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http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#Franz
Franz
Dressed in his checkered shirt and short trousers, Franz walked quickly along the dark street bordering the park. He saw the flashlights and heard the Nazi Patrol and quickly jumped into the bushes that bordered the park. Knowing how to avoid the patrol was important and Franz, who knew every bush and hiding place in the park, was sure he would never be caught. Patrol would never catch him. The son of a steelworker, Franz had just turned 16 when he left school and joined the Edelweiss Pirates. He knew most of the other boys from his neighborhood, they were his friends and he had known them for most of his life. His father was a Social Democrat who lost his position as trade union leader because he opposed the Nazis. As soon as Franz was old enough, he quit school to avoid having to go to Nazi Youth meetings. He took a job in the steel mill as an apprentice and joined the Edelweiss Pirates.
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#berthold
Berthold
When Berthold was 12 years of age, his father was killed in an accident in the steel mill. His mother had to work as a domestic to feed her family of four children. Berthold was the oldest and when he was 14 years old, he left school and found a job in a factory. He was glad to be making some money to make life easier for his mother.
Hitler promised to make a good life for all Germans, but his mother worked harder than ever trying to support her family. There were no benefits for ordinary working people. The people who profited were the rich, the factory owners. Workers had few benefits. The Nazis were always boasting about the good life they were making, but Berthold knew it was a lie.
"Everywhere you see signs, "Forbidden" "Prohibited", Not permitted" and "Forbidden on pain of death" "What kind of country am I living in?" Berthold made no secret of his hatred of the Nazis and he joined the Pirates at the same time as Franz. There were ten boys and two girls in their group.
Unlike the Nazi Youth, the Pirates tolerated differences and found a sense of solidarity with other young people who wanted to escape the strict control of the Nazi Youth groups. Having fun together was as important as the freedom they found in their activities. Being with the Pirates broke the monotony of life in the steel mill and made life exciting.
The high points of the week were the weekend hikes into the countryside and the parties in the café. Some members of the Pirates wanted to be more political and fight openly with the Nazis. They wrote anti-Nazi slogans on the streets with chalk and even distributed papers describing Allied victories. They wrote songs and sang them in the cafes at night. Although, most of the time they tried to avoid the Nazi Youth Patrols, they sometimes had to fight with them on the streets.
Despite the bombings, Berthold and Franz met their group of Edelweiss Pirates almost every evening. Food shortages, increased work loads in the mill, and the heightened efforts by the Patrols to suppress the Pirates hardly affected their activities. They knew that the Nazi authorities were more determined than ever to suppress them, especially after they began to carry on more serious resistance activities. Berthold and Franz listened to the forbidden British broadcasts on the radio and wrote a leaflet describing the Allied victories, which they printed and distributed them to people in their neighborhood. They also began to help young people who had run away from reform schools and labor camps.
Franz and Berthold helped to clean out an old empty warehouse that was used to shelter people who were hiding from the Nazis. Albert found his way to freedom with Berthold's help.
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#albert
Albert
Albert lived in a home for orphaned boys in the working class section of the city. The Director of the Home forced him to leave school and work as a street sweeper because he refused to attend the Nazi Youth Club meetings. Small for his age and frail, Albert worked all day sweeping streets and carrying big bags of trash. One afternoon, he dropped a bag of garbage and began to sweep it up, when he heard a friendly voice whisper, "So you are a member of the slave gang" Albert turned and saw an older boy dressed in a checkered shirt and black hat.
"You don't have to be a slave. I've been watching how hard they make you work. Why don't you just leave?" Berthold whispered.
Before Albert could answer, his boss began screaming at him and raised his fist, but Berthold came up from behind and held the boss' arms.
"Run away," he shouted. Albert dropped his broom and ran away. He knew he was going to be punished by his boos of he stayed and he knew that the Director would punish him if he went back there. He didn't know
where to go. When Berthold caught up with him, Albert was close to tears. He could barely speak when Berthold asked him where he lived.
"I have no place to go. I can't go back to the orphan home. The Director said he'd send me to reform school if I caused more trouble.
"Don't worry, you don't have to go back. I know a place where you can stay and I'll take you there".
"But I have no money", Albert swallowed hard.
"Don't worry. You'll be O.K. There's other guys who have run away and you can all help one another," Berthold told him, putting his arm around the frightened boy who looked much younger than his 14 years."
Besides I think I can help you find a job." Berthold took him to the empty warehouse that had become a home for six other homeless boys.
The boys slept on mats on the floor and shared whatever food they could find. Sometimes they had to steal food. But the Pirates often brought food to the warehouse. The older boys looked after Albert who
began to feel safer than he had for a long time.
For most of his life, Albert lived in the orphan home. His mother died when he was an infant and he lived with his father and grandmother. There was no work and when his grandmother got sick, his father took a
job in another city and put Albert in the orphan home run by Herr Weinstein who made sure that Albert had contact with his father. He lost his contact when the new Director came to the Home.
Herr Weinstein was a Jewish man was like a father to the boys in the home. A gentle kindly man, Herr Weinstein treated the boys like they were his family. Older boys helped the younger ones. There were always outings and picnics and Herr Weinstein helped the boys with their schoolwork. Boys who needed special help received it. Albert felt safe and cared for in the Home. Then one afternoon while Albert was in school, the police came and took Herr Weinstein away. When Albert came home from school that day, there was another Director there. Under the Nazis, Jewish people were not allowed to be teachers or Social Workers.
More and more boys were crowded into the Home and those who were failing in school or had other difficulties were sent away. The boys Albert knew and trusted were sent to work all day and others disappeared. The new Director did not interfere when younger boys were slapped or pushed around by older boys. Albert who was small for his age was often the target of jokes and teasing. The Director, a cold and cruel man, never called the boys by name; he was only interested in forcing them to attend Nazi youth meetings. The boy who bullied and
tormented Albert was the leader of the Nazi Youth club.
Albert dreaded the meetings and found it hard to keep up with the others. He didn't know how to defend himself against the bullying and began to skip the meetings. When the Director found out, he scolded Albert and threatened to send him away. Under the new social welfare system, boys as young as 12 could be removed from the school and sent to work as garbage collectors, street sweepers and other menial jobs. They worked as much as 48 hours a week or more. Albert worked with the street sweepers and found the work very hard. He could barely manage to lift the heavy bags of trash.
Berthold took a special interest in the small boy who looked much younger than his 14 years. He even found a job for him in the steel factory and took him to the meetings of the Edelweiss Pirates. With the money he earned Albert bought himself a checkered shirt and trousers. He went on outings and hikes with Berthold and Franz. Albert was devoted to the two older boys who made him feel like he was someone. He had new confidence and he volunteered to be the one to watch for the Nazi Patrols. He also helped to distribute the leaflets and write anti Nazi slogans on the streets. Dressed in regular clothes, he often stood guard outside when the Pirates were having a meeting. Alert and inconspicuous, Albert knew when to warn the others when he saw the Patrol.
One evening as soon as the bombing stopped, the boys left the shelter and started walking to the park, when they saw the Nazi Youth Patrol. They began running toward the park, but Albert could not run as fast as the others and he tripped and fell. Before he could get up, he felt someone kicking him. Pain flashed through his body as they pulled him to his he feet and slapped him hard. They turned him over to a policeman who took him to Gestapo Headquarters.
Albert could only hope that they had not captured anyone else and he refused to answer any questions or give the names of the other boys in the group.
"You riff raff are nothing but troublemakers, and you will pay heavily", the Gestapo officer shouted at him and took him to a jail. Once inside the jail, he saw Franz, Berthold, and some of the other boys. Albert, Berthold and Franz were sent to a concentration camp along with hundreds of other Pirates.
The Gestapo and the Hitler Youth brought an armory of repressive measures including sending Pirates to concentration and labor camps. For many Edelweiss Pirates the hunt ended in death. In Cologne, sixteen year
old Bernard Schink was publicly hanged in November 1944.
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#jean
Jean
On the way back to the village, Jean was climbing the hills bordering the Dordogne River when he saw a streak of silver twisting and turning in the sky; trailing streaks of black smoke as it hurtled to the ground. Jean was deaf and did not hear the plane crash, but he saw the smoke rising above the trees on the other side of the river. Jean stopped on the top of a hill and watched the smoke circling above the sparkling river, and then he saw the white parachute tangled on a tree below him. A man dangling from its ropes was waving his arms, frantically trying to reach the branch of the tree.
Jean quickly ran down the hill toward the tree and climbed up, as he came close to the man he reached and pulled him to safety in a branch of the tree. Then he disentangled the ropes and helped him climb down from the tree. Jean guessed the man was the pilot of the small plane. He knew from his uniform that he was not a German. He suspected he was British or American.
The people in the farming village were happy to see the fighter planes, everyone was hoping that they would free France from the German occupation. The year was 1944 and German soldiers were all over France. Jean knew his father resented the German soldiers who took so much food from the village that there was little left for the farmers to sell.
Safely on the ground, Jean faced the pilot who was speaking to him, but he could not read his words. They were not French. Jean pointed to his ears and shook his head, trying to make the pilot understand that he could not hear. Jean could see fear in the pilot's eyes and he wanted to reassure him and let him know he was safe. Jean quickly pulled his sweater off and pushed it in the pilot's hands and pulled on the pilot's jacket. The American understood and removed his jacket and pulled Jean's sweater over his head.
Pointing to the parachute that was still tangled in the tree, Jean climbed back up the tree and brought it down. Rolling it up into a bundle, he hid the parachute and the pilot's jacket beneath a bush. Pointing to a path through the oak trees that bordered the road, Jean led the pilot along the dirt road overgrown with bushes. Jean hoped they would not be seen. As they trudged side by side though the trees, Jean, sure his father would want to help the pilot, Jean decided to bring him back to the farm in the next village. Jean was on his way home after delivering butter and eggs to his father's friend in the neighboring village. Jean lived with his father; his mother had died the year before. Jean had two older brothers but they were in the French army.
Tall and husky, Jean was tall for his seventeen years, but he was lonely. No one in the farming village knew his language of signs. Jean left the school for the deaf in Paris when the Germans occupied the city. Jean had a friend from the school for the deaf in the nearby village and he was disappointed to discover that he had moved away.
Jean and the pilot could not walk very fast over the overgrown path through the trees. The path led to the main road where walking was easier. They no sooner started walking on the road, when Jean felt the pilot shake his arm. Jean turned and saw the truck coming up the road behind them and quickly pulled the pilot up a hill beside the road. They hid behind the small cottage on the top of the hill. There was a gasoline shortage and no one but the Germans had gasoline for trucks.
Jean peered around the cottage and looked down at the road. The truck did not stop and went it had passed, Jean and the pilot began to make their way back to the road. The door of the cottage opened and a large black dog came towards them blocking their path. Jean knew the dog was barking. An old woman came out of the cottage and looked around. The dog came close to Jean and the pilot, but Jean stood by calmly and let the dog approach. Then he reached out and petted him. The dog stopped barking and went back into the cottage.
Walking along the road, Jean felt happy, he had a companion, someone who trusted him and let him lead the way. As they got close to the village, Jean could see children coming out of the school next to the church. The village priest stood in front of the church and Jean did not want him to see the pilot. Grabbing the pilot's arm, he pulled him to the back of the church. When the children had gone, the priest went back inside the church. And they began walking again.
The road led through a countryside that was dotted by small farms and the market place in the center of the village. It was late afternoon, but there were still many people in the market. Jean was wondering how they could avoid being seen; there was no place to walk. except in front of the market. Jean had an idea and began showing the pilot some of his signs. The pilot nodded and began to imitate him and Jean and the pilot walked through the market making signs. Jean thought the neighbors would think the pilot was his friend, Phillipe from the neighboring village. He knew that many people knew about Phillipe, but they had never seen him. Jean felt more confident now and was not afraid of meet anyone.
One of the farmers saw Jean approaching and stopped him. Jean put his arm around the pilot's shoulder and carefully pronounced the words, "My friend, Phillipe, he deaf like me". The man stared at the pilot but then he shrugged and walked away. A number of other people were also looking at Jean, but he did not think that their behavior was unusual. Few people took the time to talk to Jean even though he could read their lips and pronounce words clearly. Jean often felt he was ignored, he thought people thought he was dumb as well as deaf.
The smell of freshly baked bread wafted out of the bakery reminding Jean had promised his father to bring home bread. Leading the pilot into the bakery, Jean repeated his words to the baker, "He my friend, Phillipe, deaf like me." The baker nodded and gave Jean two loaves of bread and then he hurried them outside through a back door.
When they got close to the farm, Jean was surprised to see his father waiting for them in front of the house. He seemed to be expecting the pilot and hurried him into the barn. His father sent Jean back to the house for a blanket and some clothes while he brought soup, bread, and cheese on a tray. Jean's father made the pilot a bed of hay and put the blanket down. He did not know the pilot's language either, but he knew he was an American. After eating the soup and cheese, the pilot gave the bowl back to Jean and covered himself with the blanket. Jean and his father left the barn and went back into the house to eat their dinner.
Sitting across from his father, Jean thanked him and said. "People think he is my friend Phillipe. He stay in the barn and help on the farm."
Jean's father looked at his son's smiling face and shook his head. He knew that Jean had no idea how quickly news traveled in the farming village. Everyone knew that an American fighter plane had crashed. They also knew that German soldiers would be coming to the village to search for the pilot. Jean's father also knew that there were a few people in the village who were cooperating with the Germans and he was too worried to explain to Jean why the pilot could not stay.
As soon as they had finished their dinner, Jean's father opened the door and a man Jean did not know entered the house. Jean tried to read his lips as he spoke to his father, but he was talking too quickly. His father told Jean to stay in the house and took the man to the barn. But Jean followed them, he could see that the man was able to talk to the pilot.
His father gestured him to go back to the house and Jean obeyed. He went to bed; he could not sleep. Later that night, he went out to the barn. The pilot had gone. There was no sign that he had been there. Jean felt angry and betrayed and he woke his father. "He had to go. He will be safe, now go back to bed," his father told him.
Jean felt like he had lost a friend, he wanted him to stay on the farm. He had no idea where the pilot was taken. He thought he would be safe on the farm.
The next morning, German soldiers drove up to the farm and searched every room in the house. His father put his fingers to his lips and Jean knew why the pilot had to leave.
The soldiers were holding guns and one of them came close to Jean's father. Afraid the soldier would hurt him, Jean moved close to him. The soldier looked angry Jean read the words on his father's lips, "No one here but me and my son. " Jean could not read the soldier's lips when he yelled in German, "There's no one else here but a deaf dummy".
