Then my doorbell rang. A great calm came over me. (How often have I later experienced such moments of dignity — reward for presuffering, for sustained expectation of the worst!) I opened the door. It was my fiancée! On her way she had seen smashed Jewish storefronts, the merchandise scattered over the pavement. She had steered around large pieces of furniture thrown from windows of Jewish apartments, and she had witnessed a group of Jewish men being treated with clubs and rifle butts as they were being marched to the police station.

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For a while her report and our being together loosened the rigidity of the night, giving way to a spate of activity. First of all, we wondered about whether or not to report to school. After all, it was not officially closed or suspended, as far as we knew. The apartment had no telephone, but we probably would not have dared to make the call anyhow. The idea of holding classes seemed ludicrous; still we felt uneasy about simply ignoring our duty. I packed a suitcase. Lisl made sandwiches for me and wrapped them in paper. I put the two packages into the pockets of my overcoat. This accomplished, we continued waiting together. We left the drapes in the living room closed and moved into the kitchen, away from the street. We sat down at the table; the suitcase stood at my side; my hat and overcoat laid out on a chair. The kitchen was closest to the apartment door. Both Lisl and I would be ready the moment they came for me! On that Tenth of November, we sat in the kitchen of the rambling apartment for over twelve hours and waited. We talked little and ate nothing. Now there were two of us listening to the street sounds and, once in a while, one or the other went to the living room and peeped through the curtain slit. The noises were the same as those of the night; also, the pattern of the din, drawing nearer and wandering off, had not changed. The radio was much less communicative, though, than the day before. It briefly mentioned isolated incidents here and there in Germany, where the infuriated population had vented their grief on Jewish property. A troop of Hitler Youth marched through our street. After each stanza, they interrupted their sprightly marching songs by shouting in chorus slogans like: “Death to the Jews!” “The Jews are our misfortune!” “Perish Judah!” (Juda verrecke!). We tried to formulate a plan. It entailed seeking refuge in a Jewish household that in all probability was omitted from the list of the present action: households of women and children

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only, or those in which the men were sixty-five or older. For a moment we considered my fiancée’s landlords but dismissed the idea immediately since, according to the mores of the time, an engaged couple did not live in the same household. Not even an emergency could break that moral code! Another elderly couple came to mind who probably would take me in but, when it came to actually leaving the apartment, our courage forsook us. So we stayed in the kitchen. From time to time, the flock of crows passed the window, and their call seemed to express criticism of this “spontaneous outburst of the seething soul of the people.” But what could one expect of birds whose home had been a synagogue? In the late morning, the doorbell rang. There had been no noise of hobnailed boots, and the ring was not followed by banging on the door. We waited for the second ring, and Lisl opened the door. It was the Christian cleaning woman of the household. She sat down with us in the kitchen without taking off her coat or hat. Hastily and in a hushed voice, she announced that she had come at great personal risk. Then she talked about the synagogue. The explosion, she said, had been caused by a large amount of dynamite which the Jewish community had stored in the basement of the synagogue, together with a large assortment of firearms. She was sorry, though, for the innocent among the Jewish men, whom she had seen being led to the railway depot. She lamented the destruction of the fine downtown stores, complaining that the merchandise had been thrown into the streets rather than being distributed among the needy. Eventually she came to the real purpose of her visit. Surely we had heard of the new decree that forbade Jews to possess any money (we had heard nothing of the sort). A Jew found with money on him would be shot. She was willing to take for safekeeping any money we might have on us; she even volunteered to

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cash in our savings accounts if we gave her our passbooks. As to the future, we could count on her not to leave us without means. We had to be cautious warding off her attempt at blackmail, as she might tell the nearest storm troopers about my apartment that had — so far — been overlooked. During the hour after her departure, our waiting for the boots and the banging was at its keenest. Then we sank back into a stupor, each submerged in private musings. There was little to be said anymore. When we talked, it was in short remarks and retorts, such as expressing our astonishment at the long duration of this action against the few thousand Jews of Hannover, or wondering how many other places were going through the same experience (Hannover, after all, being the hometown of Herschel Grynszpan). In case the action was widespread, was it better or worse in small towns like Rheda, where I was due the next day for my weekend visit to conduct services and hold religious school? In the afternoon the noises grew more sporadic and moved farther away. Dusk fell early, and a long evening began. Our restlessness became unbearable. At about nine o’clock — not having heard any special activity in the street for over an hour — we could stand it no longer. We put on our overcoats, left the apartment, locked the door, and went down the stairs. We decided to look up a relative who had apprenticed himself to an upholsterer and lived with the Christian family. (It was common then even for middle-aged Jews, former businessmen, professionals, or officials to start anew, learning a trade as an “emigration skill.”) The people let us in, but not without anxiety. Yes, the Gestapo had been there earlier in the day, asking for my relative. But he had left the house at daybreak, saying that he was taking a train out of town. However, the Gestapo might come back, searching for him in earnest. Their original search had been perfunctory — “after all, we are Aryans.” We understood their

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nervousness. I only asked permission to use their telephone to call my congregation in Rheda. A woman answered. She told me, for God’s sake, to stay where I was and hung up. Back in the street, we deliberated whether we should, after all, walk to the Jewish couple who were safe by virtue of their age. But we were too unnerved by the visit at the upholsterer; we also heard anew ominous noises from the direction of downtown. In the absence of any better idea, we went back to the apartment. We had been gone for less than half an hour. The apartment door was broken open, the lock torn out. We checked our impulse to run back down the stairs. No sound came from the apartment, and lying in wait for Jews did not fit the pattern the storm troopers followed this day. We entered. Most of the furniture had been smashed, apparently with axes; even the grand piano sloped precariously, held up by only one leg. Tables and chairs were overturned, pictures and mirrors broken. We looked for my suitcase under the debris in the kitchen; it was gone! There was no saying whether they would come back for me. So we hurried outside and did go to our acquaintances, who agreed to put me up until it was safe again. My fiancée left to return to her room. I spent only a few days with our friends. Although Hannover was one of those cities where groups of Nazis staged sporadic anti-Jewish raids even after November 10, the “action” was officially at an end. It was so announced over the radio. I received the notice in my hiding place to report to school on Monday morning. It had been decided on high that Jewish life had to go on “normally” but, at the same time, decrees such as the billion marks penalty for the Jews and their “expulsion from the German economy” (both promulgated on November 12) put the finishing touch to the happening of November 10. Another decree annulled

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all exceptions for Jewish children still attending public schools. These children had to be immediately absorbed by our school. There was an inconsequential sequel to what happened to us in the Crystal Night in Hannover. I will relate it here because I think it is typical for the Nazi mind in which order and chaos were neatly compartmentalized. My fiancée suggested that we should try to retrieve my suitcase. The idea appalled me. Extraordinarily lucky, we had weathered the pogrom with no greater loss than a suitcase and the repair bill for the apartment door. Should I go to Gestapo Headquarters to claim the suitcase and thereby admit having evaded the storm troopers? But Lisl never intended for me to do the claiming. Men were endangered, women were not. The “teaching of a lesson” to the Jews was completed and, as it turned out, petty theft had not been on the official program. In short, she did go to Gestapo Headquarters. I waited “inconspicuously” across the street around a corner. Later Lisl told that there had been a waiting room filled with Jewish women, all wanting to inquire to which concentration camp their husband, son, or father had been taken. Just as in a doctor’s office, one at a time they were called in. It seemed that they got a straight, even polite, answer concerning the whereabouts of their men. At that time people were still being released from concentration camps. All that was required were valid papers which assured a person’s immediate emigration. When such papers could be supplied, the prisoner was freed — after signing an affidavit that he had not been mistreated. Unfortunately, for some it was too late; they had died of one of the two admissible causes of death: “weakness of circulation” or “shot in an attempt to escape.” When Lisl’s turn came, she had to describe the “lost” object. Thereupon she was led to a room full of property, where she identified my suitcase. It had been opened and searched, but the contents were complete and undamaged. She signed a receipt,

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and the ss man apologized for the incident (“after all, we are not thieves”). She left Gestapo Headquarters carrying my Crystal Night suitcase. When she had crossed the street and turned the corner, I took it. We walked together through the cold November drizzle. The crows were still circling low over the roofs.

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A Delayed Kaddish In the course of my research for the story, “Tale of a Torah Scroll,” I directed a few inquiries to the archives of the town of Rheda. My questions dealing with the past were fully and competently answered. However, with regard to the modern period, the archivist wrote that, “in the postwar disorder all records about our Jewish fellow citizens have, unfortunately, been lost.” It would, of course, be interesting to pursue this matter and find out why documents concerning Jews were “lost” after the war. But whatever may have gone on in those archives to clean up the past, a single sheet of paper remained in the folder labeled Judenakten (“records concerning Jews”). The archivist was good enough to send me a copy of that sheet, calling it “a compilation dating from 1938.” It was a list containing fourteen names. I am convinced that the archivist did not recognize the significance of this list, and the date it bore had no special meaning for him. Those postwar raiders of the Judenakten must have overlooked the sheet or did not consider it worth withholding from the curious eyes of later historians. Who would, after the “Final Solution,” even have remembered a little Jew-baiting that had occurred in 1938? To a biased reader like myself, the date on the list — November 10, 1938 — caused an immediate shock! I realized that I was holding in my hand the list of Jewish householders who had been brought in to the police during the night, while their homes and businesses were ransacked and destroyed and the synagogue burned to the ground. The archivist was concerned with records, as befits his profession. But in my mind the “lost records about

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our Jewish fellow citizens” immediately transformed into real persons. As a son of that town, I knew every last one of those names. And, miraculously, after all this time, each name brought back a face, a gesture, a gait, a voice — palpable reminders of the people of my old congregation. In large towns and cities, only a limited number of the Jewish men were taken to police stations or ss headquarters during the Crystal Night. A small town, such as Rheda, could be made judenrein (“free of Jews”) in one fell swoop. And so, an anonymous German town clerk conscientiously recorded the names, occupations, and birthdates of the Jewish householders before their incarceration. And since the arrests began after midnight, he dated the list, just as conscientiously, November 10. Here I must interrupt my account in order to explain what, in Jewish observance, is a Jahrzeit or Kaddish list. At the end of each religious service, the Kaddish prayer is recited, a doxology, a solemn confirmation of God’s holiness, combined with a fervent plea for the advent of His Kingdom. In the mind of most Jews, the Kaddish is a “prayer for the dead,” even though this is factually incorrect. It is customary for congregations to prepare lists with names of members, arranged according to the anniversary of their death. Those names are read aloud immediately before the recitation of the Kaddish. The list from the Rheda archives with its fourteen names represented a Kaddish list to me — written many years ago but never read aloud during a service. Fortunately, the right occasion was coming up when this deficiency could be remedied. And so, when I dedicated the memorial for the Rheda synagogue in 1980, I recited those names. All the old townspeople present remembered the names of their former “fellow citizens,” for Rheda had been a very small town. These are the names:

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Karl Dannenbaum

Max Levi

Julius Ettlinger

Berthold Löwenstein

Max Goldschmidt

Arthur Seelig

Hugo Heinemann

Louis Stern

Otto Heinemann

David Weinberg

Egon Hoffmann

Israel Weinberg

Berthold Levi

Alex Ziegler

At the time of the Crystal Night, neither the philosophy nor the technique of solving the “Jewish question” had been fully developed, and only Jewish adult men were rounded up. Therefore, statistically, the list from the Rheda archives is not complete. For the purpose of my Kaddish list, I had to add those Jewish householders in Rheda who were women. They are: the sisters Fanny and Rica Cohn, Jettchen Weinberg and, finally, Paula Weinberg, my mother. On August 27, 1980, I read all these names at the place where the Rheda synagogue once had stood. And when I was through reading, I recited the Kaddish prayer.

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CONCENTRATION CAMP Those who survived their filth and woke from their blood — Behold, all their lives were loathed, the light of their world defiled. — Hayim Nahman Bialik, In the City of Slaughter

A Revelation in Bergen-Belsen Once in my life I had something akin to a revelatory experience — I mean a sudden insight that shed a blinding light on the past, present, and future together. It lasted only for a second. In the late fall of 1944, I was standing near the barbed wire fence of my compound in Bergen-Belsen, facing the main throughfare of the camp, the Lagerstrasse. Bergen-Belsen consisted of many compounds, each housing a different category of prisoners, each of them receiving different treatment. The Lagerstrasse ran from east to west. To the east was the entrance gate right near the barracks of the ss guards. As you proceeded west, you passed, on both sides, the gates to the different compounds. In the far west stood the crematorium. The crematorium had a high square chimney. On fair evenings it was silhouetted black against the sunset. The chimney belched thick yellow smoke day and night. Bergen-Belsen was not an extermination camp. Except for occasional shootings and bludgeonings, the prisoners died of starvation, exhaustion, and diseases, mostly typhus. Those burned in the crematorium had thus died of natural causes. My compound was the Holländerlager. There the treatment was better than in many other compounds. Some groups were kept in reserve for possible exchange with German nationals interned abroad. For this purpose the Sephardim whose ancestors had fled from Portugal to Holland in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were considered “Portuguese.” Others had papers proving dual citizenship or qualifying them to enter

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Palestine. In most cases such documents were forged, invalid, or illegally acquired but this did not matter. One special group consisted of diamond cutters, cleavers, and polishers from Amsterdam. They were highly skilled workers. The ss kept them in reserve in case Germany might have use for them. The compound nearest to ours, separated only by a barbed wire fence, was the grosse Häftlingslager (“large prisoners’ camp”). It held people who had been worked to exhaustion in German industry. All were weakened unto death. Yet there was a hierarchy of the weak and the weaker. Only the strongest of the weak made it as far as Bergen-Belsen. We watched them shuffling along on the Lagerstrasse. Usually two of them who could still walk dragged a third one between them. Most transports made the left turn through the gate of the grosse Häftlingslager. This compound was a Sterbelager (“dying camp”). The inmates received only token rations and no medical care at all. The threelayered bunks had been removed from their barracks. At night they were driven into the barracks — so many, that they had to spend the night standing. We heard their cries and their wailing. In the morning, when we stood at roll call, five rows deep for easy counting, in the grosse Häftlingslager, the dead of the night were hauled from the barracks. They were laid out in rows of five, likewise, for easy counting. Then came the trucks and wagons. The corpses were thrown on them, one man grabbing the head, another the feet, swinging them: eins, zwei — rauf! It sounded like wood. And yet there was a chance for life even in the grosse Häftlingslager. You might survive a day, several days, even a week. And everybody knew that the war was going badly for the Germans. So, there was a chance. In the summer of 1944, the special status of the diamond cutters in the Holländerlager suddenly ended.

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Whatever the plans for them had been, they were scrapped. The diamond workers became dispensable and were shipped away to some mines or quarries. In the fall those who had survived came back. I was standing by the barbed wire and saw the transport approaching on the Lagerstrasse. A ripple of recognition went through those of us who stood by the barbed wire. They looked like skeletons, but they were our diamond workers from Amsterdam. They were covered with caked mud, crusted blood, and some rags; they walked barefoot. Their faces bore no expression. They were in a stage well known to us; you reached it when your weight fell below ninety pounds or so. They did not make the left turn into the grosse Häftlingslager, as we had expected. Would they, then, be readmitted to the Holländer camp? But they passed our gate, too. Slowly we began to realize that they were headed straight for the crematorium. We understood. No special act of cruelty on the part of the ss guards was involved here. It simply made no sense to admit them first into the Häftlingslager, let them die there, and afterwards have to take them to the crematorium in trucks — they might as well get there while they could still do so under their own power. What was cruel was that the diamond cutters knew the layout of the camp and knew where they were headed. Yet they hardly lifted their faces to us as they shuffled on in the direction of the chimney. Then this thought flashed through my mind: thirty years from now, people will say, “That was a long time ago.” They will say, “If you cannot forgive, at least forget.” They will say, “You must come to terms with the facts.” They will say, “Life must go on.” To know this then already was one of the severest blows in my fifteen months at Bergen-Belsen.

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The Shame of Bergen-Belsen Only in the last few months of the war did Bergen-Belsen become the ultimate hell for which it has been known ever since. The thousands upon thousands of emaciated dead bodies, which the British found strewn all over the vast camp area and which yielded the well-known photographs — mountains of corpses, open mass graves filled with corpses, and corpses being steamshoveled into pits — accumulated only since all vital services in Bergen-Belsen broke down in short succession during the first few months of 1945. Until then Kommandant Joseph Kramer, whom we had inherited from Auschwitz, was quite proud of running a tight ship: three kitchens were providing the estimated six hundred calories daily per inmate; there was enough tap water for drinking, if not for washing; typhus had not yet reached epidemic proportions; the daily death rate was roughly balanced by the capacity of the crematory to burn corpses, and the stench in the air was predominantly of burned, not yet of decaying flesh. The Arbeitskommandos, or work details, in charge of the kitchens, of cleaning vegetables, of maintaining the water pipes and electric wiring, of scrubbing the latrine boards, and the Leichenkommando, the detail in charge of hauling dead bodies to the crematory — all could still operate with a modicum of pride in their work. The breakdown came mainly as a result of the catastrophic overcrowding of Bergen-Belsen during the last months of the war, when camps in the East were evacuated before the advancing Russians, and those who survived the death marches swelled the prisoner population of the centrally located Bergen-Belsen

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camp by the tens of thousands. Then three disasters happened almost simultaneously: the kitchens ran out of fuel, the latrine ditches were full and overflowed, and the typhus assumed a new virulence and spread with uncanny speed. Only a greenhorn, at the beginning of his camp career, would ever use that old cliché: “At least it cannot get much worse.” It always could — and did. As long as the spark was in you, you lived with the new circumstances. You did not get used to them, adjust to them, come to terms with them, resign yourself to them — the circumstances and you existed side by side. Nor was it a question of brainwashing; the ss could not have cared less about how we were impressed by, or what we thought of, the inferno around us. Thus the rutabaga-like turnips called Steckrüben with which they cooked our daily soup were now distributed raw. You abandoned your fight against the lice that carried the disease because you lacked the strength to pursue and squash them. And you no longer tried to control the permanent state of diarrhea. The next stage was that you could eat your Steckrüben piece only if you were able to defend it against your neighbor who fought you tooth and claw for it; that the tap water changed to a trickle and finally ceased altogether; and that the camp was strewn with bodies, dead and dying and those you could not tell whether they were already dead or still dying. In March the ponds for fire-fighting were drunk empty and licked dry, and the remnants of rutabagas and potatoes were rotten. Their smell permeated the air more than the stench of excrement and decaying corpses that hung over Bergen-Belsen. It is quite wrong to assume that we inmates of Bergen-Belsen had become like rotting vegetables ourselves. We still had feelings and even moral values. However, a total transvaluation of values and a radical reduction in the number of concerns had

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taken place. I do not think that we still felt stirrings of rebellion or of resignation and knew the sensation of misery or well-being. Yet we were capable of indignation. I remember that we were indignant over the cases of cannibalism in the camp: according to our rudimentary code of twisted values, you were not supposed to cut open a dead inmate and eat his liver. We still had empathy also: we could well understand an ss man playing up to us with an eye to his postwar future. We had longings and a sense of humor: our longing went out to the hot soup we used to get daily in the better days, and our sense of humor made us joke that the bits of meat in that soup constituted “minced prisoners,” knowing full well that it came from horses killed at the fronts. We even still knew shame, and about this I want to relate an incident that happened to me and with which I shall conclude this tale. At that time I worked in a Wagenkommando. A big cart, de‑ signed for two horses but operated instead by eight people, was loaded with whatever needed to be transported and rolled to the different camp compounds. Two men pulled and steered at the shaft, two pushed from behind, and one man each was assigned to a wheel. My place was at the left back wheel. You got a firm hold of two spokes and pressed forward, putting whatever weight and strength you had into this movement. When all eight men did their job, the cart rolled along smoothly, unless you got stuck in the mud or had to stop to remove dead or dying people out of your path. One day the man at the wheel in front of me cursed at just such an occurrence. He was new in the Kommando, freshly arrived with a transport from Auschwitz. Before the total breakdown, our camp compound had been kept strictly separated from such transport people. “An awful Schweinestall, a pigsty, you’ve got here,” the newcomer cursed; “stiffs and mussulmen all over the place! At our camp that would not have been

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tolerated.” Mussulman, German Muselmann, was camp slang for a person whose weight had fallen below the minimum, who did not feel, think, speak, or care anymore. “No mussulmen in Auschwitz!” the man in front of me boasted, “They were the first to go up the chimney!” It was only at that time that we heard of gas chambers and selections. “Auschwitz was hygienic,” the man said with pride, “No stiffs, no mussulmen in Auschwitz!” I did not know what to answer. But I remember that I was greatly impressed by the efficiency of Auschwitz and was ashamed before the newcomer of the Schweinestall in Bergen-Belsen.

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The Great Novel About Bergen-Belsen One of the crying needs in the concentration camp was toilet paper. I knew a man in Bergen-Belsen who had contrived to bring with him a good supply. Actually, these were cut-up pages of an old-fashioned business ledger, strong onion-skin paper designed for copying business letters that were written with a special copying ink and then transferred in mirror script to the book pages with a hand press, readable in the normal way through the thinness of the paper. When I decided to take notes in Bergen-Belsen, I bought a handful of that man’s paper for a day’s ration of bread. A pencil stump cost as little as an eighth of a ration, half a (medium-thin) slice of bread. The thin paper could be written on one side only, so I wrote very small, but when I was through with the pack, I wrote on the other side anyway. If in God’s ledger I was inscribed for life, there would also be time and patience to decipher the crisscross of scripts. In the Holocaust literature of our days, one finds many references to diary writing in the midst of the misery. I have read that thousands of sufferers kept records of one kind or another. I have also read profound analyses of what it was that caused them to write. You learn about an innate historic instinct, about an overwhelming desire, a compulsion, of individuals to write down what they witnessed, regardless of whether there would ever be a reader. You can read about the mandate which the articulate person received from his perishing people, about the writer’s conviction that he must bear witness, get out the message,

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that a sacred task had been bestowed upon him. I have also read that it was the very act of keeping a diary that kept many a survivor alive. Well, I was not conscious of any of this when taking notes in Bergen-Belsen. For one thing, I was not aware then that anyone else took notes or kept a diary. Nobody in my barracks or in my work detail did. On the contrary, once it was known that I had taken to writing things down — to a small circle, of course, for the matter had to be kept secret — people from my barracks, my work Kommando, and from the Dutch Hachsharah group to which I belonged, came to me reporting events which they felt ought to be included in my notes. Although I was a self-appointed historian, to the best of my recollection, nobody ever questioned my authority nor contested my exclusive rights to the Bergen-Belsen story. I always thought that the people of my closer circle were glad that I was doing the job for them. So why did I take notes? I remember how it started. Once in the perpetual twilight of the barracks, I talked with a friend about the totally unbelievable events around us. We agreed that since the beginning of time there could not have been anything like it. The point came up that matters were made even more unbearable by the fact that posterity would never know about what had happened to us. Then my friend said jokingly: “Why don’t you write it down for them?” This question occupied my mind and, after a day or so, I came up with the answer: “Yes, why don’t I write it all down for them?” And I bought the paper and the pencil stump. There was nothing solemn or mystical about the decision. It was far indeed from a call, a categorical imperative. I think it was mainly the idea that I had a scoop here, an exclusive of fantastic dimensions, something like the greatest story ever told. How the postcamp world would sit up, how the publishers would beat

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a path to my door! Wasn’t I lucky that nobody else had thought of this? I was so obsessed with self-importance that the question of personal survival needed to put my notes into usable form became irrelevant. And so I wrote. Mostly on my bunk after work, but also during work stops, sometimes literally shielded by my friends. There are only two things worth reporting about the contents and kinds of notes I wrote. The first is that my notes were not at all limited to atrocities and suffering; I wrote many trivialities: thoughts, aphorisms, pseudopsychological observations. I made a special point of writing down impressions of beauty within the filth of the camp, for instance the patches of harvested vegetables laid out in front of the kitchen barracks: turnips, red beets, potatoes, greens, carrots, hosed down to a sparkling display of colors; or the sky after a storm: blue, sunny with shreds of clouds, dark in the center, light around the edges, floating across. The second special thing about my writing was that these notes — without system and order as yet, written in my own code of several languages, abbreviations, and substitute words (I later learned that most Holocaust notetakers had developed their own code) — that these notes were not to serve for a documentary report but for a novel, and many of the notes dealt with the ideas for plots and sketches of novel characters. I was quite sure then that no factual account would ever be believed, and that the only chance of conveying the reality was through the art of creative writing. No doubt, books such as War and Peace, All Quiet on the Western Front, or Gone with the Wind must have been before my mind’s eyes. When, in April of 1945, it became known that the Dutch compound of Bergen-Belsen would be evacuated before the Allied troops, I sewed the notes into my jacket lining. For two weeks I lay on the floor of a boxcar, sick with typhus, wrapped in this jacket.

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When I found myself again in Amsterdam, some three months after the war, salesmen at street corners were hawking brochures with screaming titles: “I was a Doctor in Auschwitz,” “The Death Quarry of Mauthausen,” “Back from the Hell of Bergen-Belsen.” My setback was only temporary. I told myself that a good fate had saved me from competing with the writers of trash. My novel would be written with the necessary care. When I had worked on it for a year, I stopped and put it aside. I had conceived a different plot, found a better angle for a second novel. When it was completed, I discovered that Dutch publishers would not even look at a German manuscript, and I could not bring myself to send it to Germany. By this time, 1947, some quality writing on the Holocaust had appeared, including fictionalized accounts. But, again, I was not overly dismayed. I no longer harbored an illusion about my exclusiveness as an eyewitness, but neither had I seen among the publications anything comparable to the story I had to tell. There was only one thing to worry about: in Europe a steep decline in the interest about the Nazi period had taken place; nobody wanted to read or hear about it. But then, we would soon be in America, where a huge audience was waiting for the authentic report on the European catastrophe. Once we had settled in the States, I began writing my third novel — this time in English. I also took university courses and developed some writing techniques. The novel was finished in the early fifties. I thought this novel said it all and said it in such a way that the world had to take notice. I began the rounds of publishers. But who would have even considered printing a book that was considerably thicker than War and Peace? I found a person who helped me to cut out four hundred pages and eliminate the worst Germanisms. It was of no use. The novel manuscript kept coming back; so did the dozen short stories I had added to my arsenal in the meantime. I rationalized: people in America do

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not want to read about the terrible things, either; the time of the immediate impact has passed, the time of readiness to confront the problem had not yet come; my writing had occurred during the lull that lay in between. Furthermore, I had fallen into the emigrant language trap: my English was not good enough, my German no longer good. Last of all, I began to harbor the sobering suspicion that my writing simply was not up to par. I sent the newly revised manuscript on its last round and then started on my academic career. Ever since, two German novel manuscripts and one in English rest peacefully at the bottom of my closet. As for me, I have come to shaky terms with the fact that my note-taking in Bergen-Belsen was as senseless as the rest of the camp experience. At least, nobody has beaten me to the punch. The deluge of Holocaust literature since the reawakening of interest, just about the time when I gave up on it, did not produce the great novel about Bergen-Belsen or about the Holocaust. The exclusive plot has, as yet, not met its Tolstoy, Remarque, or Mitchell. I doubt it ever will.

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An Uvechein and a Dayeinu for Bergen-Belsen And therefore: we have sinned. We have sinned for millennia. The single and the double alphabet do not suffice for the enumeration of our sins. We have entered a covenant with You but have not lived up to its terms. At least not completely; at least not all of us; at least not at all times. And therefore: You are merciful and long-suffering. For great intervals you let us go unpunished. But from time to time — sometimes here, sometimes there — Your wrath was kindled against us, and You made us suffer for our sins. Then the innocent suffered with the guilty — at least, so it appeared to us. Then the punishment exceeded the crime — at least, in our comprehension it did. And therefore: we are stiff-necked people. None of the catastrophies that befell us have led us back unto You in complete repentance, and You must have been exceedingly disappointed in us. Perhaps You saw Your experiment of creating man and woman in Your image crumbling for the second time. Perhaps it was only Your ancient pledge of the rainbow that saved us from total destruction. And therefore: You allowed Bergen-Belsen. In every generation they rose against us to put an end to us, but never before had You allowed their zeal to be carried that far. And if a remnant returned, perhaps this too was only because You had committed Yourself to this through Your prophet Isaiah. And therefore: You led us out from freedom to slavery, from joy to agony, from festive day to mourning, from light to great darkness, from redemption to utter servitude. Perhaps You did so because our thoughts and ways of freedom, of joy, of festive

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day, of light, and of redemption were not Your thoughts and Your ways, and because Your thoughts and Your ways are higher than ours, as the heavens are higher than the earth. And therefore: we, the remnant, are still reeling from the touch of Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm. But we have sufficiently recovered to be able to ask questions. Forgive us, when the questions are childish, for we are like little children who have learned about the here-and-now and begin to wonder about the there-and-then. And therefore: we ask — If You had allowed them to take away our wealth, our homes, our rights, and our dignity — but had not allowed them to kill us: would it not have been enough? If You had allowed them to kill us — but had not allowed them to bring us first to a state lower than the animals: would it not have been enough? If You had allowed them to bring us to a state lower than the animals — but had not allowed them to massacre us by the millions: would it not have been enough? If You had allowed them to massacre us by the millions — but had not allowed them to choose as instruments for our execution hunger and thirst, cold and pestilence, gassing and shooting, clubbing and strangulation, perishing in mud and excrement: would it not have been enough? If You had allowed them to choose as instruments of our execution hunger and thirst, cold and pestilence, gassing and shooting, clubbing and strangulation, perishing in mud and excrement — but had not allowed them to kill our children, to butcher cruelly and without mercy our children — little children, O Lord: would it not have been enough? We read in Your Torah: kedoshim tihyu. Have we perhaps misunderstood these words all along? Could it be that You never

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intended them to mean “You shall be holy” but rather “You shall be martyrs” (kiddush hashem), suffering the extreme passion for the sanctification of Your name. Yet the verse continues: ki kadosh ani adonai eloheichem, “for I, the Lord your God, am . . . “not “a martyr,” of course, but “holy.” And the homiletic interpretation points out that Your kedushah (“holiness”), unlike ours, appears in full spelling, which means that it is unattainable and incomprehensible to our defective kedushah. Could it still mean “martyr,” also with regard to You? Could You, too, be suffering in a way incomprehensible to us? Could it be that the Shechinah, the Divine Presence, hid her face and wept bitterly every time the door of the gas chamber slammed shut? Are these the ruminations of an atheist? How could they be! How could a nonbeliever feel the irrepressible need to reason with God? Moreover, I come with a prayer, even two: one of thanksgiving and one of supplication. I thank You, O God, that the crushing burden of having witnessed Your wrath will melt away with me and my generation, and that those who occupy themselves with the abomination of the past will do so with objectivity and proper distance. For the marvel of man’s transforming the triumph of inhumanity into a discipline of the humanities, and its horror into appointed seasons of solemn commemoration it is incumbent upon me to thank You — even though I cannot help resenting these transformations. And one thing I ask of the Lord: Renew for us the rainbow pledge. It does not have to be as grandiose as the one You gave to Noah. Only, while the earth remains, let there be no BergenBelsen, no selection, no gas chambers, no Einsatzgruppen — and also, no Massada.

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Pilgrimage to Bergen-Belsen The Lüneburger Heide, or Lüneburg Heath, is a large area of rolling land between Celle (a town near Hannover) and Hamburg. It possesses a melancholy beauty. Pinewoods alternate with open stretches of heather, which covers the ground thickly, irregularly distributed clumps of birch trees and juniper shrubs rising from it. The heather blooms in later summer. Then it forms one huge purple carpet, and the air is filled with honey bees. The landscape has played a role in romantic German literature. However, the soil of the Lüneburger Heide is very poor, almost worthless for agriculture. That is why they built on it the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. After the liberation, the British burned down the infected barracks, bulldozed out a number of large trenches and bulldozed in uncounted thousands of corpses. The bulldozers also covered up the graves, heaping up the soil on them, and the place was returned to nature. Subsequently the Germans improved on the pragmatic British job. They coaxed the grounds back into authentic Lüneburger Heide. The mass graves, too, became overgrown with heather and almost looked like natural hillocks, except for inobtrusive engravings. On these they inscribed (in German); “Here rest 3000 dead,” “Here rest 5000 dead,” “Here rest 7000 dead,” et cetera, et cetera. These round figures do not signify irreverence — who could count under such circumstances? However, the verb ruhen (“rest”) on the plaques tends to send a shiver up my spine.

