70 VOICES PODCAST: THE DEVELOPEMENT OF THE HOLOCAUST

 

In our third weekly podcast, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws and Education Officers Martin Winstone and Tom Jackson discuss how the Holocaust evolved during the Second World War and the implications this has for teaching about the Holocaust.

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast.   

 
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"YOU REMEMBER THAT HUMAN BEINGS LIVE IN THIS GLOOM"

Long before the Nazis had decided to murder all of Europe’s Jews, the miserable living conditions in the ghettos of eastern Europe caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Although ghettos were created at different times and varied in size and nature, they all had two common characteristics: they were located in poor areas of towns and they were catastrophically overcrowded. Józef Zelkowicz was an official of the Jewish Council in Łódź in Poland, where a ghetto was created in the spring of 1940. Later that year, he recorded an inspection of a typical apartment.

The one and only window in the apartment, facing north with its shattered panes, is plugged with sundry coloured rags. Along the swollen walls, their living flesh eaten away by the mould, a few flies creep lazily. The ceiling is covered with grey-blue stains like a soiled cushion on a child’s pushchair.

The two iron beds in the middle of the room are heaped with bare pillows and mildewed mattresses, from which bundles of packed, crushed straw protrude. Next to the beds is a wooden bucket and around the bucket, strewn on the floor, is white and coloured laundry.

Filth, deprivation, neglect. Mouldy, frightening. Pins prick your body when you remember that human beings live in this gloom. In this cellar room, drenched in water that tears hunks of life out of the silent walls in summer and winter, human beings are breathing. In the repugnant bedding and on the rusty crooked iron beds, people sleep. Living people, whose open eyes have seen another life. People with mouths that know how to speak and scream and, nevertheless, keep their silence and wallow in silent despair, like those flies that creep lazily on the walls until, one hour or one day on, their wings will palpitate one last time and they will settle lifeless on the dirty floor.

In the four years of the Łódź Ghetto’s existence, more than 45,000 of its approximately 200,000 inhabitants died in the ghetto.

Photo: a woman and girl in the Łódź Ghetto; Yad Vashem

Report: Józef Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days: Notes from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. Michal Unger (Yad Vashem, 2003)

 

"A HUNDRED TIMES I RISK MY LIFE"

Along with overcrowding, the biggest single problem in most ghettos was lack of food because the Nazis provided insufficient rations. Thousands of people died each month in the Warsaw Ghetto as a result of starvation and the population relied on smuggling to provide food. Most of the smugglers were children; the photograph shows one being caught by a German policeman. In this poem, Henryka Łazowertówna paid tribute to these child smugglers and the huge risks they took to support their families.

The Little Smuggler

 Over the walls, through holes, through the guard posts,
Through the wire, through the rubble, through the fence,
Hungry, cheeky, stubborn,
I slip through, I nip through like a cat.

At midday, in the night, at dawn,
In snowstorms, foul weather, and heat,
A hundred times I risk my life,
I stick out my childish neck.

A rough sack under my arm,
Wearing torn rags on my back,
With nimble young legs
And in my heart constant fear.

But you have to bear it all,
And you have to put up with it all,
So that tomorrow you
Will have your fill of bread.

Over the walls, though holes, through bricks,
At night, at dawn, and in day,
Cheeky, hungry, crafty,
I move as quietly as a shadow.

And if the hand of fate unexpectedly
Catches up with me one day in this game,
It is an ordinary trap of life.
Mother, don't wait for me anymore.
I will not be coming back to you again,
The voice will not be heard from afar;
The dust of the streets will bury
The fate of the lost child.

And I have only one request,
And the grimace is set on the lips:
Who, Mother, will bring you
Your bread tomorrow?

Henryka Łazowertówna was murdered at Treblinka extermination camp in August 1942.

Photo: a boy caught smuggling in the Warsaw Ghetto by a German policeman; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leopold Page Photographic Collection

Poem: Michał M. Borwicz (ed.), Pieśń ujdzie cało... Antologia wierszy o Żydach pod okupacją niemiecką (Centralna Żydowska Komisja, 1947)

 

"HERE, IN THE GHETTO, IT'S CHEERLESS AND BLEAK"

This photograph shows Jewish men in the Kraków Ghetto chopping up furniture for use as firewood. The mood of despair in the ghettos caused by overcrowding, disease, and lack of food and fuel increased in the spring of 1942 with the news of mass shootings of Jews in the Soviet Union and the first deportations to extermination camps in Poland. It was at this time that the Yiddish writer Mordechai Gebirtig wrote this poem in the Kraków Ghetto.

Our Springtime

Springtime in the trees, in the fields, in the forest,
But here, in the ghetto, it's autumnal and cold,
But here, in the ghetto, it's cheerless and bleak,
Like the house of a mourner – in grief.

Springtime! Outside, the fields have been planted,
Here, around us, they've sowed only despair,
Here, around us, guarded walls rise,
Watched like a prison, through the darkest night.

Springtime, already! Soon it will be May,
But here, the air's filled with gunpowder and lead.
The hangman has ploughed with his bloody sword
One giant graveyard – the earth.