When the soldiers left, Jean embraced his father and thanked him for helping the pilot escape.
After the war, Jean received a letter from the American pilot. Jean's father took it to his English-speaking friend to translate it.
Dear Jean,
I want you to know how grateful I will always be to you. You saved my life. Your father's friend brought me to a safe place and helped me to escape. Thanks to you, I am home with my family. I will never forget you. You are a real hero.
Your friend,
Steve, the American pilot
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Second Temple, in which the Ark and the Tablets did not repose
Today's Tanya Lesson
Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 53
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ובבית שני, שלא היה בו הארון והלוחות
As for the Second Temple, in which the Ark and the Tablets did not repose, these being among the five things found in the First Temple and lacking in the Second,
אמרו רז״ל שלא היתה שכינה שורה בו, פירוש: מדרגת שכינה שהיתה שורה בבית ראשון, שלא כדרך השתלשלות העולמות
our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said1 that the Shechinah did not abide there. This means not that, G‑d forbid, the Shechinah did not abide there at all, rather it speaks of the category of the Shechinah which used to abide in the First Temple — which was not in the manner of the ordinary descent of the Worlds.
It was this level of Shechinah that did not abide in the Second Temple, but only a far lesser level.
אלא בבית שני היתה שורה כדרך השתלשלות והתלבשות: מלכות דאצילות במלכות דבריאה, ודבריאה במלכות דיצירה, ודיצירה בהיכל קדשי קדשים דעשיה
But in the Second Temple it abided according to the order of gradual descent, of Malchut of Atzilut vested in Malchut of Beriah and the latter in Malchut of Yetzirah, and the latter in the shrine of the Holy of Holies of Asiyah, that shrine being ChaBaD of Asiyah.
וקדשי קדשים דעשיה היה מתלבש בקדשי קדשים שבבית המקדש שלמטה, ושרתה בו השכינה: מלכות דיצירה, המלובשת בקדשי קדשים דעשיה
And the Holy of Holies of Asiyah was clothed in the Holy of Holies of the Temple below. In it rested the Shechinah, i.e., Malchut of Yetzirah, which was clothed in the Holy of Holies of Asiyah.
ולכן לא היה רשאי שום אדם ליכנס שם, לבד כהן גדול ביום הכפורים. ומשחרב בית המקדש
Therefore, because the Shechinah resided in the Temple’s Holy of Holies, no man was permitted to enter there, except the High Priest on Yom Kippur. And since the destruction of the Temple,
of which the Sanctuary was a part, G‑d resides in the shrine of Holy of Holies of Torah and the mitzvot, for as mentioned earlier, the Shechinah must reside in the Holy of Holies:
אין לו להקב״ה בעולמו אלא ד׳ אמות של הלכה בלבד
“HaKadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He) has but the four cubits of Halachah alone.”2
Torah is the shrine of the Holy of Holies that connects G‑d with the world, so that HaKadosh (the illumination of the Shechinah, which is Kadosh, i.e., separated and apart from the world) should become Baruch (from the Hebrew root meaning “to draw down”) — drawn down into the world.
ואפילו אחד שיושב ועוסק בתורה, שכינה עמו, כדאיתא בברכות, פרק קמא. פירוש שכינה עמו
And even if one Jew sits and engages in Torah study, the Shechinah is with him, as is stated in the first chapter of Berachot.3 The phrase, “the Shechinah is with him” means that although he is a being of this material world, the Shechinah is nevertheless with him.
The level of Shechinah that is with him is:
כדרך השתלשלות והתלבשות מלכות דאצילות במלכות דבריאה ויצירה ועשיה
in order of the gradual descent and investment of Malchut of Atzilut in Malchut of Beriah and Yetzirah and Asiyah.
It is thus inferior even to the indwelling of the Shechinah in the Second Temple, an indwelling that did not require the vestment in Malchut of Asiyah.
It differs from the drawing down of the Shechinah in the world in general, in which case the identical progressive descent occurs, in that the Shechinah which resides in the world passes through the additional “garment” of kelipat nogah, while Torah and the mitzvot do not.
The reason that it must go through Malchut of Asiyah is that the overwhelming majority of the mitzvot of the Torah involve physical action. The Shechinah therefore descends into the level of action — Asiyah, as shall now be explained.
כי תרי״ג מצות התורה רובן ככולן הן מצות מעשיות, וגם התלויות בדבור ומחשבה, כמו תלמוד תורה, ברכת המזון, קריאת שמע ותפלה
For the 613 commandments of the Torah are by and large precepts which involve action, including even those mitzvot which are fulfilled by word and thought, such as Torah study, the Grace after Meals, the recital of the Shema, and prayer,
This is so even though these mitzvot involve thought — seeking to grasp the concepts in one’s studies, and to experience the kavanot of the Shema and prayer — and as such they are not bound up with action,
הא קיימא לן דהרהור לאו כדבור דמי, ואינו יוצא ידי חובתו בהרהור וכוונה לבד, עד שיוציא בשפתיו
for it has been ruled that meditation has not the validity of speech, and one does not fulfill one’s obligation by meditation [in a manner of hirhur] and kavanah alone, even when his manner of meditation is close to speech, as is the case when one thinks about the way in which he will utter certain words, which is called hirhur, until he gives it utterance with his lips;
וקיימא לן דעקימת שפתיו הוי מעשה
moreover, it has been ruled that the motion of the lips while one is speaking is considered an “action” — in which case all these mitzvot involve a form of action.
The Rebbe explains that the Alter Rebbe will now anticipate the following question: It still remains to be understood why specifically the four cubits of Halachah take the place of the Holy of Holies; why should this be not so when a Jew studies a subject in Torah which is not Halachah, for there too the Shechinah is with him? The Alter Rebbe therefore explains that Halachah possesses the especial merit of expressing the Divine Will (as explained at length in Iggeret HaKodesh, Epistle 29).
ותרי״ג מצות התורה, עם שבע מצות דרבנן, בגימטריא כת״ר, שהוא רצון העליון ברוך הוא
And the 613 commandments of the Torah, together with the seven commandments of our Rabbis, combine to total the numerical equivalent of Keter (“crown”), which is the Supernal Will,
Will is called a crown, for like a crown it encompasses the head and brain; Iggeret HaKodesh, loc. cit., where this is discussed at length.
המלובש בחכמתו יתברך
which is clothed in His wisdom,
Thus, in addition to the fact that Torah is G‑d’s wisdom, which in its descent in the downward progression of Worlds becomes the shrine of the Holy of Holies for the Shechinah, there is the additional quality of its being the Supernal Will, which is even loftier than wisdom. This is uniquely found in the Halachah and the mitzvot, as they are expressions of the Supernal Will.
המיוחדות באור אין סוף ברוך הוא בתכלית היחוד
and they (G‑d’s Will and wisdom) are united with the light of the Ein Sof in a perfect union.
Further to an earlier statement that Torah derives from Supernal Wisdom, the Alter Rebbe will now say that the Oral Law also emanates from that source.
וה׳ בחכמה יסד ארץ, היא תורה שבעל פה דנפקא מחכמה עילאה, כמו שכתוב בזהר, דאבא יסד ברתא
“G‑d founded the earth with wisdom.”4 This refers to the Oral Law that is derived from Supernal Wisdom, as it is written in the Zohar, “The father (Chochmah) begat the daughter” (i.e., Malchut, the Oral Law; as it is written, “Malchut — the mouth, which we call the Oral Law”).
* * *
FOOTNOTES
1. Yoma 9b.
2. Berachot 8a.
3. Berachot 6a.
4. Mishlei 3:19.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
FACES OF COURAGE JACOB
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#jacob
Jacob
When the Nazis invaded Poland at the beginning of World War II, there was panic in the small village in Poland where Jacob and his family lived. Jacob was thirteen years old, he and his family were in grave danger because they were Jewish. The Polish peasants who lived around the village of Parczewa were frightened of the Germans and many were willing to betray their Jewish neighbors to seek favor with the Nazis. Jacob was determined to survive. This is his story.
I was born on the eighth of May in 1926 in Parczewa, in the province of Lubelskie in Poland. The youngest of eight children, I managed to finish six grades of school before the Germans came. After the Germans came to our village, no Jews were allowed to go to public schools. With my light brown hair and blue eyes, I did not look different from other Polish boys, but after the Germans came; Polish boys would not speak to me any more.
At the beginning of the war the Germans bombed our town. The planes came at ten o'clock in the morning and we all had to go into the fields and lie down until the bombing stopped. Only one house was demolished, but everyone was very frightened. Until that happened I did not really know what bombing was.
The German army came to our town and forced us to work for them at the Wehrmacht canteen they set up in the gymnasium. I worked for the soldiers, shining their shoes. Cleaning their rooms, chopping wood and going on errands for them. I did not mind the work, there was nothing else to do and I was a lonely 13-year-old boy who was curious about everything. Two other Jewish boys also worked for the German soldiers. The soldiers gave us official papers to prove we were workers in the Wehrmacht canteen. We came to the canteen to begin work at 7:30 in the morning and finished at 5 in the afternoon.
The soldiers did not mistreat us at that time, in fact some of them were good to us. Often a soldier would send me buy him cigarettes and then I was able to buy food at the canteen and bring it home to my family. The soldiers in the SS were different and they were often cruel when they came to the canteen. They called us names but most of the time I felt safe working in the canteen. It was only a few months later when the military police came to the town and life became much harder.
The Polish military police worked for the Germans and we were very afraid of them. I was only a young boy, but I will never forget one policeman who walked around in yellow boots and had a big dog. He beat people on the streets and everybody was afraid of him. As soon as he came on the street, everyone ran away.
I was fourteen years old when the war with the Russians began and many more German soldiers came to the town on their way to the front lines and it was very busy in the canteen. New soldiers were always coming and going and the canteen was very crowded. One day a soldier came up to me and shouted, "You're a dirty Jew" and he punched me and spat in my face. I wanted to hit him back, but I turned away. I knew then that my life was not going to be easy, but I was determined to survive. My friend Rubin was beaten up by a soldier and he talked to me about quitting the canteen and going into hiding. It was very hard to hide from the Polish military police who were looking for Jews. The police knew the village very well and they knew every place where people could hide.
To make all Polish towns and cities "free of Jews", the Germans decided to make the village of Parczewa a "Jewish" town. Hundreds of Jewish refugees were coming from neighboring towns and cities. The leaders of the Jewish Council thought if they cooperated with the Germans, they would leave us alone. They sent people house to house to collect food and clothing for the refugees.
Two families moved in with us, one was from Germany and the other from a city called Jablonka in Poland. Our small house was very crowded with four more adults and six children. I had to share my bedroom with two of my brothers and three other boys.
When my older brother Richard came home, he told us that the Germans planned
to murder all the Jews. Most people did not want to believe him, they thought this misery was only temporary and things would get better. My brother knew we needed a safe hiding place and he built a very good hideout underneath the shed where we kept wood.
We all helped to dig a tunnel from the kitchen to the wood shed. My brother put double floors in the shed beneath the shed. In between the floors he put in a drawer full of dirt, so if the Germans came and tore up the floor, they would find only dirt. We barely finished building our hiding place when German soldiers began searching Jewish homes. The soldiers came to search our house many times, but they never found our hiding place.
I was still looking for work after leaving the canteen, but I didn't know where to look. We began to hear terrible stories about the concentration camps, but the old man who was the leader of the Jewish Council told us to help the German soldiers. They picked me as one of fifty Jewish boys to be helpers to the German army. The Russian troops were destroying everything and the German soldiers had to depend on food supplies from distant places.
My mother was crying the day I left to escort a transport of cattle to German soldiers in the front lines. She thought she would never see me again. A German man was the director of our group and he was very strict. All fifty of us boys were packed into two sealed freight cars which were opened twice a day so we could feed the cattle. It was hot and stuffy inside the freight cars and we had nothing to drink or eat. Every few hours the train would stop and we boys had to get off the train and go and feed the cattle the hay we brought with us. Then we went to the train station and fill big jugs with water for the cattle. When we were finished, they gave us food from the military canteen at the station.
At a train station close to the Russian border, a Russian soldier came up and whispered to us. One of the boys spoke Russian and talked with the soldier who told him about the partisans who were fighting the Germans. The soldier wanted us to escape and join the partisans. We could have escaped because we were not carefully guarded. But one boy told the director and he was furious. He told us if we escaped our families would be severely punished, so we stayed on the train.
At the train stations, we could see freight trains full of people and I knew they were Jews who were being taken away. On the way home, we saw women, old people and children being pushed into trains. We heard their screams and cries. The soldiers who came with us were worried that we would be discovered and told us to stay in the freight cars and be very quiet. They did not want anyone to know that there were Jewish boys in the train. But someone from the SS knew we were on the train and came for us. The soldiers told them that they had orders to deliver us back to Parczewa and when we finally got home, everyone was surprised that we had returned safely.
Things were very bad when I returned. Most of the Jewish families already been taken away, only a few hundred Jews were left in the town. They made us all move to one street that was guarded by Polish and Jewish guards. The street had barbed wire around it and we could not leave. My family were still in hiding. The Germans were telling us that if we came out of hiding and were willing to work, we would not be evacuated.
My brother believed him and he took me with him to work in a temporary store of the Wehrmacht in an old glass factory. My job was to load blankets and other provisions into freight trains for the soldiers on the front lines. We worked every day, but the work was not hard and I didn't mind it. We worked there for a few weeks when a Polish policeman came to the store with orders to bring all the Jewish workers to the Gestapo prison.
At first I did not know what to do, but then I caught a glimpse of my brother being pushed into a truck. I knew at that moment that I wasn't going to prison. I didn't care what happened and I began to run. I did not stop running until I got to the outskirts of the town, where there were open fields. The only time I stopped running was to pick up an old shoe polish tin that had been thrown on the street. Once I reached the field, I started to dig a ditch with the can. Then I lay down in the ditch not knowing what else to do. It was very quiet and I stayed there for a long time. I was worried about my brother and prayed that he managed to get away.
As soon as it was dark I left the hiding place and walked back to the village. No one else was around, but I was still very frightened. When I got close to the town, I met Tadek, a Polish fellow who was brought up with us and even learned to speak Yiddish. I trusted him and told him I ran away. Tadek took me to his house and gave me food and then he gave me terrible news. The Gestapo killed all the boys they took to the prison. Tadek told me that I was very smart to run away. He didn't know where the rest of my family was. I told him I had to go home to see my mother.
