Karen Treiger's Blog, page 6

HOW QUICKLY LIFE CHANGES!

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Two weeks ago today, I flew on an airplane with my mother to New York. We went to restaurants, museums, a Broadway play (West Side Story – it was fabulous) and my mother went to a 200-person wedding at Central Synagogue. We washed our hands, disinfected our airplane trays, and had a really great time.

Since then, the spread of the corona virus has led to all the above and so much more, being shuttered. Schools are virtual, synagogues are closed, Broadway is dark. People are asked to stay home. More and more people that I know are being tested for the virus because of direct contact and/or symptoms of a fever, sore throat, or a cough. The country is worried about the impossible number of patients who will need hospitalization in the coming months the deaths that we may be mourning.

It feels like the world is at war with an organism that we cannot even see.   The organism has a very steep advantage.

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But, since my mind compares everything to the Holocaust and what Sam and Esther went through, I, of course, have been thinking about how, with lightning speed, lives can change, how we can be forced to leave where we are, forced to abide by a curfew (oh, this will be coming, I am sure), forced to completely change our lifestyle.

With the caveat that of course I know that WWII and the Holocaust is different from what we are experiencing now – here are some thoughts:

When the Germans attacked Poland on September 1, 1939 from the west and two weeks later the Soviet Union attacked from the east, people in Poland had no idea what was coming.   But with lightning speed, the Nazis went from town to town, bombing, shooting, burning – taking over. Esther’s family lost their home in Stoczek, Poland, when the Nazi’s burned it down in the first few weeks of the war. They were homeless and terrified. They were in a state of shock and uncertainty, as they found shelter in a friend’s home. At first, their family separated, Esther’s two brothers crossed the new German-Soviet Border and took the train to Bialystok. Esther, her parents and her two other siblings, decided a week or so later to join the Wisznia brothers in Bialystok. Bialystok was a transformed city, whose population had doubled in a month. It was jam packed with Jewish refugees from the western side of Poland – fleeing.

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[photo:  what uesd to be Stoczek town square where markets were held]

Just this description is enough to show how within weeks from the onset of the war, Esther’s family’s life was turned upside down, never to be the same again. We know it got much worse two years later when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, but that is not my focus here and in September of 1939, the Wisznia family had no idea how much worse it would get. What I now understand more clearly is the speed with which the change came and how frightening it must have been.

Sam’s family was living in the tiny farming village of Bagatelle, Poland. Such a small place – just one road, farms and lots of cows. Very soon after the war began, Sam’s five siblings, all of whom were married by this time, decided to cross the border and head east to Slonim, where it was safer for Jews (for 2 years anyway). Sam stayed with his parents on the farm. Even before Sam and his parents were evicted by the Nazis, life had already radically changed.   Their large family, some of whom lived within a stone’s throw from the Goldberg home, were gone, leaving a silence in their house and town that must have been deafening.  Once Sam and his parents were kicked off the farm, they moved to the east side of the border and found a place to live. They lived in one room, rented from a woman who had the space. They had just moved from their large and comfortable farm home to one room in a stranger’s home – but they considered themselves lucky to have found a room to rent!

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[Shlomo in 6/2016 in Bagatele with a current resident (center) and our translator]

Life changed so quickly. I imagine they sat around their small table and looked at each other and said – I can’t believe how quickly our lives have changed. We don’t know what the future will bring, but for now, at least we have a roof over our head, food and we are safe. They didn’t know how much worse it would get over the next few weeks and years.

Sam and Esther were the only ones from their respective families to survivors the Holocaust. They carried on. They moved to America. They named their first two children for their murdered parents – Faiga Bracha and Shlomo Zelig – hoping their parents’ memory would be carried on through the next generation.

We are in a time of rapid change and uncertainty.   We must stay in touch and support one other during this difficult time.   If you live in Seattle and you need assistance of any kind or just want to hear a friendly voice, please send me a private message (info@karentreiger.com) and I will be there.

Wash your hands.   My thoughts are with all of you.

 

Roads, Latrines, Swimming Pools: Creative Repurposing of Jewish Tombstones

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[Westhoffen Cemetery, France – photo by Kasia Streck for the New York Times]

Cowsheds
Roads
Walls
Knife sharpeners
Toilets
Patios
Playgrounds
Bars
Swimming pools
Poland
Salonica
Alsace

What do these have in common?

Yesterday, a New York Times article reported that in 2019 over 50 incidents of anti-Jewish activity across the Alsace region of France, historically, a “cradle of French Judaism,” occurred. Much of the hateful activities involved defacing Jewish tombstones. However, there has been a heartwarming response among some French people. A small group called the “Guardians of Memory,” are working to patrol the Jewish cemeteries of Alsace to keep the Jew-hating vandals out. This gives me hope in a world that sometimes seems filled with hate.

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[Guardians of Memory in Alsace.  Photo by Kasia Streck for the New York Times]

This hate has led to the destruction of many Jewish cemeteries throughout history. In my work on My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story, I learned about how Jewish cemeteries were destroyed and looted all over Poland. For example, in Esther’s hometown of Stoczek, the place of the Jewish cemetery has NO gravestones left. It’s just a cigarette-butt-ridden, overgrown, shortcut through town. After World War II, Jewish cemeteries were routinely pillaged and the beautiful stones with historical and meaningful inscriptions were taken and used as building material all over Poland. An example of this can be found in a 2018 Jerusalem Post article describing Jewish tombstones discovered in the foundation of a cowshed in a city near Kielce. The largest Jewish cemetery in Poland is in Warsaw, with 150,000 graves. This cemetery, destroyed after the war, has been partially restored with many hours of labor and care by both Jews and non-Jews. A 2018 article in the Times of Israel describes a Polish organization called “From the Depths” which has a “Matzeva Project,” which “aims to restore an estimated one million gravestones hidden in buildings and urban spaces.”  And yet . . . so many tombstones were stolen after the war – reutilized for roads, walls, lavatories, and more.

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[Shlomo Goldberg at the site of the Stoczek Jewish Cemetery – 2016]

This “help yourself to the marble” attitude was not restricted to Poland. I recently read Devin Naar’s book Jewish Salonica, where the Greek Christian attitude was – “let’s use the Nazi occupation of Greece to finally confiscate the Jewish cemetery land for city use and all those lovely marble slabs could sure come in handy” (my words – not a quote from Naar). The Greek Christians had been trying to get their hands on the Jewish cemetery for decades, but the large Jewish community had successfully pushed back and prevented the land grab. However, with the Nazi’s help, the Greek Christians’ dream of an expanded city center finally came true. But to be clear – the impetus to confiscate and destroy the cemetery was from the Greek Christians. The Nazi occupation of Salonica gave the Greek Christians the opportunity.