Mordechai Gebirtig was shot in the ghetto when deportations from Kraków to Bełżec extermination camp began in June 1942.

Photo: a group of Jews chop up furniture for use as fuel in the Kraków Ghetto, 1941; Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie/Archiwum Dokumentacji Mechanicznej/YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, courtesy of Natalia Rothenberg (public domain)

Poem: Mordechai Gebirtig, Undzer shtetl brent! (Moreshet, 1967)

 

"I WANT TO SEE MY HOME ONCE MORE"

In early 1942, a theatre was established in the Vilna Ghetto in Poland (now in Lithuania), an event which seems to challenge our preconceptions of life in ghettos. In fact, theatres were established in a number of larger ghettos such as Warsaw and Łódź. These theatres typically staged performances of classic Jewish literature and musical concerts. One of the most popular songwriters in the Vilna Ghetto was Leyb Rozental; these are the lyrics of his song ‘I Long for My Home’.

When you are young,
Your spirit’s strong,
Then your pursuit is gain,
Forsake – forget
Your home, your nest,
The time is not regained.
When your old age draws near,
The past then reappears,
We question what occurred.
How little we observed –
Just yesterday my childish voice was heard.

I want to see my home once more –
Are things the way they were before,
The old worn porch, the old gnarled tree,
The roof from which the walls hung free,
My poor old home.

Four walls, a table and a bench,
T’was here my childhood years were spent;
And here I dreamed my dreams alone,
My song of youth, my wild oats sown,
I long for home.

I hear the soulful singing sounds of night.
The wind like a mother holds me tight.
Oh, the longing for the charm once known
Fond in a mother’s humble home.
It may be brick or made of stone,
It may be straw or built of loam,
I long for home.

With life carefree,
The hours flee,
I stand aside and think;
Man has, I’m sure,
His place, his fare,
His warm bed, nothing more.
My home is marred for me.
My home is barred for me,
I wander all about
And I must do without.
If I now only had my humble home.

Some inhabitants of the Vilna Ghetto argued that it was inappropriate to “make theatre in a cemetery”, a reference to the murder of most of the city’s Jews in 1941. However, most valued the theatre as a means of sustaining morale, preserving Jewish culture and asserting basic human values in the most inhuman of circumstances. As these lyrics show, the theatre also offered the chance to comment on the trials of ghetto life. Leyb was murdered at Klooga labour camp in Estonia in 1944.

Photo: a theatre performance in the Vilna Ghetto, June 1943; Yad Vashem

Song lyrics: Eleanor G. Mlotek & Malke Gottlieb (eds.), Mir zaynen do: lider fun di geṭos un lagern (Educational Department of the Workmen's Circle, 1983)

 

"I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANOTHER BUTTERFLY HERE"

Theatre was only one of the forms of culture which provided opportunities to comment on ghetto life. This was especially true in Terezín, a ghetto created north of Prague in late 1941. Terezín was intended to hold Czech Jews prior to their deportation but was also designated as a ‘model ghetto’ to which prominent German and Austrian Jews, including many famous artists and musicians, were sent in an attempt to convince the world that the Nazis were not mistreating them. Pavel Friedman, a 21-year-old Czech Jew, wrote this poem in June 1942.

The last, the very last,
so brightly, bitterly, dazzlingly yellow
perhaps the sun's tears chimed against a white stone
such, such a yellow
floated easily so high
certainly, certainly, it went because it wanted to kiss the last of his world.

For seven weeks I've lived in here
ghettoised
but I have found myself here
dandelions call to me
and white chestnut branches in the court
but I have never seen another butterfly here.

It was the last
Butterflies do not live here,
in the ghetto.

Despite Terezín’s status as a model ghetto, approximately 35,000 people died there from disease and starvation. More than 80,000, Pavel Friedman amongst them, were deported to their deaths in extermination camps and other killing sites in eastern Europe: Pavel died in Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1944.

Painting: Detail from ‘Flowers and a Butterfly’, by Dorit Weiser, a girl in the Terezín Ghetto; Ghetto Fighters’ House

Poem: Hana Volavková (ed.), Dětské kresby na zastávce k smrti Terezín 1942-1944 (Státní židovské muzeum, 1959)

 

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"THE WORRY OVER WHAT TOMORROW WILL BRING"

As most Jews living in ghettos were sent to their deaths, the minority who remained faced an increasing struggle to survive. Those who had been spared were mostly adults of working age who were deployed by the Nazis as slave labourers. Avraham Tory, who worked as an official of the Jewish Council in the Kaunas Ghetto in Lithuania, commented in his diary in June 1943 on the strange realities of life in the shadow of death.

No less than 60 percent of the Ghetto inmates go out daily to do forced labour. The work is back-breaking. The inmates risk their lives trying to purchase goods for themselves and for their families and then smuggling them in through the Ghetto gate – all this under the watchful eyes of the German and Lithuanian policemen.

The unrelieved pressure during work, the worry over what tomorrow will bring, and the fears of extermination – all these sap the strength of the forced labourers...