Tadek pushed me down on the chair and would not let me leave. He said it was too dangerous. He wanted me to go with him to Germany. The Germans were sending Poles to work in Germany. I looked at him and shook my head, but he refused to take No for an answer. He said I had no choice because nobody would be looking for Jews in Germany. The next day Tadek brought me false identification papers and a ticket to Warsaw. He took me to the train station and told me not to worry. He had arranged everything, he said. When I boarded the train I did not know what was ahead of me or if I would ever see my family again.
Tadek's friend met me at the train station in Warsaw and brought me to his house. A few days later we left for Stargard in Pomerania. When we arrived, the Germans gave us an Arbeitskarte (work permits) that had a photo. They also gave us a small piece of linen with the letter "P" for Polish printed on it. We had to sew the linen on the front of our shirts. Then they cut our hair very short and put us in barracks. I was surprised to see so many workers from so many different countries in the barracks. There were 2000 foreign workers in Stargard and I was one of them.
I was still afraid I would be discovered, but deep inside I felt very angry. I made up my mind that if I was caught, I would not let myself be killed without fighting back. I would defend myself to my last breath.
The factory in Stargard was a big place where we built big bunkers for the army.
It was owned by a private company and we had to obey the foreman who was the boss. He was a real but for some reason he liked me. He told me I reminded him of his son and he gave me his son's shoes and some shirts to wear. He did not hit me like he hit the other boys and for that I was grateful. Sine I was the youngest worker, the others felt sorry for me. When the foreman was not around, we took breaks. We did not feel like working too hard. One of the workers was always on guard and when he saw the foreman coming, he would signal us and we would begin to work.
In December of 1942, when we first arrived in Stargard, the Germans were cruel to foreign workers, especially the Poles. Even children threw rocks at us. But when the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad, things changed and many Germans started treating us better. We had a day off every second Sunday and I took jobs cleaning private houses. I wanted to save money to get back to my family.
There were just women and old people living in the houses, the men were gone. Even though I still felt very angry with the Germans, I had to admit that some of them were very good to us. The woman who owned the bakery gave me bread even though I did not have a rationing card. I till had to be very careful and not go into the store if there were people around.
I stayed in Stargard for two years. When the Allies began bombing the city, I rejoiced. Factories were destroyed. At the end of the war I was working to rebuild one of the factories. We were still being heavily guarded because among the thousands of us foreign workers and there were prisoners from concentration camps.
I was still afraid I would be caught. Some of the other boys received parcels from home and I didn't want anyone to think I did not get any either. I saved my money and went to another barrack and bought a parcel. I came back and yelled, "Boys, I have a parcel from home. Let's eat." I also wrote myself letters and mailed them from another place. It was risky to travel and I had to take the " P " off my chest, because we were not allowed to travel. The office posted a list of those who received mail and I waited for one of my friends to tell me my name was on the list. My friends also saw me writing letters and that helped me too. I knew I would be in more danger if anyone suspected that I was Jewish.
The Russians were coming closer and closer and the Germans knew they were losing the war. They evacuated the civilian population and planned to send foreign workers to the west. But the Russians came before we were moved. We waited to be liberated, but instead of liberating us, the Russians moved us from Stargard to another city, where we were supposed to work. I found my sister there and we got permission to return to our home. When we got back to Poland, we found out that my mother and father and two of my brothers had also survived. They had been in hiding for a long time.
It was still difficult for Jewish people in Poland after the war. The peasants stole our possessions, they occupied our houses and took our lands. People were desperate and there were bands of robbers everywhere. In 1948 with the help of an international Jewish agency, we escaped to Israel.
Jacob
When the Nazis invaded Poland at the beginning of World War II, there was panic in the small village in Poland where Jacob and his family lived. Jacob was thirteen years old, he and his family were in grave danger because they were Jewish. The Polish peasants who lived around the village of Parczewa were frightened of the Germans and many were willing to betray their Jewish neighbors to seek favor with the Nazis. Jacob was determined to survive. This is his story.
I was born on the eighth of May in 1926 in Parczewa, in the province of Lubelskie in Poland. The youngest of eight children, I managed to finish six grades of school before the Germans came. After the Germans came to our village, no Jews were allowed to go to public schools. With my light brown hair and blue eyes, I did not look different from other Polish boys, but after the Germans came; Polish boys would not speak to me any more.
At the beginning of the war the Germans bombed our town. The planes came at ten o'clock in the morning and we all had to go into the fields and lie down until the bombing stopped. Only one house was demolished, but everyone was very frightened. Until that happened I did not really know what bombing was.
The German army came to our town and forced us to work for them at the Wehrmacht canteen they set up in the gymnasium. I worked for the soldiers, shining their shoes. Cleaning their rooms, chopping wood and going on errands for them. I did not mind the work, there was nothing else to do and I was a lonely 13-year-old boy who was curious about everything. Two other Jewish boys also worked for the German soldiers. The soldiers gave us official papers to prove we were workers in the Wehrmacht canteen. We came to the canteen to begin work at 7:30 in the morning and finished at 5 in the afternoon.
The soldiers did not mistreat us at that time, in fact some of them were good to us. Often a soldier would send me buy him cigarettes and then I was able to buy food at the canteen and bring it home to my family. The soldiers in the SS were different and they were often cruel when they came to the canteen. They called us names but most of the time I felt safe working in the canteen. It was only a few months later when the military police came to the town and life became much harder.
The Polish military police worked for the Germans and we were very afraid of them. I was only a young boy, but I will never forget one policeman who walked around in yellow boots and had a big dog. He beat people on the streets and everybody was afraid of him. As soon as he came on the street, everyone ran away.
I was fourteen years old when the war with the Russians began and many more German soldiers came to the town on their way to the front lines and it was very busy in the canteen. New soldiers were always coming and going and the canteen was very crowded. One day a soldier came up to me and shouted, "You're a dirty Jew" and he punched me and spat in my face. I wanted to hit him back, but I turned away. I knew then that my life was not going to be easy, but I was determined to survive. My friend Rubin was beaten up by a soldier and he talked to me about quitting the canteen and going into hiding. It was very hard to hide from the Polish military police who were looking for Jews. The police knew the village very well and they knew every place where people could hide.
To make all Polish towns and cities "free of Jews", the Germans decided to make the village of Parczewa a "Jewish" town. Hundreds of Jewish refugees were coming from neighboring towns and cities. The leaders of the Jewish Council thought if they cooperated with the Germans, they would leave us alone. They sent people house to house to collect food and clothing for the refugees.
Two families moved in with us, one was from Germany and the other from a city called Jablonka in Poland. Our small house was very crowded with four more adults and six children. I had to share my bedroom with two of my brothers and three other boys.
When my older brother Richard came home, he told us that the Germans planned
to murder all the Jews. Most people did not want to believe him, they thought this misery was only temporary and things would get better. My brother knew we needed a safe hiding place and he built a very good hideout underneath the shed where we kept wood.
We all helped to dig a tunnel from the kitchen to the wood shed. My brother put double floors in the shed beneath the shed. In between the floors he put in a drawer full of dirt, so if the Germans came and tore up the floor, they would find only dirt. We barely finished building our hiding place when German soldiers began searching Jewish homes. The soldiers came to search our house many times, but they never found our hiding place.
I was still looking for work after leaving the canteen, but I didn't know where to look. We began to hear terrible stories about the concentration camps, but the old man who was the leader of the Jewish Council told us to help the German soldiers. They picked me as one of fifty Jewish boys to be helpers to the German army. The Russian troops were destroying everything and the German soldiers had to depend on food supplies from distant places.
My mother was crying the day I left to escort a transport of cattle to German soldiers in the front lines. She thought she would never see me again. A German man was the director of our group and he was very strict. All fifty of us boys were packed into two sealed freight cars which were opened twice a day so we could feed the cattle. It was hot and stuffy inside the freight cars and we had nothing to drink or eat. Every few hours the train would stop and we boys had to get off the train and go and feed the cattle the hay we brought with us. Then we went to the train station and fill big jugs with water for the cattle. When we were finished, they gave us food from the military canteen at the station.
At a train station close to the Russian border, a Russian soldier came up and whispered to us. One of the boys spoke Russian and talked with the soldier who told him about the partisans who were fighting the Germans. The soldier wanted us to escape and join the partisans. We could have escaped because we were not carefully guarded. But one boy told the director and he was furious. He told us if we escaped our families would be severely punished, so we stayed on the train.
At the train stations, we could see freight trains full of people and I knew they were Jews who were being taken away. On the way home, we saw women, old people and children being pushed into trains. We heard their screams and cries. The soldiers who came with us were worried that we would be discovered and told us to stay in the freight cars and be very quiet. They did not want anyone to know that there were Jewish boys in the train. But someone from the SS knew we were on the train and came for us. The soldiers told them that they had orders to deliver us back to Parczewa and when we finally got home, everyone was surprised that we had returned safely.
Things were very bad when I returned. Most of the Jewish families already been taken away, only a few hundred Jews were left in the town. They made us all move to one street that was guarded by Polish and Jewish guards. The street had barbed wire around it and we could not leave. My family were still in hiding. The Germans were telling us that if we came out of hiding and were willing to work, we would not be evacuated.
My brother believed him and he took me with him to work in a temporary store of the Wehrmacht in an old glass factory. My job was to load blankets and other provisions into freight trains for the soldiers on the front lines. We worked every day, but the work was not hard and I didn't mind it. We worked there for a few weeks when a Polish policeman came to the store with orders to bring all the Jewish workers to the Gestapo prison.
At first I did not know what to do, but then I caught a glimpse of my brother being pushed into a truck. I knew at that moment that I wasn't going to prison. I didn't care what happened and I began to run. I did not stop running until I got to the outskirts of the town, where there were open fields. The only time I stopped running was to pick up an old shoe polish tin that had been thrown on the street. Once I reached the field, I started to dig a ditch with the can. Then I lay down in the ditch not knowing what else to do. It was very quiet and I stayed there for a long time. I was worried about my brother and prayed that he managed to get away.
As soon as it was dark I left the hiding place and walked back to the village. No one else was around, but I was still very frightened. When I got close to the town, I met Tadek, a Polish fellow who was brought up with us and even learned to speak Yiddish. I trusted him and told him I ran away. Tadek took me to his house and gave me food and then he gave me terrible news. The Gestapo killed all the boys they took to the prison. Tadek told me that I was very smart to run away. He didn't know where the rest of my family was. I told him I had to go home to see my mother.
Tadek pushed me down on the chair and would not let me leave. He said it was too dangerous. He wanted me to go with him to Germany. The Germans were sending Poles to work in Germany. I looked at him and shook my head, but he refused to take No for an answer. He said I had no choice because nobody would be looking for Jews in Germany. The next day Tadek brought me false identification papers and a ticket to Warsaw. He took me to the train station and told me not to worry. He had arranged everything, he said. When I boarded the train I did not know what was ahead of me or if I would ever see my family again.
Tadek's friend met me at the train station in Warsaw and brought me to his house. A few days later we left for Stargard in Pomerania. When we arrived, the Germans gave us an Arbeitskarte (work permits) that had a photo. They also gave us a small piece of linen with the letter "P" for Polish printed on it. We had to sew the linen on the front of our shirts. Then they cut our hair very short and put us in barracks. I was surprised to see so many workers from so many different countries in the barracks. There were 2000 foreign workers in Stargard and I was one of them.
I was still afraid I would be discovered, but deep inside I felt very angry. I made up my mind that if I was caught, I would not let myself be killed without fighting back. I would defend myself to my last breath.
The factory in Stargard was a big place where we built big bunkers for the army.
It was owned by a private company and we had to obey the foreman who was the boss. He was a real but for some reason he liked me. He told me I reminded him of his son and he gave me his son's shoes and some shirts to wear. He did not hit me like he hit the other boys and for that I was grateful. Sine I was the youngest worker, the others felt sorry for me. When the foreman was not around, we took breaks. We did not feel like working too hard. One of the workers was always on guard and when he saw the foreman coming, he would signal us and we would begin to work.
In December of 1942, when we first arrived in Stargard, the Germans were cruel to foreign workers, especially the Poles. Even children threw rocks at us. But when the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad, things changed and many Germans started treating us better. We had a day off every second Sunday and I took jobs cleaning private houses. I wanted to save money to get back to my family.
There were just women and old people living in the houses, the men were gone. Even though I still felt very angry with the Germans, I had to admit that some of them were very good to us. The woman who owned the bakery gave me bread even though I did not have a rationing card. I till had to be very careful and not go into the store if there were people around.
I stayed in Stargard for two years. When the Allies began bombing the city, I rejoiced. Factories were destroyed. At the end of the war I was working to rebuild one of the factories. We were still being heavily guarded because among the thousands of us foreign workers and there were prisoners from concentration camps.
I was still afraid I would be caught. Some of the other boys received parcels from home and I didn't want anyone to think I did not get any either. I saved my money and went to another barrack and bought a parcel. I came back and yelled, "Boys, I have a parcel from home. Let's eat." I also wrote myself letters and mailed them from another place. It was risky to travel and I had to take the " P " off my chest, because we were not allowed to travel. The office posted a list of those who received mail and I waited for one of my friends to tell me my name was on the list. My friends also saw me writing letters and that helped me too. I knew I would be in more danger if anyone suspected that I was Jewish.
The Russians were coming closer and closer and the Germans knew they were losing the war. They evacuated the civilian population and planned to send foreign workers to the west. But the Russians came before we were moved. We waited to be liberated, but instead of liberating us, the Russians moved us from Stargard to another city, where we were supposed to work. I found my sister there and we got permission to return to our home. When we got back to Poland, we found out that my mother and father and two of my brothers had also survived. They had been in hiding for a long time.
It was still difficult for Jewish people in Poland after the war. The peasants stole our possessions, they occupied our houses and took our lands. People were desperate and there were bands of robbers everywhere. In 1948 with the help of an international Jewish agency, we escaped to Israel.
LIQUIDATION OF THE POLISH GHETTOS AND OTHER JTA ARCHIVE ARTICLES
LIQUIDATION OF THE POLISH GHETTOS,ETC JTA ARCHIVE ARTICLES
http://archive.jta.org/article/1943/12/10/2862488/further-reports-of-liquidation-of-polish-ghettos-reach-london-poles-praised
London, Dec. 9 (JTA) –
A detailed report of the liquidation of the smaller Jewish ghettos in Poland by the Nazis during last May and June was received here today by Dr. Ignacy Schwarzbart, a deputy in the Polish National Council. The report says that the ghettos in Piaski, Komskowole, Siedlice, Lukow and Radzyn were wiped out.