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The landscaping artists did not forget to plant in regularly irregular distances clumps of birch trees and juniper shrubs. The only inorganic feature they added were old Jewish tombstones from destroyed cemeteries, placed here and there, likewise in studied irregularity. They fit so perfectly into the landscape that you have the feeling that the unspoiled Lüneburger Heide around the former camp site is not really complete. It failed to sprout irregularly distributed Jewish tombstones. But nature alone, even improved nature, was not sufficient in the eyes of the postwar German landscaping experts for making Bergen-Belsen a Gedenkstätte, a memorial park — for such was the intention. Three artifacts were added. One is a museum just outside the former campground, a good museum, whose enlarged photographs and clear charts embellish nothing and hide nothing. The other two architectural creations are an obelisk and a wall at the far end of the camp, both grey and both huge. They do not fit into the Lüneburger Heide; they rather make you think of the ostentation of the Reichsparteitage in Nuremberg or the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. This Gedenkstätte I have visited repeatedly. Both my motivations and my reactions have not stood up very well to scrutiny. Let me explain: Something is drawing me there. During the first twenty years after the war, the “never-setting-foot-again-on-German-soil” syndrome had stood me in good stead. Then the forces of attraction overcame those of repulsion. But why did I have to go to the extreme and visit the place, the very thought of which made me shudder? This ground was more cursed than the Heights of Gilboa. This heather drew its nourishment from the slime of my coprisoners’ urine, vomit, pus, excrement, and decaying bodies. Yet, my brothers’ and sisters’ blood cried to me from this ground, and I obeyed the call. Apparently it is not only the murderer who

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is drawn to the scene of the crime but also the nearly-murdered. Somewhere there was also the idea of a pilgrimage. Perhaps one must make pilgrimages not only to holy places, but even more so to unholy ones. Yet no such train of thought has satisfied my need to know what it really is that attracts me to that special memorial park. Could a guilt feeling be involved? Of not having thrown away your life in a vain gesture of resistance? Of not having loved your neighbor as you loved yourself? Of an absurd wish, when from afar you heard the ss singing melodious tunes as they marched, to be like them in Leni Riefenstahl purity and graceful power? — Then again, the reason may be much simpler. You feel how time is clouding the reality of your experience, and you need a tangible reminder ever so often in order to uphold your status as a bona fide witness. It is my observing myself when I am at the Gedenkstätte BergenBelsen that offers a clue for what might be one of the true motives of my pilgrimages. I enter the museum and the grounds with a grim determination to harden myself, not to give in to weakness or self-pity, for there are always visitors, and you would not want to make a spectacle of yourself. Then I find, to my amazement, that there is no need for me to put up a front. The armor is in place, and I see myself as an outside observer would see me: studying the exhibits, seeking out the engravings on the graves of the even thousands, reading the sculptured inscriptions in many languages on the grey wall. I even take photographs, as do the other tourists, and there is only one difference: I think, “If you only knew! If you only knew that all this is about me! If you only knew that I am a Gedenkstätte expert.” But of course, I hold my peace. The last time I was there, I had guests with me, relatives, back in Germany after forty years. Then I observed how my passive

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stance of not yielding to sadness and panic changed into an active role. I became the guide. I said, “Here, near these juniper shrubs, was my first barrack, Block 13.” I explained, “The obelisk stands on the exact spot of the chimney of the crematorium.” I translated the Dutch and Yiddish and Hebrew inscriptions on the wall. I also related to them how I had known the Lüneburger Heide long before anyone had thought of selecting it for the site of a concentration camp, how I had explored it by bicycle from Hannover, and how I had loved the landscape. I was not just active, I was talkative, close to euphoric, and I felt my voice trembling. I sensed the danger but was also aware of a tinge of triumph. There are wounds that defy healing, and the reason is that they must not be allowed to heal. However, some compassionate power allows the wound to become encased. You can grow a callous tissue over it, a veritable armor which may be a lifesaving device for some. That’s what it is: a device and no more. Like every mechanism, it needs maintenance, and it must be tested from time to time for cracks and fatigue. A pilgrimage to Bergen-Belsen goes a long way in testing the special armor which some people have grown over their special wounds. As long as I can lull myself into the belief that this is the Lüneburger Heide I once loved, as long as the hushed voices of the visitors around me remind me of the humming of the bees over the purple heather, as long as I can contain the sickly feeling aroused by our dead “resting” under that heather — I know that the armor is still in place. May it not wear thin before having completed its function.

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RETRAINING FOR LIFE One is obliged to abstain even from the study of Torah for the sake of attending to the dead. — Hokhmat Adam 155:3

The Lost Transport The circumstances of the strange journey about which I am going to tell are partly corroborated in the Dutch diaries from Bergen-Belsen by Loden Vogel and Abel Herzberg, published shortly after the war. Parts of both are included in the superbly researched volume Bergen-Belsen by Eberhard Kolb.* It was Kolb’s book, which ends where my story begins, that enabled me to make sense of the chronological and factual framework of “The Lost Transport.”

U In April of 1945, the inmates of the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen knew that the war would soon be over. Formations of Allied bombers soared over the camp, unchallenged in broad daylight; we no longer received regular rations, only now and then a raw Steckrübe, because “your friends, the Americans” had wrought havoc with the railroad net. And eventually, in the still of the night, we heard the first artillery rumblings of the Western front. Soon those prisoners who could still care about things other than food would seriously discuss whether it was distant Bremen or nearby Hannover that was being shelled. Besides this tactical concern, the prisoners agonized about the way the camp would fall into the hands of the Allies. Two contradicting rumors were * Loden Vogel, Daagboek uit een kamp (The Hague, 1946) and Abel J. Herzberg, Tweestromenland, Daagboek uit Bergen-Belsen (Arnhem, 1950; 3rd ed., Amsterdam, 1978), and Eberhard Kolb, Bergen-Belsen, Geschichte des “Aufenthaltslagers” 1943–1945 (Hannover, 1962).

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equally rampant. One had it that Kommandant Kramer would “hand over the camp in good order,” which meant that the ss guards would lay down their arms and allow us to be liberated. The other version said that the ss would put up a last stand at the perimeters of the camp while we would be locked up in our barracks and burned together with them. But for the Holländerlager or Sternlager, in which my barracks and that of my wife were located, events overtook both theories. On March 25 almost all inmates of this camp compound had been taken to the showers. (They were real showers; the function of the bath house was to maintain hygiene in general and fight lice, the carriers of typhus, in particular.) Since we had not been to the bath house for quite a while, and since this time our clothing, bundled in our blanket, went through the delousing trucks while we were in the showers, we realized that this orgy of cleanliness served a special purpose: evacuation. We were to be evacuated before the advancing Allies, apparently having been assigned a role as pawns or hostages in impending truce or peace negotiations. Most inmates of the Holländerlager possessed visas or even citizenship papers of an overseas country, and many had received Red Cross telegrams from Switzerland promising British certificates for entering Palestine. Originally this compound, as well as some others in the maze of compounds and subcompounds, had been intended as a reservoir of people which could be exchanged for German nationals interned in enemy countries. As a sign of their human status, the inmates of the Dutch compound had to wear regulation Yellow Stars — hence the appellation Sternlager. The wearing of the star was thus a privilege, and we understood it as such. In the summer of 1944, a group of 220 prisoners had indeed been exchanged for German nationals living in Palestine. (There had been several transports from Bergen-Belsen

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to freedom, most spectacularly one of nearly 1700 Hungarian Jews to Switzerland, Himmler’s “gesture to the Allies” that had been negotiated between Eichmann and Rudolf Kastner and Joel Brand and about which much has been written.) After the Palestine exchange, however, the special status of the Sternlager had lapsed, and our compound was starved and worked to death just like the others. But now, with the Allies closing in, someone, high up in Berlin, must have remembered the original concept of Austauschjuden (“Jews for exchange”) and ordered our evacuation. It will probably come as a surprise for the reader to learn that we were appalled by the prospect of having to leave BergenBelsen. During the last winter, the camp had increasingly become a stinking hole of mud, cruelty, hunger, disease, and hundreds of dead each day — yet, throughout the concentration camp years, most prisoners preferred the already familiar horror to a still unknown one. There was always great fear of the rigors, sufferings, and deaths directly connected with any transport, quite aside from the uncertainty of the destination. Possibly this was just the law of inertia applied to extremely weakened human beings. Be that as it may, it came as a relief when there was no follow-up to the evacuation bath that day. Before dark, everybody was back in his sticky, lice and bed-bug infested barracks. But on the following day, evacuation rumors flared up again because Hauptsturmführer Mös had been sighted in the camp. He was an emissary of Eichmann’s, in charge of special transports. Again nothing happened, and news filtered down from our own camp leadership that Judenältester Weiss (“Elder of the Jews” — we had adopted the Nazi terminology), together with one of the camp doctors, had successfully warded off the evacuation. They had convinced Mös that we could spread the typhus epidemic to the German population in spite of our hot bath and deloused clothing.

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“For the time being we are saved . . .,” Herzberg wrote in his diary on March 30, the same day he reported about a brave attempt to improvise a Passover celebration (March 28, 1945): “We needed no bitter herbs . . ..” We accepted the fact that evacuation plans had been scrapped and that we would be allowed to starve to death or die of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Then, on April 6, some 400 people from our compound whose names appeared on one of several “lists” of the countless special categories of prisoners were called up and taken from the camp. Still the same day we knew — internal camp intelligence left little to be desired — that a train with 2500 inmates, including our 400, 1500 Hungarians, and the rest from a variety of Sonderlager (“special camps”), had left the Bergen loading ramp (Bergen is a small town, Belsen a tiny village near it) for an unknown destination. That was when we really started to worry about our own turn at evacuation. The artillery rumblings from the West had not come appreciably closer. And sure enough, the next day, April 7, another trainload of Hungarians left, and we knew about it within the hour. We studied the stone faces of the ss guards for clues. One of our more articulate fears was that typhus would catch up with us somewhere along the way when we were even more helpless. The last entry in Vogel’s diary, April 8, reads: “Hopefully we can stay, but that is not certain.” On April 9, 1945, it was finally our turn, and we were marched the five or six kilometers to the loading ramp. The train waiting for us had brought prisoners from another camp to BergenBelsen, as had the previous two trains. Two struggling, drawn out columns of skeletons passed each other on the road; however, the newcomers were in an even worse state than we. Also, at the ramp itself, a surprise was to underline our privileged status when we heard the order: “Fifty prisoners to a box car!” Normally, on transport, that number was eighty to a hundred.

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This difference meant that we would be able to sit on the floor and — taking turns — even stretch out. (The use of the term “cattle cars” in much of the Holocaust literature unnecessarily conveys the idea of additional degradation. A prisoner with any transport experience preferred box cars to passenger cars because wooden benches and baggage nets, far from being a convenience, became instruments of torture in the shoving and turmoil and uninhibited scramble for self-preservation.) There were more surprises. The ss allowed remnants of families from different barracks to board the same wagon. My wife and I secured a space on the floor, and the group of fifty casually agreed on a leadership and a few ground rules. One of the rules was that the water pail and the latrine bucket were positioned in two diagonally opposite corners. The sliding door remained open. After many hours of sitting hunched in the car, there was still no sign of departure, and some people ventured outside. Soon most of those who had the strength to jump or climb down to the platform followed. Outside we became aware of a number of things: first of all, it was a beautiful day. The shufflers from the Sternlager still kept coming. From them we heard that the evacuation of our compound would be a complete one, only the typhus cases in the infirmary barracks were to be left behind. We also noticed a lovely little stream right near the rail embankment running through a blooming meadow and bordered by willows and a few male and female skeletons bathing in it. But best of all, we saw a huge pile of Steckrüben at the end of the platform. Steckrüben, in our experience, had always been the lowliest and cheapest kind of vegetable. My mother prepared these rutabaga-like roots occasionally for reasons of economy, and the entire family, my mother included, detested those meals. In the camp, Steckrüben was the staple food, forming the main ingredient of the daily hot soup. Not only had

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we gotten used to its taste and the all-pervading smell, but we had learned to regard it as a delicacy when thickened with potatoes and containing diced horse meat. To the taste of raw Steckrüben, however, one could never become accustomed and now, in the spring, the vegetables were rotten to boot. Still, it was food, and this big heap was just sitting there, presumably destined for the camp but left here for lack of transportation. Hundreds of prisoners were swarming over the heap. We joined them and brought as many beets as we could carry to our wagon. The ss stood guard in a wide cordon around the loading ramp. They did not strike us or even yell at us. It was rumored that a prisoner had wandered all the way to a farmhouse where he was said to have begged an egg. No doubt the guards had undergone a metamorphosis like we ourselves. Perhaps they considered their camp role at an end and, who knows, some of them might be looking forward to our common travel adventure as to a freedom ride. The whole situation had the makings of an idyll. Why then could we not flee in this relaxed atmosphere? The answer is that we could, and that some did, but at best a handful. The dense pinewoods that had lined our route all the way from the camp to the loading ramp seemed to promise a safe refuge. I remember well that my wife and I discussed the option of fleeing, of making a dash for — or better, taking an inconspicuous stroll to — freedom. We weighed the pros and cons and decided against it. I assume that all the others who did not flee might have arrived at similar conclusions — if the thought of escaping occurred to them at all. We reasoned that we were too weakened and exhausted to walk more than a few kilometers. Once the train had departed, other ss guards would search the woods with dogs. Assuming we were not immediately recaptured, where could we turn after the woods? How long could we survive? All around us was Nazi

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Germany. A Jew not behind barbed wire was something unthinkable, his recapture a sacred duty. The first farmer on whose door we knocked would identify us as escaped from the concentration camp. Even if he did not turn us in as an act of patriotism, he would have to do so in order to save his own skin. But what about the general confusion at war’s end, in which an escape might go undetected? Well, for one thing, you could not be sure that this war’s end was genuine. Too often since Stalingrad and El Alamein had we been plunged from soaring optimism back into dust and mud. For another, a state of great confusion, while it could be of advantage for a fugitive, could also be risky, for life would be held very cheap, especially the life of people who already looked more dead than alive. No, Germany in her death throes was an extremely dangerous place for a Jew to roam free. In the beginning, “international Jewry” had only caused the war (Hitler’s radio speeches, which we followed horror-stricken, will keep echoing in my ear as long as I live). But now “the Jew” had engineered Germany’s downfall. The choicest of tortures would be in store for a Jew captured at such a time. No, escape was reckless and suicidal; whatever safety there might still be for us, depended on the train . . . (Writing this almost forty years after the event, I imagine that our reasoning must have been along these lines. Once we had embarked on the journey, opportunities to make good one’s escape only increased, but extremely few prisoners made use of it.) That day, the train did not move from the loading ramp. As more prisoners arrived, the rule of fifty to a car was abandoned — still the cars were not filled to capacity. By evening three main activities had become established which were to remain constant for the duration of the impending journey: the prisoners built little fires of twigs and dry grass along both sides of the track, using their tin bowls from the camp to cook a soup

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or a stew from whatever they had saved, scrounged, begged, or stolen: Steckrüben, red beets, potatoes, and all kinds of roots dug up along the embankment. A second feature to accompany us throughout was strafing and bombing. Suddenly, out of nowhere an airplane would roar over us so close that we could see the pilot and his gunner. It sprayed the train with machine gun bullets and tried to bomb the locomotive. We ran for cover away from the tram and hit the ground, hoping that we would be sprayed only with dirt and not with bullets. Each time we were attacked from the air, the train would stop. When there was a chance, the doors were unbolted and all who were not too sick or too weak could climb down. Lying face down in a furrow, we felt like yelling: “Hey you, up there, you are our friend, you are supposed to liberate us, not to kill us at the last moment!” It was a feeling of immense despair, and there were always dead and wounded. This was the third recurring feature of our journey: collecting and burying the dead. The strongest among us — at that time I was still one of them — were ordered to dig a pit by the tracks and bury the dead. The ss kept shovels and pick axes handy. As night fell, the doors of all cars were slid shut and bolted from the outside. We slept in fits, waiting for the train to start moving any moment, but nothing happened. When we heard the bolts being opened in the morning and rolled back the door, we found ourselves still on the Bergen loading ramp. We stayed there a second day and again it was a beautiful day. We even received each a loaf of bread and some margarine with the comment that they would have to last a week, which gave us an idea of the intended duration of the journey. In the evening, hundreds of little fires competed with the sinking sun for a pictorial effect. Then we were locked up again.

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That night we had the first two typhus cases in our carriage. These people had negotiated the march from the camp with the bacilli multiplying in their blood, and with not a hint of what was to come — high fever, a cruel headache, and wild deliria. Now our car was infected. There was no question of quarantining the sick; we all had been exposed to infection for a long time. The only relevant question was whether the patients would die within one or two days, as happened in most cases, or last to the crisis which, according to camp medical lore, occurred on the twelfth day — when you either succumbed or began the path toward recovery. Another question was, of course, who would be next to develop those pea-sized pink spots around the midriff, the unmistakable sign that the disease had incubated and the reason for its popular name of “spotted typhus” or “spotted fever” (Flecktyphus, Fleckfieber; before we knew what it was, we had called it Lagerfieber, “camp fever.”) After midnight low-flying aircraft attacked again. Machine guns roared, bombs howled, but our doors were not unbolted. Shortly afterwards the train screeched and lurched and started moving. From the beginning of our train ride, a pattern was established that remained yet another hallmark of the trip: the train rolled very slowly for a short while, stopped, then began to move again and once more came to a halt. The next morning, April 11, day number three, found us standing still outside a small town, Soltau, not more than twenty-five kilometers from Bergen. For the first time, we heard the call Toten raus! (“Out with the dead!”) emanating from the ss guard who unbolted the door. We dug the second common grave and looked for water and hibernated roots along the edge of the fields. Some German civilians ventured by the train and, under the eyes of the ss, we traded with them: potatoes, carrots, beets, even bread for articles of clothing, shoes,

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and blankets. But then the depot of Soltau was being bombed; we were ordered back into the cars, and the journey continued. As we rolled through another small station, we passed a long train pulled up on a siding. It took us only a minute to recognize the “Hungarian” train that had left Bergen-Belsen on April 8. We could talk to them through the slit high on the wall of every boxcar. They had been the second train; we the third. We wondered what had happened to the first, the one of April 6. The Hungarians did not know. Meanwhile our strategist-geographers had charted our probable course. Bergen-Belsen was situated in the southwestern corner of the Lüneburg Heath, which is named after its principal city, Lüneburg. (There the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine had written his “Lorelei” and there, in the fall of 1945, the Bergen-Belsen trial against Kommandant Kramer and his crew would take place.) Now we were traversing it very slowly in a northeasterly direction. We were headed directly toward the Elbe River, our strategists said. We would cross it and then turn south — toward Theresienstadt. It took us till April 15 to reach Lüneburg. This meant that, on the sixth day after leaving the camp, we had traveled only fifty miles. We never learned the reason for the slow moving and the sudden jerks and stops. Our guesses included clogged railroad nets, lack of fuel, worn out equipment, a locomotive bombed or machine-gunned out of action. It also seemed to us that, during the daytime, the train liked to hide in wooded areas. “The train liked to . . .”? Indeed, the train had assumed a personality for us. We rarely ascribed its behavior to the engineer or the ss transport commander; it was always “the train” that moved or stopped and groped its way through an ever-narrowing corridor between the western and eastern fronts. Moreover, the train became the only place where we belonged. It was the fixed point in a world out

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of joint. We had a space of our own on its floor. There we slept, ate, and deloused our clothing. In the train we went to the toilet and took care of our sick. The train was our castle. The trip after Soltau had been uneventful, except for the news of President Roosevelt’s death on April 12. We learned about it from the ss, who suddenly reverted to their old selves. With Roosevelt the Jew and warmonger out of the way — according to Nazi lore, Roosevelt was of Jewish descent, and the writer of “Lorelei” was an anonymous German poet — and apparently with promises about new German secret weapons, the final victory again seemed within reach. With the rising spirits of the ss, we grew correspondingly depressed, but both emotions were soon swallowed up by the daily and nightly train routine. As to the nights — sleeping conditions changed for the better as the elimination of travelers through attrition resulted in more space on the carriage floor. One also became accustomed to the nightly strafings; at night the bolts were never opened, and there was nothing one could do anyway. Oh yes, another event had taken place by the time we reached Lüneburg, but we did not know it then: Bergen-Belsen was liberated that same day by the British. The camp had been “handed over in good order.” At a small station beyond Lüneburg, our train pulled up once again alongslde the Hungarians. They were feeling much encouraged. The night before they had stopped right next to a bombed freight train. Large amounts of packaged food had been spilled over the rail embankment. They had eaten their fill, and there was enough left for trading with us. We, in turn, still possessed valuables to trade. In the Sternlager we had been allowed to keep our wedding bands and wrist watches. There also were Dutch bank notes, and even gold coins and diamonds now emerged from the seams in our clothing. Trading was brisk and the ss let us carry on for a while. The Hungarians were confident about

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their destination. From Theresienstadt they would be taken to a neutral country, Switzerland or Portugal, to be exchanged for German nationals abroad. Our train meandered along the eastern edge of the Lüneburg Heath, sometimes retracing long stretches. Obviously “it was seeking” a place to cross the Elbe River. At regular intervals we found ourselves under an umbrella of artillery fire. Our strategists theorized that the Germans had formed a defense line on the east bank of the Elbe and the Americans were set on smashing it. In the natural course of things, we should have hoped not to be able to cross the Elbe, for then we would fall right into the hands of the Americans. However, after all these years, it seems to me that not only had we succeeded in personifying our train, but its “ideology” had affected us. Some of us, at least, wanted to cross the Elbe, thus outwitting our potential liberators. We did cross the Elbe River at Lauenburg, thirty miles south of Hamburg, and, as soon as we were on the other side, the bridge behind us was bombed to fragments. We wondered then whether our companion trains had managed the crossing as well.* We were now in the strip between the Elbe and the Oder Rivers. Knowing that the Americans were massing troops on the west bank of the Elbe, we assumed that the Russians were doing the same on the east bank of the Oder, unless they had crossed that river already. The corridor between the rivers runs southeast, and we had to make a dash for it if we were to reach Theresienstadt * Let me report here on the first of the three trains, the one that had left Bergen-Belsen on April 6, in which there had been some four hundred inmates from the Sternlager. That train, too, wound its way through the Lüneburg Heath in search of a bridge to cross the Elbe, but its general direction had been southeast. An advance unit of the US Army caught up with it and liberated that transport on April 13 at the town of Farsleben near Magdeburg. It was from members of this transport that word about living and dying at Bergen-Belsen during the last war winter and the spring of 1945 reached the outside world. At our first visit to Israel in 1960, we met several good friends from Holland who had ridden in Train No. 1.

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before the two armies crushed us between them. This route, as well as the existing railroad net, led us first to Berlin. The sight of the German capital was a revelation for all those prisoners who were still capable of perception. The train crossed the entire city from west to east, and what we saw were uncounted blocks of skeleton buildings with craggy skylines, and the daylight shining through blackened holes that once had been doors and windows. Long hillocks of rubble marked former streets. Those among us then, who still possessed the capacity for any emotion at all, must have felt that the Germans had truly reaped the whirlwind. If there was triumph evident in this, there was certainly also a sense of disbelief: in all their obvious defeat and degradation, these same Germans were managing to assign valuable rolling stock to move miserable prisoners around, clearing the tracks of shot-up locomotives, derailed wagons, curling rails, broken poles, and tangled wires. Of all the bizarre things the Germans had done to maintain their maze of concentration camps — and the constant transports of prisoners from one camp to another (and sometimes back again) had always been a mystery to us — our present transport seemed the most incongruous. Outside one of Berlin’s train stations, we encountered the Hungarian train for the third time. Their high spirits had vanished. They had sustained several direct hits during the previous night, resulting in three hundred casualties. We did not meet our companion train any more after that; according to Kolb, “nothing is known about the fate of the second Hungarian transport” (156). Unless later research has produced some news of their fate, these comrades of ours are just one tiny part of lost mankind swallowed up in the terrible confusion at war’s end. It took us two days to cross Berlin. It was now April 19, and we had lived in the train for ten days. As we headed south, we read station names such as Luckenwalde, Lübben and Lübbenau;

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these told us that we were traversing (again with much backtracking) the region called Spreewald, known in normal times for the market gardens that supplied the Berlin population, and for the wetnurses in fancy folk costumes from whom the little Berliners drew their nourishment. In the train, as in the camp, the most urgent concern remained food. A routine had become established by which the ss made it possible for us to forage for food. Whenever the train happened to stop near a farmhouse, a few of us were allowed to knock at the door. The guards stood to one side in small groups, chatting, smoking, munching on food, or passing a canteen. The same arrangement pertained to our daily search for water. If no houses or creeks were found in the immediate vicinity of our train, ss men would discreetly accompany small groups of prisoners. We would usually get something when we asked, a potato or a beet, once in a while a piece of bread. Our means of acquisition was begging, trading, or buying for cash or valuables. Sometimes a house was abandoned, and we searched for what the plunderers before us might have overlooked. During the first few days on the train, these foraging sorties were carried out entirely on private initiative. But as soon as they had reconstituted themselves, our leadership group from the Sternlager — Josef Weiss, “Elder of the Jews,” and his staff — took over and organized the search for provisions and other activities for the benefit of our society on wheels. Unlike what one has heard and read about a dubious or treacherous role played by Nazi-appointed Judenräte elsewhere, most of us had unbegrudgingly given recognition to our leadership while in the camp and continued to do so during the transport. I ascribe this particularly to Mr. Weiss’ integrity and courage when standing up for us within the narrow confines of authority the Germans granted him for the internal camp administration. But aside from the

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good reputation of Mr. Weiss and most of the men responsible to him in matters of food distribution, hygiene, financing, and welfare (we spoke only half-jokingly of his “cabinet”), we had in years of indoctrination gotten used to the Führer-Prinzip — being governed by appointed leaders — as a realistic alternative to a democratic form of government. During this train ride, the system worked exceptionally well. I remember the positive feeling which I, as rank and file, harbored toward the “Council of Elders.” I admired them for their resourcefulness. When the train stood still for longer periods, especially near a town or a village, they somehow stretched out their tentacles and, before long, farmers with carts came to us — not we to them — and the Council made wholesale deals involving sacks of potatoes and barrels with sauerkraut and salt pickles. Even milk, butter, and eggs were traded in smaller quantities. Generally, the Council paid with merchandise and valuables, as we did in our private deals; for farmers who accepted currency, they had large denomination Dutch guilder bills. Actually, no one knew if they were still valid currency. Articles of clothing and blankets, any kind of textiles, were highly valued by the rural population — and even more the gold coins and diamonds some people had still in their possession. From car to car Council members would collect anything that could be spared. By unwritten law the Council was also the beneficiary of the deceased, even though the surviving family members never agreed to this principle and tried to hide what they could of the “estate.” Of course, there was much grumbling against this taxation by the Council, and it was alleged that the Council members kept the best things for themselves. But, in fact, they delivered food to the carriages for individual distribution by the car representative, and everyone got something. Children even got milk occasionally.

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The daily burial of the dead became more efficiently organized; it even achieved a degree of dignity. We chose a suitable site in a meadow or in the woods and dug the grave, its size depending on the number of corpses taken from the train. Here the dead were buried fully dressed while, in the camp, bodies had been stripped naked since all clothing was required for the living. How well the grave was covered depended on the time at our disposal. It could happen that the locomotive blew its whistle and we had to run back to the train before properly completing the job. But when there was enough time, someone would even say a prayer. The train trudged along at a crawl, often standing still for long periods. More than one locomotive was hit by aircraft cannon, but the Germans still found it worth their while to repair or replace it. It must be remembered that, by then, especially in that part of the country, the Wehrmacht sorely needed all rolling stock for shoring up the German defenses on the west bank of the Oder River. We became witnesses to an extraordinary phenomenon. In the thick of the night, when the train stood still — amidst the snoring of the healthy, the moaning of the sick, the rasping and rattling of the dying — some of us became aware of an unknown sound, a muffled but steady noise like a murmuring creek. One of the young and still strong pulled himself up to the air slit. When his eyes accustomed themselves to the dark outside, he shouted it to all in the car: the German population was fleeing! The elements making up that noise became distinguishable as shuffling of feet, rolling of hand-drawn carts, voices of men and women, crying of children. This situation we could interpret ourselves without the expert analysis of our strategists. The Russians were gathering along the Oder to give Berlin the coup de grâce, while the German civilians

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were fleeing. In the pitch dark of our car, we discussed the event. All were awake now, and even some of the gravely sick participated in the excited debate. The Germans were fleeing on foot; we people in the train were better off than they! I have often attempted to recapture the feeling of triumph we must have enjoyed to the full at that hour; but no such memory will materialize. The situation must have been too improbable, too grotesque, the world too topsy-turvy for us to react with the appropriate feeling. When dawn broke, the stream of German fugitives on the road along the rail embankment continued undiminished. The train reached now the part of Saxony known as the Niederlausitz, a region facing both Czechoslovakia and Poland. There it stood still for two days. According to the ss, the army was laying extensive mine fields. The first morning we had to dig a deep mass grave, and I remember how good and fit I felt during that work. In the afternoon my wife and I built a little fire by the track and cooked potatoes with wild onions. I ate my share with a hearty appetite, even then quite aware of the fact that such a feeling of well-being often heralded the onset of typhus. It is that awareness together with a euphoric impression of physical strength and the warm glow of having eaten a good meal that form my last clear memory for some time to come. That night I lay on the wagon floor with a high fever, devastating headaches, and a parched throat. From then on, a state of blurred consciousness kept alternating with vivid hallucinations. These fever fantasies had a fairytale-like character; they were downright pleasant. They entertained me with pastel colors, smooth forms, and gliding movements. I found these visions so remarkable that, in moments of lucidity, I dictated to my wife exactly what I had seen. In my clearer moments, I realized that I was burning up with fever, that my strength was waning by

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the hour, and that there was absolutely nothing that could be done but to wait for the disease to take its course. Once I had survived the first two twenty-four-hour periods, only the crisis on the twelfth day would bring the decision between life and death. I remember a daylight dive-bomber attack when I begged my wife to leave the train with the others and seek shelter, but she refused and stayed with me. The train moved again for another day or two, covering no more than a few dozen miles. Then, one morning at dawn, the doors were rolled open from the outside, and men dressed in brownish uniforms poured into the carriage, shouting in Russian and constantly repeating a word that sounded like Horo, horo! which turned out to be their version of the German word Uhr, “watch.” They fell upon the prisoners who were still half asleep, going through their pockets, tearing rings from their fingers and watches from their wrists. It appeared to me, through the mist of fever, as if they were handling the people on the floor like tailor’s dummies, turning them over, standing them on their feet or their head, and letting them glide smoothly to the floor again. In a few minutes, the apparition was over. It was April 23, 1945, and this Cossack raid had been our liberation. Soon one of our scouts reported that the ss guards were being led away, their hands raised behind their necks. The train had run into a unit of Marshall Zhukov’s army that was moving north toward Berlin and west toward the Elbe River in order to occupy the zone which the Americans, who had reached the Elbe some time ago, had left for the Russians as their share of the German pie. (Of course, we learned all this only later; not even our strategists could possibly have foreseen the politically motivated agreements of the Allies concerning Saxony, Thuringia, and Berlin.)