Here’s the story:

Jews most likely arrived in Salonica way back in 52 CE, but the majority of Jews came after the Spanish expulsion in 1492. Between 1500 and 1900, Jewish life in Salonica thrived. They called it “la madre de Israel” – “the mother of Israel.”   It had a large and vibrant Jewish community. The Ottoman rulers gave the Jewish community a huge amount of independence and self-governance. Synagogues, schools, organizations and Jewish businesses flourished.   (There, of course, was the small blip in the positive Jewish history of Salonica, when Shabtai Tzvi declared himself the messiah in the mid 17th century.)

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[Photo: Rabbi of the City 1918 – Wikipedia]

After WWI, the Ottoman Empire fell, and the Greeks took control of Salonica.   There was a devastating fire in 1917 which destroyed a huge part of the city and in the rebuilding process, the city footprint was expanded. The Jewish cemetery was smack in the middle of the expansion. The new city plan envisioned a complete removal of the cemetery and incorporation of the land into the city sphere. The Jews strongly objected and defeated the plan.

In 1926, the University of Salonica was built adjacent to the Jewish Cemetery and the University was itching to expand but couldn’t get their hands on the cemetery property. Greek Orthodox Christians living in this expanded Salonica resented the “inconvenience posed by the presence of the Jewish burial ground,” writes Naar. “Those in search of shortcuts to the city center took pickaxes to the walls of the cemetery to burrow their own passageways when they found the cemetery gates locked and, in one instance, destroyed sixty to seventy tombstones along their path. At least one tombstone, from 1863, was appropriated as building material for a nearby military hospital. Over 150 more tombstones were destroyed in another episode. Some Jewish newspapers sought to excuse the acts of vandalism as ‘child’s play,’ whereas others viewed them as part of a ‘regular and systematic’ plan instigated by ‘evil-doing antisemites.’” (Naar, 247)

But the Christians could not get their hands on the cemetery property until the Nazis arrived in the early 1940s. It was July of 1942 when the Nazi rounded up Salonica’s Jewish men, ages 18 to 45 (same month that Treblinka’s gas chambers began their murderous run) and forced them into harsh slave labor building roads. The Jewish community raised two billion drachmas towards a 3.5 million drachma ransom demanded by the Germans to free the forced laborers. The Germans made a deal with the Jews in order to “satisfy the sentiments of the Christian population” (Naar, 274): The laborers would be freed for a lesser sum, if the Jews gave up the cemetery and its 350,000 graves. (Naar, 240) The deal was done, and the Jews transferred part of the cemetery. But before the vast majority of Jews were able to transfer their loved ones gravestones and bones to a new location, the Greek Christians, pickaxes in hand, descended on the cemetery, destroying the entire 86 acres, walking away with thousands of drachmas worth of marble stones for building materials.

“[T]he ‘rape’ of the cemetery escalated,” Naar writes, “marble flooded the market, and its price plummeted. Jewish tombstones were stacked up in mason’s yards and, with the permission of the director of antiquities of Macedonia and overseen by the metropolitan bishop and the municipality, used to pave roads, line latrines, and extend the sea walls; to construct pathways, patios, and walls in private and public spaces though out the city, in suburbs such as Panorama and Ampelokipi, and more than sixty kilometers away in beach towns in Halkidiki, where they decorated playgrounds, bars, and restaurants in hotels; to build a swimming pool – with Hebrew-letter inscription visible; to repair the St. Demetrius Church and other buildings. . .” (Naar, 275)

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[Photo: Fragment of tombstone from Salonica Jewish Cemetery – from The Reused Jewish Tombstone of Thessaloniki, The World, June 19, 2017, by Renee Gross]

Today, the place that was the ancient Jewish cemetery of Salonica is covered by the expanded Aristotle University.   Naar explains that in 2014, “after decades of silence” a small memorial was set up noting that the site was the location of the old Jewish cemetery. However, the plaque blames the Nazi occupation and does not admit the guilt of the Greek government or the Greek Christians. There is no movement among Greek residents of Salonica to do “teshuva” – no “Matzeva Project” or “Guardians of Memory.”   There is no movement to gather the old stones from buildings and swimming pools.   The Jews and their gravestones are just gone.   With the deportation of Salonica’s 54,000 Jews to their deaths in Nazi gas chambers, the centuries old, mighty Jewish community of Salonica ceased to exist.

Now, almost eight decades after WWII, Jewish cemeteries remain a target in places where Jew-hatred is alive and well, such as France. The New York Times article quotes Laurent Schilli, who heads the Colmar synagogue’s governing body:

“The real question,” Mr. Schilli states, “is not who did [the vandalism], but which will be the next cemetery touched,” he said. “The best we can do is discourage it. But prevent it from happening again — I don’t see how. We can slow it. But we can’t stop it.”

As we prepare to celebrate Purim, a holiday that yet again reminds us that there are Hamans in the world, we rejoice in our triumph of survival over the centuries. We must remain strong and be grateful for groups of people like the Guardians of Memory, From the Depth, and so many others who care. We can stand together and restore faith in humankind.

SOURCES:

Naar, Devin, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, Stanford University Press, Stanford (2016)

New York Times: Jewish Cemeteries Are Threatened. These People Are Guarding Them, March 4, 2020.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/world/europe/france-alsace-anti-semitism.html?searchResultPosition=1

Times of Israel: Warsaw to Restore Jewish Tombstones Used as Building Material, August 15, 2014.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/warsaw-to-restore-jewish-tombstones-used-for-building/

Jerusalem Post: House in Kielce, Poland, found to be made of Jewish gravestones, July 1, 2018.

https://www.jpost.com/International/House-in-Kielce-Poland-found-to-be-made-of-Jewish-gravestones-561303

The World, The Reused Jewish Tombstone of Thessaloniki, June 19, 2017, by Renee Gross

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-06-19/rescued-jewish-tombstones-thessaloniki

Wikipedia:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Thessaloniki

 

Corona, Tuberculosis, Nazis and My Grandmother

 

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[Photo:  Rensselear County TB Association]

The corona virus has infected 83,700 people, killing at least 2,858, all but 70 in mainland China (NY Times report as of today). Predictions are that this newest global scourge will affect many more people in the coming months.

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[Photo – CDC Corona Virus test kit]

All this news about how the virus is spreading, quarantine, the rate of death among the infected, where the virus is turning up around the globe – is making my head spin. But this newest virus has reared its ugly head at a time that I have been taking a deep dive in another infectious disease that has killed millions – TUBERCULOSIS.