In the town of Wlodawa 4,000 Jews - 1,000 of whom had been sent there from Lwow since May - were divided into two contingents of 3,000 and 1,000. The 3,000 were sent to the Sobibor concentration camp, and most of the 1,000 were executed on the spot. Some of the latter, however, succeeded in fleeing to safety in the neighboring woods. Several hundred Jews were killed at Siedlice. In Wengrow 400 of the 700 Jews in the city were executed in the ghetto and the other 300 were gassed in the Treblinka "death camp," the report discloses.
Several hundred Dutch Jews recently arrived at the Trawniki camp, it is also revealed in the underground report. Children, women and aged men were sent to the Sobibor camp, while able-bodied men were placed in workshops manufacturing clothes for the German army. The report pays tribute to several Polish individuals and families who have been executed by the Germans for the "crime" of either sheltering Jews or feeding them.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Further Reports of Liquidation of Polish Ghettos Reach London; Poles Praised." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 10 Dec 1943.
http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/28/2859485/many-dutch-jews-dying-in-camp-all-jews-again-warned-to-prepare-for-deportation
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 27 (JTA) –
Scores of Dutch Jews are dying in the Westerbork internment camp to which thousands have been sent by the Nazis prior to being deported to Poland and other sections of Eastern Europe, it was learned here today. A new mortality list released by the Germans this week includes the names of Jewish men and women ranging in age from 28 to 95.
It is also reported that all Jews in Holland have once more been instructed to be in constant readiness for deportation to the Westerbork camp at a moment's notice. The Jews have been advised to have a packed suitcase put aside so that they will be prepared for any eventuality. At the same time the authorities in charge of the camp are reported to have called upon the Dutch Jews to contribute typewriters to the camp office in order to "assist" the deportees who are sent to Westerbork.
The Joodsche Weeksblad, organ of the Amsterdam Jewish community, which was received here today, reveals that the Dutch Synagogue Council has appointed Rabbi S. S. Dasberg, former Chief Rabbi of Groningen, as temporary Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam. The former Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam, Rabbi Lodewyk Sarlouis, was deported to Poland, it was reported earlier this month. The Nazi paper, Volk en Vaderland, reaching here today, angrily reveals that the populations of several Netherland towns have defied the Nazi order that they change the name of streets which are named after Jews.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Many Dutch Jews Dying in Camp; All Jews Again Warned to Prepare for Deportation." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 28 Dec 1942.
http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/28/2859488/interdenominational-mass-meeting-in-manchester-asks-aid-for-jews-of-europe
LONDON, Dec. 27 (JTA) –
A resolution recording horror at the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, hailing the recent Allied declaration and demanding that immigration barriers be lifted to allow free immigration to Palestine was adopted in Manchester at an inter-denominational protest meeting attended by prominent Jewish and non-Jewish leaders and by leading Anglican clergy.
Among those who addressed the meeting were the Lord Mayor of Manchester, the Bishop of Manchester, the president of the Free Church Council, and several members of parliament.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Inter-denominational Mass Meeting in Manchester Asks Aid for Jews of Europe." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 28 Dec 1942.
http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/28/2859487/jewish-national-council-asks-practical-steps-to-implement-allied-declaration
December 28, 1942
Jewish National Council Asks Practical Steps to Implement Allied Declaration
JERUSALEM, Dec. 27 (JTA) –
The Jewish National Council made public a manifesto praising the declaration by the United Nations regarding the Nazi persecution of the Jews as "of enormous moral value," but, at the same time, protesting that nothing practical has been done as yet to rescue these Jews.
The manifesto points out that so far "no steps have been taken to exchange German nationals in Allied countries for Jews in occupied territory; nothing has been done to secure the cooperation of the neutral nations in order to facilitate the emigration of Jews from Nazi-dominated lands; no countries have announced that they will open their gates to the persecuted Jews." It appeals to the Jews of the democratic world to take action to save European Jewry, pointing out that the Yishuv is ready to receive as many Jews as can be succored.
A meeting of Hungarian Jews here, which heard a report on the situation of the Jews in Hungary, voted to establish a Representation of Hungarian Jews which will demand recognition of post-war Jewish rights in Palestine. It was decided to appeal to prominent Jewish leaders, such as Chief Rabbi Hertz of Britain, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Miss Henrietta Szold and others, urging them to attempt to save Hungarian Jewry.
The Jewish community in Palestine was particularly shocked by the report that the Jews of Poland have been concentrated in 53 "Jewish townships" in order, it is believed, to facilitate their extermination.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Jewish National Council Asks Practical Steps to Implement Allied Declaration." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 28 Dec 1942
http://archive.jta.org/article/1943/12/10/2862488/further-reports-of-liquidation-of-polish-ghettos-reach-london-poles-praised
London, Dec. 9 (JTA) –
A detailed report of the liquidation of the smaller Jewish ghettos in Poland by the Nazis during last May and June was received here today by Dr. Ignacy Schwarzbart, a deputy in the Polish National Council. The report says that the ghettos in Piaski, Komskowole, Siedlice, Lukow and Radzyn were wiped out.
In the town of Wlodawa 4,000 Jews - 1,000 of whom had been sent there from Lwow since May - were divided into two contingents of 3,000 and 1,000. The 3,000 were sent to the Sobibor concentration camp, and most of the 1,000 were executed on the spot. Some of the latter, however, succeeded in fleeing to safety in the neighboring woods. Several hundred Jews were killed at Siedlice. In Wengrow 400 of the 700 Jews in the city were executed in the ghetto and the other 300 were gassed in the Treblinka "death camp," the report discloses.
Several hundred Dutch Jews recently arrived at the Trawniki camp, it is also revealed in the underground report. Children, women and aged men were sent to the Sobibor camp, while able-bodied men were placed in workshops manufacturing clothes for the German army. The report pays tribute to several Polish individuals and families who have been executed by the Germans for the "crime" of either sheltering Jews or feeding them.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Further Reports of Liquidation of Polish Ghettos Reach London; Poles Praised." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 10 Dec 1943.
http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/28/2859485/many-dutch-jews-dying-in-camp-all-jews-again-warned-to-prepare-for-deportation
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 27 (JTA) –
Scores of Dutch Jews are dying in the Westerbork internment camp to which thousands have been sent by the Nazis prior to being deported to Poland and other sections of Eastern Europe, it was learned here today. A new mortality list released by the Germans this week includes the names of Jewish men and women ranging in age from 28 to 95.
It is also reported that all Jews in Holland have once more been instructed to be in constant readiness for deportation to the Westerbork camp at a moment's notice. The Jews have been advised to have a packed suitcase put aside so that they will be prepared for any eventuality. At the same time the authorities in charge of the camp are reported to have called upon the Dutch Jews to contribute typewriters to the camp office in order to "assist" the deportees who are sent to Westerbork.
The Joodsche Weeksblad, organ of the Amsterdam Jewish community, which was received here today, reveals that the Dutch Synagogue Council has appointed Rabbi S. S. Dasberg, former Chief Rabbi of Groningen, as temporary Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam. The former Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam, Rabbi Lodewyk Sarlouis, was deported to Poland, it was reported earlier this month. The Nazi paper, Volk en Vaderland, reaching here today, angrily reveals that the populations of several Netherland towns have defied the Nazi order that they change the name of streets which are named after Jews.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Many Dutch Jews Dying in Camp; All Jews Again Warned to Prepare for Deportation." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 28 Dec 1942.
http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/28/2859488/interdenominational-mass-meeting-in-manchester-asks-aid-for-jews-of-europe
LONDON, Dec. 27 (JTA) –
A resolution recording horror at the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, hailing the recent Allied declaration and demanding that immigration barriers be lifted to allow free immigration to Palestine was adopted in Manchester at an inter-denominational protest meeting attended by prominent Jewish and non-Jewish leaders and by leading Anglican clergy.
Among those who addressed the meeting were the Lord Mayor of Manchester, the Bishop of Manchester, the president of the Free Church Council, and several members of parliament.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Inter-denominational Mass Meeting in Manchester Asks Aid for Jews of Europe." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 28 Dec 1942.
http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/28/2859487/jewish-national-council-asks-practical-steps-to-implement-allied-declaration
December 28, 1942
Jewish National Council Asks Practical Steps to Implement Allied Declaration
JERUSALEM, Dec. 27 (JTA) –
The Jewish National Council made public a manifesto praising the declaration by the United Nations regarding the Nazi persecution of the Jews as "of enormous moral value," but, at the same time, protesting that nothing practical has been done as yet to rescue these Jews.
The manifesto points out that so far "no steps have been taken to exchange German nationals in Allied countries for Jews in occupied territory; nothing has been done to secure the cooperation of the neutral nations in order to facilitate the emigration of Jews from Nazi-dominated lands; no countries have announced that they will open their gates to the persecuted Jews." It appeals to the Jews of the democratic world to take action to save European Jewry, pointing out that the Yishuv is ready to receive as many Jews as can be succored.
A meeting of Hungarian Jews here, which heard a report on the situation of the Jews in Hungary, voted to establish a Representation of Hungarian Jews which will demand recognition of post-war Jewish rights in Palestine. It was decided to appeal to prominent Jewish leaders, such as Chief Rabbi Hertz of Britain, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Miss Henrietta Szold and others, urging them to attempt to save Hungarian Jewry.
The Jewish community in Palestine was particularly shocked by the report that the Jews of Poland have been concentrated in 53 "Jewish townships" in order, it is believed, to facilitate their extermination.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Jewish National Council Asks Practical Steps to Implement Allied Declaration." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 28 Dec 1942
Monday, May 21, 2012
1939-1945: The Edelweiss Pirates pt II
http://libcom.org/history/1939-1945-the-edelweiss-pirates#comment-482349
Hitler’s power may lay us low,
And keep us locked in chains,
But we will smash the chains one day,
We’ll be free again
We’ve got fists and we can fight,
We’ve got knives and we’ll get them out
We want freedom, don’t we boys?
We’re the fighting Navajos!
Why were the Nazis able to control Germany so easily? Why was there so little active opposition to them? Why were the old parties of the SPD and KPD unable to offer any real resistance? How could a totalitarian regime so easily contain what had been the strongest working class in Europe?
We are taught that the Nazis duped the German population and that it took the armed might of the Allies to liberate Europe from their enslavement. This article aims to show how the Nazis were able to contain the working class and to tell some of the tales of resistance that really took place.
Dealing with the opposition
Acting with a ruthlessness that surprised their opponents, the Nazis banned their opponents, the Social Democrats and the Communists. For the working class this was far more serious than just the destruction of two state capitalist parties. It was accompanied by the annihilation of a whole area of social life around working class communities. Many of the most confident working class militants were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The repression was carried out legally. The SA (the Brownshirts) now acted in collaboration with the police. Their brutal activities which once had been illegal but tolerated now became part of official state activity. In some circumstances this meant simple actions like beatings. In others, SA groups moved into and took over working class pubs and centres. The effect was to isolate, intimidate and render powerless the working class.
Many workers believed that the Nazis would not remain in power forever. They believed that the next election would see them swept from power and ‘their’ parties returned. Workers only needed to bind their time. When it became clear that this was not going to happen, the myth changed. The role for oppositionists became to keep the party structures intact until such time as the Nazis were defeated. There is no doubt that even the simple act of distributing Socialist (SPD) or Communist (KPD) propaganda took an incredible degree of heroism, for the consequences of being caught were quite clear to all – beatings, torture and death. It meant that families would be left without breadwinners, subjected to police surveillance and intimidation. The result was often passivity and inaction.
As early as 1935, workers were aware of the consequences that ‘subversive’ activity would have on their families. A blacksmith in 1943 expressed the problem simply: “My wife is still alive, that’s all. It’s only for her sake that I don’t shout it right in their faces…You know these blackguards can only do all this because each of us has a wife or mother at home that he’s got to think of…people have too many things to consider. After all, you’re not alone in this world. And these SS devils exploit the fact.”
Throughout the period of Nazi rule there was industrial unrest, there were strikes and acts of disobedience and even sabotage. All these, however, attracted the attention of the Gestapo. The Gestapo had the assistance of employers and stooges in the workforce. The least a striker could expect was arrest. As a consequence, those who were politically opposed to the Nazi state kept themselves away from industrial struggle. To be arrested would have led not only to personal sacrifice, but also could have compromised the political organisations to which he or she belonged. To reinforce the message to workers, he Gestapo set up special industrial concentration camps attached to major factories.
To put the intensity of Nazi repression into context, during the period 1933-45, at least 30,000 German people were executed for opposing the state. This does not include countless others who died as a result of beatings, of their treatment in camps, or as a result of the official policy of euthanasia for those deemed mentally ill. Thousands of children were declared morally or biologically defective because they fell below the below the Aryan ‘norm’ and were murdered by doctors. This fate also befell youngsters with mental and physical disabilities as well as many who listened to the wrong kind of music.
However, Nazi domination of the working class did not rely solely on repression. Nazi industrial policy aimed to fragment the class, to replace working class solidarity with Nazi comradeship and solidarity with the state.
To start with, pay rises were forbidden. To strengthen competition, hourly rates were done away with. Piece rates became the norm. If workers wanted to earn more then they would have to produce more. Workers’ interests were to be represented by the German Workers’ Front (DAF), which they were forced to belong to and which of course represented solely the interests of the state and employers.
Unable to obtain pay rises with their employers it became common in a situation of full employment for workers to move from one factory to another in search of higher wages. On the one hand, this defeated the Nazi objectives of limiting pay; on the other hand it further weakened the bonds of solidarity between workers.
Knowing that they could not rule solely through fear, the Nazis gave ‘welfare’ concessions to the working class. Family allowances were paid for the first time; organised holidays and outings were provided at low cost. For many workers this was their first opportunity to go away on holiday. Social activities were provided through Nazi organisations.
There is little evidence that the Nazis won over the working class ideologically, nonetheless, this combination of repression and amelioration served to confuse many who would otherwise have been outright opponents.
The spectacles we have all seen of Nazi rallies, book burnings, parades and speeches are not evidence that workers were convinced of Nazi rule. It was clear to all what the consequence of not attending, of not carrying a placard or waving a flag would be. However, they must have increased the sense of isolation and powerlessness of those who would have liked to resist. As a result there was little open resistance from working class adults to the Nazis throughout their period in power.
Young People
If the Nazi policy towards adults was based on coercion, their policy towards young people was subtler. Put simply, the intention was to indoctrinate every young person, to make them a good national socialist citizen proudly upholding the ideals of the party. The means chosen to do this was the Hitler Youth (HJ).