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At first, being free did not feel different from being imprisoned. A sick man’s grasp of the situation by me, the typhus sufferer who hardly counted anymore, seemed to be shared by my healthy companions. For it took a long time until people began to venture outside, and then only with great caution and repeated returns between excursions. They were probably still afraid of the ss and now also frightened of the Russians, apprehensive about the minefield, and dreading to be caught in crossfire, for there were rifle shots very close to us. So, for the time being, the train remained our castle. In the afternoon, however, things changed. Scouts reported two nearby villages, two and four kilometers away, the closer called Tröbitz, the other Schilda. (Later it struck me as strangely fitting my benign fever fantasies that the names of places in this part of Germany had been known to me since my youth, mostly from folk tales or from miltary lore, such as the Schildbürger from Schilda, the Schmidt von Jüterbogk, rhymes and sayings about Cottbus and Finsterwalde, the Torgauer March, and the Alte Dessauer of Prussian warrior fame.) We further heard that the village of Tröbitz was deserted — its inhabitants having fled — and that some Russians had said we could have it. Like the biblical spies of old, our scouts carried foodstuffs to substantiate their story: bread, sausages, eggs, glass jars of fruit and vegetable preserves — it was breathtaking. The news started an immediate exodus from the train. If it was true that we could actually move into the village, it was imperative that my wife hurry and establish domicile there. Then she would try to get someone to help move me to the village. With a heavy heart she left me lying on the floor of the wagon. Of the next few hours, I remember two things, and I note them here together with their explanations. First, I had a vision of human forms moving gracefully against a background of flames

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and smoke coupled with a choking sensation. Quite simply, those were people of our transport who had caught some chickens and were roasting them over a fire inside the wagon, oblivious to the sick and dead lying about on the floor. The second memory is of my burning face being gently bathed. The story behind this sensation is more complex. My wife had gotten safely to Tröbitz. The village was indeed deserted, but intact. Together with a surviving mother and her daughter, she had secured a third-floor apartment in the village’s only threestory building; she had laid claim to the master bedroom. Then she had taken a handcart from the shed, persuading a young man of our acquaintance, seventeen years old and strong, to come back to the train with her to get me. Meanwhile the situation in general became very confused. Our Russian liberators had moved on. There was a steady stream of new Red Army units who did not know what to make of us, nor did they waste any thought on it. A number of the former prisoners, no longer feeling safe in the village, came drifting back to the train, loaded with food and clothing, perhaps vaguely hoping that the train would take them to a safer place. Others had opted for Schilda, the more distant village, from which the inhabitants had not fled. (We later heard that the Landsturm in Tröbitz — young boys and old men — had put up a fight against the Russians, while those in Schilda had not.) While my wife and the lad found me on the wagon floor, unconscious, spattered with blood, covered with feathers, and half choked, they pulled me toward the door, deliberating on how to get me down the three-foot drop. A Dutch doctor from our transport came by, took a look at me, and earnestly warned against moving me any further, adding that it probably was of no use anyway. Nevertheless, my wife and the youth lowered me to the cart. My wife pulled it, and the youth — so I was told

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later, and I carry the picture forever in my mind — took the rear, riding on a liberated bicycle and whistling a Russian tune he had already picked up. During that bumpy ride, I regained consciousness for a moment when an April shower dampened my face. That rain was the benign cooling bath which I remember. Through the self-sacrificing care of my wife, I woke to life once more on the twelfth day, just as the camp lore had foreseen. And it was only a few days later that I began taking notes again. Our village had replaced our train, and I found life and death in that village interesting in the extreme. Here were two thousand survivors of the two-week long train ride — nationals of two dozen countries. They made a living by begging, stealing, and appropriating goods. They also continued to die of typhus. Even more died of overeating which, under the circumstances, proved to be as devastating as starving. It was all so fascinating because the Russians kept us in quarantine for two whole months — until long after the end of the war and, during that time, I could observe a community being formed from very heterogeneous elements and under the most improbable conditions. My urge to write things down was more compulsive than ever. The biblical words “your eyes have seen” (Deuteronomy 4:3; 11:7) became an imperative to me. What my eyes saw was the birth, the flourishing, and the end of that community, a unique experiment that deserves to be recorded in greater detail than can be done here. Just as in the train, the motto of life in Tröbitz at first was “everyone for himself.” The phase of finding quarters ended — not without minor quarrels and major clashes — on the day of liberation itself. The second need — that of providing food for two thousand starved people — could not be satisfied for long by the provisions found in the homes and village stores and the live stock left behind in the stables. To augment those sources,

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our people, from the first day on, took to lining the main road, along which all Russian columns moved, begging for food. Very soon every former prisoner possessed a list of Russian words for items, food or otherwise, which were most likely to be thrown to us by good-natured Russian soldiers, from jeeps and tanks and horse-drawn carts. Whenever a column stopped, there was pushing and yelling — a regular beggars’ choir. Though we could have elected new representatives, we continued to acknowledge the Council of Elders from the camp and train as our leaders. This elite group, too, had taken care of their personal needs first. Most of them stayed together in a large villa, the best looking private building in the village. It belonged to the director of the mines (the area was rich in soft coal), and nobody begrudged it to the Council. But on the second morning, the Council already went into action. Their foremost concern was the train. A group of men whom we classified as “the strong,” with shovels and spades, went out to it, collected the dead, and laid them to rest in a spacious common grave, dug in a meadow full of spring flowers near the spot where the train had come to a halt. Many of the sick were still lying on the floor of their wagons, having spent the night there with nobody to look after them. Fortunately, some of our scouts had discovered a large abandoned camp, with barracks and straw sacks in a wooded area, on the other side of Tröbitz. It had been a camp for Ukrainian slave laborers and seemed the right place for the sick, especially since their isolation from the people in the village would reduce the danger of infection. And then the Elders performed a truly amazing feat. Carrying the sick the long way to the “Ukrainian camp” or Lazarett (as we called it) was more than could be expected from our volunteer workers. Instead, the Council moved the train! To this day I do not know precisely how that move was accomplished. Perhaps they found a German

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train engineer who could operate the locomotive. When, on the next morning, April 25, the train came to its final halt at the edge of the woods where the rails moved closest to the camp, it was already necessary to dig a fresh grave — the last of the regular common graves. The remaining sick were carted to the Lazarett. Again a day later, a special kind of mass grave for the daily needs of a typhus station had to be designed. We called it the telescope grave. It could be expanded as required: by excavating the soil to cover the last corpses, the hollow needed to accommodate the next was created. Nothing could as yet be done for the care and the feeding of the sick, and what eventually became of the train, I have never been able to establish. By the time I ventured out and slowly overcame the disorientation and the great weakness resulting from the sickness, order and a daily routine had been established in Tröbitz. The Council of Elders had organized itself into regular departments, dealing with the rationing system, public health, relations with the Russians, adjudicating quarrels, and more. The war was over now, but this momentous event, announced on May 8 over the radio and heard in almost every house, hardly made an impression on our community. It had been as anticlimactic as our liberation to the cries of Horo, horo! Everyone was aware that repatriation was still a long way off, for the typhus was rampant and had spread to the countryside. Meanwhile the task of eating and staying healthy claimed all the energy and attention of the former prisoners in the two villages. The most important consequence of the war’s ending, for us, was probably that Tröbitz came under a permanent Russian occupation — a military administration with which the Council could establish a fairly stable relationship. This was much better than having to explain anew each time exactly who we were

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and why we considered ourselves entitled to preferential treatment. As to the latter, our new permanent Kommandant — I do not recall his rank or name — was by no means convinced that he should grant us special status; possibly, he reckoned that, in the long run, he would have to deal with the permanent element of the population rather than with us transients. Still, the Council derived prestige and authority in the eyes of the German population from whatever concessions it could obtain from the Russians. After the initial danger of being arrested as collaborators, the Council worked fairly well together with the Russians. The language barrier was no problem — we had enough interpreters among our ranks for a dozen occupying forces. The Russians moved into the former county seat — a sprawling complex of yellow stucco buildings. The former prisoners who had initially made these rooms their home had to look for different quarters. The occupation forces, in their own interest, were helpful in bringing some order and method into the care of the sick. Responsibility for the typhus sufferers in the Ukrainian camp had been a great worry for the Council. At first, the sick had to rely on voluntary contributions of food, time, and care — the latter, especially, being a true sacrifice owing to the constant danger of contagion. Now the Lazarett received a Russian staff of medics headed by a woman, a buxom, middle-aged major whom we nicknamed the yidishe mame. She was Jewish, all right, because she reacted when addressed in Yiddish. But she never spoke Yiddish herself, nor could she be tricked into a conversation, personal or political. To us, she was strictly a Russian medical officer, and we, to her, were antifascists liberated by the Red Army. The treatment at the new “infirmary” was primitive but effective. The Russians had no medicines for us. The patients were washed and the entire body shaved, including the head, to

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deprive the lice of their hiding and breeding places. After that, they were left on the straw and given a daily ration of bread and gruel. The patients either survived the crisis or did not. If they did, they were discharged into the community; if they didn’t, they were taken to the “telescope” grave. For a while a preventive service existed: a medic, armed with a thermometer, visited households and checked temperatures. Anyone who had even the slightest fever was brought to the Ukrainian camp, shaved, and put on the straw. If the fever went down in the evening or the next morning, the patient was sent home — minus the hair on his or her head. This practice caused great concern among the former prisoners but, after a week or so, the visits were discontinued. Instead, the Council of Elders was officially told that Tröbitz and Schilda had been declared quarantine areas and that no repatriation would be contemplated until four weeks after the last typhus case. In time the Russians also gave their consent to the rationing and distribution system as organized by the Council. The latter was well established by then. A room in the Council villa had been transformed into an office, complete with typewriter and mimeograph machine. The first products of that machine were forms to be used for our rationing system. They had numbered squares that were to be detached and surrendered for whatever was being distributed. Next, the Council requisitioned two abandoned stores, one in Tröbitz and one in Schilda; these became distribution centers. They were manned by volunteers who probably got something extra for their trouble. How the Council obtained supplies, I do not know. But soon our people stood in line for their rations of bread, milk, flour, sugar, and sometimes even meat or soup bones. As to the acquisition of meat, I have a superficial but personal knowledge based on a vivid recollection. On one of my first days out, I saw two men struggling

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to pull a reluctant and very lean cow toward the shed behind the distribution place. A patrol of armed Russian soldiers challenged them. The men produced a paper which the Russians studied, putting their heads together. Then they let them proceed and, on the next day, there was a distribution of meat. Was the cow stolen or purchased? Had our people received authority from the Russians to requisition it (and the bread, the oatmeal, the occasional jam, the milk)? Or did they only pretend to have such authority over the still intimidated German farmers? Did the Council obtain what it got by right, by persuasion, by bluffing, browbeating, cajoling? Did the Council bribe its way, use honest payment, business-like negotiations? I have no answers to these questions and, in all likelihood, the truth was a bit of everything. As far as we consumers were concerned, the distribution was free. Another example of the foresight, efficiency, and resourcefulness of the Council was the matter of our documents, certificates confirming that each of us was a member of the prisoner transport from Bergen-Belsen that had been liberated near Tröbitz on April 23, 1945. This paper, typewritten (for the majority group in Dutch and English), mimeographed, but personalized with typed name and date of birth looked very official indeed. It was validated not only by the signatures of our Elder, Josef Weiss and that of a well-known Dutch attorney-at-law; it also bore the rubber stamp of the Bürgermeister, the mayor of Tröbitz. The Council had confiscated it, together with his office machines and supplies. The purpose of providing us with this document was both practical and psychological. Our future repatriation would, in all probability, start from the nearest larger town, Torgau on the Elbe. This place, about twenty-five kilometers due west of Tröbitz, was known to all from the radio as the historical spot where the American and Russian troops had first met, shaken

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hands, and joyfully fraternized, while the politicians established the Elbe River as the border between their spheres of influence and areas of occupation. (Later the Americans would abandon much of their eastern areas for a slice of Berlin.) For the American authorities who would check us out in Torgau, and for all further check points on our way west, these documents would serve as our identification. But perhaps even more important, they reestablished our identity in our own eyes. We had been without papers all this time, a fact no doubt convenient to the Nazis, who made nonpersons out of their prisoners before killing them. The Council certificates markedly contributed to our psychological rehabilitation. A census preceded the issuing of these certificates: Council messengers going from house to house, making inquiries. On that occasion, the Council also registered the liberated prisoners according to country of origin; these registers were destined to play an important — and in many cases, a tragic — role later on. The end of the war also signified the drying up of an important source of food. Russian troops passing through the village became a rare event, and most people threw away their beggar’s vocabularies. The small quantity of food that came from the distribution store could not keep body and soul together; especially people recovering from typhus suffered from a ravenous hunger. Many who were physically able wandered far away from the village, calling on farms to beg, demand, and trade. They came home in the evening with their modest loot. Having the use of a bicycle for foraging trips even farther away automatically put you into a higher income bracket, so to speak. And we, my wife and I, did have a bicycle. We acquired it by the kind of incident we were to watch later in more than one postwar movie. On one of my early recovery walks through a less populous village street (one of the post-typhus symptoms was a fear of meeting

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people and having to talk with them), leaning on my wife’s arm, we saw a Russian soldier riding a bicycle. That is, he tried to balance himself on it and kept falling off. Eventually he threw the bicycle disgustedly to the ground and walked away. My wife was closest to him and, therefore, succeeded in grabbing it before another of the former prisoners who had watched the scene got a chance. We carried it up the two flights to our room, and it became the invaluable means of reaching hamlets that had not already been cleaned out. My wife came home in the evenings with bread and potatoes, even eggs and early garden produce, especially asparagus. It was the bicycle that catapulted us into the Tröbitz upper middle class. During the first week or so, some of our people had discovered large German caches in abandoned mine tunnels and idle factory smoke stacks — reserve supplies of durable food, medicines, liquor, in addition to a whole warehouse filled with bundles of cured tobacco leaves. Part of these treasures found their way into the distribution system. The tobacco leaves became a kind of monetary reserve for the Council. It is reasonable to assume that most of the provisions remained in the hands of the discoverers and their associates. In this way, the class of Tröbitz entrepreneurs was born. A structure of wholesalers and middlemen soon flourished, and the owners of the stored goods traveled in horse-drawn carriages. Rumor had it that they even bought and sold real estate. The continued treasure hunt for further caches became a way of life for some people in Tröbitz, but they found nothing beyond the original discoveries. The month of May was not yet over when the colony of former prisoners in the two villages clearly settled into social strata. As in other societies, this division was twofold, based on both pedigree and wealth. The old nobility consisted of the Council of Elders, with the surviving members of their families, and

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of the few dozen Greeks in our transport. (A small number of Greek Jews — mostly privileged families who had been exempted from the mass transports of Greek Jewry from Athens and Saloniki — were already interned in the Sternlager of Bergen-Belsen when the first Holländer transport arrived there. For a long time they alone formed the inner camp leadership.) In Tröbitz and Schilda, the Greeks together with the Council members vied with the nouveaux riches for the status of high society. The middle class — mainly Dutch and German Jews, together with some French and Hungarians — consisted, on the one hand, of people who had once been professionals, manufacturers, wholesale merchants, and higher officials and, on the other hand, of everyone who now managed to procure enough daily food to stay above the hunger line. The equivalent of a proletariat, finally, were the starvelings of all nationalities, people without family or close friends to help them. From their ranks came the largest contingent of the daily dead. On the whole, the minority of the train people who had first made their way to Schilda instead of Tröbitz were better off materially, because their village was less overcrowded. One day the Russian headquarters announced that all inhabitants of both villages, between certain ages, had to report for work the next morning. This was a catastrophe. Not only were even the healthy among us undernourished and weak, but we had no time to work because we needed every hour of every day to scrape food together. Soon afterwards, the house of the Council members (we called it “Villa of the Prominents”) was beleaguered by people seeking exemptions. My wife and I were convinced that heavy labor would quickly undo my recovery. In the meantime, word had gone out about the nature of the work. Aside from a number of men and women who would have to

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work shifts in the Lazarett, the bulk of the work force was to be employed “on the railroad” or in “local industry.” Actually this meant nothing but dismantling railroads and factories and preparing all movable equipment for transfer to Russia. The rails had to be unscrewed and wrenched from their moorings. Together with the wooden sleepers they were loaded on flatcars, the train slowly retreating as the railbed disappeared. All installations in the factories and soft coal mines, including large machines that could be unbolted, broken loose, or taken apart, were likewise loaded on the train. I obtained an exemption. The whole public work project soon fizzled out, as had the temperature-taking rounds by the medic. After a trainload of rails, ties, and machinery had left for the East, people were theoretically still supposed to report for work. But until such time when the train would return empty from Russia, there was nothing to do, and the labor force dispersed. It must have been in the beginning of June when we saw our first American soldiers. Two uniformed men on a motorcycle with a sidecar appeared in the village. Soon they were surrounded by our people who pumped them for news, especially about our repatriation. The gis proceeded to Russian headquarters, then to the Council villa, and, toward evening, they returned to Torgau, from where they had come. Council members told us later that the soldiers had been sent by the American authorities to check out rumors that had reached them about our transport (probably through a few of “the strong,” who fled the quarantine on foot, and had succeeded in swimming across the Elbe River to the American side). The soldiers inquired of the Council whether there were American citizens among us. They also took with them the list with names, promising to forward it to the International Red Cross, so that relatives could be notified about these newly found survivors of Bergen-Belsen. These were

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our greatest concerns: to know who of our families and friends had survived the catastrophe (the extent of which we could not even imagine at that time) and how to get the news of our lost transport to them. Slowly the German population of the two villages began to trickle back from wherever they had taken shelter. Ugly scenes ensued between them and their uninvited house guests. The Russians were called in to dispense justice, but the Council’s Housing Department succeeded in obtaining the guarantee that the members of the Bergen-Belsen transport could not simply be evicted. In each case arrangements for some kind of a precarious symbiosis were made. The typhus epidemic worked in our favor; several of the returnees left the village again, to sit out the quarantine in neighboring towns and to await our departure. But while we waited with growing impatience and remained conscious every waking moment of the temporary nature of our stay in these Godforsaken villages of the Niederlausitz, at the same time our settlement there acquired features of permanence. The most remarkable of these was the reorganization of burial of the dead, and it was in this area that I, personally, was destined to play a role. After the last mass graves were dug beside the tracks, there had been no more organized burials in the villages. The task was left to family or neighbors who dug graves in backyards, gardens, or empty lots. Although now and then a corpse was still taken to the “expandable” grave at the Ukrainian camp, most burials took place now in single graves. It became customary to dig graves in a row outside the wall of the village cemetery that was situated on a hilltop overlooking a serene lake. Corpses were transported in hand-drawn carts like the one in which I had been taken from the train. Sometimes a few people followed such a cart, conjuring up the picture of a regular funeral procession.

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As far as I remember, there was only one rabbi left among the two thousand former prisoners. He was Dr. Koretz, the former chief rabbi of Saloniki, of whom it was said that he had driven in the King’s carriage to the opening of Parliament. But he was gravely ill, and the funerals were performed without religious rites, unless someone spoke the Kaddish prayer now and then. I still consider the day when I received a note from the Council of Elders, asking that I assume charge of the last rites for the dead, as very important in my life. Why did the choice fall on me? Because in my precamp life I had also been a cantor and a teacher of religion; it was the closest thing to a rabbi. My recovery had made good progress, thanks to my wife, who was both a good nurse and a good provider. Without her I could not have become the cemetery warden of Tröbitz (nor would I have survived first the camp, then the train and, finally, Tröbitz). In the course of my recovery, a heightened urge to be active had manifested itself in more intensive observing, note-taking, and mapping out plans for future coherent writing. But now I was offered a part in a project that would later take its place in history (of that we were convinced). I accepted, though not without trepidation in the face of the incalculable difficulties of the job. While burying the dead would seem a rather basic and routine task to which I certainly brought ample experience, half a dozen of such difficulties came to my mind the moment I received the note from the Council. By the same token, the task appeared to me already then as one of extraordinary importance. Both spontaneous reactions turned out to be correct: there were many difficulties connected with my job but, had it not been for this task and without the total mobilization of my strength and energy that was required, I could not have coped with the residual traumas of the camp, the train, and the typhus. And beyond this, I believe that the new funeral arrangements had a therapeutic value for our entire community.

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My first action was to get an assistant or coworker. Shlomo — a member of the Hachsharah, the organization of young Jews preparing to become farmers in Palestine — was a pious youth, tall, strong, and idealistic. (The members of the Hachsharah had stuck together in the camp, continued their Hebrew studies, and almost all of them preserved their idealism through the most trying of times.) Shlomo was completely dedicated to the job, which he viewed, first of all, as a religious duty. I secured the cooperation of an old German carpenter who lived in his shop, as his house was occupied by former prisoners. For the price of being included in the Council’s distribution system (which had improved since certain staples were introduced by the Russians), he would make coffins and double as a gravedigger. Few things in Tröbitz made as deep an impression on our people as did the first wooden coffin used at a funeral. Single graves, and now coffins! Many may have felt the meaning of freedom for the first time. Shlomo recruited some of the remaining members of the Hachsharah, as well as a few elderly orthodox men and women, to form the equivalent of a Chevrah Kadisha, a religious burial society who would — as far as the circumstances permitted — see to the ritual washing and dressing of the dead. We also introduced elements of the traditional Hebrew funeral service, sometimes even a eulogy. More people began participating in the funerals and, when we buried Rabbi Koretz, our cemetery saw the largest gathering of former prisoners since the days of the train. Of course “our cemetery” was only a row of graves along and outside the village cemetery. But from the very beginning, I entertained the strong desire to establish a regular cemetery on this sandy plot overlooking the lake, where we could bury our last dead in single graves with coffins, shrouds, and ritual washing. But let me first recount another of my ambitions.

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Acutely aware that it was important for surviving family members to be able to locate a grave later on, I set up a burial register containing as much data about the deceased as Shlomo and I could learn from relatives or neighbors. Moreover, we intended to retrace the earlier burials, to locate the scattered individual graves in Tröbitz and in Schilda and to secure information about the persons buried there. After that, we planned to record names and countries of origin of as many as possible of the dead from the grave at the Lazarett and in the last two regular mass graves. Finally, we would at least make the attempt, through systematic questioning, to identify persons buried in the ten or so common graves we must have left behind near the rail embankment between Soltau in the Lüneburger Heide and Dobrilugk in the Niederlausitz. I must state immediately that these projects far exceeded our strength and means — and also the time at our disposal, as it turned out. Moreover, the few and unreliable statistics I was able to collect concerning the dead of the transport were, unfortunately, lost in the great agitation accompanying our repatriation to Holland. At that time, the German mayor of Tröbitz died of the typhus which we had brought with us. The room in his house, which he had still retained as his office, became vacant. My wife and I were advised by the Council’s housing department to move into that room. Not only was it larger than our old room and on the first floor (the two flights of stairs still bothered me), but a room in the mayor’s house was prestigious and in line with my new status. Moving was a daily event in the village, what with people dying or “repatriating” on their own, with Germans successfully reclaiming their houses and others leaving only now because of the epidemic or because the Russians had begun to smoke out the “fascists.” We already had professional movers, that is, people who had secured a large cart on which they moved furniture

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and other household goods from one house to another. The carts were man-powered, for all domestic animals — except for three or four horses owned by our wholesale merchants — had long since been eaten or removed by Germans or by Russians. The movers were paid in food, tobacco, medicines, clothing, and all kinds of merchandise. (Movers formed just one group of an emerging middle class of people engaged in free enterprise. Cobblers and seamstresses had established themselves, and there were quite a number of small merchants whose mediation between people willing to part with any of their possessions and others ready and able to pay a price for them brought enough of a profit to keep them eating another day.) Twice during our moving we ran into screaming protests, first by the woman who was the real tenant of our apartment, as the disassembled beds and the mattresses were being carried down the stairs, and then the second time by the mayor’s widow when we demanded the key to her late husband’s office. Both threatened to have us arrested by the Russians, but we knew that the Russians left housing matters up to the Council. As to German property rights, we quite simply had no doubts or inhibitions in those days. What we appropriated from them was less than a thousandth part of what they had robbed from us. Thus we established ourselves in our new room, greeted by a Dutch couple who cared for two orphaned children and who resided in the room across the hall. In the attic there lived about a dozen Hungarian men and women. The mayor’s widow retained the master bedroom on the second floor. All the inhabitants of the building shared the kitchen as well as the outhouse. There was a large cabinet in our new room. The Council’s office supplies, including the mayor’s rubber stamp, had come from there. Since the mayor’s widow claimed that the key had been

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lost and we needed the space for storage, I opened the cabinet doors with the aid of some tools from the cellar. As we cleaned it out, I found a camera at the back of the highest shelf that must have been overlooked by earlier marauders. It was the simplest kind of box camera for the standard 6 x 9 centimeter film of eight frames. A paper tag indicated that it had been confiscated from its owner on suspicion of spying. Through the little red window in the back of the camera, I discerned the number “1” which told me that it was loaded (with no indication whether or not the first frame had been exposed already). Then and there, Shlomo — he had helped with the moving — and I decided to use the film for the documentation of our activities in the graves department. (Later, vanity prevailed and my wife and I took each other’s picture, myself in my motley clothing, partly from the camp and partly “liberated” in Tröbitz: high ss boots, breeches, and a battledress-type leather jacket. She herself — having already regained her former weight and good looks — holding on to her precious bicycle clad in a blouse which she had made of muslin from the distribution shop, and a skirt also homemade out of a red and white plaid featherbed cover.) First, we would photograph the three common graves just outside of Tröbitz: the one where the train had come to a stop, the second containing the last dead from the train, and the third near the Ukrainian camp. This resolve sent us on a new course of action. Before photographing them, we had to make those sagging flat sand hills look like real graves. We were going to shovel more dirt on them and outline them with fairly large field stones, young shrubs, and trees dug up in the woods. However, distances were too great for so many walks. We needed a means of transportation, and there was my wife’s bicycle. By a lady-andgentlemen’s agreement, Shlomo and I could use the bicycle for certain specified trips. The Elder suggested that I get an official

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bicycle permit from the Russian authorities. He sent an interpreter with me to headquarters, a man who knew more than just the Russian language. Putting generous helpings of tobacco leaves in the proper hands, he steered me through a number of antechambers to the officer in charge. This man, after rolling himself a cigarette, wrote out the permit on half a page torn from a school notebook. (The Russian soldiers preferred tobacco leaves to German cigarettes. They crushed them and rolled them in pieces of newspaper.) Bicycling in the Dutch manner, one of us holding a shovel, sitting side-saddle on the carrier over the back wheel, we commuted to the three grave sites, landscaped them as planned, and photographed them. At that occasion we permanently sealed the grave at the typhus Lazarett. From now on there would be only one Jewish burial place in Tröbitz. Also in Schilda they had started a cemetery, and we would save one frame for it (all the time not knowing whether the film in our camera was still good, a matter that would become apparent only after we returned to normal environs). We held back photographing our own cemetery because it was not yet in the shape we wanted it to be. In fact, it may have been the camera that provided the impetus for some very ambitious plans for the Jewish cemetery of Tröbitz. I wanted to have it walled in, with a proper iron gate. The individual graves should be equipped with stone rims and markers. Finally, there was to be a monument, duly inscribed, and the whole cemetery would be landscaped with shrubs and trees. The Council gave its consent to these plans; that is to say, they would put no obstacles in my way if I carried them out by myself, without engaging the financial and other material resources of the Council. I could count on their moral support, expert advice in areas where I was lacking competence and, generally, I could

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Werner Weinberg in Tröbitz before repatriation. Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio at americanjewisharchives.org.

Lisl Weinberg in Tröbitz before repatriation. Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio at americanjewisharchives.org.

Retraining for Life

lean on the prestige and reputation the Council had gained by now well beyond Tröbitz and Schilda. The row of graves along the wall of the village cemetery would soon be full, giving rise to the question of whether my projected wall should be designed to enclose one or two additional rows — three rows being the maximum allowed by the size of the hilltop plateau. I had serious discussions with the Elder and the medical officer of the Council about this. The circumference of the wall would depend on the repatriation date, which, in turn, was subject to the end of the quarantine, four weeks after the last typhus case. Since nobody could foresee when that would be, the wisest thing to do seemed planning on three rows, leaving the third one empty, if we were lucky. Theoretically, this was a good idea but, in reality, we had to count with the difficulty of obtaining that many more bricks and sacks of concrete. Getting enough material to enclose two rows of graves would be hard enough. Advised by a German mason, who would eventually get the job, I came up with estimates for the amount of bricks and mortar for both a two-row and three-row wall. It was unfortunate and disquieting that, after an initial decline in the death rate from typhus, it began to mount again with the onset of summer. The popular explanation was that “the lice got more active” in this season. Stranger and even more frightening was the fact that those of our people whom we called “the strong” were now more easily stricken, and that they contracted a more virulent and lethal form of the disease. Since we did not understand this phenomenon, several theories were advanced, one being that the “strong” had used up their reserves precisely by being strong all the time. Now that they no longer had to confront the daily dangers of the camp, their resistance was lowered, and they had become more susceptible. Some even ascribed the sudden frailty to fear of facing a world where physical strength alone

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did not offer the superiority to which they had become accustomed. Be that as it may, judging by the increasing number of funerals, it seemed that three rows of graves would be required. Many of us, at that time, remembered the Council’s roster of Tröbitz and Schilda survivors. By now it must have been turned over to the International Red Cross which, in turn, would have passed on the good news to the next of kin. How many families would wait in vain for their “survivor”! Our bicycle trips gained an added dimension. Shlomo and I called on mines and warehouses of building materials, trying to acquire bricks, cement, and also wood, for our coffin maker had run out of material. These trips took us to Dobrilugk and Kirchhain, towns ten and fifteen kilometers away from Tröbitz. On the way we identified another of our burial sites along the railroad, but plans to renovate it had to be postponed. We also went to monument manufacturers, for I was determined to have that monument for the cemetery as well as a headstone for each of the three mass graves within the perimeter of Tröbitz and the small burial place in Schilda. On these trips, the Russian bicycle permit and, sometimes, a handful of tobacco leaves worked wonders; we traveled unmolested. As far as I remember, we were not under any restriction stemming from the quarantine imposed on Tröbitz and Schilda. In the towns we encountered large masses of displaced mankind and witnessed the first attempts by those communities and by the Russians to feed and clothe them and to direct their migration. This, together with our new role as “businessmen,” opened our parochial outlook and made us aware that Tröbitz was just a drop in an ocean of postwar turmoil. Shlomo and I had very little to offer our business partners in return for merchandise beside vague promises, but some bricks, sacks of cement, boards for our carpenter, and topsoil for

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landscaping were actually delivered. I cannot for the life of me remember how payment was made; probably that aspect was not included in my task. I do, however, remember one trip made in great style. Shlomo and I had located a monument firm in Kirchhain and windowshopped among the large assortment it had to offer. (Apparently, the former German authorities had seen to it that there was an ample supply of headstones for those fallen for Führer und Vaterland.) I mentioned the matter to the Elder who sent a Council representative with me for another look. That trip took place in a horse-drawn buggy — one of the entrepreneurs had put it at the Council’s disposal. I have no idea what was really negotiated between those men. It is quite possible that no actual payment was ever effected but that we received whatever we received either because of fear of Jewish reprisals or out of genuine remorse on the side of some German merchants. As to the monuments, we actually selected and ordered what we wanted, and I later returned to supervise the design and layout of the Hebrew letters which are traditionally inscribed on a Jewish tombstone. I wrote out the text for five German inscriptions and had them approved by the Council. Among my notes there is one sheet containing three of them. They read in translation: trobitz* A remnant of the Jews from many nations, saved from the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, sojourned for a time in this village. Finally freed after years of suffering, those here interred died of disease and exhaustion on the threshold of their homelands. mass grave† Here rest united twenty-eight Jews who, although freed from the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, were not able to reach their homeland. * i.e., for the cemetery † This may be the grave where the train came first to a halt or the one containing the last dead from the train.

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lazarett The Jews liberated from the concentration camp of BergenBelsen carried with them the dread disease. Here rest over one hundred of the late victims. The torch of freedom did not light their way home.

The proposed texts, incidentally, had to be approved by the Russian authorities as well. Whoever submitted them to Headquarters came back with the demand for two modifications. The phrase “victims of fascist oppression” was to be inserted, and the role of the Red Army as our liberators had to be mentioned. I remember how disturbed I was at the prospect of having to make these changes. I do not remember that I ever submitted revised texts; it seems to me that the Council was willing to take a chance, letting the stonemason go ahead with the original texts. In all probability we would no longer be in Tröbitz when the monuments were delivered, and the Russians would have forgotten about the stipulations. Among my papers is a drawing of the cemetery with the envisioned monument and landscaping. The monument was to be erected in a corner of the enclosure, overlooking the lake. In case the third row of graves would not be needed, the entire strip was to be landscaped as a memorial park. When the second row was half filled, I acceded to the request of the Elder, Mr. Weiss, to take a photograph of him standing by his wife’s grave. I owed him this courtesy, even though Shlomo and I had agreed to take the picture of the cemetery only when the wall was completed. By reneging on that plan, at least one pictorial record of our cemetery has been preserved. Today it is as clear to me as to the reader of this narrative that my preoccupation with cemetery matters in that chance community behind the Iron Curtain was hardly what you would describe as normal. I can now rationalize that I was acting under compulsion, that, like the “strong,” I was not yet ready to face reality and freedom, and that I was about to wall in, not so much rows

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of graves, but myself. At the time, however, I had no inkling of such motives. If anything, I felt pride and satisfaction in my work for the community, and the attitude of the other liberated prisoners towards me fully justified those feelings. The Elder may have sounded a word of caution when I added to my plans for the wall and the monuments a brand new one for a grand dedication ceremony with speeches and solemn promises by Russians and Germans to honor the graves of our dead. But no word of caution could dampen my enthusiasm, and I began to prepare that dedication spectacular. Perhaps I even feared that repatriation — which everybody awaited with increasing impatience — could interfere with my plans of bringing the work of the cemetery to a fitting conclusion. There remains only to be related that the “dying of the strong” ebbed off as the month of June progressed, that the iron law of the quarantine lasting until “four weeks after the last case of typhus” witnessed the same fate as most of the other Russian plans and decrees, and that one bright morning — unannounced — a long column of American trucks lined up in the village street. We had to be ready in a hurry, and, two hours later, all former prisoners hailing from Western countries were on their way to Torgau. Many people of our community who were to be repatriated to the south or east, once arrangements had been made for them, bade us farewell. The last typhus cases from the Ukrainian camp were to be brought to a hospital in Risa, a town south of Tröbitz, where they would await their recovery. As for the monuments, they had not yet been delivered. Some of the most important targets remained unphotographed. There was not even time to bid farewell to my carpenter and my bricklayer who had considered me their employer and, as to the mayor’s widow — she had made herself invisible. Only our first landlady was at hand to watch over the repossessing of her beds.

