UC Santa Barbara > History Department > Prof. Marcuse > Courses > Hist 133d Homepage > Hist 133b+d Book Essays Index page > Student essay
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"Survivors: Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust" Book Essay on:
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Brenden Feingerts for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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& Abstract |
and Links |
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at amazon |
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About Brenden Feingerts I am a third year History major at UCSB. My great grandparents were German Jews; however, they were lucky enough to have had the foresight to leave Germany in the wake of World War I. My plan for the future is to become a real estate agent and to spend extended periods of time abroad. Abstract (back to top) The book Witness: Voices from the Holocaust is a collection of transcribed video testimonies selected from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, from over two dozen Holocaust survivors. This collection is the product of nearly twenty years of gathering done by scholars at Yale University. They have secured the testimonies of hundreds of survivors from all over the world and have archived them in what has become one of the largest collections of Holocaust testimony in existence. The words of these of victims are transcribed in this book without any changes to correct grammar or improve readability. Through their unwavering resolve to maintain the integrity of these survivors’ legacy, the editors of this book have been successful at disproving several assumptions regarding the Holocaust made by today’s generation: first, that there exists a singular Holocaust experience; second, that to stay alive in the camps was a matter of survival of the fittest; and third, that society’s moral guidelines can be applied to life in the camps. |
Essay (back to top) Many scholars of Holocaust history tend to shy away from personal accounts of the events that they study. The reason for this is based on the belief that these accounts are untrustworthy due to the fallibility of human memory. They place the survivors off to the side, as if by surviving they ceased to be victims. Sadly, the lack of attention given to eyewitness accounts is robbing the world of the human aspect of the Holocaust. These events did not simply happen in some far away land in some far away time. The victims of these atrocities are real and are still around today. The book Witness: Voices from the Holocaust is a collection of the transcribed video testimonies, selected from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, from over two dozen of these victims. This collection is the product of nearly twenty years of gathering done by scholars at Yale University. They have been successful in securing the testimonies of hundreds of survivors from all over the world and archiving them in what has become one of the largest collections of Holocaust testimony in existence. The words of these of victims are transcribed in this book without any changes to correct grammar or to improve readability. Through their unwavering resolve to maintain the integrity of these survivors legacy, the editors of this book have been successful at disproving several assumptions regarding the Holocaust made by today’s generation: first, that there exists a singular Holocaust experience; second, that to stay alive in the camps was a matter of survival of the fittest; and third, that society’s moral guidelines can be applied to life in the camps. In the words of Celia K, who was sixteen when the Germans invaded Poland, “it’s hard to comprehend what it is really to go through and feel what we went through” (Greene, 237). While it may not be possible to imagine the horror of the Holocaust, the words of those who survived are this generation’s only hope for overcoming these assumptions. The personal accounts of the twenty seven survivors in this book allow us to look beyond our modern-day perspective and to see these events through the eyes of those who experienced them first hand. The book itself is separated into several sections chronicling the situation in Europe from the ascension of the Nazis into power up to the liberation of the camps and the aftermath. The words of the individual survivors are interwoven into these categories. The bulk of these testimonies come from Jewish survivors of the various death camps throughout Europe; however, the editors have also included the testimony of Jews who spent the entire war in hiding, a Hitler Youth member, and an American POW incarcerated in Mauthausen. The inclusion of these testimonies adds to the value of this work because it gives readers a broader view of the Holocaust, often describing the same event or idea from various perspectives. One common mistake made by many people today is the assumption that the experience of those living under the Third Reich differed very little during Nazi occupation. The images of blatant antisemitism, roundups, the selection process and the gassing and cremation of Jewish prisoners resonate through our minds as a result of dramatic Hollywood depictions of these events. While these events did in fact occur, each person living during Hitler’s reign experienced it differently. For example, antisemitism in pre-Nazi Europe existed on a spectrum. Many Jews remember constant harassment by their gentile neighbors. Chaim E, a Polish Jew born in 1916 who would later participate in the successful Sobibor uprising, recalls, “We always felt some hate to Jews, but we lived with it because we didn’t know differently” (Greene, 7). He describes life in Łódź, where he experienced segregation: “I wouldn’t dare to go at night there because the antisemitism was big … because we lived with the Jews alone, we didn’t see it every day, but we knew it is present there” (Greene, 7). In contrast, some European Jews claim that before the Nazis’ rise to power they never felt excluded from society or as if they were different. Walter S, born is Germany in 1924, remembers, “Jewish people in Germany, were first Germans and then Jewish—like you would be an American, and then your religion is the secondary” (Greene, 6). Upon the Nazis’ ascension to power in the early 1930s, the situation for many Jews under Nazi rule changed dramatically. Still, despite a significant increase in antisemitic sentiment among German gentiles in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power, survivor testimonies seem to point at a discrepancy between the way Germans were trained to treat Jews, and the way they actually treated them. Nazi propaganda papers, such as Der Stürmer, portrayed hideous caricatures of Jews in order to cultivate negative feeling towards them. According to Frank S, born in Germany in 1921, the German idea of a Jew was of “an ugly, miserable person” (Greene, 12). He reports that when a Jew did not fit the hideous stereotype that was drilled into the brains of his German schoolmates, they did not quite know how to feel. When he asked a few of his friends who were members of the Hitler Youth what they had against Jews, he remembers them saying “Well, we have nothing against you. If they were all like you it would be all right. But it’s the other Jews that we don’t like” (Greene, 12). Later, when his mother