By the end of 1933, all youth organisations outside the Hitler Youth had been banned – with the exception of those controlled by the Catholic Church that was busy cosying up to the Nazis at the time. Boys were to be organised into the Deutsches Jungvolk between the ages of 10 and 14 and the Hitler Youth proper from 14 to 18. They quickly incorporated around 40% of boys. Girls were to be enrolled into the Bund Deutsche Madel (BDM), but the Nazis were much less interested in getting them to join. The objective was to get all boys into the HJ. When this failed to take place, laws were passed gradually making it compulsory by 1939.
In the early days, being in the HJ was far from a chore. Boys got to take part in sports, go camping, hike, play competitive games – as well as being involved in drill and political indoctrination. Being in the HJ gave youngsters the chance to play one form of authority off against another. They could avoid schoolwork by claiming to be involved in HJ work. The HJ provided excuses when dealing with other authority figures – like parents and priests. On the other hand, they could also blame pressures from school in order to get out of more unpleasant Hitler Youth tasks! In some parts of the country the HJ provided the first opportunity to start a sports club, to get away from parents, to experience some independence.
As the 1930s went on, the function of the HJ and BDM changed. The objectives of the regime became more obviously military and aimed at conquest. The HJ was seen as a way recruiting and training young men into the armed forces. As war became more likely, the emphasis shifted away from leisure activities and into military training, State policy became of one of forcing all to be in the HJ. T made seemingly harmless activities, like getting together with your mates for an evening, criminal offences if they took place outside the HJ of BDM.
The HJ set up its own police squads to supervise young people. These Streifendienst patrols were made up of Hitler Youth members scarcely older than those they were meant to be policing.
By 1938, reports from Social Democrats in Germany to their leaders in exile were able to report that: “In the long run young people too are feeling increasingly irritated by the lack of freedom and the mindless drilling that is customary in the National Socialist organisations. It is therefore no wonder that symptoms of fatigue are becoming particularly apparent among their ranks…”
The outbreak of war brought the true nature of the HJ even more sharply into focus. Older HJ members were called up. More and more time was taken up with drill and political indoctrination. Bombing led to the destruction of many of the sporting facilities. The HJ became more and more obviously a means of oppression.
As the demands for fresh recruits to the armed forces became more intense, the divisions within the HJ became more acute. The German education system at the time was sharply divided along class lines. Most working class children left school at the age of 14. A few went on to secondary or grammar schools along with the children of middle class and professional families. As older HJ members were called up, the middle class school students took the place of the leaders. The rank and file was increasingly made up of young workers hardly likely to take too well to being ordered about at HJ meetings! It is not difficult to imagine the scene of a snotty doctor’s kid still in school trying to give orders to a bunch of young factory workers and having to use the threat of official punishment to get his own way. Dissatisfaction grew. Initially, the acute labour shortages of the early war years meant that the Nazis could not resort to the kind of Nazi terror tactics that they employed against other dissidents. As the war went on, many of these young people’s fathers died or were sent to the front. Many were bombed out of their own homes. The only future they could see for themselves was to wear a uniform and fight for a lost cause.
One teenager said in 1942: “Everything the HJ preaches is a fraud. I know this for certain, because everything I had to say in the HJ myself was a fraud.”
By the end of the 1930s, thousands of young people were finding ways to avoid the clutches of the Hitler Youth. They were gathering together in their own gangs and starting to enjoy themselves again. This terrified the Nazis, particularly when the teenagers started to defend their own social spaces physically. What particularly frightened the Nazis was that these young people were the products of their own education system. They had no contact with the old SPD or KPD, knew nothing of Marxism or the old labour movement. They had been educated by the Nazis in Nazi schools, their free time had been regimented by the HJ listening to Nazi propaganda and taking part in officially approved activities and sports.
These gangs went under different names. Their favoured clothes varied from town to town, as did their badges. In Essen they were called the Farhtenstenze (Travelling Dudes), in Oberhausen and Dusseldorf the Kittelbach Pirates, in Cologne they were the Navajos. But all saw themselves as Edelweiss Pirates (named after an edelweiss flower badge many wore).
Gestapo files in Cologne contain the names of over 3,000 teenagers identified as Edelweiss Pirates. Clearly, there must have been many more and their numbers must have been even greater when taken over Germany as a whole.
Initially, their activities were in themselves pretty harmless. They hung around in parks and on street corners, creating their own social space in the way teenagers do everywhere (usually to the annoyance of adults). At weekends they would take themselves off into the countryside on hikes and camping trips in a perverse way mirroring the activities initially provided by the HJ themselves. Unlike the HJ trips, however, these expeditions comprised boys and girls together, so adding a different, more exciting and more normal dimension than provided by the HJ. Whereas the HJ had taken young people away for trips to isolate and indoctrinate them, the Edelweiss Pirates expeditions got them away from the Party and gave them the time and space to be themselves.
On their trips they would meet up with Pirates from other towns and cities. Some went as far as to travel the length and breadth of Germany doing wartime, when to travel without papers was an illegal action.
Daring to enjoy themselves on their own was a criminal act. They were supposed to be under Party control. Inevitably they came across HJ Streifendienst patrols. Instead of running, the Pirates often stood and fought. Reports sent to Gestapo officers suggest that as often as not the Edelweiss Pirates won these fights. “I therefore request that the police ensure that this riff-raff is dealt with once and for all. The HJ are taking their lives into their hands when they go out on the streets.”
The activities of the Edelweiss Pirates grew bolder as the war progressed. They engaged in pranks against the allies, fights against their enemies and moved on to small acts of sabotage. They were accused of being slackers at work and social parasites. They began to help Jews, army deserters and prisoners of war. They painted anti-Nazi slogans on walls and some started to collect Allied propaganda leaflets and shove them through people’s letterboxes.
“There is a suspicion that it is these youths who have been inscribing the walls of the pedestrian subway on the Altebbergstrasse with the slogans ‘Down with Hitler’, ‘The OKW (Military High Command) is lying’, ‘Medals for Murder’, ‘Down with Nazi Brutality’ etc. However often these inscriptions are removed within a few days new ones appear on the walls again.” (1943 Dusseldorf-Grafenberg Nazi Party report to the Gestapo).
As time went on, a few grew bolder and even more heroic. They raided army camps to obtain arms and explosives, made attacks on Nazi figures other than the HJ and took part in partisan activities. The Head of the Cologne Gestapo was one victim of the Edelweiss Pirates.
The authorities reacted with their full armoury of repressive measures. These ranged from individual warnings, round-ups and temporary detention (followed by a head shaving), to weekend imprisonment, reform school, labour camp, youth concentration camp or criminal trial. Thousands were caught up in this hunt. For many, the end was death. The so-called leaders of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates were publicly hanged in November 1944.
However, as long as the Nazis needed workers in armament factories and soldiers for their war, they could not resort to the physical extermination of thousands of young Germans. Moreover, it is fair to say that the state was confused as to what to do with these rebels. They came from German stock, the sort of people who should have been grateful for what the Nazis gave. Unwilling to execute thousands and unable to comprehend what was happening, the state was equally unable to contain them.
Wall of Silence
So why has so little been heard of the Edelweiss Pirates? When I started researching this article, I found it extremely hard to find information about them. Most seemed to revolve around the research of the German historian Detlev Peukert, whose writings remain essential reading. Searches of the internet revealed only two articles.
A number of explanations come to mind. The post-war Allied authorities wanted to reconstruct Germany into a modern, western, democratic state. To do this, they enforced strict labour laws including compulsory work. The Edelweiss Pirates had a strong anti-work ethos, so they came into conflict with the new authorities too. A report in 1949 spoke of the “widespread phenomenon of unwillingness to work that was becoming a habit of many young people.” The prosecution of so-called ‘young idlers’ was sometimes no less rigid under Allied occupation than it was under the Nazis. A court in 1947 sent one young woman to prison for five months for ‘refusal to work’. The young became enemies of the new order too.
The political opponents of the Nazis had been either forced into exile, murdered or hid their politics. Clandestine activity had centred on keeping party structures intact. They could not afford to acknowledge that physical resistance had been alive and well and based on young people’s street gangs! To the politicians of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and SPD, the Edelweiss Pirates were just as much riff-raff as they were to the Nazis. The myth of the just war used by the allies relied heavily on the idea that all Germans had been at least silent during the Nazi period if not actively supporting the regime. To maintain this fiction the actions of ‘street hooligans’ in fighting the Nazis had to be forgotten.
Decades on, interest in the Edelweiss Pirates is beginning to resurface. More is being published on them and a film is being planned. We need to make sure that they are never forgotten again. As the producers of the film say: “the Edelweiss Pirates were no absolute heroes, but rather ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” It is precisely this that gives us hope for the future.
We march by banks of Ruhr and Rhine
And smash the Hitler Youth in twain.
Our song is freedom, love and life,
We’re the Pirates of the Edelweiss.
1939-1945: The Edelweiss Pirates
An account of the Edelweiss Pirates, a World War II era German anti-Nazi movement of working class youth who fought against the regime.
Hitler’s power may lay us low,
And keep us locked in chains,
But we will smash the chains one day,
We’ll be free again
We’ve got fists and we can fight,
We’ve got knives and we’ll get them out
We want freedom, don’t we boys?
We’re the fighting Navajos!
Why were the Nazis able to control Germany so easily? Why was there so little active opposition to them? Why were the old parties of the SPD and KPD unable to offer any real resistance? How could a totalitarian regime so easily contain what had been the strongest working class in Europe?
We are taught that the Nazis duped the German population and that it took the armed might of the Allies to liberate Europe from their enslavement. This article aims to show how the Nazis were able to contain the working class and to tell some of the tales of resistance that really took place.
Dealing with the opposition
Acting with a ruthlessness that surprised their opponents, the Nazis banned their opponents, the Social Democrats and the Communists. For the working class this was far more serious than just the destruction of two state capitalist parties. It was accompanied by the annihilation of a whole area of social life around working class communities. Many of the most confident working class militants were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The repression was carried out legally. The SA (the Brownshirts) now acted in collaboration with the police. Their brutal activities which once had been illegal but tolerated now became part of official state activity. In some circumstances this meant simple actions like beatings. In others, SA groups moved into and took over working class pubs and centres. The effect was to isolate, intimidate and render powerless the working class.
Many workers believed that the Nazis would not remain in power forever. They believed that the next election would see them swept from power and ‘their’ parties returned. Workers only needed to bind their time. When it became clear that this was not going to happen, the myth changed. The role for oppositionists became to keep the party structures intact until such time as the Nazis were defeated. There is no doubt that even the simple act of distributing Socialist (SPD) or Communist (KPD) propaganda took an incredible degree of heroism, for the consequences of being caught were quite clear to all – beatings, torture and death. It meant that families would be left without breadwinners, subjected to police surveillance and intimidation. The result was often passivity and inaction.
As early as 1935, workers were aware of the consequences that ‘subversive’ activity would have on their families. A blacksmith in 1943 expressed the problem simply: “My wife is still alive, that’s all. It’s only for her sake that I don’t shout it right in their faces…You know these blackguards can only do all this because each of us has a wife or mother at home that he’s got to think of…people have too many things to consider. After all, you’re not alone in this world. And these SS devils exploit the fact.”
Throughout the period of Nazi rule there was industrial unrest, there were strikes and acts of disobedience and even sabotage. All these, however, attracted the attention of the Gestapo. The Gestapo had the assistance of employers and stooges in the workforce. The least a striker could expect was arrest. As a consequence, those who were politically opposed to the Nazi state kept themselves away from industrial struggle. To be arrested would have led not only to personal sacrifice, but also could have compromised the political organisations to which he or she belonged. To reinforce the message to workers, he Gestapo set up special industrial concentration camps attached to major factories.
To put the intensity of Nazi repression into context, during the period 1933-45, at least 30,000 German people were executed for opposing the state. This does not include countless others who died as a result of beatings, of their treatment in camps, or as a result of the official policy of euthanasia for those deemed mentally ill. Thousands of children were declared morally or biologically defective because they fell below the below the Aryan ‘norm’ and were murdered by doctors. This fate also befell youngsters with mental and physical disabilities as well as many who listened to the wrong kind of music.
However, Nazi domination of the working class did not rely solely on repression. Nazi industrial policy aimed to fragment the class, to replace working class solidarity with Nazi comradeship and solidarity with the state.
To start with, pay rises were forbidden. To strengthen competition, hourly rates were done away with. Piece rates became the norm. If workers wanted to earn more then they would have to produce more. Workers’ interests were to be represented by the German Workers’ Front (DAF), which they were forced to belong to and which of course represented solely the interests of the state and employers.
Unable to obtain pay rises with their employers it became common in a situation of full employment for workers to move from one factory to another in search of higher wages. On the one hand, this defeated the Nazi objectives of limiting pay; on the other hand it further weakened the bonds of solidarity between workers.
Knowing that they could not rule solely through fear, the Nazis gave ‘welfare’ concessions to the working class. Family allowances were paid for the first time; organised holidays and outings were provided at low cost. For many workers this was their first opportunity to go away on holiday. Social activities were provided through Nazi organisations.
There is little evidence that the Nazis won over the working class ideologically, nonetheless, this combination of repression and amelioration served to confuse many who would otherwise have been outright opponents.
The spectacles we have all seen of Nazi rallies, book burnings, parades and speeches are not evidence that workers were convinced of Nazi rule. It was clear to all what the consequence of not attending, of not carrying a placard or waving a flag would be. However, they must have increased the sense of isolation and powerlessness of those who would have liked to resist. As a result there was little open resistance from working class adults to the Nazis throughout their period in power.
Young People
If the Nazi policy towards adults was based on coercion, their policy towards young people was subtler. Put simply, the intention was to indoctrinate every young person, to make them a good national socialist citizen proudly upholding the ideals of the party. The means chosen to do this was the Hitler Youth (HJ).
By the end of 1933, all youth organisations outside the Hitler Youth had been banned – with the exception of those controlled by the Catholic Church that was busy cosying up to the Nazis at the time. Boys were to be organised into the Deutsches Jungvolk between the ages of 10 and 14 and the Hitler Youth proper from 14 to 18. They quickly incorporated around 40% of boys. Girls were to be enrolled into the Bund Deutsche Madel (BDM), but the Nazis were much less interested in getting them to join. The objective was to get all boys into the HJ. When this failed to take place, laws were passed gradually making it compulsory by 1939.
In the early days, being in the HJ was far from a chore. Boys got to take part in sports, go camping, hike, play competitive games – as well as being involved in drill and political indoctrination. Being in the HJ gave youngsters the chance to play one form of authority off against another. They could avoid schoolwork by claiming to be involved in HJ work. The HJ provided excuses when dealing with other authority figures – like parents and priests. On the other hand, they could also blame pressures from school in order to get out of more unpleasant Hitler Youth tasks! In some parts of the country the HJ provided the first opportunity to start a sports club, to get away from parents, to experience some independence.