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I remember little about the trip to Torgau. The moment that the Tröbitz interlude had ended, our minds — my wife’s and mine — were completely occupied by thoughts about our little daughter whom we had entrusted to a Dutch couple two and a half years before. Even the thought of the cemetery dedication that would never take place barely caused me a twinge of pain. Of Torgau itself, I recall the large posters erected at the Elbe bridge with the oversized portraits of Stalin and Truman, of Eisenhower and Zhukov. We left behind us approximately one hundred and fifty dead in the cemetery, one hundred in the “telescope” grave and fifty to sixty in the two last mass graves by the railroad embankment. Together with the irregular burials of the first days, there must be close to three hundred and fifty Bergen-Belsen inmates lying in Tröbitz and Schilda for whom “the torch of freedom had not lit the way home.” If Tröbitz were not behind the Iron Curtain, I would have gone back there long ago. For nearly forty years now, I have never ceased wondering whether the monuments were eventually erected and whether my cemetery wall was ever completed.* * Although it is unlikely that, or at least difficult to determine whether, Werner Weinberg‘s plans were realized, something quite similar was built in Tröbitz in the decades to come. A memorial was erected in 1952 at a mass grave in the center of town. It made no reference to the fact that the victims were Jews. Then, in 1966, a Jewish cemetery was consecrated for 125 victims of the Lost Transport who died in Tröbitz in the days and weeks after liberation. The cemetery was enclosed by a memorial wall with an iron gate and set with a memorial stone — both decorated with a Star of David — and was dedicated by two rabbis. In 1995, a granite wall was added to the cemetery with the names of all 550 victims of the Lost Transport. The erection of this memorial wall was initiated by survivors of the Lost Transport living mainly in Israel. The publisher thanks Adam Kerpel-Fronius, Project Manager of the European Sites of Remembrance (Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas) for providing this information. Kerpel-Fronius also points out that the memorial and the cemetery in Tröblitz are, for Communist-ruled East Germany, absolutely remarkable. At many other places there would hardly have been anything to remember the victims.

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SEARCH FOR MEANING Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travelers Is reason to the soul. — John Dryden, Religio Laici

Unveiling a Synagogue Monument in Germany I have recently returned from Rheda, the town in Germany where I was born and held my first pulpit. There I unveiled a monument for the synagogue that had been destroyed with all the others in the madness of the Crystal Night, November 9, 1938. I am troubled about the monument, about the unveiling, and about my participation in it. I need to know what it all means. Many times in the past, usually on my way to Israel, I had stopped in Rheda to visit the Jewish cemetery and to meditate by the fence of the vegetable garden where the synagogue had stood. What did I meditate about? I remembered my small but tightly knit congregation and the services we had held at this place. I saw faces, heard voices of Jews from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Scenes from my childhood and youth welled up that centered around the synagogue and the school. Every thought and every image brought home the crushing realization of the irreparable damage done to me and to half a million Jews like me in that cursed night. When sadness and grief threatened to overcome me — I fled the place. I had not yet sufficiently recovered from the years of horror to react with anger. Then I could not even summon the courage to make my presence known. The thought of facing Rheda people was unbearable, whether they were friends whom I had dearly loved or enemies who had cruelly persecuted me. An amorphous fear paralyzed my sense of reality, and my judgment was blurred. I did realize, though, that it was imperative for my own sake to wean myself gradually from that inarticulate dread, to outgrow the apprehension

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which could change into a panicked urge to leave the place as soon as I had arrived there. I told myself that, if I did not succeed in quieting the ghosts of Rheda, I acknowledged that the Nazis still had a grip on me. I cannot say that the gradual approach worked; I only knew that, after the fourth or fifth visit, I discovered myself feeling comfortable in Rheda; in fact, I felt great. The sudden replacement of my fear by near euphoria reminded me of the time when, just as suddenly and inexplicably, I had lost the fear of flying and took with relish to looking down from the clouds. I was now bold enough to put two requests before Rheda’s city manager. I proposed that the city assume permanent care of the Jewish cemetery (only one Jew had returned to Rheda), and that a dignified monument be erected on the site of the former synagogue. I was ready to put up a fight for these demands, but this bellicose resolve proved superfluous. The response was positive and enthusiastic. Many German cities had already erected monuments to their destroyed synagogues or even built new synagogues for the handful of Jews who returned or were stranded there. The city manager was eager to steer the matter through the political machinery of the city council. My request — as the last Jewish religious functionary of Rheda — added considerable weight. The city manager represents an entirely new kind of German — men in their forties, new Josephs who knew not the king. Still, it took three years for the project to be completed. It passed the City Council easily enough, although the Social Democrats protested that the gesture was much too late in coming and the Communist faction even insinuated that the city manager was motivated by the impact of the television program “Holocaust.” The city was then in the middle of a vast project to reroute traffic, which called for a new road running across that unspeakable vegetable patch. And once that was solved, there were questions

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of bids, artists’ sketches, landscaping, the inscription, and the date and program for the unveiling ceremony. Much correspondence crossed the Atlantic, for I was involved in every step of the preparations. The District Rabbi of Westphalia, Dr. Emil Davidovic, had given me a free hand. I decided to try and locate those Rheda Jews who had emigrated in time and might still be alive in the countries of their immigration. I found almost the entire remnant of my congregation or their children scattered throughout the world, and the city of Rheda agreed to notify and invite every last one of them — after I had conceded that the city was, realistically, unable to bear their travel expenses. The matter of my own expenses was delicately passed over with silence. Of course I was aware that Berlin and Frankfurt and an increasing number of other cities in West Germany from time to time invite a number of their former Jewish residents for a red-carpet vacation. But Rheda was small. Though it crossed my mind that perhaps a token amount toward travel costs might have been offered, I did not make that suggestion. This was my first compromise. My sense of German culpability and my inclination to be accommodating had come into conflict, and I had evaded the issue. The second compromise on my part involved the inscription on the monument, not so much the historical part — which would read, “Here stood the synagogue of the Rheda congregation which was wantonly destroyed by the National Socialists” (even though I felt some uneasiness about the equivocal and detached designation “the National Socialists” for the local perpetrators of the Crystal Night) — but rather the way the accompanying Bible verse was to appear. Rabbi Davidovic had suggested the reference only: “Exodus 3:5.” But I wanted the text written out, and I wanted it in Hebrew as well as in German. However, the city

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manager raised a sober objection: wasn’t it conceivable that the mere presence of Hebrew lettering on the stone might incite some old or new Nazi to desecrate it? I conceded the point immediately because, at that moment, it seemed to make excellent sense. We agreed on the inscription, “The place whereon thou standest is holy ground” in the German translation by Zunz. Still, I did not feel quite right about having given in so readily on the Hebrew. Months passed, the negotiation continued, and still I received no formal invitation to be the main speaker, though I was so listed on the official program. I began to resent the way this detail had consistently been ignored. By honoring me, I felt, the city of Rheda would be honoring my martyred congregation. If they meant to save a couple of thousand marks because they knew I would come regardless, then they were treating that holy congregation shabbily, and I could only conclude that their gesture of atonement was not really sincere. So I waited, trying hard not to make notes for my speech. But I discovered myself often musing about what I was going to say — besides giving a capsule history of the congregation and expressing both my sadness about its destruction and offering my bittersweet appreciation to Rheda for having put up this monument. I thought about what Rheda itself expected me to say: that I reciprocate their goodwill gesture? That this one stone makes up for thousands of blackened bricks? That all is forgiven and the status quo ante restored? Wasn’t this exactly the terrible moment I had foreseen in Bergen-Belsen, and now I assisted in bringing it about? More time went by, and I got used to the idea that I might not attend what I had earlier defined as “my last official function in Rheda after an interruption of forty-two years.” The next letter from Rheda summed up all the details of the unveiling. Enclosed was a copy of the invitation which had been mailed to all the Jews

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from Rheda whose addresses I had been able to collect, complete with the disclaimer: “I beg your understanding when I mention that the city is unable to grant any remuneration for your possible participation.” Despite the many details in the letter to me, one was lacking: an official invitation including an offer to pay my expenses. Apparently, they were not included in the budget for the synagogue monument. After that my mind was made up: the city made light of its obligation toward my congregation. As far as I was concerned, the deal was off. I felt an immense sense of relief. I sat down and wrote a courteous note of cancellation to the city manager for reasons of work and deadlines. The rest of the letter suggested how the program could be modified due to my absence. Two months before the scheduled date, the telephone rang. It was the city manager of Rheda. The city council wished to apologize for its oversight. They were hereby inviting me formally, all expenses paid and, “needless to say,” my wife was included in this invitation. An official letter confirming all arrangements was already on its way. The moment I heard the operator say that there was a long distance call from Rheda, something in me gave way. (The last telephone call with Rheda happened on November 10, 1938. I was in Hannover then and needed to find out whether my congregation expected me that weekend as usual . . ..) I had the presence of mind not to blurt out a jubilant “yes” right into the telephone. After a decent interval, I wrote the city manager that my wife and I had decided to accept the invitation. By that time I had already covered several sheets with notes for my speech. My immediate associations with the memorial stone were biblical. It was Jacob, our father, who had a special predilection for erecting matsevot, or stone pillars. He put up the first at Bet-El as a symbol of survival after a violent uprooting and of “returning to his father’s house in peace” (Genesis 28:21). He

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erected his second matsevah after being “hotly pursued” (31:36) by Laban, when the two reached an understanding, even made a covenant — not a very cordial one, as one can read in the text, but an agreement by which the two parties, the two nations, could coexist. This matsevah was to be “a heap of witness,” a name recorded both in Hebrew and Aramaic. Jacob called it Galed and Laban Yegar Sahaduta (32:47). The literal meaning is the same, yet each man insisted on naming it in his own language. In this way Laban managed to introduce the only two Aramaic words into the Hebrew Pentateuch. The passage has always been of interest to philologists. But when considering it for use in my address at the synagogue monument, it occurred to me that the meaning may transcend linguistics. Does not this case of bilingualism teach that the parties to an act of reconciliation might view the identical covenant with quite different eyes? Jacob built yet a third matsevah as he mourned for his beloved wife who had died on the way and never reached a haven (35:20). How rich in symbolism were Jacob’s matsevot toward my speech! Another biblical association was the number of years the Children of Israel had wandered in the wilderness, “bearing their iniquities and knowing the Lord’s displeasure” (Numbers 14:33– 34). Their sins had been great indeed, but God granted them a statute of limitation — forty years. And had not more than forty years passed since the Crystal Night? But then there was the stern zachor! “Remember what Amalek did unto thee . . .. Blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heaven — lo tishkach — thou shalt not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:17, 19). Yet, on the other hand, were not the Bible and the Prayerbook, especially the Yom Kippur liturgy, replete with references to atonement and forgiveness? Wasn’t the world kept in balance by kippur and selichah: the atonement and expiation offered by

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the sinner; the forgiveness and reconciliation tendered by the wronged? And yet, had the greatest sin of all times indeed been expiated through penitence and making of amends? Was the wronged party, accordingly, expected to forgive? And was erecting the matsevah, the monument, to be the final act of atonement? But I could not forget; I would not forgive. Perhaps in an abstract way I might, but not when I saw, in my mind’s eye, my mother, naked, machine-gunned at the edge of a ditch or coughing out her lungs in a gas chamber, and so my sister, and so my wife’s father. One is commanded: lo tishkach. Therefore I was vindicated in that respect. But what about forgiveness? I checked the biblical passages in which the word salach, “forgive,” occurs and again found support. The concordance lists fifty occurrences, and every single one refers to God. Only Eloah selichot, “the God of Forgiveness” (Nehemiah 9:17), could make a statement as sublime as salachti, “I have pardoned” (Numbers 14:20). Forgiveness is indeed divine, and I understood why: a crime against human beings is always a sin against God, who created man in His image. Thus I was justified. The Book of Books bore me out. Still I could not go to Rheda preaching doom like Jonah in Nineveh. I could not unveil the monument to the synagogue with the refrain: I cannot forget, I will not forgive. Something else made the situation even more complex. By now the majority of all living Germans were personally innocent, and I felt a strong need to tell them so, especially the young people. The Germans have a word, versöhnungsgesinnt. It means the inclination of individuals toward exculpation, their readiness for reconciliation, their willingness to wipe the slate clean. Present-day Germans know that many Jews are not in the least versöhnungsgesinnt — Jews abroad as well as Jews in Germany. Clearly, the Rheda representatives who expected me to give the memorial speech considered me versöhnungsgesinnt. Were they

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right? It was true, I felt close to some Germans and bore them no grudge. I knew exactly which ones. They were the small remnant of close friends with whom I had grown up and who, I was sure, had never been Nazis. The second category consisted of children and teenagers. The third, finally, involved people like the city manager, men and women born in the thirties, but only those among them who — while personally free of complicity — were conscious of a national guilt and shame. I was compulsive enough to make myself a list of age brackets to figure out whom I could exculpate and whom not: ** Germans over sixty — may be personally guilty. In 1933–1945 they were thirteen to twenty-five years old or older. ** Germans now fifty-five — were children when Hitler came to power. In 1933–1945 they were eight to twenty years old. (Can they be fully guilty for following their Führer?) ** Germans under fifty — are personally innocent. In 1933– 1945 they were three to fifteen years old. ** Germans over seventy — if they are senile or decrepit, I cannot work up a genuine hatred against them anymore. But those among them proven personally guilty must be excluded from society.

This leaves Germans between sixty and seventy to evoke the question, “Did he shoot or gas my mother?” Ten years from now there will be no one left for whose punishment it will be worthwhile to stage a crusade. I counted on my fingers the positive deeds of Germany or the Germans toward us — the remnant of persecuted Jewry — after the demise of the Third Reich: Postwar Germany (West Germany, that is) had done much for the material indemnification of the survivors and the dependents of victims; she had aided the struggling State of Israel; she had rebuilt synagogues and was going out of her way to further new Jewish life in Germany. Special

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credit had to go to the work of the German youth organization Sühnezeichen, “Sign of Atonement,” whose members repented for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers through such imaginative projects as working in kibbutzim or building the museum at Bergen-Belsen. I realized I had to go further than declaring Germans under fifty guiltless. I should commend them for their positive actions and their willingness to expiate. I belong to those German Jews who are inclined to “idealize and sentimentalize” their pre-Nazi time in Germany. Therefore, on the other hand, I thought that I would have to be on my guard indeed not to be carried away by romantic notions, not to spare my listeners’ feelings, not to be overly civil and nice, not to give the false impression that all was right and rosy — all because my nature inclined toward sentimentality and idealization of the past. I thought, finally, of my audience. Through correspondence, I had a pretty good idea of whom I would actually be addressing: some twelve to fifteen members of the old Rheda congregation, including their children, among them relatives and former students of mine; an equal number of Jews from neighboring congregations that were functioning again (Bielefeld, Münster, Dortmund); the District Rabbi of Westphalia; Rheda’s Christian dignitaries and officials, many of whom I knew by now; Catholic and Protestant clergy; school children (one class each delegated from nine schools); a handful of my old German friends with their families and two to three hundred sympathetic citizens of Rheda (so ran the estimate). There might be a few old or new Rheda Nazis in the crowd, and perhaps one of them had put a revolver in his pocket. Yes, I thought of that possibility, too. The Rheda authorities never asked me what I was planning to say, let alone to show them the text of my speech beforehand. I would have understood such a request. Could I not, Mark Antony-fashion, set afoot all kinds of mischief? Actually, the reverse

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occurred. In a private session the day before the ceremony, a city official read me the complete text of the mayor’s speech to see whether I found anything objectionable in it. The contents of this speech amazed me: here the mayor of Rheda was saying many things which I had censored out from my own speech. But he spoke of six million Jews “who had to pay with their lives,” calling them brothers and sisters. He said that a lifetime was not enough for such wounds to heal . . . that young people who say “what do we have to do with it?” were reflecting the failure of their elders to explain the past to them . . . that everyone must be deeply ashamed of the deeds in the name of the German nation, even though “none of those assembled here” had become “immediately guilty” . . . that one cannot live only in the present but had to overcome the past” . . . and “therefore we must fight anything that today, once again, threatens to open a door to inhumanity . . ..” For the mayor, “they” were clearly not “we”; but for me, only by a conscious effort could I distinguish between “they” and “you” in the audience. The ceremony was very moving. A church brass band played the Nineteenth Psalm set to music by Beethoven, the mayor accepted a check for money collected from the population at large toward the monument; his speech came out as a strong indictment of the Nazis and a serious warning to contemporary Germans to be wary of indifference and prejudice. Assisted by the president of one of the neighboring Jewish congregations, the mayor unveiled a large tombstone — beautiful native green sandstone with a red copper plaque bearing the inscription. The rabbi chanted the El malei rachamim. Then I spoke. It went very well, the audience sighed, smiled, and wiped tears at the appropriate moments. I said nothing, after all, about Jacob’s matsevot, about the forty years in the wilderness, about the zachor-imperative. Instead I

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told them that I had come to lament, not to accuse (the play on the German words klagen and anklagen is lost in translation). But nevertheless, some pointed accusations were subtly interspersed in my lamentation for the lost synagogue: I deplored the loss of the Holy Ark, above which was inscribed, “For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7). I mourned the loss of the Torah Scrolls in which were written, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), “Neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16), and some other suitable verses. I grieved for the Eternal Light whose flame stood for life in Judaism but which had become an instrument of destruction and death in the hands of “the arsonists.” I reminisced about the stained glass windows of the synagogue through which bricks came flying while we worshipped. I bemoaned the loss of a commemorative plaque in the synagogue bearing the names of the sons of the congregation who had fallen in the First World War. But with regard to the congregation itself, I used straightforward language. Part of it, I said, had been exterminated like vermin and another part scattered to the winds. I still wonder: did my tone of voice exempt the present company just as the mayor had done? Perhaps so, because I went on to describe the symbiosis between Jews and non-Jews in Rheda before the Nazi time. And this was the central part of my speech. For the benefit of the oldtimers in my audience, I mentioned by name some of the established Jewish families, dwelling on their occupations and social position, concluding that they had constituted a solid middle class, whose few poor were taken care of by the Jewish congregation, while its few rich had furthered the commerce, industry, and social justice of the town at large. Next I reminisced about my carefree youth with my Christian friends in Rheda. Here I could “idealize and sentimentalize” to my heart’s content. I conjured up an idyll of harmony, and if you ask me

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whether I meant what I said, my answer is: every word of it. In conclusion I addressed the significance of the monument, saying that it would stand as a symbol of the reconciliation offered by the town but also as a reminder that the synagogue itself would never be rebuilt. (The press later reported that I had then and there “accepted the hand offered in reconciliation.”) I closed with a charge to the citizens of Rheda, especially the youth, to consider themselves as honor guards for these two pieces of holy ground: the old cemetery and the new memorial stone. After my speech I first explained the nature of the Kaddish and then recited it for the martyred members of my former congregation, reading off the names of the heads of households, which included that of my mother. At the cue ve’imru amen (“And say ye: Amen”), the brass band played a marche funèbre, and two young people stepped forward, carrying a big wreath with a large bow of black, red, and gold and placed it at the foot of the monument. Although this gesture had not been on the program, I found it altogether fitting. Later I learned that the laying of the wreath constituted a political act carried out by delegates of the dkp (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei). At that moment I did not care. I only wished there had been just one more item on the program, like singing the “Hatikvah” or the “Deutschlandlied” or the “Internationale” to round it off. But the ceremony — my last official function in Rheda — had irrevocably ended. There was a one-hour interval before the banquet, to which all official guests had been invited; most people went to view an excellent display about World War II and the Holocaust that had been mounted in the city hall to coincide with the unveiling of the synagogue monument. At the dinner itself, the spirit of goodwill and harmony continued. There were speeches; there was even a collection for the Magen David Adom of Israel, and there was an exquisite truite à la meuniere with parsley potatoes. A kit had been

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placed on every chair. It contained the list of addresses of former Rheda Jews, a bundle of letters — the regrets of those who had been unable to attend, a color brochure of Rheda, my “Tale of a Torah Scroll” in a new German edition, and a copy of the menu. They seated my wife next to the mayor, and I sat next to the Prince himself. As a child I had sometimes seen the Prince of Rheda from afar, riding in a horse-drawn coach. Not in my boldest dreams could I have imagined that one day I would be talking to his son and heir as one man to another. But there I was making conversation with His Highness about the meaning of the monument, about the good relations the Jews of Rheda had enjoyed with the princely dynasty over the centuries, and about our life in the United States. (The next morning a handwritten note from the Princess was delivered to our hotel: my wife and I were invited to the mansion for tea.) Table talk, speeches, gestures of goodwill! And through it all, I did not feel at ease. I might have shown myself to be versöhnungsgesinnt in my speech; I might have indulged in spirited conversation before and after; I am sure I smiled a great deal — but all along I wondered: Had I allowed a stone to blur history and its presence to gloss over the depth of human pain? Had I been exploited? Was the whole affair an ego trip? Had I exonerated the guilty? Had I misused my status as a survivor? Had I desecrated that moment of revelation in Bergen-Belsen? Very early the next morning, I went to the monument. Dew still covered the flowers which had been replanted there in full bloom, just for the ceremony. Already they had wilted somewhat. So had the flowers on the political wreath, while the black, red, and gold of its bow looked wet and dull. I suppose I had come to be by myself on that spot, to bid it goodbye — in short, to “meditate” there once again and probably for the last time.

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I made the strange observation that the green stone with the red plaque was hindering my meditation rather than furthering it. The new matsevah ruined my spontaneity; it told me what to meditate about. That the synagogue had been “wantonly” destroyed, for instance, not criminally, accidentally, or routinely. And by whom? Perhaps by arsonists, professional or demented ones? By children playing with matches? By regular people of any description? Not so, but by “the National Socialists.” And if the ground was so holy, why were the flowers in it wilting after a day? The stone itself did not reflect the moods of Jacob’s three matsevot; no welcome to the son who had returned home (if only temporary, to be sure); no mourning over the death of what I had loved; no true reconciliation. On the contrary, this matsevah, glistening in the early sun, sending forth a long, sharply contoured shadow, seemed all too self-assured, as if saying: “I am Yegar Sahaduta for the town and the inhabitants thereof. They have done right by you and wiped the slate clean.” And here I had thought all along that I would dedicate a Galed for the synagogue and its lost children. But on my way back to the hotel, thoughts of a different kind took over. It seemed that I began to appreciate the stone’s steadying influence on my meditating. For many years now, I had indulged in an unstructured, chaotic kind of mourning. Leaning against the picket fence, I heard drifting notes of synagogue music, the solemn strains of the Kol Nidre as well as the jubilant tunes of the Hallel. And how ambivalent, how fluctuating had my attitude been toward “the Germans”! Perhaps the taming of the place into a little park, the expectation of quiet patina, coating the copper plaque, would at last soothe the harshness of my anger, would give shape to the amorphousness of my pain. The

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place is holy, but I had made an idol of it; many times holier than the place is the martyrdom of my people. One more event in connection with that memorable journey needs to be told. It “rounded off the program,” so to speak. The morning after the unveiling, I spoke at the Albert Einstein Gymnasium, as previously arranged. I had addressed the upper classes during my visit in 1977. But even though those students had graduated in the meantime, the memory of that session was still alive at the Gymnasium. At that occasion I had spoken about the Jews of Rheda, their beginnings, their everyday life and their terrible end. This time I proposed several topics for a more formal lecture to the director but, to my astonishment, the youngsters expressed the wish to hear personal memories from the Holocaust. So I told my family’s story. Half an hour had been set aside for questions and answers. But that period lasted all through the lunch break and, in fact, until ten minutes before my wife and I were due at the mansion for tea. The young people were insatiable. They asked me to speak to their own problems, which were deep-seated and urgent: most had participated in school excursions to the Gedenkstätte (“memorial park”) — Bergen-Belsen — and wanted to know why their parents and grandparents had consistently evaded telling them the truth about that dark period in German history; why it had taken the television program “Holocaust” to give them an idea of what had happened; what they could do to remove the blot that defiled Germany and Germans? They expected me to supply profound and valid answers, and I understood why. I had established a reputation for not condemning everything German on principle. I was a Jew, a survivor, born in Rheda. I was authentic. One boy, fifteen or sixteen years old, told the following story: He had recently been in the States with his family. In a restaurant, his father did not find a knife with his table setting and asked the

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waiter for one. The waiter reportedly answered: “You are German; I am sure you want a real long knife.” What did I say to this? Well, the truth is that my heart went out to the boy and to all the young people who were struggling almost desperately to come to terms with their nation’s past. So I said that the waiter had been wrong, and that the boy should forget the incident as unimportant and atypical. But this answer did not comfort him: “That’s how the world thinks about Germans. What can I do to make them change the image they have of us?” Again and again the discussion turned to the phenomenon of neo-Nazism. It took me a while to understand that this term meant more to them than antisemitic incidents like cemetery or synagogue desecrations or the revival of the literature of the Elders-of-Zion type. The students were more concerned about West Germany’s political stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict, former Nazis occupying government posts, the shabby treatment of the Gastarbeiter (“foreign laborers”), terrorism — all in all, matters which they considered to be symptoms of a revival of “neofascism,” which had to be nipped in the bud. I told them what had always been my conviction, that potentially “it could happen again,” here or anywhere else, if the conditions were favorable; and one had to watch out for any incipient Nazism (or as they called it: fascism), no matter how insignificant or silly it might look. Still, I had the impression that these young people took the problem of neo-Nazism more seriously than I did myself . . . We were to fly home via Amsterdam and decided to visit the Anne Frank House there. Its exit hall is devoted to documenting the worldwide menace of neo-Nazism. On display are many pamphlets, handbills, posters, newspapers, and other propaganda materials, clear proof of virulent Nazism in many parts of the world, including the United States. Most dangerous-looking

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among them — reminiscent of the terrible Stürmer — was the Deutsche Nationalzeitung. I read the threats, the obscenities, the twisting of facts, and I recognized the trappings and techniques of the “Big Lie” all over again: “The Lie of the Six Million,” the headings read, “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Great Hoax,” “Not One Jew Gassed in Germany” (a reward of dm 10,000 being offered to any person who would bring proof of such a gassing). This perversion of language, which had been such an effective weapon in the Nazi arsenal, jolted me into reality. For all my pessimism and vigilance, I had, until now, underestimated the danger posed by neo-Nazism. This depth of depravity had not been revealed to me in my vision at Bergen-Belsen — not that, within a generation, the forces of hell would regroup for the next Holocaust; not that, as a part of their onslaught, they would wrest the crown of martyrdom from my people. The teenagers in Rheda had recognized the danger for what it was better than I. Perhaps my ultimate mission in Germany was to strengthen the resolve of a small group of German youth to fight the recurrence of the great evil by making the past real to them and by reassuring them that they were not personally guilty. My anguish over what had happened and their determination not to let it happen again transcends the generations that separate us and links the victim to the offspring of the tormentors. Perhaps there is some hope: freedom from self-torment for both the survivor and the innocent heirs.

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The Crack in the Dam We did not call it Kristallnacht, certainly not Reichskristallnacht, a late caustic term suggesting that the Party pogrom served an official function such as the Reichsparteitag at Nuremberg. We called it, sometimes in a whisper tone, “the night of the long knives,” a phrase the Nazis had used for years in their organized campaign to frighten us into panic. But it seems to me that the common term of reference was Zehnter November, “November Ten,” with its pedantic implication that the pogrom in the night of November 9–10 actually began after midnight. But later it became Kristallnacht, “Crystal Night,” because of the masses of broken glass in the streets, reflecting the light of the street lamps in the November rain. If so, why not “Broken Glass Night”? Because “Crystal Night” furnished the badly-needed euphemism. Also, its spooky-romantic sound and image may have helped the name to its popularity. Two comparisons have often been used to characterize the significance of that night within the Hitler years: it was a watershed, and it was a dress rehearsal. Both these images are appropriate, and below I shall list some of the facts and conclusions that make it plausible to so categorize the events of the Crystal Night. But I believe that their profounder meaning manifested itself only after the event. Nazi antisemitism, a psychological as well as a political expedient, had first been carefully nourished and later enforced both by clever manipulation and brute force, and it eventually became an inseparable factor of party doctrine and performance. Party

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and Government were, of course, one and the same thing. For this reason, the most regressive and savage ideology and behavior could be wrapped in the cloak of legality. This device — permitting, encouraging, and rewarding behavior which for centuries had been considered either criminal or insane, elevating inhumanity to become the law of the land — made Party perversions respectable for the majority of a nation of law-idolizing citizens. Not only were the people allowed to break with impunity through the veneer with which inhibition, education, and historical experience had covered their lower instincts, but they were led to believe that their sin was actually virtue. This was a stroke of genius on the part of an oligarchy that had to neutralize all liberal, democratic, and individualistic stirrings among its followers. Naturally, a scapegoat had to be provided, together with the new ideology; otherwise the unleashed powers of primitivism might turn against the leadership itself. This is where Jews and Jew-hatred entered the Nazi program. It was absolutely essential to it. In all of their twelve years m power, the Nazis could never afford to relent in fanning the hate instinct and keeping the scapegoat intact, even when the latter had actually been rendered more than harmless already. Whenever virulent antisemitism threatened to slacken, be it out of sheer fatigue and boredom or through a relapse into humanity, it had to be stirred up anew. We could observe this process from the first of the thoroughly organized “spontaneous outbreaks,” Boycott Day of April 1, 1933, through the Nuremberg Laws and through each of the unceasing onslaughts on the Jews, be they “individual actions of which the Führer did not approve” or “legal” raids on our lives, limbs, and property with the laws freshly enacted for the occasion. I remember that Hitler, Göbbels, Göring, Hess and Streicher, and every local Führer, in their speeches of 1936 and 1937, never stopped lashing out against us cruel and dangerous Jews, never ceased

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preaching the necessity to break our sinister might. I often thought then: what are they talking about? Not only do they know, but the masses whom they incite against us likewise know, that we have long ago been reduced to a negligible minority of impoverished, helpless, persecuted, and very frightened creatures. But as delusory as was their goal of conquering, ruling, and redeeming the world, still more unreal was their idea of the obstacles they had to overcome on their way to this redemption. It is quite possible that, in 1938, five years after their takeover, some Nazi leaders, upon taking stock, may have reached the conclusion that Party antisemitism had fallen short of its assigned role. It may have lacked in enthusiasm, radicalism, pagan abandon, and perhaps even in credibility with many Germans. Therefore something drastic had to be done toward its revitalization and intensification. In that light do I see the accelerated pace of the anti-Jewish measures and events of 1938. Their partial enumeration here is to serve merely as a reminder but, even so, the crescendo in their succession is unmistakable: March 13 Extension of all anti-Jewish measures to date to include Austria March 28 Annulling the legal public status of Jewish congregations April 22 Punishment for “camouflaging” Jewish businesses April 26 Reporting of all Jewish property, domestic and foreign, in excess of five thousand marks June 9 “Premature” destruction of the Main Synagogue in Munich June 14 Registration and marking as “Jewish” of all Jewish businesses and enterprises of any kind July 6 Exclusion of Jews from most occupations overlooked till then July 6–15 Propagandistic exploitation of the failing International Conference on Refugees in Evian

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July 23 Issuance of special id cards for Jews July 25 Jewish physicians prohibited to practice medicine except for Jews August 10 “Premature” destruction of the Main Synagogue in Nuremberg August 17 Forced addition of the names “Israel” and “Sara,” respectively, to given names of Jewish men and women September 27 Jewish lawyers prohibited to practice law except for Jews September 29 Propagandistic exploitation of the free hand given to Nazi expansion by Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich October 5 Jewish passports marked with a large letter “J” October 28 Forced evacuation of Polish Jews

It is obvious that the development moved toward a climax. This is clear not only in retrospect; it was clear to us then. I do not doubt for a moment that a disaster would have broken loose over us even without the murder in Paris. Göbbels, the minister of propaganda, could be counted on to provide a fitting pretext. As the Ninth of November was drawing near — the mystical date that had been established as a special day of doom for the Jews — we waited with bated breath for a catastrophe. The shooting of vom Rath on November 7 saved Göbbels the trouble to stage an incident; the devil himself could not have come up with a better pretense for the “spontaneous popular explosion of justified wrath” that was to forbode the end of more than a thousand years of Jewish history in Germany. The watershed image of the Crystal Night may be illustrated by a compilation of what still existed “before” but no longer “after.” First. Those who had not emigrated and dared look ahead at all could still conceive of a Jewish life in Germany, albeit as pariahs. There even existed such organizations as the Naumannianer