Like the current corona virus, this ancient infection is spread from person to person through particles in the air – from a cough or a sneeze. The number of infections has decreased world-wide due to effective antibiotic treatments and other preventions. But it hasn’t disappeared! In 2018, 10 million people were infected with TB around the world and 1.5 million of those infected died. There is a new strain of TB that is resistant to antibiotics.

Before the disease was understood scientifically, TB was a terrifying mystery. Theories of why certain people were infected were a dime a dozen. It’s no surprise that German eugenicists of the early 20th Century looked at TB as a racial weakness – proof that the infected person was not worthy of life. “German eugenicists,” writes Helen Bynum in Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis, “regarded the tubercle bacillus as ‘the friend of the race,’ such was its power to weed out the unfit members of society. They regarded sanatoria not so much as places of cure, but as somewhere to segregate the sick compassionately and to stop the dilution of the race by preventing them from reproducing.” (Bynum, 183)

During the interwar period in Germany, eugenicists called for greater control over TB patients. Then with the rise of the Nazi party and Hitler’s election in 1933, ideas of a “healthy” and “pure” Aryan race became national policy. Sterilization was legalized. Marriage between Aryans and “other” was restricted or forbidden. People with mental and physical disabilities were murdered in the T4 Program (see blog post from 8/29/19 and blog post from 11/12/17).

Germans with TB were appropriately quarantined in sanatoria. However, “[t]he Nazi doctor Kurt Heissmeyer,” Bynum writes, “recommended in 1943 the sorting of patients by ‘racial value’ as well as ‘organic condition’ when deciding if they were worth treating. At the Neuengamme concentration camp he used Jewish children and adults for his experiments on the immunity to tuberculosis, and not just because of their easy availability; in his view their racial inferiority made them particularly easy subjects to infect and in which to monitor the progress of the disease.” (Bynum, 185)

People with TB were also sought out by the Nazis in areas of occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.  The SS used mobile X-ray machines to diagnose people with TB. These X-rays diagnosed approximately 100,000 Polish and Soviet citizens with TB. They were all shot. (Bynum)

In my previous research into eugenics and how that theory played out in Nazi Germany, I had not come across this information about TB and how it fell into the Nazi world of racial and ethnic purity. I stumbled on this information as I was reading about TB and its world of coughing, collapsed lungs, sputum and sanatoria.  You see, my grandmother had TB.

Elizabeth (Staadecker) Friedlander (Nanny) contracted tuberculosis around 1947 and was quarantined in Seattle’s Firland Sanatoria. She was a mother of two girls, ages 12 and 10. Neither my mother nor my aunt remember much from when their mother had TB. Their strongest memories are of visiting Nanny at Firland. My mother, because she was 12 (some kind of magical age), was able to enter my grandmother’s room and visit for a few minutes. But my aunt, age 10, could only wave through a glass window. My mother recalls other visits where all they were both only allowed to stand outside the building and wave to their mother through a window.

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[Photo:  Firland – University of Washington Digital collection]

Did Nanny have typical TB symptoms? Did she have a painful, exhausting cough? Did she spit up blood? Did she have night-sweats, weight loss, pain in her lungs and trouble breathing? Her daughters don’t remember. Nanny was released from Firland after six months of treatment and declared cured. But she relapsed and had to be quarantined for another six months! I believe that the new antibiotic streptomycin saved her life, since it was introduced for treatment of TB in the United States in 1946 and Nanny was most likely at Firland in 1947.

I hope and pray that the newest corona virus does not stay with the human population as long as TB has and that those infected may find a speedy and full recovery.

P.S. Did you know that Franz Kafka and George Orwell both died of TB?

Sources:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firland_Sanatorium

New York Times 2/28/20: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html

World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis

Bynum, Helen, Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2012).

 

Germany was not the only country where eugenics raged – England and the United States were hotbeds of this racial theory.  More about US policies – see blog post dated 8/29/19)

VLADKA MEED’S MEMOIR III

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[Photo:  Vladka Meed 2005]

By October 1943, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto was complete. Pictures of the ghetto after the uprising reflect the destructive force of the German army. The small group of Jewish survivors had to find hiding places on the “Aryan Side.”

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[Photo: Warsaw Ghetto after the war]

Vladka Meed and her fellow members of the Jewish Coordinating Committee got to work to help them secure hiding places and obtain documents. The Committee also provided aid for the children that survived and established contacts with inmates of slave labor camps and Jewish partisans. They even “kept in constant touch with the Polish underground.” (Meed, 182)

Every Jew in Warsaw – those in bunkers, basements, or attics, as well as those like Vladka, who were hiding in plain sight – lived in constant fear. There were so many things to fear. “Fear of the Germans,” Vladka writes, “fear of the Poles, fear of the blackmailers, fear of losing one’s hideout, fear of being left penniless.” (Meed, 194) Those Jews in hiding were always hungry and they feared being kicked out of their hiding place, being informed on, or just being found. Those, like Vladka, with Aryan features, attempted to blend with their Polish neighbors. They had to change names often and It was hard to accurately adopt all Polish customs and religious observances. It seemed to Vladka that the Poles always had a way to sniff out a Jew. The szmalcownik, the blackmailer, always seemed to know! “The eyes were a special danger sign,” Vladka explains. “A careworn face might be transformed by a smile; an accent could be controlled, church customs and prayers could be learned, but the eyes . . . How could one hide the mute melancholy, the haunted look of fear?

’Your eyes give you away,’ our Gentile friends would tell us. ‘Make them look livelier, merrier. You won’t attract so much attention then.’ But our eyes kept constantly watching, searching the shadows ahead, glancing quickly behind, seeing our own misfortune and foreseeing even worse to come. Haunted by fear of betrayal, our eyes betrayed us; and this knowledge only increased our fear.’”   (Meed, 194)

Vladka brought food and news of the outside world to Jews in hiding. Some were in the city while others were in the countryside. She described one city bunker built by a gardener. The large, fortified space was built under an expansive garden. Thirty Jews hid there, including one of the most famous Warsaw Jews, Dr. Emmanuel Ringelblum, the historian who is responsible for the Oineg Shabbes collection of documents saved in the ghetto. “It was from this bunker,” Vladka writes, that the “now famous historic report of Jewish cultural activities in the ghetto was issued.” (Meed, 209-210). But then, the gardener and his mistress had an argument. To take revenge, the mistress informed the Germans about the bunker. All the Jews were all murdered.

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[Photo: Emmanuel Ringelblum]

Then there were the hiding places outside of the city. Vladka went one day to Miedzeszyn, a summer resort near Warsaw where she was to visit Clara Falk and her ten-year-old son, Adash. She found the small hiding place.   It “was so cluttered with lumber and old pieces of furniture that I could hardly turn around.   I strained my eyes in the semi-darkness but saw no one. The landlady pointed to a corner, littered with debris and branches, from which a hand protruded, barely visible. Then I heard a faint, ‘Good morning!’ The same hand began to scrape away the debris. I opened the door a little wider to get more light.