As the 1930s went on, the function of the HJ and BDM changed. The objectives of the regime became more obviously military and aimed at conquest. The HJ was seen as a way recruiting and training young men into the armed forces. As war became more likely, the emphasis shifted away from leisure activities and into military training, State policy became of one of forcing all to be in the HJ. T made seemingly harmless activities, like getting together with your mates for an evening, criminal offences if they took place outside the HJ of BDM.
The HJ set up its own police squads to supervise young people. These Streifendienst patrols were made up of Hitler Youth members scarcely older than those they were meant to be policing.
By 1938, reports from Social Democrats in Germany to their leaders in exile were able to report that: “In the long run young people too are feeling increasingly irritated by the lack of freedom and the mindless drilling that is customary in the National Socialist organisations. It is therefore no wonder that symptoms of fatigue are becoming particularly apparent among their ranks…”
The outbreak of war brought the true nature of the HJ even more sharply into focus. Older HJ members were called up. More and more time was taken up with drill and political indoctrination. Bombing led to the destruction of many of the sporting facilities. The HJ became more and more obviously a means of oppression.
As the demands for fresh recruits to the armed forces became more intense, the divisions within the HJ became more acute. The German education system at the time was sharply divided along class lines. Most working class children left school at the age of 14. A few went on to secondary or grammar schools along with the children of middle class and professional families. As older HJ members were called up, the middle class school students took the place of the leaders. The rank and file was increasingly made up of young workers hardly likely to take too well to being ordered about at HJ meetings! It is not difficult to imagine the scene of a snotty doctor’s kid still in school trying to give orders to a bunch of young factory workers and having to use the threat of official punishment to get his own way. Dissatisfaction grew. Initially, the acute labour shortages of the early war years meant that the Nazis could not resort to the kind of Nazi terror tactics that they employed against other dissidents. As the war went on, many of these young people’s fathers died or were sent to the front. Many were bombed out of their own homes. The only future they could see for themselves was to wear a uniform and fight for a lost cause.
One teenager said in 1942: “Everything the HJ preaches is a fraud. I know this for certain, because everything I had to say in the HJ myself was a fraud.”
By the end of the 1930s, thousands of young people were finding ways to avoid the clutches of the Hitler Youth. They were gathering together in their own gangs and starting to enjoy themselves again. This terrified the Nazis, particularly when the teenagers started to defend their own social spaces physically. What particularly frightened the Nazis was that these young people were the products of their own education system. They had no contact with the old SPD or KPD, knew nothing of Marxism or the old labour movement. They had been educated by the Nazis in Nazi schools, their free time had been regimented by the HJ listening to Nazi propaganda and taking part in officially approved activities and sports.
These gangs went under different names. Their favoured clothes varied from town to town, as did their badges. In Essen they were called the Farhtenstenze (Travelling Dudes), in Oberhausen and Dusseldorf the Kittelbach Pirates, in Cologne they were the Navajos. But all saw themselves as Edelweiss Pirates (named after an edelweiss flower badge many wore).
Gestapo files in Cologne contain the names of over 3,000 teenagers identified as Edelweiss Pirates. Clearly, there must have been many more and their numbers must have been even greater when taken over Germany as a whole.
Initially, their activities were in themselves pretty harmless. They hung around in parks and on street corners, creating their own social space in the way teenagers do everywhere (usually to the annoyance of adults). At weekends they would take themselves off into the countryside on hikes and camping trips in a perverse way mirroring the activities initially provided by the HJ themselves. Unlike the HJ trips, however, these expeditions comprised boys and girls together, so adding a different, more exciting and more normal dimension than provided by the HJ. Whereas the HJ had taken young people away for trips to isolate and indoctrinate them, the Edelweiss Pirates expeditions got them away from the Party and gave them the time and space to be themselves.
On their trips they would meet up with Pirates from other towns and cities. Some went as far as to travel the length and breadth of Germany doing wartime, when to travel without papers was an illegal action.
Daring to enjoy themselves on their own was a criminal act. They were supposed to be under Party control. Inevitably they came across HJ Streifendienst patrols. Instead of running, the Pirates often stood and fought. Reports sent to Gestapo officers suggest that as often as not the Edelweiss Pirates won these fights. “I therefore request that the police ensure that this riff-raff is dealt with once and for all. The HJ are taking their lives into their hands when they go out on the streets.”
The activities of the Edelweiss Pirates grew bolder as the war progressed. They engaged in pranks against the allies, fights against their enemies and moved on to small acts of sabotage. They were accused of being slackers at work and social parasites. They began to help Jews, army deserters and prisoners of war. They painted anti-Nazi slogans on walls and some started to collect Allied propaganda leaflets and shove them through people’s letterboxes.
“There is a suspicion that it is these youths who have been inscribing the walls of the pedestrian subway on the Altebbergstrasse with the slogans ‘Down with Hitler’, ‘The OKW (Military High Command) is lying’, ‘Medals for Murder’, ‘Down with Nazi Brutality’ etc. However often these inscriptions are removed within a few days new ones appear on the walls again.” (1943 Dusseldorf-Grafenberg Nazi Party report to the Gestapo).
As time went on, a few grew bolder and even more heroic. They raided army camps to obtain arms and explosives, made attacks on Nazi figures other than the HJ and took part in partisan activities. The Head of the Cologne Gestapo was one victim of the Edelweiss Pirates.
The authorities reacted with their full armoury of repressive measures. These ranged from individual warnings, round-ups and temporary detention (followed by a head shaving), to weekend imprisonment, reform school, labour camp, youth concentration camp or criminal trial. Thousands were caught up in this hunt. For many, the end was death. The so-called leaders of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates were publicly hanged in November 1944.
However, as long as the Nazis needed workers in armament factories and soldiers for their war, they could not resort to the physical extermination of thousands of young Germans. Moreover, it is fair to say that the state was confused as to what to do with these rebels. They came from German stock, the sort of people who should have been grateful for what the Nazis gave. Unwilling to execute thousands and unable to comprehend what was happening, the state was equally unable to contain them.
Wall of Silence
So why has so little been heard of the Edelweiss Pirates? When I started researching this article, I found it extremely hard to find information about them. Most seemed to revolve around the research of the German historian Detlev Peukert, whose writings remain essential reading. Searches of the internet revealed only two articles.
A number of explanations come to mind. The post-war Allied authorities wanted to reconstruct Germany into a modern, western, democratic state. To do this, they enforced strict labour laws including compulsory work. The Edelweiss Pirates had a strong anti-work ethos, so they came into conflict with the new authorities too. A report in 1949 spoke of the “widespread phenomenon of unwillingness to work that was becoming a habit of many young people.” The prosecution of so-called ‘young idlers’ was sometimes no less rigid under Allied occupation than it was under the Nazis. A court in 1947 sent one young woman to prison for five months for ‘refusal to work’. The young became enemies of the new order too.
The political opponents of the Nazis had been either forced into exile, murdered or hid their politics. Clandestine activity had centred on keeping party structures intact. They could not afford to acknowledge that physical resistance had been alive and well and based on young people’s street gangs! To the politicians of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and SPD, the Edelweiss Pirates were just as much riff-raff as they were to the Nazis. The myth of the just war used by the allies relied heavily on the idea that all Germans had been at least silent during the Nazi period if not actively supporting the regime. To maintain this fiction the actions of ‘street hooligans’ in fighting the Nazis had to be forgotten.
Decades on, interest in the Edelweiss Pirates is beginning to resurface. More is being published on them and a film is being planned. We need to make sure that they are never forgotten again. As the producers of the film say: “the Edelweiss Pirates were no absolute heroes, but rather ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” It is precisely this that gives us hope for the future.
We march by banks of Ruhr and Rhine
And smash the Hitler Youth in twain.
Our song is freedom, love and life,
We’re the Pirates of the Edelweiss.
The Edelweiss Pirates
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#pirates
The Edelweiss Pirates
I want a brutal, domineering, fearless cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes. That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication. That is how I will create the New Order.
Adolph Hitler
Hitler's power may lay us low,
And keep us locked in chains,
But we will smash the chains one day,
We'll be free again.
We've got the fists and we can fight,
We've got the knives and we'll get them out.
We want freedom, don't we boys?
Song of the Edelweiss Pirates (Peukert, p. 158)
There were many young people in Nazi Germany who resisted the cruelties of the Nazi Youth and remained true to their own codes of moral conduct. The Edelweiss Pirates was one of the largest youth groups who refused to participate in Nazi youth activities. The police were not allowed to arrest members of the Hitler Youth Patrol Service, who were known for their brutality and bullying. Hitler Youth were guilty of many crimes, they broke shop windows, stole, and beat people on the streets. In one case, a group of Hitler Youth broke the windows of the home of a teacher who had given them low marks. The Nazi Youth Patrol raided movie houses, cabarets, billiard halls and coffee shops looking for the Edelweiss Pirates, who stood up to them and even fought with
them on the streets of the cities of Dusseldorf, Essen, Cologne and other industrial cities in western Germany.
The Edelweiss Pirates had different names in different cities, but they shared basic beliefs and attitudes. They were not deprived children or delinquents; most were not even deliberate resistance fighters. They were simply the sons and daughters of working class parents who refused to be bullied into absolute obedience. Most of the Pirates were between 16 to 18 years of age and were too young for military service.
The first Pirates appeared at the end of the 1930's. Dressed in checkered shirts, short dark trousers and white stockings, the Pirates wore metal Edelweiss pins on their collars. Because they lived in the same neighborhoods they had a territorial identity and shared beliefs. Refusing to participate in Nazi Youth activities, they shared a strong sense of social identity and solidarity with one another.
The groups of Edelweiss Pirates consisted of ten to fifteen boys, there were girls in some of the groups too. During the day they worked in factories and mills as unskilled workers and in the evenings and weekends they met together in cafes or in the parks. The high point of their activities together was the hikes they took into the countryside with rucksacks on their backs and their bread and butter rations. At night they slept in barns or tents. Sometimes they rode bicycles deep into the countryside ignoring the Nazi rules. Always on the watch for the dreaded Nazi Youth Patrols, they sometimes provoked street fights, but most of the time they avoided the Nazi Youth.
As the war progressed, social chaos intensified, and many Pirates became active in the underground resistance movement. When the industrial cities were being bombed between 1942 and 1945, the conflicts between the Edelweiss Pirates and the Nazi authorities intensified. Edelweiss Pirates in Cologne offered shelter to German army deserters, escaped prisoners from concentration camps, and escapees from forced. labor camps. Groups of Edelweiss Pirates made armed raids on military depots and deliberately sabotaged war production. The Nazis were determined to suppress them.
A Nazi official wrote, "There is a suspicion that it is these youths who have been inscribing the walls (of the pedestrian underground walkways in the Altenbergstrasse, a boulevard in the center of the city) with the slogans "Down with Hitler". "The OKW (Oberkommande des Wehrmacht) is lying", "Down with Nazi brutality". No
matter how often the writings on the walls were scrubbed away, they were back again after a few days.
Nazi patrols were constantly looking for members of the Pirates and those who were caught were imprisoned, sent to jails, reform schools, psychiatric hospitals, labor and concentration camps and many lost their lives. In a single day of raids in December 1942, the Dusseldorf Gestapo and the Secret Police made more than 1000 arrests. During the round ups, the Nazis were brutal. Captured Pirates had their heads shaven, were threatened and beaten, and often cruelly punished. A member of the Pirates was publicly executed by hanging in the center of
the city of Cologne. The story of the Edelweiss Pirates is a story of courage and resistance.
____________________________________________________________________
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jean-jlich-one-of-the-edelweiss-pirates-who-resisted-the-nazis-6259542.html?origin=internalSearch
Jean Jülich: One of the Edelweiss Pirates, who resisted the Nazis Jean Jülich: One of the Edelweiss Pirates, who resisted the Nazis
Jean Jülich, who has died in his native Cologne aged 82, was one of the last surviving Edelweiss Pirates, the working class German teenagers who ran wild in the ruins of the city during the last years of the Third Reich. By 1944 as many as five thousand tearaways were living as outlaws in Hamburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt and in the heavily bombed cities of the Rhine and Ruhr valleys. Known sometimes as Navajos, Ruhrpiraten, Harlem-Club or even Meuten [wolf packs], they were usually under military age and had evaded the compulsory Hitler youth organisations.
Boys and girls wore long hair, short shorts and distinctive checked shirts decorated by a small badge or pin in the shape of the edelweiss flower.
Jean Jülich tramped the hills south of Bonn with his guitar, singing attheir secret meetings. He had lived with his grandparents from the age of seven, after seeing his communist father badly beaten by SS men and jailed for high treason. In a deserted bomb-disposal bunker, the Navajo group of the Ehrenfeld district of Cologne supplied black market food and shelter to runaway forced labourers, concentration camp escapees, fugitive Jews and German army deserters. They attacked Hitler Youth patrols, derailed ammunition trains, catapulted bricks through the roof of a munitions factory and sabotaged machinery.
Their plan to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne, using detonators extracted from unexploded British bombs, was discovered after a 24-year-old Edelweiss Pirate had shot dead a Nazi informer.
Jülich was arrested at the age of 15, held in solitary confinement without trial and tortured for four months. His 16-year-old friend, Barthel Schink, was hanged with 11 other Pirates on a public gallows at Ehrenfeld railway station, without trial, on orders from Heinrich Himmler. Jülich survived a year of beatings, starvation and typhus in a concentration camp until liberated by American tanks in 1945.
In "year zero", after the defeat ofGermany, feral surviving Pirates living on their wits in the ruined cities were frequently arrested by Allied military police. One Pirate was sentenced to death, though later reprieved, by amilitary court in Lower Saxony inApril 1946 for his "very active part in carrying out the nefarious schemes of the Edelweiss Piraten. An organisation such as this might well threaten the peace of Europe."
In the Soviet zone, Edelweiss Pirates were routinely jailed for 25 years. In West Germany, the courts ruled that wartime teenage criminal convictions recorded by the Gestapo counted as part of their criminal record. Jülich and a fellow Navajo, Gertrud Koch, codename "Mucki", fought a long campaign to get the Piraten rehabilitated as resisters. Despite being recognised as "righteous gentiles" by Yad Vashem in Israel in 1988, their Gestapo records were not annulled until 2005.
"Mucki" lost her father in a concentration camp. Now 87, she said, "The old Nazi judges used after the war upheld the criminalisation of what we had done and who we were."