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(“followers of Max Naumann”) and the Vortrupp (“Advance Guard”), who dreamed of some kind of Nazi-Jewish symbiosis. Jewish communal life still functioned; there were synagogues, schools, congregational offices, a Jewish press, homes for the aged, orphan homes, and hospitals. There was even a cultural life: concerts, lectures, recitations, theater — all by Jews for Jews only, all on a modest scale and in a subdued mood — but all this still existed “before.” Before the Crystal Night, life had been grim; “after” it, it was no longer bearable. Second. Before the Crystal Night, the need to emigrate had grown ever more urgent. Afterwards, the search for a place of refuge became an obsession. It was everyone for himself, and in most cases it was too late. Third. Perhaps because the Nazi persecution had been racial, with religion playing only a secondary role, nobody imagined that the systematic destruction of all synagogues was even a possibility. Would the Christians not consider this a barbarous act against religion as such, including their own? Well, all synagogues were destroyed, but Catholic and Protestant houses of worship still stood in their full splendor after the Crystal Night. Fourth. Already before, Jews had become impoverished due to the removal from business and the professions. Now they were without means. Fifth. Before we still nourished hopes about sympathy, compassion, perhaps even protection. Aside from foreign countries, in Germany itself there were still old socialists, democrats, but above all, the clergy. After the Crystal Night we knew we were abandoned and there was no hope left. Sixth. Before, many Germans, including Nazis, had still not fully absorbed the new ideology that declared the Jew subhuman. These people disapproved of the persecution, were even ashamed of it, and inclined now and then to confide these feelings

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to an old Jewish friend. Afterwards, every single German realized that the slightest show of sympathy toward a Jew could be suicidal. In addition, the Crystal Night phenomenon in and of itself diminished whatever positive attitudes toward the Jews still existed: if the murder of one Aryan committed by one Jew was able to evoke such a tidal wave of wrath against all Jews; if — inversely — the brutalization of all Jews did not elicit any counteraction at all; if Jews could be treated so openly like vermin; if cruelty and terror could be used toward them without anyone lifting a finger — then something had to be wrong with the Jews, very wrong indeed. The dress-rehearsal image of the Crystal Night can be exemplified by the following: First. If Hitler needed a last confirmation of how far he could go in “solving the Jewish question,” that night he got all the endorsement he could have wished for and probably more than he had dreamed of in his philosophy. Neither England nor France nor America, in fact no country, antagonistic or neutral, would take the slightest risk on behalf of the Jews. Hitler could go as far as he pleased, he could do whatever he wanted with the Jews, even take measures as yet not contemplated. He could do so now in Germany and Austria, and later in country after country he would conquer. Second. The Crystal Night taught Hitler that Jews could be more than just taxed to the limit. You could take from them everything they had acquired and accumulated in their industrious lives. This opened a new financial source, a war chest that required no quid pro quo whatever. The source did not cease to yield bounty when the Jews had been stripped of their money, their businesses, their bank accounts, their stocks and bonds, their gold and silver, their jewels. They readily would hand over possessions abroad under threat or for the smallest preferential

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treatment, such as postponement of deportation or temporary exemption from another calamity. The value of the oftenmentioned golden teeth and bridges, broken from the mouths of gassed Jews, should likewise not be underestimated; nobody will ever know how many ingots the Reichsbank had cast from this cornucopia. So did the gold coins and diamonds Jews had sewn into their clothing before deportation, as a last reserve, amount to a veritable Nibelungen Hort. And finally, the Jews were a source of unpaid labor. What a brilliant discovery that you could exploit and diminish them in one boldly conceived operation! Third. Owing to the lame reaction abroad and within, Hitler now knew that he could continue to conquer the world piecemeal. After Austria and Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia would follow in the East; Denmark and Norway in the North; Holland, Belgium, France and, eventually, England in the West. To the Jews in these countries (and later in the rest of the world), he would do as he had done to the Jews in Germany — and worse, much worse, for nobody cared. The huge reservoir of Jews in Eastern Europe alone would provide him with scapegoats as long as his wars would take. Only in retrospect did the Crystal Night become the precipitous watershed and the grand dress rehearsal. I am certain that no Nazi, including Hitler, Göbbels, and Streicher — for all their blood-curdling rabble-rousing and their countless horrendous deeds — had planned the actual, systematic, physical extermination of the Jewish people right from the beginning. The very conception of such a plan was then still beyond human ken. The lesson of the Crystal Night is simply that mankind overestimated the progress it had made since its dawn, that the veneer of humanity, decency, ethics, and fear of God was a mere eggshell, and that — if conditions were right, you could do the absolutely unthinkable with absolute impunity. Moreover, you could do it

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without shame and guilt, and even create a new national ethos in the process. The key concept here is impunity. It alone enabled man to unleash the savagery deeply imbedded in him and specific to his kind. Man is afraid of punishment for his misdeeds but, beyond the fear, there is the need of punishment. More than repentance, grace, and redemption, it is punishment for wrongdoing that in man’s mind keeps the world in balance, and nobody wants to revert to the Tohu Vabohu. But punishment — even when needed and expected — is something to be feared and suffered. In a society, however, in which violence, evil, and wickedness alone guarantee the good life and acquittal of sin, its members will only too gladly waive the need for punishment. This is what the Nazis discovered. I believe that this total subversion of previously ingrained ideas began with the individual Nazi killing his Jew and getting away scot-free. When he saw that it was good, he killed again, already confident that he would go unpunished. The process continued with the next individual Nazi, who saw his comrade triumph through barbarism and followed his example. And so the next and again the next. Once begun, the process spread widely and quickly. The relegation of this total abandonment of human inhibition from many individuals to the law-making oligarchy and the efficient organization of the slaughter was strongly aided by the Messiah complex of the oligarchs. It is well to remember that one of Hitler’s first acts as chancellor of the Reich was passing the Ermächtigungsgesetz, the law that suspended the Constitution. Since he and his group were false messiahs, they had, in fact, “come to abolish the law” (Matthew 5:17). Eventually — and this is the third image I connect with the Crystal Night — the dam, which humanity had built against the primeval abyss in man, cracked and gave way, and “the fountains

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of the great deep burst forth” (Genesis 7:11), carrying with them nearly everything and nearly everyone. The crack in the dam, hardly discernable as yet, but eventually fatal, occurred in the Crystal Night. After November 10, 1938, those Jews still in Germany and Austria were filled with nightmarish fears about what the future might hold for them. But even someone gifted with the most fertile fantasy would not have fancied anything like the Holocaust. And yet, the dam had cracked. Let us hope and pray that the Holocaust itself will not have to be looked back upon one day as a mere precursor of the Holocaust of Holocausts. But this idea should not really worry us, for on that day nobody will be left alive to look back upon it.

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Why I Did Not Leave Nazi Germany While There Was Still Time The life of a Jew of my generation and background is most fittingly divided into a pre-, post-, and during-the-Holocaust existence. Any other periodization, such as peacetime/wartime/new beginning, or childhood/youth/adulthood, becomes insignificant when measured by the criterion of the Holocaust. Already the third, the post-Holocaust phase, for someone of my age has lasted longer than the first two put together. And seeing the changes wrought by the passage of time — changes not of facts but of our perception and evaluation of facts — I find myself idealizing my pre-Holocaust years, and I notice that the acute awareness of my suffering during the Holocaust has lost some of its sting. I do not know which of these two changes is the greater distortion of facts and of truth. The post-Holocaust period, in turn, is clearly subdivided into separate phases. First there was the immense effort of starting life anew, of even wanting to live after the great dying. Only when that was settled, so it seems to me, were we ready for the shudder of disbelief, the onslaught of horror. There followed the crisis of faith — “God after Auschwitz” — and then the apportioning of guilt: guilt of the perpetrators, their people and their progeny; guilt of the bystanders, Christian and Jewish; and also the guilt of the victims. Comparatively late, there began the phase of investigation: how could it have happened? And its counterpart: how can a recurrence be prevented? Almost simultaneously with this quest, the first signs of a potential recurrence became manifest:

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the slumping economy, the social and moral turmoil, the preponderance of violence and cruelty in much of the world, the actual rise of neo-Nazism. To recognize this potential recurrence, you do not have to see uniformed storm troopers in the streets, or acquaint yourself with the publication of old as well as new hate literature and the growing publicity given to the “Great Hoax” theme. It is sufficient to witness the ignorance about and lack of interest in the Holocaust, its relegation to academic research, to monument building, to the archives, and even to entertainment. Naturally, my impartial mind tells me that this is normal, certainly inevitable, and probably even good when these events are losing their immediacy and receding somewhat into the distance. This enables them to be seen in “their proper perspective” — to be shelved, so to speak, alongside with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with the Crusades and the Inquisition or, for that matter, alongside any manifestations of human inhumanity on a large scale in which people other than Jews were sufferers. But I observe, with regard to the Holocaust, my mind can be impartial only at rare moments, while my emotional response has become rather more impassioned as time passes. To me the prevailing composure will easily appear as indifference, callousness, and the wish not to be bothered on a personal level. More than by anything else, this attitude is brought home to me by certain questions I am sometimes asked — and it makes no difference whether the questioner’s interest is genuine, feigned, or just polite. I list here some sample questions of this kind that drive me especially mad: Why did you allow yourself to be led to the slaughter like sheep? How did you survive the concentration camp? Did you ever contemplate escaping from the concentration camp? How come you did not leave Germany when there was still time? Why did you emigrate to the United States instead of Israel?

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The most painful aspect of these questions is that I am expected to answer them. Even if they are asked without malice or reproach, the questioner still waits for a deliberate, logical explanation, supported, if possible, by a few convincing and easily remembered arguments. Why is it so difficult for me to remain calm in the face of such questions? Why do I react to them with exasperation? Why do they make me angry and unhappy? Is it because I know for a fact that they can be asked only with historic hindsight? For at that time, resistance and rebellion and heroism of the flamboyant kind were simply not among the existing options, and emigrating was a trauma, not a simple matter of packing up and leaving. I think that of the two reactions, anger and unhappiness, unhappiness comes first. I am unhappy, for one thing, because I am seized by a feeling of inadequacy and helplessness when I strain and concentrate to find answers; for another, because I despair of my ability to formulate what I fleetingly and vaguely glimpse during intensive introspection; and third, because I know that I lack the power, or whatever else it takes, to convince my questioner. Finally, I am unhappy because I am practically certain that the entire process of trying to answer these questions is an exercise in futility; in most instances the questioner is not really that interested, and why should he or she be? There are many more urgent questions to be answered today. It is this unhappiness about my own inadequacy, ineffectiveness, powerlessness, and sense of futility — which seem to be built into the problem — that cause my anger. And that anger is intensified by the realization that, despite all reasoning to the contrary, I cannot but perceive these questions as an assault upon my person. Instead of remaining a natural mechanism for soliciting information, which they normally are, they assume the shape of an interrogation in which the questioner is also the tormentor.

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For, when all is said and done, are we Jews not being judged guilty of lack of foresight, of gullibility, of inertia, of cowardice, of irresponsibility, of a defeatism by which guilt is being transferred to an army of anonymous bystanders who may include the questioner? The surviving victims are put into the grotesque situation of having to explain what others did to them, and of meeting with incomprehension should they refuse or declare themselves unable to answer. The surviving perpetrators are not approached; one would not expect a true answer from them. The situation is somehow reminiscent of the law enacted immediately after the Crystal Night requiring the Jews to pay for the damage done to their businesses and homes. And yet, the victim-survivor is the only reliable “expert” and eyewitness to whom to turn and, by the very fact of having survived, he is also morally obligated to provide information. So why should he be coy about answering a few forthright questions? Therefore, I feel I must overcome my resistance and resentment, must dismiss the feeling of unwillingly engaging in an exercise in apologetics, and try earnestly, if not to supply straight and simple answers, at least to clarify and line up some of the evasive arguments that I have harbored for a long time, and to articulate them as well as I can. There is another compelling reason for such a course of action: survivors are a vanishing breed, but questions like those quoted will be around for a long time to come. And of whom will they be asked? Of Jews. The “expertise” about the martyrdom of the Holocaust will be inherited by generation upon generation of Jews. The surviving Jew, therefore, has the added obligation to provide future Jews with authentic material with which to withstand the onslaught of future questions. Naturally, not only non-Jews will ask the questions; fellow Jews will ask as well — in fact, they are doing so already.

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Even the most basic question is being asked of me in all sincerity and will be continued to be asked of Jews, no matter how outrageous it may appear to us that we, of all people, should provide an answer. I refer to the question: How could a country of such high culture as Germany become the nation of the Holocaust?

In response I routinely say that millions of words of learned analyses have not yet provided an answer, and I advise the questioner to turn to a German Aryan, not to me. But this is, of course, a subterfuge, and I notice the resulting disappointment. By some special logic, the Jew is the expert on all aspects of the Holocaust. This is true of the survivor and will be true of the Jews hereafter. And since the still-living survivors do have direct access to some of the facts, they must lay the foundation for eventual answers. There is, then, no getting out from under the obligation to face the questions asked ad hominem: about meekly going to the slaughter, about hiding behind the barbed wire of the concentration camp, about not leaving Germany while the leaving was good, and about choosing the safety of the United States over the hardships and dangers of Palestine. For, after all, there were some who did not go like sheep, there were a handful who did attempt to flee from the camps, there were many thousands who left Germany in time, and many shiploads of survivors strove to reach the shores of Palestine. I shall pick only one of the sample questions for a sample reply — the easiest: Why didn’t you leave Germany while there was still time? It is the easiest for me because it offers me the reprieve of concentrating on Germany’s Jews, without having to consider Eastern European Jewry who paid a much higher price in suffering and death, as well as Austrian Jewry who shared our fate

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but began doing so at a later time. What is more, the answer to this question has quite a few objective aspects; it does not force me to search the deepest crevices of my soul — a process as yet too painful. Even so, I still have one caveat. When this question is being asked with the implication that those who left Germany early were the only farsighted ones, people of action and without illusions and false sentimentality, I reserve for myself the right to keep silent. Why should I add insult to injury for myself and the other two hundred thousand German Jews who did not leave while there was still time? Here, then, are a number of thoughts in connection with that question: I was eighteen when Hitler came to power, and I was beginning my education toward a professional career. During the first year of Hitler’s rule, most of us thought that he would disappear from the stage now that he had been given responsibilities. We had no doubt that he would fail, just as those before him had failed, and that this would be the end of him and his histrionics. For the next three years (approximately through 1936), we thought we would be able to endure the discrimination, the impoverishment, the threat of life and limb to some of us, as other Jewish generations had endured. For together with the blows that fell on us, there grew an inner regeneration, an awakenmg of Jewish consciousness, a pride in our Judaism, a readiness to suffer for it and eventually to triumph through it — which I do not think is paralleled in any three-year period of Jewish history. Far too little is known as yet about this short-lived inner Jewish renaissance under outside pressure. But just count the publications of the Schocken-Verlag or the Jüdischer Verlag in Berlin during those years. And let us not forget that, together with this

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newly found wellspring of strength, we were still proud of and practicing our German heritage, and often we felt that we were the only true Germans. How many people have ever given thought to what it means to tear oneself up by the roots and leave an environment that has been one’s physical, cultural, and emotional home perhaps for generations? The uprooting I speak of is totally different from the “Get thee out of thy country” imperative that went out to Abraham and that carried with it God’s promise about “a land I will show thee” (Genesis 12:1). An uprooting that is totally involuntary causes great pain. Even in the concentration camp, having to leave a barracks with which you had become familiar and go to a different one and, worse, moving to another camp was a misfortune. Strangely, in the flight of refugees, we seldom consider the initial stage: that of being uprooted. We begin to develop a degree of empathy only after they are well advanced on their thorny path. I readily admit that many of us feared the shock of being uprooted and tried to avoid it, if at all possible. But to understand this reaction, you will have to believe me when I say that nobody could possibly have foreseen the “final solution.” To me, everyone who says he foresaw the slaughter of our people and that it was all clearly stated in Mein Kampf is a boaster or has forgotten the limits of the human mind before Auschwitz. When, in the winter of 1944–1945, the first evacuees from Auschwitz arrived in Bergen-Belsen (a camp where prisoners died only of “natural causes”) and told us about gas chambers, we did not believe them. There was even a moral objection against emigrating. I remember that, as a child, I sometimes overheard the phrase: Der musste nach Amerika, that is, “so-and-so had to go to America.” This was said of someone who, perhaps generations ago, emigrated to avoid

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army service, to evade the police, to escape creditors, or someone who just could not make a living at home. In short, the association with emigration was negative: a person “in good standing” did not emigrate. We had been brought up on the precept: Bleibe im Lande und nähre dich redlich, “Dwell in the land and make an honest living.” Ironically, most of us had no idea that this so typically German proverb was nothing but Luther’s translation of a verse from the Hebrew Psalms (37:3). In some families this prejudice even included emigration after the political upheavals of 1815 and 1848, which gave rise to the very “aristocracy” of the German-Jewish immigration in the United States. In 1935 the graduating class of my Hebrew Teachers Seminary organized a trip to Palestine. One of the students stayed there illegally; a second wanted to stay but his father sternly forbade it. All others returned and later assumed their new positions in Germany. Many Jewish leaders felt they had to stay as shepherds of their flock. But some of the most highly placed leaders advised other Jews to stay as well. This feeling of duty to stay was not limited to, say, rabbis; I felt it strongly as a teacher in a Jewish grade school and also as a son. For, if an opportunity had offered itself to me as a young man, it was certain that I would have to leave my mother in the midst of the danger I sought to escape. Many cases of able-bodied young persons who were given the chance and left, of rabbis who made use of their special standing outside the immigration quota, filled us with sadness and indignation. Beginning perhaps with the Nuremberg Laws in the fall of 1935 — when the terror grew and the belief of a Jewish future in Germany faded away — and increasingly through 1938, many of us, who had not done so before, began to contemplate emigration. Before the open panic started, reaching the decision to emigrate was still an individual process; some arrived at it earlier, others

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later. People still employed or in business tarried longer than those without means. Aside from this factor, individuals have different thresholds, even with regard to acting and reacting in the face of grave danger. Once the decision had been made, the urgency grew quickly, and the feeling was, the sooner the better. But up to the Crystal Night, there was, connected to the willingness to emigrate, still the consideration of where to go and how to build a new future there. Now there evolved this true tragedy: in the same measure as the need to emigrate became evident, the opportunities for emigrating decreased rapidly and radically. The American immigration quota was filled and the consulates handed out waiting list numbers that stretched years ahead into the future. The number of certificates for Palestine declined sharply because England, the Mandate power, was careful not to alienate the Arabs. As far as Great Britain herself was concerned, the demand for housemaids — one of the few ways to be admitted to England, except for a number of children transports — was saturated. Those countries that sold entry visas asked ever-higher sums, and there were ever fewer Jews who could raise the money. All in all, long before the German exit door slammed shut, immigration countries effectively barricaded themselves against the Jews. The causes were economic and social, combined with the fear of displeasing Hitler or outright sympathy with his goals and methods, including antisemitism. By that time, every Jew in Germany heard his own “Get thee out,” but God did not show him a land. I wonder whether those who ask such a question as Why did you not leave Germany while there was still time? realize that not everyone could emigrate. There were definite qualifications and conditions, and those who did not meet them could not leave. Our conversations were governed by such things as affidavits, sponsors, certificates, quotas, and visas; requirements of age, skills and

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health; relatives abroad and rumored loopholes in immigration laws from New Zealand to Chile. Tens of thousands of German Jews simply could not emigrate if their life depended on it, which was, indeed, the case. And if I, a healthy young man with a certain sense of adventure, could not emigrate — what about young children and old people, the sick and the handicapped? The greatest irony, something that to us could only appear as a cruel hoax, was the International Conference on Refugees held at Evian, France, in July of 1938. If President Roosevelt deliberately convened it as a political measure to demonstrate to his constituency in the United States that the state of the economy, especially the unemployment situation, did not permit the immigration of any more Jews, he could not have chosen a more effective means. Strange that he should not have realized what the outcome would be; we Jews in Germany knew that the conference would lead to nothing, for each of us had heard the regrets and refusals of the different countries privately, before delegate after delegate from country after country stated them publicly at that conference. Daily, during the conference, gloating headlines in the German press announced how right Hitler had proven to be; how the world was beginning to see things his way; how nobody wanted the Jews. There were tiny sparks of hope, but they only emphasized the total darkness on the face of the earth. We read the newspapers with growing dread; we were glued to the radio in horror. Right there in Evian our fate was sealed. We did not have to wait another two months for Chamberlain’s journey to Munich to know that the world was buckling under to Hitler. As directly as Chamberlain’s Munich led to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, so surely Roosevelt’s Evian made possible the Crystal Night. The message was loud and clear: do what you want with your Jews — it’s an internal affair. We and the rest of the world won’t lift a finger.

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It is commonplace to say that the Crystal Night foreshadowed what was to come. It is seldom realized that it was also a last chance. The world’s moral fiber was being tested once more, and once again the world failed. For a few days after the event, border police in neighboring countries — Holland, Belgium, France — were less strict about repelling Jews who dared the desperate nighttime dash over a frontier in the woods. Then this loophole was closed, too, and the trap shut on us. As for the Jews left in post-Crystal Night Germany, there was nobody who had the slightest hesitation about leaving. Never mind tearing up old roots or striking new ones; it was a mad scramble. But emigration was available for only a few; the rest were caught. Quiet despair settled over us. We continued our different tasks under ever-worsening conditions; I went on teaching at my Jewish grade school. Many of us were very pessimistic, depressed, and gloomy; many anticipated still worse to come, even though nobody imagined — or could have imagined — Einsatzgruppen and gas chambers. One more thing I did not anticipate: that forty years later a well-meaning student of a brand-new academic subject called “Holocaust Studies” would ask me, Why didn’t you leave Germany while there was still time?

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“I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You” I am going to discuss two kinds of survivorship: surviving the Holocaust itself and continuing survival in the post-Holocaust period. Here follows a list of possible reasons for my surviving the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. It should go without saying that this must not be interpreted as a manual for outwitting a killing mechanism as perfect as a Nazi concentration camp. In the last analysis, everything was chance, luck, a fluke of fate, a miracle — better even, a string of miracles or divine destination — whichever you prefer. The conditions I will enumerate guaranteed nothing, but the absence of several of them almost always proved fatal. And while I use general and neutral language, there should be no misunderstanding the fact that I am setting down here my own experiences and my personal insights. First. You had to be young, but not too young. It seems that the optimal age was seventeen to thirty-five years. Second. You had to be healthy, and not just in a general sort of way, or by the absence of a major disease and disability or a chronic illness. A disorder to which, in normal society, one does not pay too much attention — a cold, a toothache, a scratched knee — could easily turn into your dying disease. Third. It was good to be overweight. In the case of women — the Germans liked well-endowed females (as did the Russians, when we were liberated), and often assigned them to preferred work details, which meant extra rations and better treatment. But for both men and women, obesity was a plus that could be

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measured arithmetically: if you lost, say, two pounds per camp week, and were fifty pounds overweight, you had an advantage of half a year over the person of normal weight, until your body began to digest itself. Lean persons were the first to starve to death. Fourth. The later in the Nazi period you were taken to a camp, the better were your chances. Every additional camp day reduced the odds of survival. Fifth. You had to be assigned to a good work detail, called a Kommando. Kommandos varied extremely. We suspected that some of them had a certain quota of dead per working day, while other Kommandos could almost be compared to a job in society. Sixth. It was a great advantage to speak a fluent German. The ss guards could become extremely unpleasant if their orders were not immediately followed, or if a prisoner tried to make himself understood in broken German. Seventh. It was a plus to be inconspicuous, not too tall and not too short, not too ugly and not too handsome. It was advisable not to stand in the front row at roll call. You had to be bland, average; you had to master the art of mimicry, not drawing attention to yourself in any way. Eighth. It was very helpful to belong to a group that took care of each other and took chances for one another. Such a group could be remnants of a family or people of the same town, neighborhood, or social circle; it could be an ideological group like our Hachsharah, or a group formed only in the camp, like people working in the same Kommando. Now a word about our attitude toward survival while in the camp, our awareness of fear, hope, or faith. Nobody could be unaware of the fact that his or her life hung in the balance at every hour of every day and every night. Nobody could, with any rationality at all, assume that the threat of death — death in an agonizing, undignified, dirty, and senseless form — was

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there “for other people” but not for him or herself. Probably just because of this ever-present threat of death and its barbaric form, our minds refused to apply it to ourselves except for short periods at a time. When witnessing how a prisoner was clubbed, when lying on a bunk in the sham infirmary amidst the sick and the dying, when during morning roll call in the compound next to ours the dead of the night were laid out in straight rows — there was no more than a fleeting thought: tomorrow it may be my turn. But then the mind left the subject and switched to one of the aspects of living in the camp. For, quite aside from our slave labor, there was a manifold daily life and routine in the camp which kept us busy all day, even though it almost totally pivoted around food. Perhaps a specialist in the study of death and dying may include that in the stark reality of the camp, death had become an organic part of life, on a level with living actions such as fighting and clawing one’s way for a turn at scraping out an empty soup barrel or selling one’s shoes on the black market for a bread ration. But I would maintain that death in the camp belonged to a separate realm. One did not deny its imminence, one feared it, one fought it with rational means, such as delousing one’s clothes, or trying to be economical with one’s strength at work — but most of the time one did not think about death. It was probably a simple act of repression, but I seem to remember mastering a technique of being able to shut out the fear and the thought of death by means of an imagined electric switch or metal shutter. Death was thereby relegated to a realm separate from that of life in the camp. The wall between you and death was a reality, not an illusion. And hope? There was much hope, be it ever so unjustified and contradicted by what we saw. The saying of “hope against hope” or Schiller’s “At the edge of the grave he still plants hope”

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applied to life in the camp. There were small hopes: tomorrow’s soup might be thicker than today’s; the Germans might release the Red Cross packages that were withheld from us. And there were large hopes: perhaps, unknowingly, I possess immunity against typhus, or the Allied forces might liberate us just in the nick of time. I think we spent more time in the camp indulging in fantasies of hope than in horror and fear of death. And then there was the question of religious faith in the camp, of belief in God’s providence — in one of two forms. One was resignation: all He does is for the good; if He has decreed that I be among the dead of this place, so be it. The other was that of invoking personal privilege: God will hear my prayer and save me alive from this hell. I have seen both of these attitudes among believing Jews. (I was never imprisoned together with Christians.) These matters were occasionally discussed in the camp, and I rejected both these expressions of faith. The former seemed to me defeatist, actually inviting death. (The insistence of some Orthodox Jews not to transgress the dietary laws, even in the concentration camp, is a case in point; they simply starved to death sooner.) The second attitude, the faith of an individual that God would spare his or her life, appeared to me as an expression of egotism and arrogance. Today I go still a step further, in that I perceive an utterance like “God has saved me” as unadulterated blasphemy against God who, therefore, must have allowed the others to be killed. It appears to me an expression of contempt for the millions whose lives, apparently, were not worth saving. At a survivors’ gathering, I heard a speaker close with the benediction: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord . . . who has kept us alive, who has sustained us, and has enabled us to reach this season.” Us, us, us! Nobody seemed to share my revulsion at this declaration of selective grace, of divine arbitrariness.

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Altogether, the concentration camp was a good place for reducing the understanding of a God-man relation to a very simple formula. The God who permitted the unspeakable cruelties, especially those perpetrated on children, could not be “good” in the accepted sense of the word. If perhaps our situation constituted Isaiah’s “brief moment during which God has forsaken [us]” (Isaiah 54:7) and corresponded to the Psalmist’s conception of time, namely, that in God’s sight “a thousand years are but as yesterday” (Psalm 90:4), then it must be said that our circumstances were not conducive to thinking in such lofty terms. Surely God was the Creator and Maintainer, but a God of love and justice? — not in terms that we could grasp. In fact, our theology became so basic — and this I remember vividly — that we made absurd distinctions. For instance: the fact that we were made to stand on punitive roll call for many hours, sometimes whole nights, even the children, aged, and sick people — that was ss cruelty. But that it was also cold and wet and windy to sharpen our pain — that was God’s doing, for the ss did not control the weather. We were victims not only of human beings’ inhumanity — but also of God’s ungodliness. It was the old question of the suffering of the righteous and the prospering of the sinner. But many of us had lost the quality of sophistication, and it all boiled down to Heinrich Heine’s not so mocking lines: Whose fault is it? Is our Lord Less almighty than foreseen? Does He Cause Himself the mischief? That would truly be obscene.

I turn now to the problems of the survivor in the post-Holocaust society. The term “survivor” as a definitive name for members of the group of people who outlived the Holocaust made its appearance comparatively late. The history of the name seems to run

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parallel to the word “Holocaust” itself, which has now become the appellation for the unique and all-too-successful attempt of the Nazis “to annihilate all Jews, young and old, children and women” (Esther 3:13). Immediately after the war, we were “liberated prisoners”; in subsequent years we were included in the term “dps,” or “displaced persons.” Eventually, we became “emigrants” and “immigrants” as well as “refugees”; in the United States we were sometimes generously called “new Americans.” Then for a long time, the facts of liberation and migration were not reflected in a name assigned to us, and there was a good chance that we, as a group, might go nameless. But one day I noticed that I had been reclassified as a “survivor.” I dislike both the fact of being so classified and the name bestowed upon the group. First of all, I feel “survivor” to be a temporary designation. One survives an earthquake, a shipwreck, but after a while one returns to one’s former identity despite possible scars left by the calamity. However, Holocaust survivorship is terminal. Especially now that “The Holocaust” has become a separate academic discipline, with a perfect right to its own terminology, I have been categorized for the remainder of my natural life. I have been set apart for having been in the Holocaust, while in my own sight I am a person who lived before and who is living after. True, I am essentially changed, but I do not feel that I have joined a club. The ones to be set apart are the nonsurvivors. To be categorized for having survived adds to the damage I have suffered; it is like wearing a tiny new Yellow Star. Second, in my case, “survivorship” is a negative classification. A survivor of a war is a veteran, who marches proudly in parades. But to be a survivor of the Holocaust is virtually a contradiction in terms, for a burnt-offering does not allow for remains. At best it is a constricting designation that can easily

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make its bearer appear — to others and himself — as a museum piece, a fossil, a freak, a ghost. Third, to be classified as a Holocaust survivor can mean the intensification of a threat experienced by many individuals. When identified as a “survivor” to a new circle of people, he or she wonders, “How do these people think I managed to survive — by luck or, maybe, at the cost of others?” How many may think secretly: “Was this person a collaborator, an informer, perhaps a Capo?” Many a survivor cannot help feeling defensive, even if no accusing word is ever spoken. Fourth, and likewise aggravating a well-known condition, there exists the danger that a survivor, officially so classified, is more readily inclined to exploit that survivorship in order to attract interest, pity, awe. I think immediately of two parallels from modern Hebrew literature. One is the story, “The BurnedOut Ones,” by the writer Mendele, in which the inhabitants of a burned-down Jewish town in Russia in the last century demand charity, feeling superior to regular beggars, since theirs was a total and famous conflagration. The other is from Bialik’s “In the City of Slaughter.” The exasperated poet imagines the survivors of the pogrom going begging and boasting: Publicly they advertise their wound Like a hawker his wares . . . “I have a broken head,” “My father was martyred,” “Give me their recompense!”

Fifth, a survivor easily falls into the trap of looking upon himself the way compassionate and charitable people see him or her. This may lead to the fallacy of using one’s survivorship as an excuse for any and all inadequacies and failures, for inherited or normally acquired frailty and shortcomings both physical and psychological.