picked him up from school, they asked him “Who was that dirty Jew woman that picked you up from school?” When he answered that she was his mother they responded with “Oh, my God, you should be ashamed of yourself to have a mother like this.” Such discrepancies were common among in the relationships of Jews and gentiles in Nazi Germany up until the grip of the Gestapo began to tighten. Golly D, the daughter of an Orthodox father and a Christian mother who converted to Judaism recalls walking home from school with her German friend when a Gestapo agent pulled the boy off the street and lectured him. According to Golly D, the boy’s father was ordered to report to Gestapo headquarters and was told to keep his son in line under threat of deportation to a concentration camp (Greene, 14). Slowly, the situation for Jews in Germany and surrounding countries grew worse. Soon, walled ghettos were established and Jews from all over the continent were herded into these overcrowded slums. Not long after, these ghettos were liquidated and their surviving inhabitants were shipped off to the death camps. Once deportation to the death camps began, a slew of new hardships emerged. Jews were rounded up and crammed into cattle cars. Often over 150 people were forced into a car that was built to hold only ten horses (Greene, 104). They were given no food or water, and a significant percentage died in transit. Immediately upon arrival, the masses were subjected to a selection. Those who were chosen for extermination were sent to the gas chambers and only hours later their ashes rained down over the camp. Those “lucky” enough to be allowed to live were subjected to slave labor, disease, unimaginably harsh beatings, and a starvation diet often consisting of less then three hundred calories per day (Greene, xi). A common misconception about life in the camps is that the strongest prisoners were able to overcome these hardships and survive while the weak died off. The voices of those who did indeed survive disconfirm this. Walter S, incarcerated at Auschwitz, said, “You could be the strongest man. You could have the strongest even will to live. You could be very religious and prayed all your life—it really didn’t help…you had to have luck” (Greene, 169). Survival, as Walter S. clearly understood, was a matter of luck. Many German guards killed mercilessly and the victims were often randomly selected, or chosen for some minor mistake. Herbert J, an American POW in Mauthausen, describes a particularly gruesome scene: “One of the men made a mistake cutting a piece of wood. And he tried to hide it…the officer that was in charge there walked up…grabbed him by the arm, and run his arm into the band saw and threw the hand over in the corner” (Greene, 157). Chaim E. describes a situation where a handful of his fellow campmates were successful in killing a guard and running off. They were soon captured and punished with death; however, in order to discourage further uprisings, the Germans lined up every prisoner in the camp and selected every tenth person to be gassed along with the rebels (Greene, 154). Each of these situations shows that those still alive in the camps could be selected for death at any time. In addition to this, starvation and disease claimed victims continuously. It can be argued that a strong desire to survive helped many prisoners make it to liberation. In fact, a handful of the survivors showcased in this book attribute their survival to their own strong will. Helen K, a Polish Jew born in 1924, describes her personal will to live as a method of resistance: “What we had to do, we did. Our aim was to defy Hitler, to do everything we can to live” (Greene, 147). Martin S, who was a mere eight years old when he first arrived in the camps, states: “I don’t remember…that I ever had any other thought than survival” (Greene, 133). While it was true that many survivors did indeed have a strong will to live, the random quality of the victimization ensured that some who possessed this strong desire lived while many others, who shared it as well, died. One major tendency of today’s generation is to judge the actions of prisoners inside the camps based on their own moral principles. This is a mistake because it is unfair to compare one’s situation with that of those who suffered in the death camps. The Jews in the death camps were forced to live in impossible circumstances. Nothing could be done to guarantee survival; however, one could strive to ward off death for another day or another hour. Unfortunately, this often involved sacrificing one’s moral values, turning a blind eye to the surrounding suffering and instead focusing all efforts on one’s own survival. Many Jews with useful skills offered their talents to the Germans in hopes of being spared. A few prisoners became what were known in the camps as Kapos. In the words of Martin S: “those were guys that worked for the Germans but they were really prisoners” (Greene, 158). In exchange for slightly more bearable living conditions, they beat their fellow Jews and were the object of contempt by many of the other prisoners. On a smaller scale, some would commit minor crimes against their fellow prisoners in order to obtain a little more food, or a little more comfort. Hanna F, a Polish Jew born in 1923, recalls with regret that one night she stole a piece of bread from her bunkmate: “She saved a tiny, tiny slice of bread and a piece of margarine for breakfast…that particular night, I stole that piece of bread” (Greene, 142). In retrospect, Hanna F. is sorrowful about her crime. “I was hungry and she was hungry,” she said, however, at the moment her suffering was so intense that all that mattered was finding some way to live to see the next day. She later described exchanging her pair of wooden shoes with another’s pair of good shoes so that she would be able to work better and be more useful. Again she feels ashamed, yet she understands that her actions likely saved her life and she employs this rationality in an attempt to clear her conscience. The unfathomable nature of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust makes way for the surfacing of several assumptions regarding the experience of the camps and the events leading up to the “Final Solution.” Among these are the assumptions that the Jewish experience during the Holocaust was singular, that survival within the camps was based on a Darwinian model of survival of the fittest, and that the set of morals that govern our everyday choices can be applied to life in the shadow of death. The book, Witness: Voices from the Holocaust offers its readers the unedited words of a handful of individuals who have seen the worst that human beings are capable of, and have lived to tell their stories. While it is impossible to fully comprehend what life was like for the victims of the Nazis, the survivor testimonies organized within this book help to bring readers to a higher level of understanding than what can be achieved by reading documents and learning statistics. Thanks to the work of the scholars at Yale University who painstakingly recorded and archived the voices of these survivors, future generations will surely be aware of the human aspect of mass murder as the voices of the few remaining survivors are being extinguished forever. |
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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