During the campaign for recognition, Jülich made a successful recording of a romantic tramping song, "Es War In Shanghai", much loved by the Edelweiss Pirates but banned at Hitler Youth campfires, that tells of a midnight encounter in the Ohio Bar in Shanghai between Heini and Charly from Hamburg and Jim Parker, their comrade from 'Frisco.
Jülich always claimed, "It was not a political song, but it addresses the desire for foreign countries, fellowship and independence. The Nazis did not sing this song because it was not consistent with their ideology."
His 2003 pamphlet Kohldampf, Knast un Kamelle ("Hard Times, Jail and Carnival: An Edelweiss Pirate Looks Back on His Life") was equally romantic.
His wife, Karin, daughter Conny and son Marco were at his bedside when he died in hospital after a heartattack.
Andrew Rosthorn
Jean Jülich, war hero: born Cologne 18 April 1929; married Karin (one son, one daughter); died Cologne 19 October 2011.
Louise
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#louise
Louise
As the persecution of Jews in Germany intensified, life became increasingly dangerous, whole families were deported and sent to concentration camps. By August 1942, very few yellow stars could be seen on the streets of Berlin. Emigration had become impossible and many people went into hiding.
Hiding meant living in constant fear of being recognized and reported; those in hiding has to be constantly alert. The people who helped them hide were in as much danger as the people they hid. Hiding meant staying out of sight for the duration of the war in empty warehouses, bombed out buildings, and rat infested cellars. Some people were able to obtain false identification papers and obtain work, but most of those in hiding depended on other people for food and other necessities. It took enormous courage and determination to survive.
Despite the difficulties, those in hiding were able to help one another. In Berlin, young Jewish people in hiding managed to meet in cafes and keep in touch with one another. They gave one another information about obtaining false identity papers or making contact with "border runners" who could smuggle them out of Germany. Berlin provided a unique opportunity for hiders to find one another. Those who were hiding in the countryside or small towns had few other Jews to help them.
Jewish resistance groups were formed. The Chug Chaluzi was organized in 1942 by Edith Wolff and saved many young people from deportations. This group viewed saving Jewish lives as a form of political resistance. The members met regularly, exchanged information, and organized meals and lodgings for one another. The intense bombing raids over Berlin did not stop them from meeting one another in pre-arranged secret meeting places. It was a miracle that most of the members of this group survived.
Louise had just gone to bed when she heard the loud knocking on the door and
then the words she feared the most, "This is the Gestapo. We have come to search the house. We know you are hiding a Jew."
Louise leaped up from the bed, smoothed the sheets, grabbed her schoolbooks and dashed into the closet. Holding her breath, she could hear the pounding of her heart as the footsteps came closer and closer. Louise felt she had been in the closet for a very long time, but the footsteps disappeared, they did not open the closet door.
Not daring to move and feeling as if all the strength was drained from her body, Louise stayed in the closet until Frau Muenter opened the door. Still clutching her school books, she crawled back into the room.
Frau Muenter tried to smile, but she had tears in her eyes as she helped Louise off the floor. She knew Louise was no longer safe in her home.
Herr and Frau Muenter were social democrats who opposed the Nazi regime. Herr
Muenter was a close friend of Louise's father, an active trade union leader. Arrested after he organized an anti-Nazi protest demonstration, Louise's father, who was not Jewish, was no longer able to protect his wife and child from the anti Jewish laws. Like other Jewish people, Louise and her mother had to wear yellow stars sewn to their clothing and could only shop for food in the late afternoon. Forbidden to go to the school, Louise's mother enrolled her in the Jewish school and they had to move to a small rooming house.
Despite the difficulties, Louise made many friends at the new school, but when the persecution of Jews intensified in 1942, many of her school friends disappeared. Hundreds of Jewish people, young and old were arrested and being sent to concentration camps, and many tried to emigrate to other countries. Sixteen years old, Louise tried to help her mother cope with the difficulties of living in Berlin. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles on her mother's side were arrested and sent away. Her father's parents had died when she was very small and she had no contact with the rest of his family. She had no contact with her father's family. When the Nazis forced the school to close, Louise tried to keep in touch with her Jewish friends.
Louise's mother kept telling her that life would be better as soon as her father got out of jail. But instead of being released, he was sent to a forced labor camp. Herr Muenter was able to see her father before he was moved and he promised him he would look after Louise and her mother.
The final round up of Jews began in February of 1943. Louise was just coming home when a neighbor stopped her and told her that her mother had been arrested and warned her not to go into the rooming house. Louise turned away from the house and recklessly pulled her off her yellow star and then began to run. She crossed the street and headed to the busy street alongside of the canal. It was safer to be walking with other people. A feeling of deep sadness welled up in her as well as fear.
"I have nothing to lose," she thought. "I've lost everyone and everything dear to
me". She did not know where her mother was, her father was far away in a labor camp, her grandparents had died and she did not know her father's family. They lived in another part of Germany. The clouds began to gather and the sun was sinking, it was getting dark. Then she remembered Herr Muenter's words. "If you are ever in trouble, come to me". Louise turned around and began walking to the big apartment complex on the other side of the canal where the Muenters lived. As she approached the large sprawling building, she saw a group of Nazi Youth standing in front of the building. She did not make eye contact and walked more slowly. A housewife with a big bag of food was just entering the building. She stopped at the entranceway of the building and realized she did not know the number of their flat. But before she could speak to the woman who had entered the building with her, she saw Frau Muenter coming towards the entranceway. Frau Muenter was a nurse and was coming home from the hospital. Louise went up to her, but Frau Muenter put her finger to her lips and took her into the courtyard and then into another building. She dared not speak. Frau Muenter took out her key, opened the door to the flat and led her inside. As soon as she closed the door, Louise could not hold back her tears. She told Frau Muenter that her mother had been arrested. A tall stately woman, Frau Muenter put her arms around Louise and held her close.
That morning on her way to work, she saw lines of army trucks with gray canvas covers on the street. The trucks were escorted by armed SS men and stopped at factory gates, in front of private houses and were full of men, women and children. Her heart was heavy and she thought about Louise and her mother.
"You will stay here with us and you will be safe", Frau Muenter "We promised both your mother and your father that we would look after you and we will" Frau Muenter tried to smile.
The Muenters' small flat overlooked the courtyard of the big housing complex. It
had a coalstove, a small kitchen and parlor and two bedrooms. Frau Muneter took Louise to a small bedroom and told her it was her very own room. There was a small bed, a dresser and a chair and a table. The window in the bedroom overlooked the courtyard.
"Make yourself comfortable and try to rest", she told Louise and went into the kitchen to prepare supper.
As soon as Herr Muenter came home that evening, he went to talk to Louise. He told her he was glad that she had come to them. He had heard about the raids on Jewish homes that had become known as the final round-up of the Jews in Berlin. AT dinner that night the Muenters told her that she woul d be safe as long as no one knew she was there. Louise understood that she was now in hiding, she could not leave the flat or answer the door bell. When visitors came to the house, Louise had to stay in her room. Frau Muenter would bring her books and puzzles to keep her amused. Louise asked her for school books too, so she could keep up with her studies.
Frau Muenter left for work early in the morning. She and Louise ate breakfast together and then Louise went to her room and spent the day doing school work and reading the books Frau Muenster brought her. She could not listen to the radio for fear the sound would attract attention. When visitors came, Louise stayed in the bedroom.
The days were long and the Muenters seemed to understand how difficult it was for the young girl to stay in her room day after day. They tried to cheer her up in the evenings and the three of them played cards and talked.
"We'll take it day by day. Before you know it, you will have a normal life again",
Frau Muenter told her.
The Muenters often had visitors and then Louise had to go to her room. Only a very few of their trusted friends klnew she was living with them. Herr Muenter brought her a jigsaw puzzle to work on when she had to stay in the room.
The kindness of Herr and Frau Muenter made Louise miss her parents all the more. Herr Muenter told her many stories about her brave father. Slowly Louise adjusted to the routine and the Muenters were confident that Louise was safe in their home until the night of the Gestapo raid.
After the raid, Frau Muenter discovered that it was her neighbor who had reported them to the Gestapo. The neighbor saw Frau Muenter bring Louise to the flat and when. she asked Frau Muenter about the young girl, Frau Muenter replied , "Oh, she is my niece, she comes to visit now and again". But the woman was already suspicious of the Muenters because they had so many visitors. She watched the flat every day and noticed that the girl Frau Muenter said was her niece, never left the apartment, she reported them to the Gestapo.
The little flat was no longer a safe place for Louise, but Herr Muenter would not let her leave until he could find another safe place. He knew other anti-Nazis and social democrats who were hiding Jewish people. The very next evening, Herr Muenter brought home an address and told Louise to memorize it and throw away the paper. He gave her instructions.
_______________________________________________________________________
"You will be safe in this place", he assured her. "I have been told that there will be other young people there. But be very careful that no one sees you enter the building. If there is someone on the street, don't go inside." Herr Muenter gave her a wallet with some money. Frau Muenter gave her some clothing, a skirt, a sweater and two blouses and stuffed them in a paper bag along with some food. Louise was to leave early the next morning. No one slept that night.
After breakfast, Louise hugged Frau Muenter and left the flat. She had to walk along the canal for a mile and calmed herself by looking at the early morning shadows on the water. She could not remember a time when fear was not part of her life. She thought about her mother and her father and wondered if she'd ever see them again. Thinking about her mother, she tried to remember happy times.
She walked a long way and then turned away from the canal as she was told and headed up a small street, she found herself in a neighborhood she did not know, but she did not stop walking until she reached the address she had memorized. It was a deserted building with a broken door and it looked so empty she thought no one was inside. Louise rapped on the door four times, paused and then rapped four times again just as Herr Muenter had instructed.
The door opened and Louise went inside. As soon as the door closed, Louise saw
the boy who had opened the door. It was Gabriel, a boy she knew from the Jewish school. Tall and good looking, Gabriel was a year older than Louise. He often played the violin at the school and wanted to be a musician.
"I'm glad to see you", Gabriel told her.
"Did you know I was coming?" she asked.
"I didn't know it would be you, but I was told to watch for a young girl", he replied.
Gabriel told her that she was now part of a group of young people in hiding and that they looked after one another. The groups that were in hiding were called "U boats".
"You'll be meeting other members of the group. You are not alone. We are going to survive all this cruelty and chaos". He spoke calmly and with confidence as he explained the important rules.
"We never do anything to draw attention to ourselves like walk around in groups or wear funny clothing. And when you see someone you know, walk away as quickly as you can".
Gabriel hid most of the day. As a young man out of uniform, he knew he would arouse suspicion if he walked around the streets and if he wore his Jewish star, he was in even greater danger. Nevertheless, he managed to look after the others.
Looking out for one another often meant bringing parcels of food to hiding places. Knowing there were spies on the street looking for Jewish people in hiding. Whenever a young Jewish person was found to be homeless, Gabriel or some of the others made arrangements for them. People in hiding lived in deserted buildings and cellars, some slept behind counters in grocery or fruit stores. There were also people that Gabriel knew who were willing to smuggle Jewish people out of Berlin.
During the day the members of the group had various hiding places. Some were able to obtain false identity papers and get jobs, but others spent their days in hiding. At night they met together in cafes or cellars. Berlin was famous for its many cafes called kneipen. In working class neighborhoods, there were kneipens on almost every street. Some members took chances and went to theatres or movie houses, but most of young people took hiding very seriously.
That night Louise went with Gabriel to a meeting in a back room of a café, where she met a few of the other young people. One of the girls worked illegally in a laundry run by her Christian aunt. Whenever someone in uniform came to the laundry, she had to run away. A boy who was the same age as Louise had false identification papers and was able to work in a factory and shop in food stores. He often bought food for the others who were not as fortunate. Another girl slept under a bed in a Christian friend's house, but could not stay there during the day and spent the days traveling on streetcars or in the train station, pretending to wait for a train. When she saw a soldier or a Gestapo officer she hid in the public toilet.
Leon worked in an armaments factory in North Berlin and was on his way to work, when a co-worker, a young Frenchman met him in the train station and warned him not to go to work. He had heard a rumor that the Gestapo was looking for Jewish workers. Leon went back to his flat and the next day the Frenchman came and told him to find another place. Leon left his flat and made contact with another Jewish boy on the street who brought him to Gabriel.
Ilse was the daughter of a Christian mother and Jewish father, her blonde hair and blue eyes made her look "Aryan", but her mother died when she was a small girl and she was raised by her Jewish grandparents. When her grandparents and her father were arrested, Ilse managed to escape and to her aunt, her mother's sister, who was able to get her identity card from a priest. Ilse became an active member of the group and like Gabriel, she found suitable hiding places for newer members.
With her identity card, Ilse was able to get work as a waitress in small restaurants, but she never spent more than a few months in any one place, for fear of being discovered.
"I just don't want people to know me too well", she explained. "You never know who's going to give you away".
That night at the meeting in the small café, they At the café meeting, they talked about many things, Jewish holidays, looking for other Jewish young people, and safe hiding places. Louise looked around at the bright young faces and felt good to be counted one of them. After the meeting, Louise went with Ilse to her tiny room in an old rooming house. The owner was an elderly woman who was only interested in getting rent for her rooms and did not ask for identity cards.
The Allies began bombing Berlin in heavy nightly raids in 1943. The bombing raised many new dangers; those without identity cards could not seek shelter in the underground air raid shelters. At the same time, the bombing made it easier to find hiding places. There were also many more homeless people, seeking shelter after their homes had been destroyed. Mothers with crying children, elderly people carrying luggage, and other people filled the streets after the air raids.
Louise, Ilse and the others hid in cellars during the raids. Fire and smoke were everywhere. Ilse managed to find an identity card for Louise with the name "Alice Wissen" printed on it. With the card, Louise was now able to get to a shelter during a raid. She was also in a better position to help Gabriel and Ilse rescue other Jewish young people.
Gabriel learned about a 14 year old boy hiding in a cellar and sent Louise to meet him. The boy's name was Samuel. Louise found him in the cellar of a bombed out building and gave him a parcel of food and some clothing. She looked at the skinny boy and wondered how he managed to stay alive. Samuel had been living by raiding garbage cans or buying stale bread with the few coins he had.
One night when Louise was in a bomb shelter, a girl she knew from school called her name. Louise tried to ignore her, but when the girl persisted, Louise said, "You must have the wrong person. My name is Alice, not Louise."
The girl looked at her and shrugged. "Louise was Jewish so I guess she's not around any more", she said.
The group continued to meet regularly. They even had study sessions to learn more about the Jewish holidays. Together they shaped a strong sense of identity. Belonging to a group gave them courage and determination. One of their favorite topics of conversation was what they would do when the war was over.