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Having stated my discomfort with both the classification and the name assigned to surviving Holocaust victims, I must of course admit that people who have essential experiences in common are often grouped together and that it is convenient to call them by a common name. I can only stress that this group is widely diversified, and that the thought and behavior patterns of its individual members vary as much as those of members of other groupings. And as to a name: I turned to the Bible for enlightenment. There I found in Prophets the image of the “smoldering firebrand,” or “a brand plucked from the fire,” for someone brought very low and rendered powerless (Isaiah 7:4; Amos 4:11; Zechariah 3:2). This I rejected, for I thought: being plucked from this fire — if it is to have any meaning at all — must be tied to a task. A verse from the Hallel liturgy occurred to me. During my days as a cantor, I had often chanted its triumphant melody with special fervor: “I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord” (Psalm 118:17). The verse seemed to fit my situation perfectly, but there was a flaw. What did “deeds of the Lord” mean to me in the context of the Holocaust? How could I enthusiastically recount them; would I not rather strain my mental resources to account for them? It was another biblical verse that appealed to me. In the first chapter of the Book of Job, four different bearers of ill tidings close their tales of a catastrophe with the words: “I alone have escaped to tell you” (Job 1:15, 16, 17, 19). This line, so it appeared to me, contained four different elements: I alone: There are no two survivors who escaped annihilation by an identical set of circumstances. No two reacted the same to their leaving the inferno alive. And no two drew the same conclusions from their return to the world of the living. Each survivor is one of a kind. The Talmud concludes from God’s creating man

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first as a single being that “every human is obliged to say: ‘for my sake the world was created’” (Sanhedrin 38a). In a similar way, each and every survivor must come to terms with the past, with him or herself, as well as with the post-Holocaust world, and any task derived from surviving is unique to him or her. Have escaped: In the Hebrew the word appears in the passive voice. “I have been spared” might be a closer translation. For the victim’s fate was sealed; he belonged to the morituri, the ones about to die. There was no reason to assume that a certain percentage of concentration camp inmates might survive, not even an insignificant fraction of a single percentage point. Only because the killing machinery stopped before the work was completed, the destiny of some of the morituri never materialized. Even now they have that look of disbelief in their eyes, and every so often they shake their head in wonderment. To tell: The meaning is “in order to tell” or “so that I may tell.” Therefore the reason for this rescue was a charge to tell. To tell what? About the catastrophe that had befallen us; about God’s wrath? For what purpose? To change God? To change man? To be able to live with oneself? Whatever! The survivor must tell; it is a commandment. You: This means everybody who is not the survivor himself, and in a deeper meaning it includes him too. “You” is the perpetrator, the bystander, and the victim; the contemporary, the descendant, and generations unborn. To tell “you” means to tell all, to keep on telling as long as there is breath in the survivor’s lungs and sense in his brain. These four elements are contained in the messenger’s panting, “I alone have escaped to tell you,” and if someone could wrap these elements up in one word signifying a person, I would gladly exchange that word for the term “survivor.”

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But as a practicing linguist, I know that a name once established, once accepted by a speech community, can seldom be dislodged; it may, however, become obsolete by itself. Who knows, perhaps I shall survive the name, too. Meanwhile, I must continue using it in spite of my reservations. When one lists disabilities and handicaps survivors have had to cope with since they reentered human society, a differentiation between physical damages and mental, or emotional, ones is in order, if for no other reason than because the official German program of Wiedergutmachung — indemnification, compensation — distinguished sharply between the two, especially in its initial stages. In the 1950s, the German government, under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, began to pay reparations to victims of the Holocaust, partly out of genuine compassion and a wish to atone, and partly to rehabilitate the German image in the world. The bureaucratic apparatus created to implement the new legislation coined the word verfolgungsbedingt, “due to the persecution.” For the purpose of claiming damages, an individual had to deliver proof that a certain ailment or disability was “due to persecution.” Much depended on the individual physician to whom the claimant was directed by the German consulate and who reported back to the German authorities. Everyone who submitted a compensation claim in the 1950s or early 1960s will remember that nervous disorders stood almost no chance of being considered for indemnification. This attitude on the part of the interpreters of the indemnification law changed only slowly, after a number of lawsuits and thanks to some enlightened literature on the subject. The change found its expression in a new law in 1965 which acknowledged a twenty-five percent decrease in earning capacity, with a corresponding pension when incarceration of at least one year in a recognized concentration camp could be proved, whatever the damage — physical or emotional. An

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additional lump-sum payment, incidentally, for Schaden an Freiheit, “damage of freedom,” was based on five Deutschmarks per acknowledged concentration camp day, or $1.25 in the exchange rate of that time! Among physical damages “due to persecution,” one must again differentiate — from the survivor’s viewpoint — between visible damages, for instance poorly-healed broken bones caused by severe beatings and scars left from infected wounds or medical experiments, and those more subtle ones, such as consequences of malnutrition and exposure or possible residues of one of the many camp diseases. The need for such a distinction arises from the fact that the visibility or invisibility of the physical affliction can, in turn, influence the survivor’s mental or emotional anguish. Even the presence or absence of a tattooed number on one’s forearm can make a difference in one’s attitude. And here I do not mean to infer that visibility of camp blemishes is bad and invisibility good — it may be the other way round. Take the example of the tattoo: not all camps followed this procedure, but it is almost expected that a former concentration camp inmate is authenticated by his tattooed number, or at least a scar on his forearm, in case he or she had the number surgically removed. A survivor who was never tattooed may suffer from the fact that he appears — or thinks he appears — to be an impostor. In my opinion it is a mistake to ascribe the mental or emotional troubles which possibly afflict a survivor only to extreme episodes of the Holocaust, such as the stay in a concentration camp, work as a slave laborer, being locked up in a starvation ghetto, escaping from under a heap of corpses. One must go back to the beginning of the persecution, even in its initial “milder” form. Thus the foundation of a neurosis for German Jews may have been laid with Hitler’s rise to power.

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From the first days of the Nazi era, individual people, Jews as well as non-Jews, were arrested and not heard from again till their death notices arrived (“due to weakness of circulation” or “shot in an attempt to escape”). Frightened families and neighbors explained those arrests only by one of two possibilities: “His name must have been on a list” or “She must have said something.” Being “on a list” resulted from membership in the Communist or Social Democrat parties or in a trade union, but it could also mean that the unfortunate person had once contributed to a cultural or a charitable cause which the Nazis subsequently renounced. To “have said something” might have been any utterance, recently or in the past, that expressed or could be interpreted as expressing disagreement with any of the policies of the Third Reich or dislike of one of its champions, nationally or locally. It seems unbelievable that, after a while, “reasons” like these became plausible, even to us. “Too bad for so-and-so, but why wasn’t he more careful?” To this day I have to overcome a strong resistance to joining an organization — no matter what kind — or putting my name on a petition or even on the visitors list of a museum or funeral home. Another example of the perversion of judgment (the term “brainwashing” had not yet been coined) during the early Nazi period was the Streicher-Göbbels propaganda machine. The Germans and eventually even many young impressionable Jews became indoctrinated with the notion of Jewish inferiority: cowardly, malicious, greedy, lewd, incapable of doing physical work, unthinkable as athletes, unimaginable as soldiers, known as usurers and political conspirators. The very words in German for “merchant,” “democracy,” or “liberal” were ridiculed and became invectives in the conscious doctoring of words by the Ministry of Propaganda, and the Jews were identified with such un-German concepts.

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Should this constant onslaught, year after year, long before Auschwitz, not have left its sediments in the souls? Try to imagine what it meant to people who, until then, had considered themselves to be accepted and equal, to become ostracized, degraded, humiliated, pauperized, terrorized, uprooted. The constant anticipation of the next hammer-blow was enough to unsettle stable minds. Do we have the right to assume that traumas like these have healed without leaving scars? I remember vividly how many of us were actually relieved when we were eventually caught, when we set foot in the concentration camp, because a terrible nightmare had finally ended. We did not realize then that a worse one was just beginning. Certain neuroses and phobias, when exhibited by survivors of the Holocaust, seem to me, as a layman, verfolgungsbedingt — due to persecution — some of them directly traceable to camp situations. Again I know I am not fooling any reader by couching the following enumeration in impersonal terms; however, it makes my task a little easier. First. An exaggerated respect of people in authority or command. It may be one’s boss, the policeman on the corner, or the clerk at the post office. It may even be the waiter, the taxi driver, or the telephone operator. Second. An unrealistic fear of being endangered in a certain locality or situation. There is a strong urge to keep in the background, not turning attention on oneself. The most normal and inoffensive act of self-assertion may appear to yourself as aggressive, inviting retaliation. Third. Pedantry, a compulsion to be overly correct, punctual to a fault, doing what one thinks people expect one to do, doing too much rather than too little. Fourth. Oversensitivity to physical phenomena such as a slight pain or even noise and brightness, but also to the mental

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grief that results from feeling criticized, neglected, or rejected. In the camp the equivalent of oversensitivity was a permanent state of highest alert. Fifth. Being excessively concerned with matters of food, shelter, and security, steering clear of conflicts, dodging threats, avoiding speculation, not taking chances. Saved once against impossible odds — who wants to tempt fate! Sixth. Tormenting dreams and nightmares, often dealing with the imminence of the horror rather than with the horror itself. Seventh. A guilt feeling toward psychiatry and psychiatrists for having failed to respond to treatment. Eighth. And a whole cluster of behavior patterns that stem from the imprisonment itself, from lack of privacy, from being punished while innocent, from being denied any personal initiative. I could imagine that all these troubles together, or any combination of them, and probably many others still — even if they are camouflaged as direct opposites of the ones just described — form a medically viable syndrome: the “survivor syndrome.” One symptom of the “survivor syndrome” that I have observed in my peers is that many of them are tight-lipped about their troubles toward outsiders and even among themselves. One can easily rationalize that they do not want to be reminded of the past or, conversely, that they have come to terms with it. But I am not ready to concede this possibility. I think that the survivor is hesitant to blame society for standing by idly when the unspeakable happened to him — not because he is so considerate, but because he is afraid of meeting with resentment and anger. Toward their own kind, survivors may pretend perfect adjustment to normal society — not because they have overcome all handicaps, but because they cannot admit that they, too, failed to rise above the depravity of the concentration camp.

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There are a number of survivor organizations. Their programs deal mainly with matters of restitution, continuing the search for lost persons, bringing the criminals to justice, collecting records, publishing books and reports, staging memorial gatherings, and doing educational work. But there is no “Survivors Anonymous,” perhaps because the survivor feels safer bottling up his or her troubles than spilling them. Most survivors lead a seemingly normal life. But I believe that, in many cases, the appearance of normality is heavily paid for by a constant and merciless struggle under the surface, by an undue expenditure of nervous energy in order to keep up the appearance. Who knows how many of the survivors we see so well adjusted and functioning beautifully continue to push wagons and carry stones under the crack of the ss whip, with no mercy in sight anywhere? Those who do speak out may fare better toward themselves, though I am far from believing that symptoms magically disappear when one verbalizes them or guesses at their causes. I would rather say that, in some cases, the readiness, even the wish, if not the compulsion, to speak is in itself a symptom. Some consider it a moral duty to bear witness, letting the world know, doing their share in trying to prevent a recurrence of the Holocaust. But who is there to say whether this lofty moral stance, in turn, is not a verfolgungsbedingte compulsion that enables the survivor to conceal his actual status of being a “smoldering firebrand,” as he announces with properly restrained self-importance: “I alone have escaped to tell you!”

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Contending with Guilt In my notes written in Bergen-Belsen, I recorded an imaginary dialogue. Its setting is an Amsterdam street, my counterpart, another former camp inmate, called “x.” I am rushing toward x with outstretched arms and a happy smile on my face. x stops. He, too, raises his hand, but he does it to point a finger at me. i: Don’t you recognize me? We bunked together in Block 13!

x: I hate you! When you worked in Kitchen II, I came

to the back door, begging you to throw me a crust of bread. You wouldn’t.

i: But you know it was impossible. Nothing escaped that Scharführer. I would have endangered myself and the whole kitchen detail. The entire compound might have been punished.

x: You are a traitor. When you were foreman of the road repair squad, you cursed at me; just when the Scharführer was approaching, you even slapped me.

i: Because he was approaching. You know as well as I that every good foreman pretended to be strict. If one did not discipline his men, the Scharführer would. You had slowed down with your wheelbarrow, and he was coming toward you with no good intentions. Be honest: which would have been preferable, my treating you to a shouting and a slap or the Scharführer treating you to his rifle butt?

x: You have no human feelings. On that death march,

when I was about to collapse, one comrade let me put my arm around his neck, as was customary on those

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marches. But you pushed my other arm off your shoulder, so I couldn’t be dragged along. i: I couldn’t help you; I was exhausted unto death myself. Dragging you would have sapped my last ounce of strength; it would have meant my death.

x: I’ll never forgive you. You are alive and I am dead. For the record, let it be stated that, during my concentration camp days, I never worked in a kitchen, never was a foreman of any work detail, and did not participate in a death march. This fictitious dialogue from my camp notes, however, reveals to me that I definitely counted on surviving, and that I was preoccupied with guilt feelings even while still in the camp. Perhaps the two — intending to survive and feeling guilty — are directly related. There was nothing special about my determination to survive. I simply wanted to live, as did everybody else. Why then did I attach a feeling of guilt to that wish? Why was I sufficiently preoccupied with guilt to invent a dialogue with trumped-up charges against myself? Did I perhaps substitute those false accusations for real ones? True, I did not work in Kitchen II, but for a short period I had the good luck to work in the food magazine. Had I refused to help in a situation in which I could have? I do not remember, and I do not think so; but it is possible. I had never even come close to the other situations contrived for my Amsterdam dialogue. Had I harmed my coprisoners in any way? Again, I do not remember and I do not think so; but it is possible. I had been neither a saint nor a hero. When I had two potatoes, I did not give one of them to my neighbor. Further, in contrast to so many others, I benefited from the fact that I was young and could do heavy work, and that German was my native language, so I did not infuriate the ss by stammering or failing to obey an order instantly.

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But an act such as saving my skin at the expense of someone else’s, from which a justifiable guilt feeling could flow — such an act I did not commit. If I had, would not something like that imaginary dialogue — an accusation, a confrontation — have actually occurred in the forty years since? Yet nobody has ever pointed a finger at me. Are we then dealing with a general sense of guilt, a kind of obligation to feel guilty, an attitude with which we were brought up, an ethos of our culture? Doesn’t the society in which we live expect us to feel guilty in a great number of situations, and shouldn’t surviving a concentration camp certainly be one of them? Probably at least part of a survivor’s guilt feelings must be ascribed to such a general, unspecified syndrome for which we have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs. Still, it is hardly conceivable that a general guilt feeling alone accounts for the guilt some survivors endure — even forty years later — for not having perished with the rest. This sensation, incidentally, is neither constant nor disabling. It takes the form of a sudden, seemingly unprovoked, “stab in the heart,” a “pulling in the brain,” a dark cloud moving across the mind, a momentary dread, a selfreproach — emotions akin to those evoked, even many years later, by the loss of a dear one. I kept searching for the basis of a particular guilt. I sought a tangible omission or commission that would require punishment — if not in an actual judicial system, then in some imaginary court that adjudicates unethical behavior. I found within myself three specific cases of guilt associated with the Holocaust. No earthly court would even want to hear these cases, yet a prosecutor within me continues to bring charges. He does not desist, regardless of the passage of time. Somewhat to my surprise, I discovered that each of my three cases of guilt deals with “abandoning.”

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U first indictment: you abandoned your mother! In 1939, when my wife and I received our visas to immigrate to Holland, the size of my family was already greatly diminished. My father had been unable to cope with the loss of his business, the physical violence he had experienced, and the reduction to a pariah status in the country of which he and his forebears had been proud citizens. In the second year of the Hitler regime, he suffered a stroke and died. Following the 1935 enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, my mother, three older sisters, and I “worked at our emigration.” Jewish families in Germany would have preferred emigrating as units, but the chances for this were extremely small. Often the opportunity for one member of a family to leave Germany was greeted with joy by the rest — the destination involved or the uncertainty of reunification then became a secondary factor. As was typical of the pattern of emigration at the time, my sisters left before me because their chances came earlier. One sister’s husband, an active Zionist, could raise the £1000 which assured a “capitalist certificate” for entry into Palestine. The other two were young, healthy, and unmarried and thus fit the emigration category of “housemaids from abroad” then desired in several countries. By 1938 they had left to assume positions as housemaids in Holland and England, respectively. My mother and I clearly understood that, of the two of us, I was the only remaining candidate for emigration. My mother’s category — a widow, over fifty, in poor health, without means or close relatives abroad — was no category at all. When my wife and I received our visas for Holland, we knew full well that accepting them meant leaving my mother to face an ever-worsening condition all by herself. Nevertheless, we

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emigrated. At least Holland was close, enabling us to stay in regular contact by mail, and we still clung to the hope of being able to send for my mother. This hope was a constant in our correspondence, even when it became increasingly clear that it was based on an illusion. Since all mail was censored and only postcards allowed, we wrote in veiled terms. We learned that my mother had dissolved the household in our hometown and moved to a large city, where she lived in cramped quarters without adequate means. It was obvious that her move was not voluntary, and my heart grew heavy. My sister and I tried everything possible to obtain her admittance to Holland. We also explored methods for an illegal entry, but all came to naught. Still, in my postcards I tried to keep up the pretense, but my mother’s messages became ever gloomier. The German occupation of Holland in May of 1940 brought no change in the situation. Late in 1941 her correspondence began to contain hints about a “journey” and, after a gap of several months, I received a postcard from Lodz, Poland. It said that I was allowed to send her ten guilders once a month. A few times she acknowledged receipt, adding a stereotypic: “I am fine. I have enough to eat.” Then, one day, my own postcard came back with the rubberstamped notice: “Moved without leaving a forwarding address” From then on I was plagued by terrifying fantasies of what might have happened to her. These fantasies — often dwelling on her poor eyesight — only worsened after the war, as the details of the Final Solution became known. But I could not even find out whether my mother had died in the Lodz ghetto or was among the tens of thousands who had been deported to Chelmno or Auschwitz, and in what terrible manner she met her end. I only knew that neither her husband nor any of her four children were with her in that hour. Perhaps I could have been by her side had I refused the Dutch visa. It wouldn’t have been

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rational or sensible, but there were people who did stay behind with loved ones. Staying at her side as long as possible would at least have eliminated the notion of having abandoned my mother to a fate I still refuse to imagine.

U second indictment: you abandoned your faith! Many learned treatises have been written about the Holocaust’s impact upon the religious faith and practice of former camp inmates. For some the experience changed little or nothing, others became more religious or newly religious, while still others lost their faith partially or entirely. I am acquainted with many of the theological attempts to deal with the Holocaust, and I have confronted them in a very personal way: Were we punished for our sins (possibly the accumulated sins of generations)? Did God’s omnipotence stop at the gate that was inscribed “Work Makes Free”? Did God suffer for making us suffer, but had to do so nevertheless? Should I prefer the idea of a God with limited powers (whether or not self-imposed) to One who is indifferent to human suffering? Should I understand the verse “The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth He has given to the sons of men” (Psalm 115:16) as stating a clear dichotomy between God’s realm and man’s realm? Is there a place in monotheism for a more than allegorical Satan figure, a Devil who reigns supreme in domains which God has relinquished to him? Must I squarely confront the idea that there may be no God?

Of these, I have a clear opinion about the atheistic option alone: I reject it out of hand. Even after the Holocaust, a foundation of religious feeling remains within me, but I have been unable to build a firm structure of faith upon it.

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My attitude toward the mitzvot has emerged from the Holocaust as ambivalent as has my faith. I am far from “joyously serving my God” (Psalm 100:2) and from the precept of keeping His commandments out of love (Deuteronomy 6:5, 11). I know that I lost the joy and the love in the concentration camp but, since that same experience did not so effect others, I sometimes think that I am using it as an excuse for what is really a lack of commitment — and then I feel guilty. What did it mean in practical terms to preserve a religious life in the concentration camp? The moment Orthodox Jews set foot in the camp, they automatically had to relinquish most religious laws and observances. They were forced to work on the Sabbath and holidays, could not maintain the dietary laws, could not adhere to the fixed times for prayer, and were unable to obey most of the other mitzvot whose fulfillment had meant a way of life to them. Here the question of quantity enters. If the circumstances made it impossible for the pious person to keep ninety percent of a given mitzvah, did it make sense to cling to the ten percent that remained? For instance, should one keep the minutiae of the Sabbath laws after the hours of forced labor, and was there merit in removing the most obviously non-kosher ingredients from the daily soup? Should one perhaps fast on the Day of Atonement, and eat no bread during Passover? I knew people who went to these extremes in the midst of general starvation. They did so in spite of the liberalizing concept of pikuach nefesh built into Jewish law, the permission to disregard a commandment when its fulfillment endangers life. I remember that the Dutch rabbis who were with us in the Holländer compound decreed that we must eat the soup. Yet some did not abide by this order, among them the rabbis themselves. Were these people fanatics or martyrs? No, I think that they just could not eat the horsemeat in the

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soup, that they could not bring a bite over their lips on the Day of Atonement. The question arises whether a pious person’s inability to observe the vast majority of ritual laws would undermine his or her religious faith. Not really; nothing forced Orthodox Jews to give up their belief, and I am sure that the majority did not. They were troubled by having to suspend serving their Creator in the way He had ordained but were confident that He would not hold this against them and looked forward to the day when they could resume leading full religious lives. Finally, there were mitzvot which a religious Jew was able to perform even in the concentration camp. Thus a man could keep his head covered except when he had to take off his cap before an ss man; everyone could pronounce the proper blessing for prescribed occasions; and the nature of camp life insured that both men and women kept most of the sexual prohibitions. The daily morning prayer contains a listing of important mitzvot with which every observant Jew is familiar. Of these, couldn’t a camp inmate, for instance, “perform deeds of lovingkindness,” “visit the sick,” “pray with sincerity,” and “make peace between one man and his fellow”? Ethical mitzvot of this kind a camp inmate could perform, albeit to a limited degree. Even the mitzvah of “providing a funeral procession” could be, and was, observed in the beginning. In our compound at Bergen-Belsen, when the number of dead was still only a few a day, the corpses were taken on a cart to the crematorium. A custom soon developed that prisoners — who witnessed it and whose circumstances permitted — accompanied the deceased a few steps. Some followed the cart up to the gate in the barbed wire fence. In the morning prayer, the listing of mitzvot climaxes with “study of Torah.” This mitzvah could be, and was, observed in Bergen-Belsen. “Study of Torah” has always been understood in

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both a narrow and a wide sense: not only studying Scripture but also extending one’s study to rabbinic works, a whole literature that stretches from the Bible to the present. Realistically, all such study — together with cultural activities and what little relaxation there could be — had to take place at night after an exhausting day of work or on our free Sunday afternoon. And it did take place. Small groups pored over a Hebrew text or recited psalms; Zionists studied Hebrew, history, or the geography of Palestine; lectures were given; one could even hear Jewish songs. A number of images that show the bond between Jew and Torah in the concentration camp stand out vividly in my mind: five or six chalutzim (Palestine-pioneers) crouching in the little space left between their topmost bunks and the ceiling, deadtired, practicing conversational Hebrew; worship services held at night in the barracks, with people chanting the Sabbath or holiday liturgy while standing in the high and narrow canyons between the bunkbeds; a hastily gathered minyan (prayer quorum) near one of the bunks, saying Kaddish before a corpse was removed from the barracks; a small transport of Tunisian Jews being herded into our compound and, leading them, an old man carrying a Torah Scroll; a group of small boys, sitting in a circle on the ground surrounding a teacher who drills into them the conjugation of Hebrew verbs. These are images that simultaneously grip the heart and make one shake one’s head in disbelief. The most ludicrous image I remember is a circle dance, a horrah, performed by a group of girls one Sunday afternoon on the roll call field of our compound. But it was not just the dancing that seemed so totally out of place, it was the tune the youngsters sang to it, a melody popular in Zionist circles at the beginning of the Hitler period. The words are likewise from the daily morning prayer:

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“ashreinu, mah tov chelkeinu . . .” How greatly are we blessed, How goodly is our portion, How pleasant our lot, How beautiful our heritage!

Of course, it was not meant as a demonstration of unshakeable faith. The little girls just wanted to dance on a sunny afternoon. They knew the Hebrew song but not the meaning of its words. In the end some adult inmate put an end to this merrymaking. When the situation in Bergen-Belsen sank below the bearable, a shift from the religious to the secular must have occurred within me. Emotions and actions which I would formerly have called religious or religiously motivated now ranked in my mind as “Jewish-cultural,” “Jewish-national,” or “spiritual-ethical.” Perhaps the only religious manifestation was an occasional desperate prayer offered in a moment of dire need. Fear of God was replaced by fear of man. The verse from the Hallel, “God is with me, I shall not fear, what can man do unto me?” (Psalm 118:60), seemed to have lost all meaning. Why, man could and did do everything to me, everything thinkable and unthinkable. After the liberation I wrote a painful letter to my former rabbi, giving an account of the change that had taken place within me. I remember a certain argument contained in the rabbi’s reply: I had always known about the sufferings of the Jewish people throughout its history. Was there a difference, when Rabbi Akiva had been raked to death with iron combs some eighteen hundred years ago or when I myself had now witnessed inhuman suffering and cruelty? I had known about the destruction of the two Temples, about the annihilation of whole Jewish communities by the Crusaders, about the tortures inflicted by the Inquisition, about the bestial pogroms in Poland and Russia — I had known all this, yet remained a God-fearing, pious Jew. But now, when this cruel Jewish fate had touched my own person, it appeared

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different to me. Why? Should personal involvement play any role at all in our reaction to historical phenomena? The rabbi’s argument was impeccable. For me to say, “you are right in principle, but it is different when the evil befalls me,” seemed trite and undignified. And yet, that was exactly how it felt. The change in my religious feelings did not occur as the result of any single event or definite insight. Rather its beginnings were unnoticeable, its development gradual. In our continuous crucifixion, there was not any single outcry, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me!” (Psalm 22:2; Matthew 27:46). Instead there were many moments when I thought: My God, they cannot do this! You cannot let them do this! You cannot do this! But I felt guilty for harboring such thoughts. My dilemma was that I could not reconcile the God of the concentration camp with the comfortable God of justice, love, and mercy I had known in my youth in school, in stories, prayers, and conversations. In those days God was always der liebe Gott (“The good Lord”). But in the concentration camp, der liebe Gott and the Great Evil seemed to coexist. That troubled me no end and, again, I felt guilty for my thoughts; I guess I was a poor sort of rebel. More than once I thought of Goethe’s lines: You cause the wretched to be guilty. And then you leave him to his pain:

But it only made me bitter, and gave me no comfort. I remember a conversation in Bergen-Belsen about the Book of Job. The argument advanced was that, in the last chapter, God did right by Job: not only was his property restored, but he received seven new sons and three new daughters to compensate for an identical set of children that had been killed in the first chapter. I protested: what kind of reparation was this? The first ten children had been the innocent victims of a casual wager, and they

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remained dead. Nothing short of their resurrection would satisfy my sense of justice. Here we are back to the concept of an almighty God Who is limited by His own law, an idea which, to me, is as incomprehensible as it is reprehensive. My real trouble is my apparent incapacity for teshuvah, a term that is translated “repentance” but actually means “return,” a return to God and to that which is godly in man.

U third indictment: you abandoned your loyalty! The Hachsharah, a branch of the Zionist movement, got me out of Germany and into Holland. There I served as a teacher for the chaverim and chaverot, as the male and female members were called, respectively. I taught them a variety of subjects related to their future life in Palestine, including Zionist ideology. And I stood behind that which I taught. We were a tightly knit group buoyed by a common ideal. There was never any doubt that, should we survive the war, we would all proceed to Palestine. Indeed, some did not wait for the war to end, and the annals tell of daring attempts to defy all dangers and reach the Holy Land. The chaverim and chaverot who found themselves together in Bergen-Belsen continued the life of a spiritual elite, gaining the respect of the other inmates. Several from this group contrived to be assigned to the Gartenkommando, a labor squad that required long hours of hard work; they were actually continuing their preparation to be agricultural laborers in kibbutzim. Food, clothing, and medicines were shared to a degree, and the clinging to an ideal helped to stave off the dehumanizing effects of the concentration camp. Most of the chalutzim and chalutzot who lived to see the day of liberation experienced it as whole human beings.

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After the war, we rebuilt the Hachsharah in Holland from the remnants who had returned from concentration camps or had survived the war in hiding. The young people again worked with Dutch farmers and craftsmen and continued their Palestineoriented studies. The British White Paper — designed to limit and eventually end Jewish immigration to Palestine — remained in power even after the catastrophe of the Holocaust. Yet in the face of the danger and the improbability of actually reaching Palestine, there was no greater desire among a majority of the Hachsharah group than to participate in aliyah bet, the Hebrew code name for illegal immigration to Palestine. But when my wife and I were offered passage on one of those ramshackle, overcrowded ships, “there were great searchings of heart,” as there had been in the Tribe of Reuben (Judges 5:16). In fact, the two situations were not unalike. The Reubenites preferred to stay on the safe side of the Jordan rather than moving ahead together with their co-Israelites to wage war and conquer the Promised Land. Our Zionist ideals had not weakened, but we had. The dangers of aliyah bet, even more the privation, hard work, terrorism, and possibility of war that awaited us in Palestine, even the lack of comfort and privacy in a kibbutz — all these compared poorly with the fleshpots of America, as we visualized them. We begged off for the time. The same rabbi who had chided me for my lack of faith was working tirelessly to obtain American visas for us. Our second opportunity came in 1946. By then, our reasons were no longer vague notions. Clearly suffering the after-effects of the concentration camp, we were now convinced that we could endure neither the rigors of the journey nor the life in Palestine. After all we had gone through, we felt we deserved an easier life. We were aware that most of the others, who had suffered as much as we, were unshaken in their determination to go to

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Palestine — just as most Orthodox Jews had not forsaken their faith — yet we let the second chance for aliyah bet pass us by. With a heavy heart, I went to Amsterdam and told the secretary of the Hachsharah that we were expecting visas for the United States. The next day, I received a letter to the effect that my salary would be paid for one more month, but that I was to stop teaching immediately. I still cannot look at that letter (which, for some strange reason I saved) without palpitation. I have lived now with these guilt feelings for a very long time. They have always disturbed me and often made me miserable. When I meet a person with poor eyesight or Orthodox or Zionist acquaintances, I may experience a twinge of guilty conscience, shame, and sometimes even of self-contempt. It is as though I have built a prison of guilt for my soul, and often it seems to me that the sentence is for life. Theoretically, except for having left my mother to her fate, I could still reverse the other two guilt-generating decisions. Regarding religious faith, does the Talmud not say: “Return one day before your death!” (Avot 2:10)? And as to my Zionist loyalty — I could move to Israel now, living out my life there. But I feel paralyzed when contemplating these options. Just as I cannot now accompany my mother on her thorny way to the Lodz ghetto and beyond — it appears equally impossible to me to be a fully observant Jew or go on aliyah. No remedy seems to be in sight for what the Holocaust has done to my sense of duty, to my faith, and to my loyalty. In my worst moments, the words of Ecclesiastes reverberate in my ear: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight” (1:15). But there are other times, when these negative feelings recede, when I almost seem ready to leave them behind for good. Then I know that the door of my prison stands wide open, but each time I am held back at the threshold. To cross it I need special

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help. I feel that an act of God is required to initiate my teshuvah toward tranquility. It must be an act as incisive and as total for me as was the Holocaust experience. It must not be a tremendous event, however, not even a public one. There need be no participants but God and myself. What I yearn for is no less than a personal revelation of the “still small voice” kind, a private act of redemption. But while I wait for God to act, He may be waiting for me. If I could only understand what Isaiah meant by his “Come now, let us reason together” (1:18), if I only knew how man reasons with God, I might reconcile myself to the Prophet’s insight that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways not ours (see 55:8), such an acquiescence might be identical with what I have termed “revelation.” If I were able to mobilize both the strength and the humility to make this insight my own — freeing myself from the compulsion to explain the inexplicable — I would be able to cross the threshold of my prison unassisted. May this be soon — but not later than a day before my death.

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EPILOGUE Whoever sustains a single human soul is considered as one who sustains an entire world. — Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5

A Dutch Couple Yad Vashem (“Memory and Name”; Isaiah 56:5) is the name of “The Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority” established by the State of Israel on one of the Judean hills in the western outskirts of Jerusalem. On its grounds stands a large Holocaust Museum; no one leaves here quite the same as when he or she entered it. There are also the Holocaust Library and the Archives that contain the records of the slaughtered millions. Yet another vast building is called “The Hall of Memory.” The grounds are distinguished by sculptures and monuments and by the “Avenue of the Righteous of the Nations” that winds half the way around the hill. It was June of 1979, and it had taken us two years of preparation. But now we were gathered in the back of the Hall of Memory, which was lit only by a flickering Eternal Light and a narrow opening between the walls of unhewn boulders and the roof. Standing in the center of our row were Wim and Jennie, the Dutch couple, now in their sixties, who had hidden and taken care of our daughter Susie during the war. Susie stood at Wim’s right; next to her, Susie’s husband and their children, and next to them my wife and I. On the opposite side, to Jennie’s left, stood Lottie, another of Wim and Jennie’s Jewish girls, with her husband and two daughters, the oldest expecting a baby. Space was left for Thea and her family, who could not come. Thea lives in Los Angeles, Lottie in Bet Yitshak, and Susie in Michigan. Susie had been the baby of the expanded underground family; Lottie and Thea were then young teenagers.