Clara and Adash lay crouched side by side on the bare earthen floor. Pinned under the debris, they could hardly move. They were skin and bones, their faces haggard, their lips chapped, their eyes bulging, their hair disheveled and matted with chaff. They looked like spectres; they no longer seemed human.

They begged me to close the door. The daylight, they said, hurt their eyes. They ate, slept, and spent their waking hours in that crouching position: there was no space for them to stand upright or to lie down full length.

Twice a day the landlady bough them some scraps to eat. She would not allow them to go outside. They had not washed during the past few months. On rare occasions, when Clara’s limbs became numb, she risked venturing outside at night for a few moments. Her right arm felt lifeless, but it gave her excruciating pains.” (Meed, 205)

Vladka and her Committee relocated Clara and Adash to a hiding place in Warsaw, where they could help them. Mother and son both survived the war.

Vladka also describes going outside of Warsaw, to a forest encampment with food and medicine. But she got there too late. The hidden Jews had been found. Many were killed by the Germans; the rest scattered throughout the countryside.

In July of 1944, the Poles revolted against their German occupiers. In response, the Germans demolished the city of Warsaw. The city was in ruins and many of the nooks and crannies where Jews were hiding were bombed and destroyed. Rumors abounded that the Germans planned to take all young, able-bodied Poles to camps in Germany. Vladka lost her home and felt that there was no way to remain safely in Warsaw. So, she and her future husband, Benjamin, left the city and headed out to find a place to hide. They wandered from place to place and survived until Warsaw was liberated by the Red Army.

After liberation, Vladka and Benjamin returned to Warsaw. Vladka’s grief oozes from the page. “The aching eyes devour the scene,” Vladka wrote. “[E]very stone, every heap of rubble is a reminder of the Holocaust. Here a protruding length of pipe, there a bent iron rail, there a charred sapling – these are what is left of our devastated world. My eyes fall upon the remains of a torn, soiled prayer book, on a rusty, dented pot, and I see my home again – my father and mother. . ..” (Meed, 262)

Vladka walked to the Jewish cemetery to try to find her father’s grave, where she might find a physical marker to mourn her loss. She remembered exactly where the grave was: “Row no. 105, the seventh grave from the left.” (Meed, 262)

Vladka slowly walked through the devastated cemetery. “Wherever I turned,” she writes, “there was nothing but overturned tombstones, desecrated graves and scattered skulls, their dark sockets burning deep into me, their shattered jaws demanding, ‘Why? Why has this befallen us?’

Why, then, the guilt that tinged my revulsion and rage; why the shame-my shame-that persecution followed my people even into their graves? Carefully, so as not to trample the skulls or fall into an open grave, we made our way through this place of eternal rest to the spot where my father’s bones had lain. Though I knew the location, I could not find his grave. The whole area had been desolated, the soil pitted and strewn with crushed skulls and broken grave markers.

Was one of these desecrated skulls that of my own father? How would I ever know?

Nothing. Nothing was left me of my past, of my life in the ghetto, not even my father’s grave.” (Meed, 262-263)

These are the last painful words of Vladka Meed’s 1948 reflections. There is an Epilogue that tells of her visit to Warsaw 33 years later. But it has a different tone, a different color. I find this 1948 memoir to be one of the most powerful I have read. The immediacy of the grief, the fear, the pain and sadness come through each page, each word.

I learned so much from Vladka’s memoir. Sharing parts of her story with you has helped me to process her grief and my sorrow.

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Source:   Meed, Vladka, On Both Sides of the Wall, Originally published in Yiddish in 1948 by the Educational Committee of the Workmen’s Circle New York, Reprinted in English by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 1972, 1993.

 

 

Can We Be Silent?

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[Photo:  Post-war reconstruction of Warsaw’s Old Town]

“Establish contact with Gentiles, find living quarters for women and children, assist Jews who are in hiding, and, in particular, to find sources of arms.”

This was Vladka Meed’s assignment living on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw in 1943.   She could pass as a Gentile because she had a “rather small nose, grey-green eyes, straight light brown hair.”

Soon after arriving in this alternative universe, where people went about their daily business, had food to eat and didn’t live in fear of deportation, Vladka got a job as a seamstress. This job provided her with a source of income and a crucial identity card.

Shocked – that’s what Vladka was – when she realized that Poles didn’t care about the suffering of the Jews on the other side of the wall.

“I had expected that on the ‘Aryan side’ there would be an intense interest in the life of the ghetto,” Vladka wrote. She thought that “that the Gentiles, who lived so close to the wall and could observe through their windows the horrifying events in the ghetto, would be haunted by what they saw. I had thought that Poles were eager to aid their Jewish acquaintances and neighbors.   . . . but before long, something happened that shattered my illusions. One Sunday I was strolling along a Warsaw street in the ‘Aryan sector,’ not too far from the ghetto wall. There was a playground on Krasinski Square opposite the wall, and that Sunday it was crowded with youngsters and adults engaged in sports, dancing and games. The small cafes were bursting with young men eating, drinking and having a good time. I paused at some distance and took in the scene, then turned left. The ghetto wall was only a stone’s throw away. Two different worlds on the same street.

Suddenly a volley of gunfire rang out on the other side of the wall. There were anguished screams, then silence. The Germans had claimed another victim in the ghetto.

I looked toward the park. Had the people there heard the gunfire? Some of them had looked over their shoulders, startled and alarmed. But one of them pointed toward the wall, and with his other hand made a motion indicating that there was nothing to worry about.

That is just for the Jews, a youthful Pole remarked with a grin – and returned for a second ride on a swing.’” (Meed, 88)

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[Photo:  Krasinski Square – 1890-1905.  Wikipedia]

But Vladka was living on the Aryan side of the wall for a reason. Her main task was to purchase arms and smuggle them into the ghetto for the resistance.   She was thrilled when she was able to procure her first revolver and smuggle it successfully into the ghetto. Her confidence built and she began to smuggle larger boxes of guns and dynamite into the ghetto and later the ingredients to make explosives. Terrified, she climbed the wall and threw the box of arms or explosives into the ghetto or climbed over herself, dropping down to the street and running for cover. But she was successful, over and over.

The first Jewish shots of revolt were fired on Jan. 18, 1943.   These first shots of rebellion managed to kill a few Germans, but the outward resistance quieted. The Jews continued to arm themselves for a larger battle. The Jews on the “Aryan side” were able to procure revolvers and grenades and smuggle them into the Ghetto. Vladka and her peers purchased the necessary chemicals such as gasoline, acid and potash, to make explosives. Vladka’s last smuggling mission to bring such chemicals to the resistance fighters was the day before the uprising began.

