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HOPE IS the LAST to DAI This Page Intentionally Left Blank HOPE IS the LAST to DAI HOPE IS THE LAST TO DAI This page intentionally left blank HOPE IS THE LAST TO DAI A COMING OF AGE UNDER NAZI TERROR A CLASSIC OF HOLOCAUST LITERATURE EXPANDED WITH A NEW POSTSCRIPT HALINA BIRENBAUM Translated from the Polish by David Welsh ROUTLEDGE Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1971 by M.E. Sharpe Published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1971 by Halina Birenbaum, 1996 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. First published in Polish under the title Nadzieja umiera ostatnia byCzytelnik, Warsaw, 1967. First English edition, Hope Is the Last to Die: A Personal Documentation ofNazi Terror, published by Twayne Publishers, New York, 1971. Hebrew edition, Life as Hope, published by Hakibutz Hameuhad, Tel Aviv, 1983. German editions, Die Hoffnung Stirbt Zuletzt, published by Rainer Padligur Verlag, Hagen, 1989, and Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1995. Auschwitz editions published by Publishing House of the State Museum, Auschwitz, 1993 (German, Die Hoffnung Stirbt Zuletzt), 1994 (English, Hope Is the Last to Die), and 1996 (with Paro I Publishing, Polish, Nadzieja umiera ostatnia). Hope Dies Last, in Polish with English subtitles, an oral record of the events in this book, was produced by Film Production, Studio WIR, Warsaw, Poland. © 1992 by Studio WIR. Related films in which Mrs. Birenbaum has appeared are Contre / 'Oubli [Against forgetting], produced by France 2-Taxi Productions, Paris, France, 1995; La Mort en Face [Facing death], produced by Planette--Cable--France 2-Taxi Productions, Paris, France, 1995; and Because of That War, produced by Israeli Film Service, Jerusalem, Israel, 1988. The publisher would like to thank Barbara Herburt for bringing this memoir to our attention. Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Birenbaum, Halina, 1929- [Nadzieja umiera ostatnia. English] Hope is the last to die : a coming of age under Nazi terror I Halina Birenbaum.-A new, expanded ed. p.cm. ISBN 1-56324-746-1 (hardcover: alk. paper).­ ISBN 1-56324-747-X (paperback: alk. paper) I. Jews--Poland--Warsaw-Persecutions. 2. Holocaust, Jewish {1939-1945)-Poland--Personal narratives. 3. Birenbaum, Halina, 1929- . 4. Warsaw (Poland)-Ethnic relations. 5. Holocaust survivors--Israel--Travel--Poland. I. Title. DS 135.P62W256313 1996 940.54'7243-dc20 95-49342 CIP ISBN 13: 9781563247477 (pbk) ISBN 13: 9781563247460 (hbk) Introduction I received a copy of Hope Is the Last to Die in June 1995 with the question: would I be willing to publish a new English-language edition? After a brief correspondence with Halina Birenbaum the matter was arranged. In September I met the author in New York. We spent several hours discussing changes that she wanted to make to bring an otherwise excellent translation closer to the meaning that she intended to convey in the original Polish. Dur­ ing that time, I had an opportunity to form an impression. She is as she writes: direct and open; and her conversation makes the same impression as her writing: that of a woman who saw so much death that she marvels at life. We know about the Holocaust because we have read about it and we don't know about it because we weren't there. Here is a book that takes us as close as we will ever get. It bums with an urgency and an immediacy that forces us to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the Holocaust as the author did from the time that she was ten in occupied Warsaw until she was fifteen in the concentration camp at Neustadt-Glewe from which she was liber­ ated. We feel endless terror-the terror of occupation; the terror of rifle shots, falling bombs, and smoking rubble; the terror of being hunted like an animal to be exterminated. And the terror of the "selections" in the concentration camps: the "strong" go to v VI Halina Birenbaum the right and live; the "weak" go to the left and die. Through the eyes of a young girl we see everything shattered-her family, Warsaw, Poland, humanity, even the idea of a merciful God who presides over the universe. Everything shattered except her will to live and hope despite the unfathomable evil that surrounded her. More than half a century has passed since the end of the Holo­ caust. Most people alive today were either children or were yet unborn. What do these seemingly remote events mean now? What will they mean in the future? I entered into a correspon­ dence with Halina Birenbaum and asked her questions. "What can you say to new readers?" She replied: I show through my book that people today can understand and iden­ tify with our suffering and struggle for life in the Holocaust. We were ordinary human beings with normal human feelings. After the Holocaust people used to say that the truth about this tragedy was impossible to describe, it could not be understood by those who were not there. I am happy that I have been able to refute this false theory and to prove the opposite. Everything that a human being experi­ ences can be described--life, death, love, hate, longing, fear. For many years people were afraid to hear what happened and didn't want to know the whole naked truth. They lost the chance to learn how strong hope is, the real value of life and human feeling-their power even in the worst circumstances, in hell. I wrote back with these questions: "What do you tell people when they ask why we should remember the Holocaust? And how, in what way, should we remember it?" We learn about historical events and pass the knowledge from gener­ ation to generation over the centuries. What happened during the Holocaust is something that mankind never experienced before, could not even imagine. Daily murder, the worst evil that human beings ever faced, became normal, legal. It was no longer important who was a doctor, who was a professor, who had an even higher rank-the prominence that we today admire so much and strive for ourselves--all this was ridiculous, banal. All we wanted was a little air to breathe, a little place to put our bodies-something to put in HorE Is THE LAST TO Drn vii our mouths besides the smoke of the crematorium burning thousands of people who only moments before got out of boxcars hugging their children. We have to remember the Holocaust because of the people who didn't survive. They wanted to stay alive to tell the world all that I have told, their last dream was to be remembered. We all, the whole of humanity, owe them that. When I speak about those who did not survive, describe them, I am trying to give them another hour of life so they can live on in the minds and hearts of those who hear me. The murderers, the Nazis, didn't want anybody to know what they did to us. Ifwe do not remember today-forever-we do what they wanted! Remembering is not for the purpose of hate, not for vengeance, but to learn what hate brings. Remember so as to preserve your humanity, to be proud of your human feelings. Remember so as to learn what we must not be. This was my last question: "Which members of your family, besides yourself and your brother Marek, survived?" As to my family before the Nazis came, we had both grandparents from my mother's and father's sides and my mother had two grand­ mothers from her father's and mother's sides. We had many uncles, aunts, cousins, and my brother Hilek. Aside from Marek and me [Marek, or Mark, now lives near Cleveland], only one cousin sur­ vived, Rachelka, whom I met in Majdanek. I would like to repeat a proverb that appeared on the dust jacket of the first English-language edition. It is said in the Jew­ ish tradition that it would be enough if a book merely recorded the events witnessed. When the record is enhanced by vivid words, the document becomes all the more precious. Perhaps the unknown writer of the proverb would not object if we added a third category. When an author records events, records them in vivid words, and speaks for six million who cannot speak for themselves, her document is transformed. It is no longer simply a document but a testament. How long will it be before we are ready for it? M. E. Sharpe February 1996 This page intentionally left blank Preface I was aged ten in 1939. I lived through the war and occupation in the Warsaw ghetto, and in the concentration camps at Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Neustadt-Glewe. In the ghetto and later in Auschwitz I often noted down my impressions and obser­ vations of those terrible times. In Auschwitz I used to write on scraps of empty cement sacks. But I was not able to keep these notes until liberation came. In any case, I did not make notes with the idea of using them later; they simply helped me in some way to survive. Hope Is the Last to Die consists of recollections from 1939 to 1945; it is my first extensive work.
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