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The Dutch couple were asked to press a lever. Immediately the gas flame shot up high and shed light on the floor of polished dark granite. Inlaid on the bare floor are the names of the concentration camps. Ashes, taken from each of the camps, are buried under the Eternal Light. If there was ever a moment that I felt the ephemeral assume tangible form, it was this moment. Like Jacob, I wanted to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16). It was the solemn setting which caused this feeling, but even more the presence of Wim and Jennie in this setting. I wondered for a moment whether any of these feelings had also occurred to Wim and Jennie. Did they realize that they were true heroes? But I knew the answer: they did not consider themselves as such. They probably appreciated the way the Jewish community was thanking them, not because they expected gratitude, but rather because they found the ceremony beautiful: genuine and without any pretense. Besides, they enjoyed being in the Land of Israel and, above all, they were happy about the reunion with two of their “underground daughters,” with meeting their “underground sons-in-law” and their “underground grandchildren.” They are matter-of-fact people, straightforward and down to earth; they have the gift of enjoying simple things, such as life — theirs and others! Not only is an awareness of heroism alien to them (“everyone else with our opportunities would have done the same”), but also our feeling of unending indebtedness is incomprehensible to them (“wouldn’t you have done the same for our children?”). A cantor intoned the El malei rachamim, “God full of Mercy.” Traditionally it is used as a memorial prayer for deceased individuals but, in our generation, its use has been expanded to include the Six Million. The melody is haunting, and the chant added to the solemnity of the gloomy hall with its flickering light. The Yad

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Vashem ceremony always attracts a large congregation, Israelis as well as tourists. They stood silently on an elevated walkway around the sunken floor with the inscriptions. “Thus shall it be done to the man and the woman whom the Jewish people delights to honor!” (Esther 6:9). Thus is being done to the “Righteous of the Nations,” Yad Vashem’s term for Gentiles who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust while endangering their own and that of their families (in scholarly terminology, “rescuers”). This honor is not bestowed lightly. After we applied to the “Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority” for a ceremony honoring our Dutch friends, it was up to us to provide proof and documentation to support our application. Wim and Jennie knew nothing of the plan; they would never have gone along with it. Only surreptitiously we finally learned from them the first names of the other girls, Thea and Lottie. After the war, the former had stayed in Belgium and the latter was supposed to live somewhere in Israel. This was all we had to go by for our detective work to find the two. With them to substantiate our claim, we received, at least, a file number at Yad Vashem. I mention this especially because I remember how shocked we were to see that the number was in the nine hundreds. This means that, by 1978, fewer than a thousand “Righteous Gentiles” had been identified in all of Europe. The strains of the El malei rachamim reverberated throughout the sanctuary. “Heroes, patriots, saints.” Had my lips formed any of these words? Wim and Jennie would not have known what I was talking about. Did they have an inkling that their deed had brought mankind a step closer to redemption? Did not some kind of radiance rest on their faces? Wrong — they only listened intensely to the cantor’s sonorous baritone voice . . .

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Spring 1942. We had lived for nearly two years under German occupation in Holland. The anti-Jewish measures had first been slow in coming, but now we feared that eventually every last Jew would be deported for “resettlement in the East,” a euphemism which we then understood to mean labor camps. Until that time only Jewish men had been taken away. They were summoned to the police, picked up in their homes or snatched from the street. Many Dutch officials were favorably inclined toward the Jews, and through them we learned about plans being readied for family transports. We were greatly worried because of our two little daughters, Hannah, two years old, and Susie, the baby. How could they survive the rigors of a labor camp? Some of our Jewish friends had entrusted their children to Gentiles. Also, many adults had already gone underground, which, in most cases, meant that they were hiding out with non-Jews. We had practically no contact with Dutch Gentiles, but Dutch Jewish friends tried hard to find a family among their Christian acquaintances willing to take our girls. They did not know Wim and Jennie personally (nor did they ever meet them, for they perished in Bergen-Belsen), but they knew their aunt, and this lady was certain the two would be willing to help Jews in trouble. We heard that they lived in Eindhoven, where Wim was an engineer with the Phillips Corporation. They had three children, ranging from two to six years of age. I do not remember how the first contact was made, and I never learned how Wim and Jennie had first reacted to the proposal: hesitantly, enthusiastically, or matter-of-factly — probably the latter. As to us — once we had found a refuge for our little ones — the separation from them seemed too harsh. So we decided that our new benefactors should first take one, Susie, then nine months old. We rationalized that, in case we were apprehended without a warning, the two-year-old would stand a better chance

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of survival than a baby in diapers. But should we learn in time about an impending action, a coded message to come and get Hannele would be sent to Wim and Jennie. They agreed to this plan transmitted by our intermediaries and, in May of 1942, Jennie came to Apeldoorn to pick up Susie. I must mention here that, in many hiding arrangements, financing played a significant role, especially since illegal house guests had no ration cards, and either black-market food or forged ration cards had to be procured at great expense. Wealthy Jews did not mind paying large sums for the privilege of living underground, and a minority of Dutchmen hid Jews for financial gain — though never really exclusively so, for no amount of money could make up for the terrible risk connected with this kind of “sabotage.” From the very beginning, Jennie did not allow us even to mention money. They were doing all right, thank God, and where five were eating, seven could eat. In any case, we could talk about these things after the war. She gave us her promise that, should we not return from the war, the children were to be sent to my sister in Palestine. We, in turn, pledged that we would never make an attempt to contact the children, let alone visit them, as long as we were still free. We also offered to destroy all pictures, birth certificates, and any written reference to Susie and Hannele, but Jennie thought that this was going too far. We refrained from giving a solemn assurance to keep our daughters’ whereabouts secret, regardless of the consequences, and no such declaration was requested of us. Jennie did not want any of Susie’s clothes or toys; they might be conspicuous, and she had enough from her own children. She took Susie and left the neighbor’s house where we had arranged to meet. During the summer a lull occurred in the cat-and-mouse game the Germans played with their victims in those first years of the

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occupation in Holland. For some time now, there had been no roundups and, more important for us, I had received a new Schein. At that time, Scheine (“papers”) and certain rubber stamps on your identity card literally meant new leases on life, i.e., temporary deferment of deportation to the East. The deportations went together with the confiscation of property and, since not all Jews reported their bank accounts, securities, and valuables, the Nazis outsmarted them by granting respites from deportation to individuals in the form of papers or rubber stamps on their identity card, which had to be paid for with exorbitant sums. Through this kind of “leniency,” the Germans got all the Jewish property and eventually got all the Jews anyway. Under the same policy, the Germans postponed the deportation of certain groups they could still exploit, among them members and employees of the Judenrat, diamond polishers, and workers in certain key industries and in agriculture. I fell into the last category because I belonged to the Hachsharah, which involved work as a gardener in addition to teaching Hebrew. The latter took place in the evenings and on weekends. Since the Hachsharah groups were widely dispersed, traveling was a necessity. I now owned three Scheine: a bicycle permit, another one for using the railroad, and a third extending my evening curfew. They gave me exactly as much feeling of security as the Germans wanted Jews like me to have at that stage of their cruel game. Sure enough, we asked to have Susie back, at least until the situation became critically dangerous. Our courageous and generous friends agreed, and for a few deceptive months our family was reunited. As soon as Susie returned, we planned to have a professional photograph taken of the two sisters together. This was important to us for several reasons: we wanted the double portrait for each one of them to have, in case they became separated or only

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Clandestine photograph, Hannele and Susie Weinberg (Netherlands, Spring 1942). Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio at americanjewisharchives.org.

Epilogue

one of them survived; then, of course, we wanted a print each for ourselves to carry with us into exile. However, as a Jew, one could not simply go to a studio to have a picture taken. Jews were allowed to shop for basic necessities only, and only at certain times of the day. A photographic studio was certainly off limits. To make things even more complicated, we had to wear the Yellow Star sewn to a coat or dress at all times outside the house, and you could not enter the studio marked as a Jew. But for a Jew to be caught without the star was dangerous in the extreme. Still, we decided that the risk had to be taken — the portrait was worth that much to us. Despite the expected deportation of entire families, women had not yet been arrested in the streets; therefore my wife took the dangerous mission upon herself. She fixed one of our Yellow Stars with the Dutch word Jood on it in such a way that it looked sewn to her dress while in reality it was attached with safety pins. In a back alley, she unfastened the badge and came to the photographer as an “Aryan.” We have never regretted our decision to take that chance. The picture survived the war, and it is the only good photograph we have of our oldest, Hannah. In October of 1942, Hannele became sick. The modern medicines which she needed were not available and, on November 9, she died. Having Susie with us was a great consolation. Then the decree came that, by January 1, 1943, all Jews who had remained in the provinces were to move to Amsterdam and live there in one of three ghetto areas. Once all Jews were concentrated in those ghettos, the latter were systematically emptied. A few blocks at a time were surrounded, and each house, each apartment, beginning with the top floor, was emptied of inhabitants. Young and old, healthy and sick were loaded on waiting trucks. You could never know which block was next.

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By April it was no longer responsible to postpone the unavoidable. The signal was sent. This time, Jennie could not retrieve Susie herself. We were in the ghetto, and even though ours could not compare in harshness to the ghettos in the East, any scheme for her “underground mother” to pick up Susie was much too risky. Help came from my cousin Richard and his wife Gretel. Theirs was a “mixed marriage,” and they still enjoyed certain privileges. Richard had to work in a Dutch labor camp but could go home in the evenings, and he was allowed to live outside the ghetto. One day Gretel visited us. My wife took Susie out in her stroller. The women walked together behind it. When they were far enough from the house, they changed places, and Gretel pushed the stroller. She left the ghetto with Susie for her own home. My wife had to restrain herself from waving or even looking back. I had followed the scene from behind the curtains of our third story apartment until the group turned a corner. It was Gretel, my cousin’s “Aryan” wife, who took Susie on the train to her underground place in Eindhoven . . . In the fall of that year, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, the trucks lined up for us. I showed my Scheine to the ss man, who tore them up with relish. My deferment had expired. Like all those taken from their homes, we were shipped to the Dutch concentration camp of Westerbork, from which a long train departed every Tuesday to the East. Slowly names of those Eastern destinations became known: Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Sobibor. They were then only names, but they filled us with dread. Comparatively late the name of Bergen-Belsen was added to the list of destinations.

U The cantor had finished his chant. The onlookers began to stream out from the Hall of Memory to secure good places at the second

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site of the ceremony. Our group, too, led by the government official, made its way outside, at first blinded by the bright sun. We entered the “Avenue of the Righteous,” planted on both sides with carob trees. For the first few hundred feet, the trees were already grown and provided welcome shade. Next to each tree a plaque was set in the ground, bearing the name of a “Righteous Gentile” and his country of origin. We recognized several names from the Dutch resistance. As we progressed, the trees became younger and smaller and, finally, we arrived at a sun-drenched plot where the ground was prepared, and a small sapling as well as digging tools and a watering can lay waiting for the honorees. The spot was already surrounded by tourists, friends, and relatives, as well as reporters. Cameras clicked incessantly. The actual planting took no more than a few minutes, but what an event it was! How people shouted congratulations; how they laughed and cried; how Jews expressed their gratitude to the Righteous of the Nations! Jenny held the sapling in the center of the hole, Wim shoveled soil on it and around it. Both patted the ground first with their hands, then packed it firm with their feet. Wim took the watering-can and began to pour. When the can became lighter, Jennie completed the job. They were so absorbed in the mechanics of planting a tree that I wondered whether they had time to consider the symbolism of what they were doing. Were they at all aware of the importance with which Jewish tradition has surrounded tree-planting, especially planting a tree in the Land of Israel? In the eye of the beholder, they seemed interested only in planting the sapling expertly, bringing to bear the loving care and know-how so many Dutch have when it comes to gardening. After the little tree was firmly embedded, Jennie took the spade and drew a ditch around it while Wim asked for more water.

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Jennie and Wim van Heeckeren planting a tree at Yad Vashem (June 1979). Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio at americanjewisharchives.org.

Epilogue

During the planting the couple had seemed oblivious to the picture-taking all around them, but afterwards they willingly posed with everyone who wanted to be photographed with them, their tree, and their plaque. They themselves were interested in having their picture taken with their extended underground families, forming a semi-circle around the carob sapling. The third and last part of the Yad Vashem observance was the reading and the presentation of the certificate of honor and the medal of honor which the State of Israel has struck for the “Righteous of the Nations.” This ceremony took place in a special room in one of the Yad Vashem buildings to which only invited guests were admitted. The Government representative, who happened to be of Dutch extraction, gave a speech in English, containing a full account of all Wim and Jennie had done in their rescue work. It was clearly based on independent Yad Vashem research, containing many a fact of which we had been ignorant. Thus it turned out that Lottie’s husband, Perets, too, had temporarily stayed with them in Eindhoven on his way to Portugal, from where he and a group of others reached Palestine at the height of the war. Wim and Jennie had been a regular link in the underground railroad, run by a branch of the Dutch resistance, which spirited Jews out of the Netherlands, through Belgium and France to neutral Switzerland or Portugal. For the first time, we learned about members of our Hachsharah group who had actually operated that railroad, who had made that run from stop to stop several times, until they got caught by the Gestapo. Wim was asked whether he wanted to say a few words. To our surprise he did. Likewise speaking English, he remembered what a joy it had been to have Susie and Lottie and Thea as members of their family, and having been able to give shelter to those secret transports. He stressed that their underground railroad station was a purely geographical accident, since Eindhoven was close

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to the Belgian border. Above all, the real merit was Jennie’s, as it was she who took the extra work upon herself in addition to extending loving care. Wim and Jennie put their heads together as they studied the large, beautifully engraved medal for a long time, while the company was silent. Then they passed it around. Inscribed on it was an adapted quotation from the Talmud: Whoever sustains a single human soul is considered as one who sustains an entire world.*

But Wim and Jennie had saved more than one soul . . .

U In Bergen-Belsen, my wife and I were housed in different barracks in the same compound. Both our barracks were close to the Lagerstrasse, the long straight road passing the gates of the different compounds. Often both of us watched incoming transports shuffling along on the Lagerstrasse. There were transports of many kinds: Jews recently rounded up in Hungary, Italy, or Libya; transfers from other camps — people worn to shadows of their former selves — and children transports. These were the worst of all. The oldest children were twelve or thirteen, the youngest, babies, carried by older ones. They came from occupied countries, where they had been flushed out of their hiding places and assembled in prisons till there were enough of them to make up a transport. The Gentiles who had given them shelter were sent to other camps or executed at home; those who had betrayed them were rewarded. My wife and I strained our eyes, scanning the face of each child of Susie’s approximate age, unspeakably relieved when * Sanhedrin 4:5

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the pitiful procession was over and our daughter had not been among the children (even though there really was no saying whether we would have recognized her). We each had a small photograph of Susie, a print made from the double portrait taken in Apeldoorn. We had soon abandoned as much too dangerous the idea of taking with us the picture of both of them together. But how did we dare have in our possession in the concentration camp the picture of a child hidden underground? By means of a stratagem. In the same envelope that held the photo, we kept, folded up, Hannah’s death certificate, one of us the original, the other a certified copy. If necessary, we would say that the picture was that of our deceased daughter. The trick seemed foolproof, both for us and for Susie’s underground parents. The original double portrait, as well as Susie’s birth certificate, were hidden in Holland, together with other pictures and documents. It was good to have Susie’s picture, but every furtive glance at it only enhanced our fear for her. We knew that she was not literally hidden away (as many underground children and adults were), but that she lived openly in the midst of her foster family. In this respect, too, a subterfuge had been devised. (How puny were our little tricks compared to the crushing power of the Nazi machine — yet some of them worked!) We had contrived that Susie was to be declared an orphaned child from bombedout Rotterdam. More than a few of these orphans indeed lived with foster families in different parts of Holland. But would the excuse hold in Susie’s case? What we imagined with the greatest trepidation was the sight of Susie’s dark curly head of hair among the blond, straight-haired children of our friends. Any neighbor or passerby could become suspicious, and the other children might innocently give away the awesome secret. Only one thing was in her favor: when we separated from her, Susie

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could not yet talk, so she would not betray herself. The anxiety over Susie’s safety was to stay with us for two-and-a-half years. After Wim’s speech, the official part of the Yad Vashem ceremony ended. Together we undertook the walk through the Holocaust Museum, which lasts about two hours. I do not think that we exchanged a single word. But, again, I projected my thoughts onto our Dutch friends: even if they refused to acknowledge their personal heroism, now they had to realize the fate from which they had rescued Susie and Lottie and Thea and an unknown number of others. At the exit, few people had dry faces, and those were grim. Someone said in a voice, hoarse from the long silence: ‘”And where was God?” I remember well that I was on the point of turning around, retorting wryly: “God was where He always is — omnipresent!” But I lowered my head and walked on. The Yad Vashem event took place on a Friday. It had been decided that Lottie would take Wim and Jennie, together with Susie and her family, to spend the Sabbath on their farm in Bet Yitshak. They returned in high spirits early Sunday morning, in time to set out with us on the week-long tour through the length and breadth of Israel. Actually, that week on the bus offered the first opportunity since our reunion with Susie, thirty-four years earlier, to talk leisurely and in detail about Susie’s stay with Wim and Jennie. My wife and I — but more important, Susie, her husband, and their children — learned many particulars. Susie herself began to remember things, persons, and events she had forgotten or never remembered in the first place. Wim and Jennie told anecdotes in a light vein. Jennie related that Susie provided her own assumed name as a bombed-out orphan from Rotterdam. One morning in her crib she announced: “Susie bakker,” baby pronunciation for Dutch wakker, “awake.” And so her new papers were made out for Susie Bakker (“Baker”). Wim once rode on a bus, holding

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Susie on his lap. A German soldier sat down next to them and could not stop admiring and stroking Susie’s dark curls. Susie, in turn, was fascinated by the soldier’s brass buttons and insignia. It was love at first sight between the two — Wim could do nothing but sweat it out. However, Wim and Jennie did not dodge more serious subjects. Once, when word went out that a Gestapo search for hidden Jews was imminent (this was before Lottie and Thea had arrived), Jennie stayed alone with their own children, while Wim went into hiding with Susie until the danger passed. What affected us most in Jennie’s musings was her returning again and again to Hannele’s death. All these years the thought had been haunting her: what if both our daughters had been with them, and Hannele had died while under her care — she would never have stopped feeling guilty for her death. We also talked about the Yad Vashem Museum, especially with regard to the persecution in Holland. Wim and Jennie had known some of the hostages that had been shot and their corpses flung into the street as a warning to others. Did they realize that they might have shared that fate if Susie had been found with them? And what would then have happened to their own children? The traveling company on the bus was the usual mixture of tourists. It was inevitable that our friends’ special status was soon known to all, and I must say that this mixed multitude — almost exclusively Jews — admired and honored them; they were immensely popular. Wim and Jennie, though, appeared immune to this outpouring of collective Jewish gratitude; they did not seem to hear anything that cast them into the role of heroes. On the other hand, they were soon acquainted with most of the other travelers, and they showed deep and genuine interest in their lives and stories. Toward us they behaved like in-laws who are also good friends; toward Susie, like she was a daughter who

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had been away from home for some time; toward Barrie, like their son-in-law; and toward the children, like they were their own grandchildren. Our conversations were not limited to reminiscing. Wim and Jennie had developed a strong love for the Land of Israel (their weekend stay in Bet Yitshak had been pivotal in this regard). But this did not mean that they blindly admired everything they saw and, even less, that they accepted uncritically all that our super-patriotic tour guide told us concerning the history, culture, progress, and politics of the country. They were especially concerned about the status of the Arabs in Israel and, with regard to what in Israel was then called the administered areas, they held opinions decidedly unpopular with the rest of the traveling company. But above everything else, they were extremely eager to learn. They had prepared themselves well, taking out books on Israel from the library; now they wanted to know more about Zionist history, the Jewish religion, the Hebrew language and literature, about music and art, and about just living in the country. My wife and I mobilized all our resources explaining Israel to them, and I hope we did an honest job. The tour ended in Tel Aviv, and we spent the last day with my sister’s family in Kfar Shmaryahu, half an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv. In this beautiful village — which they had helped to found — my sister Anneliese and her husband Hans had been living since 1935. After a lifetime of hard work, much want, and ever-recurring episodes of acute danger, they are now honored “old settlers,” surrounded by children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. Wim and Jennie felt at home in Kfar Shmaryahu as they had in Bet Yitshak. On my sister’s patio, shaded by huge ficus trees which they had planted as little saplings, we had the liveliest conversations. But one matter was never put into words, even though I am sure that we all thought of it: that this was the

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sister and this the village where Susie would have been sent had we not returned from the war . . .

U In fact, it took us more than two months after the end of the war until we finally returned to Holland. The great postwar turbulence washed us behind the Iron Curtain, and the Russians held us in quarantine because of a typhus epidemic. During all that time, we could not learn whether our Susie was alive. Even after we eventually crossed the border into Holland, we had no chance to contact Eindhoven and ask the question of questions. A great shock was in store for us. All people who spoke Dutch with a German accent — those who, like ourselves, had fled to Holland in the Nazi years — were arrested as Germans. Men were separated from women, and we found ourselves imprisoned again without even knowing each other’s whereabouts. Our Dutch comrades went to work for us as soon as they got back home, but it took the authorities a week to sort out the facts and to release us. As we were reunited and about to be taken home, my wife brandished a note she had received in her camp from the Jewish repatriation aid society containing the message, “Susie is alive and well.” Yet there was still a matter that caused us much agonizing. An Amsterdam address for Susie was added to the message, but it was not that of Richard and Gretel. And why was she no longer in Eindhoven? Had they all perished, and was Susie perhaps in an orphanage? Once back in Apeldoorn, we still could not telephone or send a telegram, much less travel to Amsterdam. Wires and railroad beds and bridges for the many canals and river arms were still being repaired. But the aid societies that had sprung up in every

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town managed to communicate with each other and, within a few days, we were able to piece together the puzzle of Susie’s address. While the Russians had kept us under quarantine, a list of our group of concentration camp survivors had reached the International Red Cross. The names were forwarded to the former prisoners’ respective countries of origin. Wim and Jennie, in turn, had reported Susie’s presence with them to the central refugee committee in Amsterdam directly after the liberation. They were told that our names appeared on that list of survivors. Immediately they went into calm and levelheaded action. (How could they know that after compilation of the list some two hundred people on it had still died of the consequences of hunger and disease?) They reasoned that a transition period between one set of parents and the other would be best for Susie, especially since her “other parents” were Jewish, which now meant so much more than just a difference in religion. So they decided to let Susie stay till our return with Richard and Gretel, a half-Jewish, half-Christian household. They managed the difficult transport through the recent battleground that was Holland, as they had managed everything else — just because they refused to yield to the problems involved. My cousins took Susie willingly. They had moved to a better apartment as soon as Richard’s status as a forced laborer had ended. It took three more weeks until we were able to contract for a truck ride to Amsterdam. We found the new address. Outside, little children were playing. Was Susie among them? We scrutinized the children. One little girl seemed a likely candidate, but we could not be sure and went inside. After a wordless embrace, our cousins called up Susie from the street. She was indeed the curly-haired, smiling four-year-old whom we had seen before. How often had we imagined this moment, had rehearsed in our minds all its details. But before we could do or say anything, Susie

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took charge of the situation. More curiously than solemnly she asked: “Is this mevrouw my mother, and that mynheer my father?” “Yes, dear.” Thereupon she climbed on my wife’s lap, threw her arms around her neck, kissed her on the mouth, and repeated the procedure with me. Then she asked permission to go downstairs again and join her friends in play. That was all as far as Susie was concerned, that was absolutely all! Could she have absorbed by osmosis some of Wim and Jennie’s matter-of-factness? Since it had been impossible for Wim and Jennie to come to Amsterdam themselves, Jennie had written a six-page letter, which was delivered to us by our cousins, together with ample clothing and toys for Susie, including her recent birthday presents. We still have this letter, and it is one of our precious possessions. We call it in German our Gebrauchsanweisung for Susie, “directions for use.” Jennie had put down in it every bit of information concerning Susie’s two-and-a-half years with them, everything about her we should know, both physical and psychological. The letter was so compact, yet so explicit that, on its strength, we could almost take up life with Susie as though none of us had ever left Apeldoorn. Unfortunately, we could not meet with Wim and Jennie even afterwards: too many bridges were still missing over the Lower Rhine, the Waal and the Maas. This was the more regrettable as they were about to leave for the United States for good. They loved Holland, but they did not care to live in Europe anymore. We knew the day of their departure and sent our farewell wishes. After they had left, we received a letter from Wim’s sister. It contained a money order and a short note: Wim and Jennie had asked her to send us the money, which might come in handy, as we had to rebuild our lives from scratch. That money belonged to us. How so? Since Susie had lived in their household “legally,”

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they had received a tax deduction for her. Actually, it was money Susie herself had earned . . . I am happy to report that Wim and Jennie are alive and have retired to northern Florida. From time to time, Jennie buys one of those unlimited-travel bus tickets (“It’s such a bargain!”) and visits in one sweeping itinerary those of their children who live in this country. (In addition to the three they had when they took Susie, a fourth was born during the war and three more, a “second generation,” after the war.) In these motherly visits, Jennie includes Susie in Michigan and now also Thea in California as a matter of course. Since I have so often tried in this narrative to project my own ruminations into the minds of our Dutch friends, I shall do so one more time. The one Holocaust topic I have discussed most with my wife, my students, my audiences, my readers is the topic of theodicy. This question is always present, even if I do not identify it by name. I wonder whether Wim and Jennie ever considered their own role in God’s inscrutable scheme? In me their lives evoke a strong association with the biblical story of Elijah on Mount Horeb: And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; and after the fire a still small voice.*

It does not say where God was during the wind, the earthquake, and the fire; nor does it say explicitly that God was in the still small voice. I do not presume to know or even to speculate where God was when the gas filled the chambers in Auschwitz, when the * I Kings 19:11–12

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machine-gun fire reverberated from the ledge of Babi Yar, when the bodies of live babies hit the blaze of the fire pits — but I like to think that He was in the still, matter-of-fact act of deliverance performed by our Dutch couple.

256

Glossary of Hebrew, German, and Yiddish Terms Alenu. Prayer proclaiming God’s kingdom and asking for peace and unity among all men. It is recited at the end of each of the three daily services. aliyah. Immigration to Palestine. aliyah bet. Illegal immigration to Palestine. anständig. Decent. aron hakodesh. Holy Ark. Ornamental ark in the synagogue containing the Torah scrolls. Av. Name of a Jewish month. See Tishah Beav. Bar/Bat Mitzvah. A ceremony during which a Jewish child, upon reaching the age of thirteen, is “called up to the Torah” for the first time. He or she recites the blessings, reads from the Torah, and leads other parts of the service. Barechu. “Praise ye!” Call to Prayer. Behaalotecha. Name of one of the weekly Torah portions. The entire Torah, containing the Five Books of Moses, is read in the course of a year. For this purpose it is divided into weekly portions, which are named after one of its first words. The name is also applied to the Sabbath of the reading. bimah. Platform in the synagogue on which the Torah is read and from which the sermon is preached. Bürgermeister. Mayor. Capo. Foreman/trustee, himself a prisoner, selected on grounds of cruelty and often feared more than ss guards. chalutzim (fem. chalutzot). “Palestine pioneers,” young people on Hachsharah. chaverim (fem. chaverot). Members of a chalutz group (see chalutzim). Chevrah Kadisha. Religious burial society.

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Glossary

chuppah. Bridal canopy. Dayeinu. “It would have been enough for us.” Refrain and name of a song at the Passover seder, praising God for his many miraculous deeds between the Exodus from Egypt and the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. Einsatzgruppen. Mobile ss killing units. Ermächtigungsgesetz. “Law of Empowering” which allowed the Nazi oligarchy to suspend the Constitution and govern by decree; passed on March 24, 1933. fleishig. Meat dishes. According to dietary law, all food derived from meat must be strictly separated from dairy dishes (see milchig). This separation extends to pots, pans, china, silver, linen, etc. used with meat dishes. gemütlich. Comfortable, pleasant. golel. The person honored with wrapping and dressing the Torah after the reading. Gymnasium. See höhere Schule. Hachsharah. Lit. “preparation.” A pre-state-of-Israel organization in several countries that prepared young Jews for pioneering in Palestine. They were taught agriculture and various crafts. After work they studied the geography and sociology of Palestine as well as Hebrew and Jewish History. Hallel. Psalms 113–118, which together form a part of the liturgy recited on joyous festivals. höhere Schule. In Germany, roughly comparable to junior high school plus high school, comprising grades 5–13. Students of the höhere Schule left the Volksschule (grades 1–8) after the fourth grade. The main types were Gymnasium and Oberrealschule, the former stressing classical studies, the latter science and modern languages. Israelitisches Familienblatt. A Jewish weekly subscribed to by many Jews in Germany. Jood. Dutch for “Jew.” Judenrat (pl. Judenräte). Council formed of prominent Jews appointed by the Nazis, nationally or locally. The council’s task was to carry out the Nazi decrees. jüdischer Lehrer. Lit. “Jewish teacher,” the religious teacher in small German congregations who also chanted the services, read from 258

Glossary

the Torah, preached, conducted marriages and funerals. He thus combined the offices of a teacher with those of a cantor and rabbi. Kaddish. Doxology. Prayer containing praise of God’s name, hope for the coming of His kingdom, for life and for peace. The Kaddish prayer is recited in memory of the dead. Kaiserreich. Germany’s political form of government through World War I under the Kaisers. kashrut. Observance of Jewish dietary laws. Kedushah. The solemn central part of the Shemoneh Esrei (“Holy, holy, holy . . .”). Kehillah Kedoshah. Holy Congregation: designation preceding the individual name of a congregation. kibbutz. Collective agricultural settlement in Palestine/Israel. Kiddush. Benediction over wine for Sabbath and Holidays. kippur. Atonement. See Yom Kippur. kugel. Jewish Sabbath dish. In Germany, a kind of plum pudding different from the Eastern European kuggel. Kultusbeamter. Official employed by a congregation and in charge of its religious aspects. Lehrer. Teacher. See jüdischer Lehrer. lokshen. A sweet noodle pudding in German Jewish cuisine. lulav. Palm branch. One of the “four species” used in the celebration of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. See Leviticus 23:40. magbiah. The person honored with lifting the Torah from the lectern after the reading and holding it high, displaying the written side to the congregation. Magen David Adom. “Red Star of David.” Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. mantle. Torah cover, usually of richly embroidered velvet. matsevah (pl. matsevot). Pillar, monument, tombstone. matze. Matzah, or unleavened bread for the holiday of Passover. megilah (pl. megilot). Parchment scroll containing the Book of Esther. It is read on the holiday of Purim. mezuzah (pl. mezuzot). Capsule fastened to the doorpost containing

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a small scroll with verses from the Torah. See Deuteronomy 6:9. milchig. Dairy dishes. According to dietary law, dairy food and utensils used in its preparation and serving are strictly separated from meat dishes (see fleishig). minyan. Quorum of ten people (in Orthodox congregations ten males) required for certain prayers. mishebeirach. Personal blessing bestowed upon someone called up to the Torah as well as upon others designated by him (connected to a pledge of giving charity). Mishnayot. A plural form of Mishnah indicating its individual units. It also denotes a course in Mishnah, the basic code of Jewish law. mitzvah (pl. mitzvot). Religious commandment, ethical and merciful deed, ritual. mohel. Performer of circumcision. Oberrealschule. See höhere Schule. Oneg Shabbat. “Sabbath Joy,” a program of singing, discussion, cultural presentations, etc., usually accompanied by refreshments, after the regular Sabbath services. parnes. President of a Jewish congregation. pastert. A sweet pie crust filled with apples and raisins in GermanJewish cuisine. pikuach nefesh. Suspension of religious laws in the presence of danger to life. pinkas. Memorial book containing the names of the martyrs of a congregation. piyut (pl. piyutim). Poetical prayers inserted in the regular worshlp service. Rashi. Hebrew commentary to Bible and Talmud, named after its eleventh-century author. Reichsvertretung. Nazi-created umbrella organization of all Jewish institutions in Germany. resho’im. See rosche. rishes. Antisemitism. roshe (pl. resho’im). Antisemite. Scharführer. ss rank of most camp guards.