Once the uprising began, April 19, 1943, the Nazis fought back with everything they had. Among other tactics to smother the uprising, the Nazis set fire to buildings. Vladka describes a heart-wrenching scene:

“On the balcony of the second floor of the burning house stood a woman, wringing her hands. She disappeared into the building and a moment later returned carrying a child and dragging a featherbed, which she flung to the sidewalk. Obviously, she meant to jump, or perhaps to drop the child, hoping that the featherbed would break the fall. Clutching the child, she started to climb over the railing. Amid a spray of bullets she slumped. The child dropped to the street. The woman’s lifeless body remained draped over the railing.” (Meed, 144)

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[Photo:  Warsaw burning during the uprising.  Wikipedia]

Vladka and other Jews on the “Aryan side” watched as the Ghetto burned and their comrades fought to their deaths. Vladka describes how they “were bursting with admiration for them, but we were consumed also by a sense of guilt at being outside the ghetto, in relative safety, while they were fighting and dying. We should have been there with them, amid the roaring fires and the crashing walls.

We stared into the fiery sky over Warsaw. Why was there no response from the rest of the city? Where was the help our neighbors had promised? And the rest of the world – why was it so silent?” (Meed, 147)

These words hang in the air in the space where I sit.

“Why was it so silent?”

We all must ask this question as we watch the burning of American democracy.   We must not be silent. I am grappling with what to do.   I have not worked it out yet, but I cannot be silent.

RAW, FIRST-HAND TESTIMONY – JEWISH POLICE

 

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[Photo: Warsaw Ghetto – Wikipedia]

I am still struggling with how to think about Kapos, the Jewish Police and the Judenrat.

After reading Bitter Reckoning (see posts I, post II and post III), I dared to crack the binding of On Both Sides of the Wall, by Vladka Meed, a survivor from Warsaw. This powerful memoir was first published in 1948, and Vladka’s recollections are raw, descriptive and powerful.

We know the outline of events: after conquering Warsaw, the Nazis forced the Jews to build a brick wall around a 1.3 square mile area of the city. The Jews of the city were forced to move into the ghetto. Vladka and her family already lived in this part of the city, so initially they felt relieved that they didn’t have to move. In the crowded, deprived ghetto, Vladka struggled to find food for herself and her family. She described the mind-melting hunger, the standing in lines in the cold of winter and the heat of summer, the desperate attempts to get a life-saving work card, the death in the streets, the clandestine meetings with the underground.

Her accounts of the Jewish Police in the Warsaw ghetto scream out to me with new meaning and, honestly, new confusion, after reading Bitter Reckoning:

“The Jewish police were now very important people in the Warsaw ghetto. The Nazis relied on them to carry out their roundups, to control employment cards, and to load unemployed Jews into the wagon and transport them to the waiting railway cars. Obviously, no one was very fond of the police; even in better days they had been known to badger and harass people in their daily lives by insisting on rigid adherence to the Nazi regulations. Now they had become even more hostile and aggressive. They were feared, but at the same time they were the objects of envy. For one thing the Jewish police were secure; even the Germans thus far had left their relatives alone. They were never threatened with ‘resettlement.’” (Meed, 26)

“The luckless residents of the building submitted to the orders of these men. Without protest, they were herded roughly down the stairs. With the callous arrogance of the privileged, the Jewish police dragged children, the elderly and the ailing down to the courtyard. Although a number of the residents had employment cards, the faces of all were pale with fear. Families clung together for whatever comfort there might be in closeness. . .. After the inspection had been completed, a few of the Jews who had neither [work] cards nor money were ordered to step to one side. Yet other Jews in similar straits were passed over. How, I wondered, did the police decide? There were protests. In order to spare certain lives, others had to be made the victims. (Meed, 26-27)

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I try to place myself in the ghetto standing in terror, as the Jewish Police make their selection of who will live and who will die. It’s impossible to do so as I sit in Berkeley, California (here visiting my brother Ken). But, during those terrible dark days of the Grossaktion (Large Action) in Warsaw, between July 23, 1942 and September 21, 1942, between 250,000 -300,000 Jews were deported from the ghetto. Those “selected,” were sent to Treblinka, where Sam washed their clothes. Vladka’s mother, her sister and brother were captured and Vladka never saw them again (her father had previously died in the ghetto).

Like so many remaining after the Grossaktion, Vladka was young and bereft of family. She worked in a factory and was hungry all the time. She continued to meet with those in the underground, planning resistance. One of the leaders of the resistance asked to meet with her. He proposed that she be smuggled outside the ghetto and live there as an Aryan. He explained that because her features are not typically Jewish and her Polish is good, she is a perfect candidate for this difficult job. The resistance would provide her with false identity documents. Her task would be to procure arms for the resistance and smuggle them into the ghetto and to assist Jews in hiding on the Aryan side.

Vladka accepted the assignment. As if in an instant, she found herself outside the ghetto walls, where people were living a “normal” life. She couldn’t believe it. She was free from the eyes of the Jewish Police and the Nazis; free from the constant fear of “selection.” But she still lived in constant danger of being “found out.”

I will share more of Vladka’s story in a future post, but for now, let us sit with her words about the Jewish Police.   Although these events happened 75- 80 years ago, I listen to Vladka’s voice and I am moved: moved to feel Vladka’s fear and pain; moved to grieve the death of her family and so many more; moved to take action to live in a better world.

 

 

 

Trauma Comes in Many Shapes – lessons from Spokane

Trauma. Over the past two days I have been thinking a lot about trauma.

This week, I went to Spokane, Washington to speak at the Southside Community Center. I was welcomed on Wednesday evening by a crowd of 210. They listened and absorbed the stories of Sam and Esther Goldberg and a few of the miraculous things that happened to me during my research and writing process. It was a fantastic event with meaningful and interesting questions. I was moved by the crowd and by the response to my presentation. I want to thank Lynn Terry and her amazing team of volunteers.

During the question and answer period, we discussed the lingering signs of trauma that Esther and Sam exhibited. Then someone mentioned the importance of speaking about the Holocaust in schools. Assuring them that speaking in schools is part of my mission, I mentioned that I would be speaking at Freeman High School the following day. A hush fell over the crowd and then a solitary, brave sole, raised her hand.

“You should know,” she said, “Freeman High School had a shooting there in 2017. They are suffering from their own trauma.”

“Yes, thank you,” I answered, “I am aware of the shooting.”