An observer might come to the conclusion that the life of the Ghetto inmates runs entirely in the shadow of a permanent fear that the enemy is threatening to put an end to their lives. This was, indeed, the situation in the first period of the Ghetto, at the time of house raids and ‘actions’...

Little by little, however, the mood changed. The Ghetto inmates became accustomed to the Ghetto gate, to their work, and to the injustice. They tried to forget all of the unpleasant things, the dangers and the yoke. Some of them even began inviting friends and colleagues for meals, for a drink of wine or vodka. Others sought an escape in study, in writing, in giving lectures, in composing poems, etc... All these activities provided the Ghetto inmates with some relief.

By law, of course, all these activities are forbidden... The Germans regard us as slaves, and slaves must not be allowed to enjoy life.

The Kaunas Ghetto was one of several where, as Avraham Tory suggested, illicit cultural activity flourished. However, this was stamped out in late 1943 when the SS converted the ghetto into a concentration camp and resumed the murder of its inhabitants. The ghetto was liquidated in July 1944. Avraham was one of around 2,000 of its 30,000 inhabitants who survived the war.

Photo: a boy works at a machine in a Kaunas Ghetto workshop; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of George Kadish/Zvi Kadushin

Diary extract: Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. Martin Gilbert (Harvard University Press, 1990)

 

70 VOICES PODCAST: GHETTOS

 

In the fourth of our weekly podcasts, the Trust's Head of Education Alex Maws and Education Officer Martin Winstone are joined by historian and educator Jeremy Leigh of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, to discuss the evolution and nature of ghettos during the Holocaust and the responses of Jewish communities to them. 

Click here to read a transcript of the podcast. 

 
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"WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO HIM? WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH HIM?"

The destruction of Jewish communities typically began in towns and cities with the separation of the population into those designated for murder and those chosen for work. In November 1941, a few thousand Jewish men of working age were ordered into a fenced-off section of the Riga Ghetto, leaving behind the other 25,000 inhabitants. One of the men was Elik Rivosh who recalled spending a last night with his wife Alya and his young children Dima and Lida.

The alarm clock calmly ticks away, its hands unmercifully tracing their path. The hours pass. My shirt has grown wet where Alya is resting her head on my shoulder. Heavy, silent tears. What is happening in her soul, what is happening in the souls of thousands of women, no one knows; indeed it is impossible for the words to convey. And the alarm clock continues to tick...

Our little girl is sleeping, lying on her tummy; her rosy heel is sticking out from under the blanket. I lean over and tickle her heel with my moustache; her little foot disappears under the blanket. I hugged Dima so very tight. But he did not cry out. What will happen to him? What will they do with him? Why? For what? Hatred, despair, and hope blend into one lump that chokes and squeezes my throat. Our greatest suffering comes not from our own pain but from that of our closest friends and loved ones.

The 25,000 Jews, including Alya, Dima and Lida, were marched in two waves – on 30 November and 8 December 1941 – on foot to Rumbula forest outside Riga where all of them were shot. The memorial that stands at Rumbula today is shown in the photograph. Elik Rivosh was murdered in 1942.

Photo: memorial, Rumbula; Holocaust Educational Trust

Testimony: Ilya Ehrenburg & Vasily Grossman, The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, ed. David Patterson (Transaction, 2003)

 

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"UNABLE TO BEAR THE SUSPENDED HORROR ANY MORE"

The largest killing operation of the Holocaust – which would later be codenamed Aktion Reinhard in honour of Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated in Prague in May 1942 – began on the night of 16 March 1942 in the Polish city of Lublin. An unnamed Jewish nurse described what happened on that night and in the following days.

At about 11.30 p.m. the city was suddenly put under bright illumination... Small groups of Germans or Ukrainians broke into apartments, expelling everyone, regardless of dress, down into the yard. Here selection followed, according to age, sex, families, [work] stamps, depending on the whims of the thugs. Needless to say, screams, blows and even shots were part of the process... The vacated houses were immediately surrounded by the Ukrainians. As for the deportees, they were immediately escorted to the Marszak synagogue and there sorted into families who had stamps and those who had not...

From then on, there were several actions each day, none lasting longer than 2-3 hours. Gradually, they increasingly assumed brutal forms. Whoever did not leave the apartment in time, did not keep in line, did not march well, was sick or was regarded unfit to work was likely to be shot on the spot...

Transports were directed to unknown destinations. Unable to bear the suspended horror any more, many who didn’t have [work] cards were reporting for deportation voluntarily. Their numbers were so large that the Germans were forced to send hundreds of them back each day, saying that there was not enough room for them.

Between mid-March and late April 1942, more than 30,000 Jews from Lublin were murdered, mostly through deportation to the newly operational Bełżec extermination camp – the photograph shows a group awaiting deportation. Several thousand others were shot in the ghetto. Similar scenes were repeated across the General Government region of Poland in the following months as Aktion Reinhard developed: between March and December 1942, close to 1½ million Jews were murdered in the General Government.

Photo: deportation of Jews from Lublin, 1942; Yad Vashem

Testimony: Joseph Kermish (ed.), To Live with Honor and Die with Honor!... Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (“Oneg Shabbath”) (Yad Vashem, 1986)

 

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