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Seelsorger. Somewhat pretentious term for a congregational official in charge of pastoral work. Sefer Torah (pl. Sifrei Torah). Torah scroll containing the Five Books of Moses, written by hand on parchment. selichah. Forgiveness. selichot. Prayers for forgiveness in the High Holy Day services. shabbeskugel. See kugel. shalet. Sabbath dish made of fat and flour simmered overnight in bean soup. See the Eastern European tsholent. Shavuot. Feast of Weeks (seven weeks after Passover) celebrating the giving of the Commandments at Mount Sinai, as well as the offering of the First Fruits. Shemoneh Esrei. Prayer of Eighteen Benedictions, central prayer of worship services. shochet. Ritual slaughterer. shofar (pl. shofarot). Ram’s horn which is blown on the High Holy Days. sofer. Scribe for Torah scrolls, tefilin, and mezuzot. Stürmer. Name of an inflammatory and slanderous antisemitic hate and pornography newspaper during the Nazi period. talit. Prayer shawl with fringes at its four corners. See Numbers 15:38. tefilin. Phylacteries. Black quadrangular capsules fastened with leather straps to arm and head during the weekday morning prayers. The capsules contain Torah verses written on parchment. See Deuteronomy 6:8. teshuvah. Repentence, return in the religious meaning. Tishah Be’av. Ninth of the month of Av. Day of mourning and fasting in memory of the destruction of both the First and the Second Temple. Uvechein. “And therefore.” Recurring first word of several paragraphs in the main prayer of the High Holy Days. ve’imru amen. “And say ye: Amen.” From the Kaddish prayer. verfolgungsbedingt. “Due to persecution.” In connection with damage claims, a survivor has to prove that a given damage was caused by Nazi persecution.

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Glossary

Verlag. Publishing house. versöhnungsgesinnt. Favoring reconciliation. wimpel. Inscribed and decorated long strip of linen with which the two halves of the Torah scroll are bound together. Yavneh. When Jerusalem was destroyed, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai founded a new House of Study and Sanhedrin in the town of Yavneh. yidishe mame. Jewish mother as a stereotype. Yom Kippur. Day of Atonement. Fast day and highest Jewish Holy Day. zachor. “Remember!” See Deuteronomy 25:17.

262

Index Abraham, 195 Akiva, Rabbi, 226

Auschwitz, xxv, 91, 93–94, 98, 221, 243; and theology, 189, 255; as symbol of social and psychological turning point, 195, 213

Albert Einstein Gymnasium, 48–49, 175

Austria, 181, 184–185, 187, 193

aliyah. See immigration to Palestine, legal

Avenue of the Righteous of the Nations, 235, 244. See also Yad Vashem

Adenauer, Konrad, 210

aliyah bet. See immigration to Palestine, illegal

Avot 2:10, 230

All Quiet on the Western Front, 97

Bava Qamma 79b, 59

Allies, iii, 113–15, 130

Babi Yar, 256

Amalek, 166

barracks, iii, 87–88, 96–97, 105, 108, 114– 15, 117, 134, 195, 225, 247

America, 5–6, 98–99; immigration to, 33, 65, 195, 197, 206, 229; fails to act on behalf of Jews, 32, 184. See also United States American Jews, 9 American soldiers, 31, 113, 124, 130, 138–39, 142, 156 Amos 4:11, 208 Amsterdam, iii, 4, 29–30, 31, 88–89, 98, 176, 217–18, 230, 252–54 Anna (author’s nursemaid), 44, 46–47, 49 antisemitism, 11, 37, 179–81, 197 Apeldoorn, 28–31, 239, 248, 252, 254 Arab-Israeli conflict, 176, 251 Arabs, 197, 251 Aramaic, 166 Ark. See Holy Ark aron hakodesh. See Holy Ark Aryan, 10, 29, 77, 184, 193, 242–43 Athens 141 atonement, 164, 166–67, 169, 210, 223–24. See also expiation, repentance

Barrie (author’s son-in-law), 251 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 170 begging, 118, 120, 126, 134, 139, 207, 217 Belgium, iii, 185, 199, 237, 246 Belsen (village near town of Bergen), 116 Bergen (town near village of Belsen), 116, 120–21 Bergen-Belsen, iii, xi–xii, xv, 99, 141–43, 175, 201, 224, 228, 238, 243, 247; author’s postwar return visit to, 47, 108; author’s vision in, xxiv, 14, 177; meaning of, xxv, 101–3, 164, 173, 227; description of and conditions in, 87–89, 91–92, 94, 195, 226, ; liberation of, 123; memorial park at the site of (see Lüneberger Heide); museum at, 169; survivors of, buried at Tröbitz, 154–55, 157; note-taking in (see notetaking); transport out of, 42, 114–16, 122, 124, 138 Berlin, 106, 115, 125–26, 128, 130, 139, 163, 194 Bet Yitshak, 235, 249, 251 Bialik, Hayim Nahman, 14, 85, 207 biblical texts, references to. See I Kings,

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Index

Amos, Deuteronomy, Exodus, Esther, Genesis, Isaiah, Job, Judges, Nehemiah, Numbers, Psalms, Zechariah. See also classical Jewish texts, references to

as hiding place for valuable items, 97, 123, 185 Cohn, Fanny and Rica, 83 Cologne, 27, 28

bicycle, 108, 133, 139–40, 148–49, 153, 240; photo 151 Bielefeld, 38–39, 169 Big Lie, the, 11, 177 birth certificate. See certificate Borgholzhausen, 21 Boycott Day, 57, 180 Brand, Joel, 115 Brazil, 62, 66

confiscation of property, 29, 138, 148, 240 congregation, 170–71, 181, 183; author as leader of the Rheda congregation, 26–27, 40–41, 47, 53–54, 56, 58–61, 65, 78, 82, 161–65, 169, 172 contagion, iii, 136. See also disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus

Bremen, 113

corpse, 88, 91–92, 105, 128, 135, 143, 211, 224–25, 250. See also dead, the

British soldiers, 91, 105, 123, 229

Cottbus, 131

Buchenwald, 73 bunks, 88, 97, 203, 217, 225

Council of Elders, 127, 134–35, 137, 140, 144, 152, 154. See also Judenrat

Capo, 207

crematorium, 87, 89, 108, 224

Celle, 105

Crusades, the, 190, 226

cemetery: desecration of, 176; in Rheda, 19, 45, 47, 49–51, 56, 161–62, 172; in Tröbitz and Schilda, 143–45, 149–57

Crystal Night (Kristallnacht), xii, 28, 32, 41, 50, 64–66, 71, 73, 75, 79, 80, 82–83, 161, 163, 166, 179, 182–87, 192, 197–98, 199

certificate: of birth, 239, 248; of death, 248; of honor for the Righteous of the Nations, 246; of immigration to Palestine, 65, 114, 197, 220; of liberation at Tröbitz, 138–39 Chamberlain, Neville, 182, 198 Chelmno, 221 Chile, 198 Christians: after the war, 6, 10, 169, 171, 183; before the war, 24, 26, 38–39, 53; during the war, xxv, 30, 40, 76–77, 189, 204, 238, 253 Cincinnati, xii, xxi, 19, 34–35, 43 citizenship: dual, 87; of another country, 114; Polish, 71 classical Jewish texts, references to. See Avot, Bava Qamma, Hokhmat Adam, Midrash Eleh Ezkerah, Sanhedrin, Yoma. See also biblical texts, references to clothing, 114–15, 128, 132, 148, 228, 254; as currency for trading, 121, 127, 147;

Cuba, 32 culpability, 163. See also guilt currency for trading. See clothing, tobacco leaves, medicine Czechoslovakia, 129, 185, 198 Dachau, 72 Daladier, Edouard, 182 Dannenbaum, Karl, 83 Danziger, Meir, 21–22 Davidovic, Emil, 163 dead, the, 21, 82, 88, 91–93, 105, 108, 111, 115, 120–21, 128, 132, 134, 141, 143–46, 148, 154, 156–57, 202–4, 224. See also corpse death certificate. See certificate death march, 91, 217–18 dehumanization, 6, 228 Denmark, 185

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Index

deportation, 71–72, 185, 221, 238, 240, 242

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 157

Dessau, 131

El Alamein, 119

destruction of the Temple(s), 10, 25–26, 190, 226

Elbe River, 122, 124, 130, 138, 142, 157

Deuteronomy 4:3, 133; 6:5, 223; 6:11, 223; 11:7, 133; 25:17, 166; 25:19, 166; 28:65, 32

Elder of the Jews, 115, 126, 134–35, 148, 152, 154–56 Elijah, 255

diamond worker, 88–89, 240

emigration 9, 26–28, 39, 41, 50, 56–57, 61– 62, 64–65, 77, 79, 163, 182–83, 190–91, 195–99, 220–21. See also immigration

diarrhea, 92

Emmering, Siegfried, ii–iii

diary-writing. See note-taking

emotional effects of persecution, xvi, xxiv, 6, 42–43, 123, 125, 190, 195, 210–11, 219, 226. See also psychological effects of persecution

Deutsche Nationalzeitung, 177

diphtheria, iii, 6 disability, 201, 210. See also contagion, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus disease, iii, 30, 87, 92, 115, 121, 130, 152, 154–55, 201, 211, 253. See also contagion, disability, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus Dobrilugk, 146, 153 Dortmund, 169 dp (displaced person), 206 Dutch currency, 123, 127 Dutch Jews, 96, 141, 223, 238 Dutch language, 31, 108, 138, 242, 249, 252 Dutch resistance, 30, 244, 246 dysentery, 6. See also contagion, disability, disease, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus Ecclesiastes 1:15, 230 Egyptians, 60 Eichmann, Adolf, 115 Eindhoven, 238, 243, 246, 252 Einsatzgruppe, 103, 199 Einstein, Albert, 49

England, 46–47, 49, 184–85, 197, 220 English language, xi, 48, 53, 98–99, 138, 246 epidemic, iii, 42, 59, 91, 115, 143, 146, 252. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus escape, 5, 32, 41, 62, 65, 79, 119, 196, 208–9, 212, 215 Esther 3:13, 206; 6:9, 237 Eternal Light, 171, 235–36 Ettlinger, Julius, 83 Europe, 4, 30, 32, 47, 98, 185, 237, 254 European Jews, xxiv, 9, 193 Evian, 181, 198 exculpation, 167. See also exoneration, forgiveness, reconciliation exhaustion, 12, 87–88, 118, 154, 218, 225 Exodus 1:14, 60; 3:5, 163; 20:13, 171 exoneration, 48, 173. See also exculpation, forgiveness, reconciliation expiation, 166–167, 169. See also atonement, repentance exposure, 6, 211. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus

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Index

Genesis 7:11, 187; 12:1, 195; 28:16, 236; 28:21, 165; 31:36, 166; 32:47, 166; 35:20, 166

extermination, 87, 185 faith, xvi, 35, 189, 202, 204, 222–24, 226, 229–30

Gentiles: possessions left with, 43; who saved Jewish lives, 237–38, 244, 247. See also non-Jews

Farsleben, 124 Faust, 42

German civilians, people as a whole, xxv, 33, 43, 48–49, 82, 106, 115, 121, 128–29, 134, 136, 138, 143, 145–47, 152, 154, 156, 162, 167–70, 174, 176–77, 181, 183–84, 193, 195, 201, 204, 212, 239–40

fear, xii, 6, 10, 13, 59, 71, 73, 115–16, 139, 152, 154, 156, 161–62, 185–87, 195, 197, 202–4, 213, 226, 238, 248 fever, 6, 121, 129–31, 137. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus

German Jews, xxi, xxiii, 32, 37, 42–44, 49, 53, 57, 61, 122, 141, 167–69, 182, 185, 187, 194, 196–98, 211

Florida, 32, 255 food available during and after imprisonment: asparagus, 140; beets, 97, 118, 120–21, 126; bread, 95, 120–21, 126, 131, 137–38, 140, 203, 217, 223; butter, 127; carrots, 97, 121; eggs, 127, 131, 140; flour, 137; fruit, 131; greens, 97; jam, 138; meat, 93, 118, 132, 137– 138, 223; milk, 127, 137–38; oatmeal, 138; onions, 129; pickles, 127; potatoes, 26, 92, 97, 118, 120–21, 126–27, 129, 140, 172, 218; sauerkraut, 127; soup, 92, 93, 117, 119–120, 137, 203–4, 223– 24; sugar, 137; turnip (Steckrübe), 92, 97, 113, 117–18, 120; vegetables, 91–92, 97, 117–18, 131 forgetting, xxv, 11, 89, 166–67, 176 forgiveness, xxv, 89, 102, 164, 166–67, 218. See also exculpation, exoneration, reconciliation

German language, xi, 25, 48, 62–63, 94, 98–99, 105, 130, 154, 163–64, 171, 173, 202, 212, 218, 254 German literature and culture, 73, 105, 123, 196 German nationals imprisoned abroad, exchange of Jewish prisoners for, 87, 114, 124 German occupation of Holland, 221, 238 German soldiers, 29, 42, 63, 88, 105, 124–26, 128, 250 Germany, xvi–xvii, xxi, xxiii, 8, 11, 19, 24–25, 28–29, 37, 39, 41, 43, 51, 53–56, 62, 64, 66–67, 71, 75, 88, 98, 107, 119, 131, 161, 167–69, 175, 177, 182–85, 187, 190, 194, 196–99, 220, 228. See also West Germany Gestapo, 29, 61, 77, 79–80, 246, 250 ghetto, 211, 221, 230, 242–43

France, 184–85, 198–99, 246

Gilboa, 106

Frank, Anne, 176–77

Göbbels, Joseph, 71, 73, 180, 182, 185, 212

Frankfurt am Main, 30–31, 163

“God after Auschwitz,” xiii, 103, 106, 167, 185, 189, 195, 197, 204–5, 208–9, 222–28, 231, 249, 255–56

Frishman, David, 59 Führer, 26, 29, 61, 72, 154, 168, 180; in reference to Moses, 61. See also Hitler, Adolf Führer-Prinzip, 127 funeral, 49, 55, 56, 60, 143–45, 153, 212, 224 gas chamber, 94, 103, 167, 195, 199 Gedenkstätte (memorial park), 106–7, 155, 175. See also Bergen-Belsen

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 42, 227 Goldschmidt, Max, 83 grave: author returns to Germany to tend his father’s, 43–45; in the Rheda cemetery, 49–50; in Tröbitz, author’s effort to document, 148–49, 152–56; mass (common), 91, 105, 107, 121, 128– 29, 134–35, 137, 143, 147–48, 154–57; single (individual), 145–46, 152–53 Great Hoax, the. See Holocaust, denial of

266

Index

Greek Jews, 141

Hitler, Adolf, xvi, 9, 11, 71–72, 75, 119, 168, 179–80, 184–86, 194, 197–98, 211, 220, 225. See also Führer

Gretel (author’s cousin), 243, 252–53 Grumet, Elinor, xviii

Hoffmann, Egon, 83

Grynszpan, Herschel, 71, 77

Hokhmat Adam 155:3, 111

guilt: of perpetrators and bystanders, 48, 168–70, 173, 186, 189; of survivors, xii, 107, 189, 192, 214, 217–31; of youth, 13, 177

Holland, iii, 3, 28–29, 31, 41–43, 46–47, 49, 67, 87, 124, 146, 185, 199, 220–21, 228–29, 238, 240, 248, 250, 252–54 Holländerlager, iii, 87–89, 97, 114, 141, 223. See also Bergen-Belsen, Sternlager

Hachsharah, 28, 67, 96, 145, 202, 228–30, 240, 246

Hannover, 27–28, 41, 61, 71, 74, 77–79, 105, 108, 113, 165

Holocaust: academic study of, xv, xxiv, 9–10, 12–13, 190, 199; as sui generis event, 3, 12; denial of, xxiv, 14, 177, 190; fictionalization of, xv, 98–99; post-Holocaust period, xii, 189, 201, 205, 209, 222, 229; television programs related to, 13, 165, 175, 190

Hanover, Sigmund, 56

Holocaust Museum. See Yad Vashem

Hans (author’s brother-in-law), 251

Holy Ark: in Rheda, 23–24, 28, 171; at huc-jir in Cincinnati, 34

Haggai 1:4, 69 Hallel, 174, 208, 226 Hamburg, 105, 124

Havana, Cuba, 32

Holy Land, 228. See also Israel, Palestine

Hebrew language, xi, 21, 23, 25, 28, 38, 44, 49, 55, 61, 65, 108, 145, 154, 163–64, 209, 225–26, 229, 240, 251

hope, xvi, xxv–xxvi, 65, 67, 177, 183, 187, 198, 202–4, 221

Hebrew literature, 14, 21, 66, 196, 207, 251

Horeb, Mount, 255

Hebrew Teachers Seminary, xxiii, 26, 39, 196. See also ilba

Hungarian Jews, 115–16, 122–23, 125, 141

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (huc-jir), xi, xiii, xxi, xxv, 19, 34–35, 43

I Kings 19:11–12, 255

Heekeren, Wim and Jennie van, xxv, 235– 39, 243–44, 246–47, 249–51, 253–55; photo 245

ilba, 53–57, 60, 63, 66. See also Hebrew Teachers Seminary

Heine, Heinrich, 17, 122, 205 Heinemann, Hugo, 83 Heinemann, Otto, 83

Hungary, 247 identification papers, 139

illness, 201. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus

hepatitis, 6. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus

immigration, 5, 43, 66, 114, 163, 196–98, 220; to Palestine, legal (aliyah) 230; to Palestine, illegal (aliyah bet), 229–30. See also emigration

heroism, xxv, 191, 218, 235–37, 249–50

indemnification, 168, 210. See also reparations, restitution

Herzberg, Abel, 113, 116 Herzebrock, 21, 24, 26 Hess, Rudolf, 180 Himmler, Heinrich, 115

impunity, xxii, 180, 185–86

infection, 105, 121, 134, 211. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage,

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Index

Kommando, 91, 93, 96, 202, 228

starvation, typhus inmate, 3, 88, 91–93, 113–14, 116, 157, 209, 211, 217, 222, 224, 226, 228. See also prisoner Inquisition, 190, 226 Iron Curtain, 155, 157, 252

Koretz, Zvi, 144–45 Kramer, Joseph, 91, 114, 122 Kristallnacht. See Crystal Night Laban, 166

Isaiah 1:18, 231; 7:4, 208; 54:7, 205; 55:8, 231; 56:5, 235; 56:7, 171

Lagerstrasse, 87–89, 247

Israel, 33, 44, 46, 124, 161, 166, 168, 172, 190, 230, 235–37, 244, 246, 249, 251. See also Palestine, Holy Land

Lazarett, 134–37, 142–43, 146, 148–49, 155–56. See also Tröbitz

Israelitische Lehrerbildungsanstalt. See ilba Israelitisches Familienblatt, 65, 66 Italy, 247 Jacob, 165–66, 170, 174, 236 Jacobson, Israel, 27, 58 Jerôme Napoleon, 24, 27, 58 Jerusalem, 10, 47–48, 58, 190, 235 Job (person), 227 Job 1:15–17, 208; 1:19, 208 Joint Distribution Committee, 32 Jonah (person), 167 Jordan River, 229 Judaism, 25, 57–58, 61, 63, 171, 194; liberal, 24, 59; orthodox 25, 63, 145, 204, 223–24, 230 Judenältester. See Elder of the Jews Judenrat, 126, 240. See also Council of Elders

Lauenburg, 124

Levi, Berthold, 83 Levi, Max, 83 Leviticus 18:5, 59; 19:16, 171 Lewandowski, Louis, 58 liberation, xxiv, 3–4, 6, 9, 14, 42, 105, 114, 120, 123–24, 130, 132–33, 135–36, 138–39, 148, 155–56, 201, 204, 206, 226, 228, 253 Libya, 247 lice, 92, 114–15, 137, 152. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus Lifton, Robert Jay, xxiii Lodz, 221, 230 Lottie (Wim and Jennie van Heeckeren’s daughter), 235, 237, 246, 249–50; see also Perets, Thea Löwenstein, Berthold, 83

judenrein, 82

Lower Rhine, 254

Judges 5:16, 229

Lübben, 125

jüdischer Lehrer, xxiii, 21, 26, 29, 33, 39, 53–56, 60–61, 65

Lübbenau, 125

Jüterbogk, 131

Lüneberg, 122, 123

Kastner, Rudolf, 115

Luckenwalde, 125

Kfar Shmaryahu, 251

Lüneburger Heide (Lüneburg Heath), 105–8, 122, 124, 146, 175

kibbutz, 169, 228–29

Luther, Martin, 196

Kirchhain, 153–54

Maas River, 254

Kishinev pogrom (1903), 14

Magdeburg, 124

Kolb, Eberhard, 113, 125

malnutrition, 211. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery,

Kommandant, 91, 114, 122, 136

268

Index

epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus Mann, Thomas, 1 Manstein, Ernst von, 63 martyrdom, xix, 52, 103, 164, 172, 175, 177, 192, 207, 223, 235, 237 Massada, 103 Matthew 5:17, 186; 27:46, 227 matsevah: of Jacob, 165–66, 170, 174; in Rheda, 167, 170, 174. See also Rheda, synagogue monument in

30, 39–41, 47, 49, 51, 55, 57, 61, 71–72, 74, 78–79, 98, 115, 118, 123, 126, 139, 162, 164, 168, 169–71, 176–77, 179–83, 185–86, 190, 201–2, 206, 212, 240, 248, 252 Nehemiah 9:17, 167 Netherlands, 246 neurosis, 211. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, phobia, physical damage, starvation, typhus New York, 32

Mauthausen, 98, 243

New Zealand, 66, 198

medical experiments, 211

Niederlausitz, 129, 143, 146

medicine, 136, 228, 242; as currency for trading, 140, 147

Nineveh, 167

meditation, 45, 161, 173–74. See also prayer Mein Kampf, 195 memorial book (pinkas), 49 Mendele, 207 Messiah complex, 186 Meyer-Michael, Wolfgang, 51

Noah, 34, 103 non-Jews, xxiv, 26, 47, 171, 192, 212, 238. See also Gentiles Norway, 185 note-taking, iii, 95–97, 99, 113, 116–17, 133, 144, 154, 217–18 Numbers 8–12, 22; 13–14, 131; 14:20, 167; 14:33–34, 166

Midrash Eleh Ezkerah, xix

Nuremberg Laws, xxiii, 10, 40, 57, 180, 196, 220

Mitchell, Margaret, 99

Nuremberg, 28, 106, 179, 182

monument-building, 29, 190. See also matsevah; Rheda, synagogue monument in; Rheda, World War I monument in; tombstone; Tröbitz, cemetery monument

occupation, military, 135–36, 139, 221, 238, 240

Mös, Ernst, 115

Palestine, 28, 65, 88, 114–15, 145, 193, 196–97, 220, 225, 228–30, 239, 246. See also Holy Land, Israel

Munich, 72, 181–82, 198 Münster, 44–47, 49, 169 museum: at Bergen-Belsen, 106–7, 109; at huc-jir in Cincinnati, 34; Holocaust (see Yad Vashem); of the extinct Jewish people (planned by the Nazis), xxv Mussulman, 94 Najman, Regina, iii

Oder River, 124, 128 Offenbach, 31

Paris, 71, 182 Passover, 116, 223 penitence, 167. See also atonement Perets (Lottie’s husband), 246. See also Lottie

Naumann, Max, 182

persecution of Jews, 5, 6, 183, 210–11, 213, 250

Naumbourg, 58

Pforzheim, 28

Nazism, xi, xvi, xxii–xxv, 5, 8–9, 26, 29–

phobia, 213. See also contagion, disability,

269

Index

disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, physical damage, starvation, typhus physical damage, 6–7, 210–11, 14. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, starvation, typhus

rationing, 88, 95, 113, 135, 137, 201, 203, 239 reconciliation, 166–67, 172, 174. See also exculpation, exoneration, forgiveness Red Army, 132, 136, 155. See also Russian soldiers Red Cross, 114, 142, 153, 204, 253 redemption, 101–2, 181, 186, 231, 237

pogrom, 10, 14, 74, 79, 179, 207, 226

refugee, 181, 195, 198, 206, 253

Poland, 27, 64, 129, 185, 198, 221, 226

Reichsvertretung, 64

Polish Jews, 27–28, 71–72, 182

Remarque, Erich Maria, 99

Portugal, 87, 124, 246

reparations, 210. See also indemnification, restitution

postsurvivor era, 12–14 postwar period, 43, 81, 93, 106, 139, 153, 168, 252 prayer, 19, 103, 128, 171, 204, 223, 227; Alenu, 25; Barechu, 60; book, 24, 47, 166; daily morning (Shacharit), 224–26; El malei rachamim, 236; hakol yoducha, 60; Kaddish, 45, 82–83, 144, 225; piyutim, 60; quorum (minyan), 60, 225; selichot, 60; shawl, 24; Shemoneh Esrei, 25, 60. See also meditation

repatriation, 135, 137–38, 142, 146, 152, 156, 252 repentance, 58, 101, 186, 228. See also atonement, expiation rescuer. See Righteous of the Nations resettlement in the East, 29, 238 resistance, 30, 60, 107, 191, 244, 246 restitution, 215. See also indemnification, reparations

Prince of Rheda, 173

revelation, 125, 173, 231

prisoner, iii, xxii, 3, 79, 87–88, 91, 93, 106, 113–19, 125–26, 130, 132, 134–40, 144–45, 156, 195, 202–3, 206, 218, 224, 253. See also inmate

revisionism. See Holocaust, denial of

Promised Land, 229 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 176 Psalms 22:2, 227; 37:3, 196; 90:4, 205; 100:2, 223; 115:16, 222; 118:17, 208; 118:60, 226; 119:126, 59

Rheda, 24, 37–39; author’s visits to after the war, 37, 42–51; Christian neighbors in, 26, 38, 49; Jewish cemetery in, 49; Nazism came to, 26, 39–42; synagogue, 19, 21–29, 31, 33–34, 37–41, 45–47, 49– 51, 57–58, 65, 81–83, 161–63, 171–72, 174; synagogue monument in, 49–52, 161–77; World War I British pows in, 37; World War I monument in, 51

psychological effects of persecution, xvi, 4, 6, 97, 138–39, 207–8, 210–11, 213, 254. See also emotional effects of persecution

Richard (author’s cousin), 243, 252–53. See also Gretel

quarantine, 42, 133, 137, 142–43, 152–53, 156, 252–53

Righteous of the Nations, 235, 237, 244, 246

quota: immigration 65, 196, 197; of dead 202

Risa, 156

rabbi, xi, 54–55, 59, 65, 144, 170, 196, 223, 226–27, 229

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 123, 198

Riefenstahl, Leni, 106–7

roll call, 88, 202–3, 205, 225

Rabinowitz, Dorothy, xxiv

Rosenberg Institute (Institute for Research on the Jewish Problem), 31

Rath, Ernst Freiherr vom, 71–72, 182

Rosenberg, Alfred, 30

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Index

Rotterdam, 248–49

stealing, 133

roundups, 29, 240

Stephanie (author’s granddaughter), 34

Russia, 10, 140, 185, 207, 226

Stern, Eliezer, 21

Russian language, 130, 133–34, 149

Stern, Isak, 21, 27

Russian soldiers, 42, 91, 124, 128, 130–43, 145–47, 149, 153, 155–56, 201, 252–53. See also Red Army

Stern, Leah, 21

sa. See storm trooper Sachsenhausen, 73 Saloniki, 141, 144 Sanhedrin 4:5, 233, 247; 38a, 209 Saxony, 129, 130 scapegoat, 180, 185

Stern, Louis, 83 Stern, Rosa, 21 Sternlager, 114–15, 117, 123–24, 126, 141. See also Bergen-Belsen, Holländerlager Stoll, Jakob, 56, 66 storm trooper (sa), 73, 77–79, 190 Streicher, Julius, 180, 185, 212

Scharführer, 217

strong, the (able-bodied), 88, 120, 128, 132, 134, 142, 145, 152, 155–56, 196

Scheuermann, Solig, 58

Stürmer, Die, 177

Schilda, 131–32, 137, 141, 146, 149, 152– 53, 157. See also Tröbitz

survivors: as resource persons, 5–8, 175–77, 192–3; hierarchy of, 9–10; -inresidence, 3, 9, 12; mission of, xxiv, 10–11, 33, 173; who remain silent, xxv, 5, 12. See also guilt, of survivors; postsurvivor era

Schiller, Friedrich von, 203 Schwartzman, Sylvan, xviii Seelig, Arthur, 83 Sefer Torah. See Torah scroll Shlomo, 145–46, 148, 153–54, 155 sick, the, 21, 120–21, 123, 128–29, 131–32, 134–36, 198, 203, 205, 224, 242

survivorship: after the war, 206–15; in the camps, 201–5. See also postsurvivor era Switzerland, 114–15, 124, 246

Soltau, 121–23, 146

synagogue, xii, xxi, 55–56, 183; at Apeldoorn, 28–29; at Amsterdam, 29–31; at Hannover, 74, 76; at hucjir, xxi, 19, 33–34; at Munich, 181; at Nuremburg, 182; at Rheda, (see Rheda, synagogue); destruction of, xxi, 26, 28–29, 40–41, 65, 76, 81, 162–63, 171, 174, 176, 183; rebuilding of, 168, 172

Sonderlager, 116. See also Bergen-Belsen

tattooed number, 211

Spreewald, 126

Tel Aviv, 251

ss, 73, 107, 120, 123, 126, 129, 243

Thea (Wim and Jennie van Heeckeren’s daughter), 235, 237, 246, 249–50, 255. See also Lottie

Six Million, the, 170, 177, 236 slave (or forced) labor, 101, 134, 203, 211, 223, 253 Sobibor, 243

St. Louis, the, 32 Stalin, Joseph, 157 Stalingrad, 119 starvation, 6, 72, 87, 211, 223. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, typhus

theodicy, 255 theology. See “God after Auschwitz” Theresienstadt, 122, 124 Third Reich, 61, 168, 212 Thuringia, 130 Tishah Be’av, 25–27, 33

271

Index

tobacco leaves, as currency for trading, 140, 147, 149, 153 Tolstoy, Leo, 99 tombstone, 44, 46, 49–51, 106, 154, 170. See also monument Torah scroll, xxv, 19, 21–22, 24, 27–35, 43, 48, 55, 58, 81, 171, 173, 225 Torgau, 131, 138–39, 142, 156–57 trading, 121, 123, 126–27, 139. See also tobacco leaves train, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46–47, 116, 118–35, 141–45, 148, 154, 243 transport, 42, 72, 88–89, 93, 113–17, 122, 124–26, 132, 138, 141–43, 146, 197, 225, 238, 246–47, 253 trauma, 3, 6, 144, 191, 213

248, 250; photo 241 Weinberg, Israel, 83 Weinberg, Jettchen, 83 Weinberg, Leffmann Abraham, 21, 27 Weinberg, Lisl, xi, xiii, xviii–xxiv, 28, 30, 32, 34, 65, 67, 71, 73, 75–76, 79; photo 151 Weinberg, Paula, 83 Weinberg, Ruth and Walter, 32, 34 Weinberg, Werner, photo ii, 20, 150 Weiss, Josef, 115, 126–27, 138, 155. See also Elder of the Jews Werner, Robert, 28 West Germany, 163, 168, 176. See also Germany

Tröbitz, 131–35, 137–38, 140–41, 144–46, 148–49, 152–57; cemetery monument, 149, 153–57. See also Schilda

Westerbork, 243

Truman, Harry, 157

wimpel, 22–24, 31, 34

typhus, 6, 42, 87, 91–92, 97, 114–17, 121, 129, 131, 133, 135–37, 139, 143–44, 146, 149, 152, 156, 204, 252. See also contagion, disability, disease, dysentery, epidemic, exposure, fever, hepatitis, illness, infection, lice, malnutrition, neurosis, phobia, physical damage, starvation

Wisbrun, Anneliese, 251. See also Hans

underground, 30, 235–36, 238–39, 243, 246, 248 Ukrainian camp. See Lazarett United States, xi, 5, 32, 43–44, 65, 173, 176, 190, 193, 196, 198, 206, 230, 254 verfolgungsbedingt, 210, 213, 215 visa, 5, 28, 32, 65, 66, 114, 197, 220–21, 229, 230

Westphalia, 19, 21, 24–26, 37, 163, 169

witness, xii, 3, 5, 8–9, 13–14, 33, 35, 39, 50, 74, 95, 98, 103, 107, 128, 166, 190, 192, 203, 215, 224, 226 World War I, 28, 51, 71 World War II, 172 Würzburg, xxiii, 26–27, 39, 53, 56–57, 63 Yad Vashem, 235, 237, 246, 249–50, photo 245. See also Avenue of the Righteous of the Nations Yavneh, 58 Yellow Star, 114, 206, 242 Yiddish, xi, 25, 37, 108, 136 Yishmael, Rabbi, xix

visions, xxiv, 14, 129, 131, 177

Yom Hashoah, xxi, 9

Vogel, Loden, 113, 116

Yoma 85b, 59

Waal River, 254

Zechariah 3:2, 208

Weinberg (Konicov), Susie, xiii, xxv, 30, 32, 235, 238–40, 242–43, 246–50, 252–55, photo 241

Zhukov, Georgi K., 130, 157

Weinberg, David, 83 Weinberg, Eli, 24, 27

Ziegler, Alex, 83 Zionism, 220, 225, 228–30, 251 Zunz, Leopold, 164

Weinberg, Hannah, 29–30, 238–39, 242,

272