I had looked up this tragedy before leaving Seattle, to remind myself what type of school shooting it was (sad statement that we have so many that I cannot recall which was which!). I was reminded that a student who was angry at being bullied and who knows what else, brought a gun to school and shot and killed one student, Sam Strahan, and injured many more.

Then, Thursday (yesterday), I drove 30 minutes out of Spokane into the “valley.” Ten minutes into my drive, I found myself on a road empty of cars, barren of houses, with only a few farms that sporadically appeared – as if out of nowhere. This is the definition of rural Washington. I was following my GPS, of course, and as I got closer to Freeman High School, I wondered how there could be a school here in the middle of nowhere. But then the school came into view on the right side of the road – a large, beautiful brick building emerged in the barren landscape. I turned right into the driveway and easily found a place to park.

I pulled up the parking brake in my rented green Subaru Forester and got out the car. As I walked down the pathway towards the main entrance, something in the garden next to the building caught my eye. It forced me to stop and pay attention. It was a jumble of painted, colorful stones. I thought, “oh, how sweet.” But then I saw the stone in the back – it read;

In Loving Memory of

Sam Strahan

Bravery & Selflessness

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My breath caught in my throat as I realized that Sam Strahan was the boy who was shot that day in 2017 by his fellow student.

I took a deep breath at the front door and pressed the buzzer for entry. I spoke to 100 students in their gym. They sat respectfully on the bleachers. I only had 40 minutes. I mentioned that Monday was the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Then I launched into Sam and Esther’s story of survival, finishing with their arrival in NY harbor in May of 1949 and a final quick word about my family trip to Poland in 2016. The bell rang its obnoxious ring and my time was up. But I had one more opportunity to speak to students. I met with a subset of the 100, about 25 students, in their classroom on the first floor.

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They asked good questions and I did my best to answer. A few parents came and they had wonderful points to contribute. At one point in the discussion someone asked about Sam and Esther’s life in America and how they managed to go on after what happened to them.

I thought – “if there is a moment to raise the issue of the shooting, it’s now.”

So, I discussed being immigrants in NY with, at first, no English and no money and how they suffered from the trauma of what happened to them during the war. I suggested that there are many kinds of trauma and each person’s trauma is different, but very real.   I told them that I knew that they had suffered a tragedy a couple of years ago with the shooting and that I have no doubt that the trauma of that day lives inside of them. I told them that they are free to bring up their feelings or not, as they wish.

I was not surprised when the room fell silent. Their faces fell as their own personal trauma rose to the surface for a few seconds. I could feel the air change in the room. Pia, the teacher, told me later that a few kids in this class had older siblings who had been injured during the shooting, so it was very real for them.

The final question was from a student who asked, “shouldn’t look at both sides, especially about Hitler, because he had such a hard childhood with so much rejection in his life.” I responded that he is right, Hitler had a difficult childhood and was rejected many times. He lived for several years in Vienna and he wanted to be an artist. He was not successful. He was certainly exposed to Jews in Vienna and it is there that he may developed his intense hatred of Jews.

[here is a short article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about Hitler’s early years:

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/adolf-hitler-early-years-1889-1913]

I told the class that Hitler found his “voice” and calling as a political speaker, not as an artist. When, in 1923 he attempted a coup against the German government, he was arrested and put in jail. It was there, at the age of 34, he wrote Mein Kampf, and set down his Jew hatred in writing and set the course for his political career. I suggested that today we need to try hard not to make people feel rejected and outcast, because they may search for meaning down a different path. Hitler’s path of hatred led to a world war and the murder of six million Jews.

The obnoxious bell rang again, and I thanked the students and the teacher for having me to their school. The kids ran out – hungry for lunch.

I thanked Pia for inviting me and got back in the Forester and drove back through the empty landscape of Eastern Washington. I had time to think about the students and the world they find themselves in today. So much has changed since 1923, when Hitler attempted his coup, but so much is the same. We still have much to learn and much work to do.

 

 

Words that Pierce My Heart – 75 years since Liberation of Auschwitz

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I first posted Esther Peterseil’s words (2018) in a post on May, 30, 2019. The words pierced my heart then and they still do today as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

*****

We are in one the most horrible places on earth.

Here, at Birkenau, hundreds of thousands of Jews, almost one million Jews, were murdered.

Here is where I saw so many of my family, so many of my friends, for the very last time.

Here is where the smoke we saw rising to the sky was all that was left of children, women, and men who never did any harm to anyone, and who were tortured and killed by monsters.

My dear friend Hadassah Rosensaft, Menachem’s mother, said that after our liberation, we survivors were free from the fear of death, but not from the fear of life.

Today I speak not only for myself but for Hadassah, and for all my friends who were with me here at Birkenau, but who are not here anymore.

Hadassah was right. But this fear of life started for us long before the liberation.

Here in Birkenau, we were always afraid – afraid of being cold, afraid of being hungry, afraid of being beaten, afraid of being selected to die, afraid of seeing a member of our family or a friend selected to die. We all wanted desperately to live, but we knew that here tomorrow would not be better than today. We knew that the cold would continue, that the hunger would continue, that the SS and the kapos would continue to beat us. And we knew that many of the Jewish prisoners who were with us today would not be with us tomorrow.

But we also had dreams, even here in Birkenau.

We dreamed of our homes, of our parents, of our brothers and sisters. I dreamed about the life I had before the Germans came to Będzin and destroyed that life. I dreamed about the ghetto which seemed so bad, but was so much better than the hell of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Auschwitz and Birkenau.

These dreams kept us human. They reminded us that we were better than those who wanted to kill us.

And each one of us also dreamed that the nightmare would end, and that we would be allowed to live again.

We dreamed that we would one day have homes again, and families, and nice clothes, and good food. Those dreams gave us a little hope.

I am here today with my daughter and my grandsons. I dreamed of you, that I would one day have you.

And I want to say to all the children and grandchildren of survivors here today: we all dreamed of you. We did not really believe that our hell would ever end, but we dreamed that it would, and that we would have you.

Here at Birkenau, I give you our memories and our dreams. They are your inheritance. Use them to fight against hatred, against injustice, and to prevent other genocides.

And never forget whose children and grandchildren you are.

*****

What does it mean to be 75 years away from the day the Soviet Army entered the gates of Auschwitz. Most who were survived Auschwitz are no longer alive. We live in their shadow.

These 75 years have been rocky and difficult. At first no one wanted to talk about what happened to the Jews.   It was too painful; too horrific; too hard to believe. But slowly, as time went on, people began to talk, to discuss, to research, to question, to ponder the why and the how. The Eichmann Trials in Jerusalem in 1961 allowed the world a glimpse into the unthinkable and transformed public awareness and public opinion. Since that time, there has been an explosion of publications, movies, Holocaust Centers, memorials, museums – sometimes it is almost overwhelming. But it speaks to our human need to try to understand how this happened and to remember with honor and respect.

