Thursday, January 27, 2005

Testimony

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Here are the memories of three survivors, excerpted from The Independent today:

Henry Bulawko:

"Even on the train to Auschwitz, we didn't know what awaited us. We didn't know that we were being sent to our deaths. A few of the younger men wanted to try to escape but the women in the wagon came to plead with us, and said: 'No, please don't. If you do that, we will suffer and our children will suffer. You see, it won't be so bad. They will make us work but it won't be so bad.' Even when we arrived, when the older men, and women and children, were separated and placed on trucks, people were saying: 'See, the Germans are not so cruel as all that. They are a civilised people. They are not going to make the old people and the children walk.'"

Monty Burgerman:

"When we first arrived, we were ordered to take off our clothes and given a striped uniform. They woke us up at 4am every day for a daily head count. We would have to parade in front of the guards who told us to stand on our toes and whipped us from behind. ... We became like animals. We didn't feel like human beings any more. All we could think of was the next piece of bread. ... There was a period when the food rations stopped for four weeks. Occasionally, the SS would throw half a loaf of bread in one wagon and laugh and take photos as we tried to get the bread. After four weeks, we began eating grass and dead bodies."

Natalia Karpf was spared death because she was a virtuoso concert pianist and, along with other Jewish musicians, was forced to keep the Gestapo officers entertained:

"We were being taken in a bunker to be shot when I was told I would have to play at [a] birthday party. I had not played [for four years] and my fingers were stiff. The guests were all looking at me and [the camp's commander] called me 'Sarah' - the Nazis called all Jewish women Sarah - and told me to 'play now'. I sat down and started to play Chopin's Nocture because I have always found it very sad."

More:

+ "You must give some meaning to my condemned existence." Zalmen Gradowski, a Polish Jew, wrote this just before he died in a camp revolt in October 1944. His testimony was found buried near the gas ovens.

"Dear reader, I am writing these words in the hour of my greatest despair. I neither know nor believe I will ever reread these lines after the 'storm' that is to come. Who knows whether one day I will have the satisfaction of revealing to the world the profound secret I carry in my heart? Who knows whether I will ever see or speak to a 'free' man again? Perhaps these lines will be the only witnesses to the life I once lived..."

Full text

+ Memories of Auschwitz. Survivors' stories from The Guardian.

Other link today:

+ BBC writer Ivan Noble's last column. "What I wanted to do with this column was try to prove that it was possible to survive and beat cancer and not to be crushed by it. Even though I have to take my leave now, I feel like I managed it. I have not been defeated." I wish I'd had his writings to guide me through my own illness a few years ago. His courage and bravery have been inspiring. But now I can't stop crying.

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