There were many rumors of the Nazis losing the war and they heard about the Russian army attacking the Nazi troops inside Germany. Hope rose like a flame as they thought about having a future.
In the spring of 1945 the Allied armies captured Berlin. White sheets were hung from windows and on the lamp posts that were still standing. Every member of the group had survived the war.
The Fall of Berlin, Anthony Read and David Fisher, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992
Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Marion A. Kaplan, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998
Louise
As the persecution of Jews in Germany intensified, life became increasingly dangerous, whole families were deported and sent to concentration camps. By August 1942, very few yellow stars could be seen on the streets of Berlin. Emigration had become impossible and many people went into hiding.
Hiding meant living in constant fear of being recognized and reported; those in hiding has to be constantly alert. The people who helped them hide were in as much danger as the people they hid. Hiding meant staying out of sight for the duration of the war in empty warehouses, bombed out buildings, and rat infested cellars. Some people were able to obtain false identification papers and obtain work, but most of those in hiding depended on other people for food and other necessities. It took enormous courage and determination to survive.
Despite the difficulties, those in hiding were able to help one another. In Berlin, young Jewish people in hiding managed to meet in cafes and keep in touch with one another. They gave one another information about obtaining false identity papers or making contact with "border runners" who could smuggle them out of Germany. Berlin provided a unique opportunity for hiders to find one another. Those who were hiding in the countryside or small towns had few other Jews to help them.
Jewish resistance groups were formed. The Chug Chaluzi was organized in 1942 by Edith Wolff and saved many young people from deportations. This group viewed saving Jewish lives as a form of political resistance. The members met regularly, exchanged information, and organized meals and lodgings for one another. The intense bombing raids over Berlin did not stop them from meeting one another in pre-arranged secret meeting places. It was a miracle that most of the members of this group survived.
Louise had just gone to bed when she heard the loud knocking on the door and
then the words she feared the most, "This is the Gestapo. We have come to search the house. We know you are hiding a Jew."
Louise leaped up from the bed, smoothed the sheets, grabbed her schoolbooks and dashed into the closet. Holding her breath, she could hear the pounding of her heart as the footsteps came closer and closer. Louise felt she had been in the closet for a very long time, but the footsteps disappeared, they did not open the closet door.
Not daring to move and feeling as if all the strength was drained from her body, Louise stayed in the closet until Frau Muenter opened the door. Still clutching her school books, she crawled back into the room.
Frau Muenter tried to smile, but she had tears in her eyes as she helped Louise off the floor. She knew Louise was no longer safe in her home.
Herr and Frau Muenter were social democrats who opposed the Nazi regime. Herr
Muenter was a close friend of Louise's father, an active trade union leader. Arrested after he organized an anti-Nazi protest demonstration, Louise's father, who was not Jewish, was no longer able to protect his wife and child from the anti Jewish laws. Like other Jewish people, Louise and her mother had to wear yellow stars sewn to their clothing and could only shop for food in the late afternoon. Forbidden to go to the school, Louise's mother enrolled her in the Jewish school and they had to move to a small rooming house.
Despite the difficulties, Louise made many friends at the new school, but when the persecution of Jews intensified in 1942, many of her school friends disappeared. Hundreds of Jewish people, young and old were arrested and being sent to concentration camps, and many tried to emigrate to other countries. Sixteen years old, Louise tried to help her mother cope with the difficulties of living in Berlin. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles on her mother's side were arrested and sent away. Her father's parents had died when she was very small and she had no contact with the rest of his family. She had no contact with her father's family. When the Nazis forced the school to close, Louise tried to keep in touch with her Jewish friends.
Louise's mother kept telling her that life would be better as soon as her father got out of jail. But instead of being released, he was sent to a forced labor camp. Herr Muenter was able to see her father before he was moved and he promised him he would look after Louise and her mother.
The final round up of Jews began in February of 1943. Louise was just coming home when a neighbor stopped her and told her that her mother had been arrested and warned her not to go into the rooming house. Louise turned away from the house and recklessly pulled her off her yellow star and then began to run. She crossed the street and headed to the busy street alongside of the canal. It was safer to be walking with other people. A feeling of deep sadness welled up in her as well as fear.
"I have nothing to lose," she thought. "I've lost everyone and everything dear to
me". She did not know where her mother was, her father was far away in a labor camp, her grandparents had died and she did not know her father's family. They lived in another part of Germany. The clouds began to gather and the sun was sinking, it was getting dark. Then she remembered Herr Muenter's words. "If you are ever in trouble, come to me". Louise turned around and began walking to the big apartment complex on the other side of the canal where the Muenters lived. As she approached the large sprawling building, she saw a group of Nazi Youth standing in front of the building. She did not make eye contact and walked more slowly. A housewife with a big bag of food was just entering the building. She stopped at the entranceway of the building and realized she did not know the number of their flat. But before she could speak to the woman who had entered the building with her, she saw Frau Muenter coming towards the entranceway. Frau Muenter was a nurse and was coming home from the hospital. Louise went up to her, but Frau Muenter put her finger to her lips and took her into the courtyard and then into another building. She dared not speak. Frau Muenter took out her key, opened the door to the flat and led her inside. As soon as she closed the door, Louise could not hold back her tears. She told Frau Muenter that her mother had been arrested. A tall stately woman, Frau Muenter put her arms around Louise and held her close.
That morning on her way to work, she saw lines of army trucks with gray canvas covers on the street. The trucks were escorted by armed SS men and stopped at factory gates, in front of private houses and were full of men, women and children. Her heart was heavy and she thought about Louise and her mother.
"You will stay here with us and you will be safe", Frau Muenter "We promised both your mother and your father that we would look after you and we will" Frau Muenter tried to smile.
The Muenters' small flat overlooked the courtyard of the big housing complex. It
had a coalstove, a small kitchen and parlor and two bedrooms. Frau Muneter took Louise to a small bedroom and told her it was her very own room. There was a small bed, a dresser and a chair and a table. The window in the bedroom overlooked the courtyard.
"Make yourself comfortable and try to rest", she told Louise and went into the kitchen to prepare supper.
As soon as Herr Muenter came home that evening, he went to talk to Louise. He told her he was glad that she had come to them. He had heard about the raids on Jewish homes that had become known as the final round-up of the Jews in Berlin. AT dinner that night the Muenters told her that she woul d be safe as long as no one knew she was there. Louise understood that she was now in hiding, she could not leave the flat or answer the door bell. When visitors came to the house, Louise had to stay in her room. Frau Muenter would bring her books and puzzles to keep her amused. Louise asked her for school books too, so she could keep up with her studies.
Frau Muenter left for work early in the morning. She and Louise ate breakfast together and then Louise went to her room and spent the day doing school work and reading the books Frau Muenster brought her. She could not listen to the radio for fear the sound would attract attention. When visitors came, Louise stayed in the bedroom.
The days were long and the Muenters seemed to understand how difficult it was for the young girl to stay in her room day after day. They tried to cheer her up in the evenings and the three of them played cards and talked.
"We'll take it day by day. Before you know it, you will have a normal life again",
Frau Muenter told her.
The Muenters often had visitors and then Louise had to go to her room. Only a very few of their trusted friends klnew she was living with them. Herr Muenter brought her a jigsaw puzzle to work on when she had to stay in the room.
The kindness of Herr and Frau Muenter made Louise miss her parents all the more. Herr Muenter told her many stories about her brave father. Slowly Louise adjusted to the routine and the Muenters were confident that Louise was safe in their home until the night of the Gestapo raid.
After the raid, Frau Muenter discovered that it was her neighbor who had reported them to the Gestapo. The neighbor saw Frau Muenter bring Louise to the flat and when. she asked Frau Muenter about the young girl, Frau Muenter replied , "Oh, she is my niece, she comes to visit now and again". But the woman was already suspicious of the Muenters because they had so many visitors. She watched the flat every day and noticed that the girl Frau Muenter said was her niece, never left the apartment, she reported them to the Gestapo.
The little flat was no longer a safe place for Louise, but Herr Muenter would not let her leave until he could find another safe place. He knew other anti-Nazis and social democrats who were hiding Jewish people. The very next evening, Herr Muenter brought home an address and told Louise to memorize it and throw away the paper. He gave her instructions.
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"You will be safe in this place", he assured her. "I have been told that there will be other young people there. But be very careful that no one sees you enter the building. If there is someone on the street, don't go inside." Herr Muenter gave her a wallet with some money. Frau Muenter gave her some clothing, a skirt, a sweater and two blouses and stuffed them in a paper bag along with some food. Louise was to leave early the next morning. No one slept that night.
After breakfast, Louise hugged Frau Muenter and left the flat. She had to walk along the canal for a mile and calmed herself by looking at the early morning shadows on the water. She could not remember a time when fear was not part of her life. She thought about her mother and her father and wondered if she'd ever see them again. Thinking about her mother, she tried to remember happy times.
She walked a long way and then turned away from the canal as she was told and headed up a small street, she found herself in a neighborhood she did not know, but she did not stop walking until she reached the address she had memorized. It was a deserted building with a broken door and it looked so empty she thought no one was inside. Louise rapped on the door four times, paused and then rapped four times again just as Herr Muenter had instructed.
The door opened and Louise went inside. As soon as the door closed, Louise saw
the boy who had opened the door. It was Gabriel, a boy she knew from the Jewish school. Tall and good looking, Gabriel was a year older than Louise. He often played the violin at the school and wanted to be a musician.
"I'm glad to see you", Gabriel told her.
"Did you know I was coming?" she asked.
"I didn't know it would be you, but I was told to watch for a young girl", he replied.
Gabriel told her that she was now part of a group of young people in hiding and that they looked after one another. The groups that were in hiding were called "U boats".
"You'll be meeting other members of the group. You are not alone. We are going to survive all this cruelty and chaos". He spoke calmly and with confidence as he explained the important rules.
"We never do anything to draw attention to ourselves like walk around in groups or wear funny clothing. And when you see someone you know, walk away as quickly as you can".
Gabriel hid most of the day. As a young man out of uniform, he knew he would arouse suspicion if he walked around the streets and if he wore his Jewish star, he was in even greater danger. Nevertheless, he managed to look after the others.
Looking out for one another often meant bringing parcels of food to hiding places. Knowing there were spies on the street looking for Jewish people in hiding. Whenever a young Jewish person was found to be homeless, Gabriel or some of the others made arrangements for them. People in hiding lived in deserted buildings and cellars, some slept behind counters in grocery or fruit stores. There were also people that Gabriel knew who were willing to smuggle Jewish people out of Berlin.
During the day the members of the group had various hiding places. Some were able to obtain false identity papers and get jobs, but others spent their days in hiding. At night they met together in cafes or cellars. Berlin was famous for its many cafes called kneipen. In working class neighborhoods, there were kneipens on almost every street. Some members took chances and went to theatres or movie houses, but most of young people took hiding very seriously.
That night Louise went with Gabriel to a meeting in a back room of a café, where she met a few of the other young people. One of the girls worked illegally in a laundry run by her Christian aunt. Whenever someone in uniform came to the laundry, she had to run away. A boy who was the same age as Louise had false identification papers and was able to work in a factory and shop in food stores. He often bought food for the others who were not as fortunate. Another girl slept under a bed in a Christian friend's house, but could not stay there during the day and spent the days traveling on streetcars or in the train station, pretending to wait for a train. When she saw a soldier or a Gestapo officer she hid in the public toilet.
Leon worked in an armaments factory in North Berlin and was on his way to work, when a co-worker, a young Frenchman met him in the train station and warned him not to go to work. He had heard a rumor that the Gestapo was looking for Jewish workers. Leon went back to his flat and the next day the Frenchman came and told him to find another place. Leon left his flat and made contact with another Jewish boy on the street who brought him to Gabriel.
Ilse was the daughter of a Christian mother and Jewish father, her blonde hair and blue eyes made her look "Aryan", but her mother died when she was a small girl and she was raised by her Jewish grandparents. When her grandparents and her father were arrested, Ilse managed to escape and to her aunt, her mother's sister, who was able to get her identity card from a priest. Ilse became an active member of the group and like Gabriel, she found suitable hiding places for newer members.
With her identity card, Ilse was able to get work as a waitress in small restaurants, but she never spent more than a few months in any one place, for fear of being discovered.
"I just don't want people to know me too well", she explained. "You never know who's going to give you away".
That night at the meeting in the small café, they At the café meeting, they talked about many things, Jewish holidays, looking for other Jewish young people, and safe hiding places. Louise looked around at the bright young faces and felt good to be counted one of them. After the meeting, Louise went with Ilse to her tiny room in an old rooming house. The owner was an elderly woman who was only interested in getting rent for her rooms and did not ask for identity cards.
The Allies began bombing Berlin in heavy nightly raids in 1943. The bombing raised many new dangers; those without identity cards could not seek shelter in the underground air raid shelters. At the same time, the bombing made it easier to find hiding places. There were also many more homeless people, seeking shelter after their homes had been destroyed. Mothers with crying children, elderly people carrying luggage, and other people filled the streets after the air raids.
Louise, Ilse and the others hid in cellars during the raids. Fire and smoke were everywhere. Ilse managed to find an identity card for Louise with the name "Alice Wissen" printed on it. With the card, Louise was now able to get to a shelter during a raid. She was also in a better position to help Gabriel and Ilse rescue other Jewish young people.
Gabriel learned about a 14 year old boy hiding in a cellar and sent Louise to meet him. The boy's name was Samuel. Louise found him in the cellar of a bombed out building and gave him a parcel of food and some clothing. She looked at the skinny boy and wondered how he managed to stay alive. Samuel had been living by raiding garbage cans or buying stale bread with the few coins he had.
One night when Louise was in a bomb shelter, a girl she knew from school called her name. Louise tried to ignore her, but when the girl persisted, Louise said, "You must have the wrong person. My name is Alice, not Louise."
The girl looked at her and shrugged. "Louise was Jewish so I guess she's not around any more", she said.
The group continued to meet regularly. They even had study sessions to learn more about the Jewish holidays. Together they shaped a strong sense of identity. Belonging to a group gave them courage and determination. One of their favorite topics of conversation was what they would do when the war was over.
There were many rumors of the Nazis losing the war and they heard about the Russian army attacking the Nazi troops inside Germany. Hope rose like a flame as they thought about having a future.
In the spring of 1945 the Allied armies captured Berlin. White sheets were hung from windows and on the lamp posts that were still standing. Every member of the group had survived the war.
The Fall of Berlin, Anthony Read and David Fisher, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992
Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Marion A. Kaplan, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998
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