What will the next 75 years bring? That is up to us. It is up to us to keep the true facts and survivor’s stories alive. When I speak to groups, especially to students, I feel the weight of this task on my shoulders. Let’s keep the fighting the deniers; let’s keep fighting the hate. Let us stand together for the next 75 years and try to make a world that we want to leave to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

[Photos below:  left: shower head used to gas the victims, found in wreckage of crematoria 2; right: Tzitzit – tallit kattan – hidden by an Auschwitz inmate and made it out of the camp]

Kapo Trials – III

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[Photo: Haim Cohn – Wikipedia]

“[I came] to believe that those of us who did not experience the Holocaust ourselves, have no ability or the right to try a person for his actions, intentions and constraints when he [was trapped in] that Hell.” (166) Haim Cohn

These words were uttered by Haim Cohn years after he began prosecuting Jewish functionaries as Israel’s Attorney General. In the early 1950’s, after the Nazi and Nazi Collaborator Law was passed, Cohn relentlessly pursued Jewish functionaries. The first fifteen indictments brought by the Attorney General averaged ten counts and they included multiple counts of crimes against humanity, whose punishment was death. “In their totality,” Dan Porat, in his book Bitter Reckoning, concludes, “the collection of indictments seemed to be asserting that these Jewish functionaries were partners to the Nazis in their war against the Jews.” (86)

After years of trials and prosecutions, even Haim Cohen, began to soften. The years between 1958 and 1962 saw a further shift in public opinion towards Jewish functionaries in Nazi-controlled Europe. In this third stage, Jewish functionaries were viewed more often as victims of the Nazis who tried their best in an impossible situation. This shift was in part due to the “Kastner trial” in 1954 and the Eichmann trial in 1961.

*****

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[Photo:  Rudolf Kastner – Wikipedia]

In 1954 there was a trial that became known as the “Kastner trial.” In this trial, the State prosecutor (Haim Cohn) brought suit for libel against Malkiel Gruenwald. Gruenwald claimed that Rudolf Kastner, one of the heads of the Rescue Committee in Budapest Hungary, knew of the Nazi plan to “relocate” the Jews of Hungary to Auschwitz, but did not tell the 500,000 Jews that this was their destination as they boarded the trains in 1944. Gruenwald claimed that Kastner didn’t tell in order to save his own family and friends in a “blood for goods” deal he negotiated with Eichmann.

But at the trial, Gruenwald’s attorney, Shmuel Tamir, turned the tables and put Kastner on trial, showing that as a leader of the Hungarian Jewish community, he knowingly collaborated with the Nazis and sent the Jews to their death to benefit himself and his friends. Tamir stated that Kastner was “an agent of the Nazi gang” and was “their confidant, their ally, one of them.” (161)

Attorney General Cohn, the prosecutor of the libel action against Gruenwald, now found himself defending a Jewish functionary. He argued that Kastner only wished to “serve his people.” (159) Cohen argued that “Kastner should be viewed not as someone who had saved 1,685 relatives and friends at the expense of half a million others, but rather as one who had saved 1,685 people from among half a million doomed men and women.” (160) “We are unable to judge,” Cohen stated emphatically, “this is a matter between them and heaven.” (160) Here – one of the most powerful legal voices in Israel changed his tune. Jewish functionaries were no longer “guilty until proven innocent.” The new mantra was “who are we to judge?” This was a radical shift.

After nine months of deliberation, in October of 1955, Judge Halevi issued his 274-page ruling in the Kastner trial. “What caused the Jews of Hungary to board the trains obediently and not resist?” Judge Halevi asked. “It was their ignorance about the destiny of their trip, an absence of knowledge that Kastner could have remedied but failed to do. Had Kastner informed Hungary’s Jews, the judge continued, they would have either escaped or resisted.” (161) Kastner had “sold his soul to the devil.” The judge cleared Gruenwald of the libel charges in all but one minor issue. (162)

In January of 1958, the Supreme Court of Israel reversed the lower court ruling. Focusing on Kastner’s motivation, four of the five Justices cleared Kastner of the allegations of collaboration with the Nazis. “Even if a person knew that some of his actions would benefit the Nazis but his overall motivation was morally justified,” the court wrote, “one could not label him a collaborator. Kastner had clearly acted with the larger motivation of saving the Jews of Hungary.” (165) Rather than being in bed with the devil, this court saw Kastner’s actions in saving Jews as “miraculous.”

But there is a desperately sad end to this story – while Kastner was awaiting the Supreme Court ruling, he was murdered outside his Tel Aviv apartment.   He was shot on March 4, 1957 by members of a “right-wing underground cell that aimed to reestablish the Kingdom of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River.” (165) The three men were tried and sentenced to life in prison. All three were released from prison after five years.

After the Kastner trial, Prosecutor Cohn dramatically reduced the number of cases he brought against Jewish functionaries. He was a changed man.

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Another turning point was the Eichmann trial in 1961. Among other things, the Eichmann trial served to bring to light the difficult choices that had to be made by Jewish functionaries and further soften public opinion against them. “One of the goals of the Eichmann’s prosecutor,” Porat explains, “was to remove the charge of collaboration from kapos and policemen. In his selection of witnesses for the Eichmann trial, he portrayed functionaries as harmless and in some instances even heroic.” (6)

With these transitionary trials – Kastner and Eichmann – the stage was set for the second to last kapo trial – the trial of Hirsch Barenblat in 1963. Barenblat was accused of being a Jewish Police and delivering Jews to the enemy and of rounding up and arresting dozens of orphaned children and handing them over to the Gestapo in Bezdin. The Court found him guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison. (203)

The Supreme Court overturned this verdict. The language below shows how the Israeli mind set had changed:

“And it is also the bitterest truth that ‘in the atmosphere of [the] extraordinary pressure of those days, moral concepts and values changed.’ But it would be hypocritical and arrogant on our part – on the part of those who never stood in their place and on the part of those who succeeded in escaping from there, like the prosecution witnesses – to make this truth a cause for criticizing those ‘little men’ who did not rise to the heights of moral supremacy when mercilessly oppressed by a regime whose first aim was to remove the human image from their faces. And we are not permitted to interpret the elements of the special offenses defined in the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 1950, by some standard of moral conduct only few are capable of attaining. One cannot impute to the legislator an intention to demand a level of conduct that the community cannot sustain, especially as we are dealing with ex post facto laws. Nor should we deceive ourselves in thinking that the oppressive weight of the terrible blow our nation suffered would be lifted were the acts committed there by our persecuted brethren judged according to the standards of our morality.” (208)

So, where does that leave us?

I say, it leaves us confused. These functionaries – the Judenrat, the Jewish Police, kapos – had power over the disenfranchised, persecuted Jews. But they too were disenfranchised, persecuted Jews. In the end, most of those who had these privileged positions died like the rest. Some were evil – for sure. Some did evil things but did it in order to help others. Some were truly righteous. Some functionaries survived, maybe even because of their position. But what would I have done if I had the opportunity to take one of these positions if it meant I might be able to live another day or save my family? I don’t know and I hope I never have to find out.

Porat concludes his admirable book with his “where does that leave us?” idea: “Considering [Jewish functionaries] . . . has the potential to complicate our understanding of our existence. While we cannot judge them, we must deliberate on their dilemmas in order to deepen our own humanity.” (219)

Amen.

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Kapo Trials – Part II

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[Photo: Oberkapo armband – Wikipedia]

Joseph Paal – found guilty of hanging inmates from the barracks ceiling by their hands for ten to twenty minutes at a time and of beating prisoners until they bled.
Mordecai Friedman – found guilty of beating inmates who were slow in carrying out their jobs.
Miriam Goldberg – found guilty of pouring soup on an inmate who during food distribution asked for another potato.
Elsa Trenk – found guilty of nine instances of striking inmates and ordering individuals to kneel on the ground or pavement for extended periods of time.

These were some of the first verdicts handed down in the trials, which became known as “the kapo trials.” Dan Porat, in his new book, Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors As Nazi Collaborators, describes three distinct phases of Israel’s kapo trials. In this first, most harsh phase, (August 1950-January 1952), these Jewish functionaries (kapos, members of the Judenrat or Jewish Police) were treated harshly. Prosecutors viewed them as “guilty until proven innocent.” (4) They were treated, by the justice system, on equal footing with actual Nazis. Prosecutors were relentless in adding count after count of alleged crimes to bring before the court. Judges heard the cases and meted out punishments. But the sentences were more lenient than the prosecution requested.

Joseph Paal – “For his ‘sadistic’ actions, wrote the Judge, Paal deserved life in prison, but because these actions had occurred under the Nazi regime . . . [he was] sentenced . . . to ten years, reduced later by the Supreme Court to five years.” (114)
Mordecai Friedman – panel of three judges gave him three years in prison. (114)
Miriam Goldberg – sentenced to ten months in prison but allowed the ten months she had already served in detention awaiting trial to count as time served. The Judge stated “that none of your ‘actions showed that you identified yourself with the Germans. . . and I have no doubt that you are not and you were not wicked . . . I have no doubt that your actions resulted due to the concurrent circumstances of anger [and] disturbances from both sides,’ meaning both supervisors and subordinates.   (114)
Elsa Trenk – sentenced to two years imprisonment, with credit for time served awaiting trial. The Prosecutors had charged Trenk with Crimes Against Humanity (requiring the death penalty) and War Crimes. The Court, however, did not convict Trenk of either these crimes. “The judges determined Israeli law required that for an offense to be considered a war crime it must be a serious one, such as ‘murder, ill-treatment or deportation to forced labour [sic] or for any other purpose, of civilian population of or in occupied territory.’ Trenk had not been found guilty of any serious crimes.” (117-118)

So although the Israeli public, especially the survivor population, wanted revenge and took harsh positions against these Jewish “traitors,” the judges softened the blow, admitting that these Jewish defendants were in a situation that they, having not been there, could not judge based on norms of a democratic society.

A turning point in these cases came with the conviction of Yehezkel Jungster in 1951. Survivors testified that Jungster was a “malicious kapo.” (130) “Already on my first day at work,” testified Yehuda Holtzman, “the defendant punched me and broke two of my teeth.” (130) “[I]f a person did not jump from his bed with the required speed,” David Levkovitch, another survivor explained, “he struck him with his stick. If he found a bed not made exactly as it should be, he would hit him with his stick. . . If he found a pair of shoes not lined up precisely – he would strike.” (130)

The judges in the Jungster case found that the defendant had beat and harmed fellow Jews in the camp, but they dismissed the counts of war crimes, stating: “one cannot convict a person for a war crime when both he and his victims are members of the same persecuted people.” (139)

This rational, however, did not extend to the counts of Crimes Against Humanity.  Two of the three judges on the panel in the Jungster trial stated that to rise to a Crime Against Humanity, the “action has to be of a sever nature that might make a person miserable, humiliate him, and inflict on him grave physical or mental torments,’ and ‘the action must be committed against civilians in a wide-scale and systematic manner . . [and] in a way that arouses a revolt of conscience and of human emotions.” (140)  Jungster’s actions, they determined met this threshold. His acts were against individuals, but “had been committed on a wide scale” that they were crimes against humanity. “The defendant had allowed himself to be used as a tool in the hands of the barbaric Nazi regime,” the majority opinion held, “[to carry out] its pan to annihilate the Jewish people, and because his actions took place under the Nazi regime in an enemy country, he committed a crime against humanity as defined in the first paragraph of the [Nazi and Nazi Collaborator] law.”(140)

One of the three judges dissented on this point. Judge Joseph Lam, who himself survived Dachau, wrote that the conditions needed for a Crime Against Humanity were not met here. Jungster did not aim to annihilate the Jewish population nor did he commit “inhumane actions.” (140)

Because of the way the Nazi and Nazi Collaborator Law was written, the Judges determined that they had no choice but to impose the death penalty on Jungster. To them, the law stated clearly that if a person was found guilty of Crimes Against Humanity, he or she must be put to death.  This outcome gave the zealot prosecutors pause and they realized that this was an unjust result. The prosecutors then instituted a new “rule:” Jewish functionaries would not be charged with Crimes Against Humanity. (142)

In the end, the Supreme Court reversed the finding against Jungster related to Crimes Against Humanity and the death sentence was abated, but they let stand the finding on assault, with a two-year prison term. Jungster did not live to the end of the two-years. His health deteriorated in prison and he died on July 10, 1952.

The Jungster trial’s outcome – death penalty for a Jewish functionary – made people realize that they could not judge these survivors in this harsh – “guilty until proven innocent” – way.  The next phase of the kapo trials (February 1952-1957) sees a change of attitude – a bit more of – “who are we to judge?” After the Jungster trial, the editor of Yediyot Acharanot stated: “To judge here those who were there – and precisely by our common laws, that are normal here according to our everyday logic – that is difficult!”(148) Although there was definitely some softening of public and legal opinion towards Jewish functionaries, the “kapo trials” continued.

The next phase of the “kapo trials” saw further changes and a shift in public opinion against Jews who “collaborated” with the Nazis. Stay tuned.

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