Allegiance to Invasion: The Plight of Hungarian Jewry during

Interviewer: Beverley Howard Interviewee: Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits Instructor: Alex Haight February 11, 2014

Table Of Contents

Interviewee release form…………………………………………………..2

Interviewer release form…………………………………………………...3

Statement of purpose……………………………………………………....4

Biography……………………………………………………………….....5

Historical Contextualization:

Living Through the Holocaust……………………………………………..8

Interview Transcription……………………………………………………29

Audio Time Index Log Sheet………………………………………………71

Interview Analysis…………………………………………………………72

Appendix…………………………………………………………………...79

Works Consulted…………………………………………………………...84

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this project is to acquire a better understanding of the challenges

Hungarian Jew’s faced during World War II through an oral history of Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits.

A young man for most of the War, Rabbi Berkowits was subjected to life in several Nazi

Concentration camps. He recalls Germany invading the Hungarian capital of and from that moment on he was not longer human, but a number. This interview offers the Rabbi’s unique experience during the Holocaust and it shows, unlike a textbook would, the emotional and physical toll the Nazi regime cost him and other people.

Biography

Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits was born on February 29th of 1928. He grew up in the small country town of Derecske, . He lived with parents, two older sisters, a younger brother, and a younger sister. In the small community of Derecske there were about 11,000 people, but only 1,800 of them were Jewish. Growing up, his orthodox religion was very important to him, his family and the community. The temple was the center of life for all the in his hometown. While he was in the concentration camps Rabbi Berkowits said, “Reading the prayer book was an act of passive resistance, an assertion of self” (Berkowits 46). The Nazis tried to take away his faith, but that same faith is what kept him alive. In 1943, at age 15 Rabbi

Berkowits, his father and two older sisters relocated to Budapest, Hungary in search of jobs; however, he left behind his mother, younger brother and sister. His father and him worked at the

Central Jewish Cemetery of Budapest and his job was raising and tending to the flowers. While the men were working at the Cemetery his older sisters worked as nannies. Rabbis Berkowits loved working with the flowers in the cemetery and the physical labor prepared him for the harsh conditions he would withstand in the concentration camps. On Sunday July 8th of 1944 he and his entire family were arrested and sent to the central Jewish ghetto in Budapest. Rabbi

Berkowits managed to escape the ghetto, but he was worried that his father would wonder where he had gone so he proceeded to sneak back in. The next day they were shipped to Auschwitz-

Birkenau in the boxcars. When he arrived he was assigned to Block 11 of Camp E. While in

Auschwitz -Birkenau Rabbi Berkowits found his two schoolboy friends Arthur and Jack. Those two boys would be his constant companions throughout the war. On November 11th 1944, 119 days into his stay at Auschwitz- Birkenau, Berkowits, Arthur, and Jack were shipped to

Braunschweig, a labor camp. In Braunschweig factory he labored to repair vehicles, but the

Allies were dropping bombs so, the camp was evacuated in March. From there Rabbis Berkowits was sent to Watenstedt, and then Ravensbruck. From Ravensbruck he was deported for the last time, to a camp called Wobbelin. Jack, Arthur, and Rabbi Berkowits were only in Wobbelin for ten days before the American 82nd Airborne unit liberated the camp on May 2nd of 1945.

After their liberation the boys were sent to Sweden to recuperate. In January of 1948 they all came to the United States. In 1954 Rabbi Berkowits was drafted into the Army and was stationed in Hawaii. He was in the 25th Infantry Division and eventually was promoted to a

Specialist, 3rd Class. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor until 1956, and during his service he became a Chaplains assistant. Through work with the Chaplain he realized he wanted become a

Rabbi. Rabbi Berkowits wanted to go to Hebrew Union College, but he first go a B.A in

Sociology from the University of Cincinnati. In 1961, while at Cincinnati he met his future wife

Judy. He graduated from Hebrew Union College with a Masters and then in June of 1963, he received his rabbinical ordination. Shortly after his ordination, on July 1st of 1963 he got a job with Temple Rodef Shalom, a small budding temple in Falls Church, VA. Rabbi Berkowits worked for the temple for 45 years until his retirement in 1998. Under his guidance the temples congregation grew from just 30 members who held services in congregant’s basements, to the largest temple in the D.C Metropolitan area with over 5,000 members. The Governor of Virginia granted him membership to the Virginia Human Rights Commission as recognition of his great works, and the Fairfax City Council also honored him. Today, Rabbi Berkowits is happily retired and surrounded by his wife, two daughters and five grandchildren.

Living Through the Holocaust

The Sonderkommando were a group of concentration camp prisoners whose job it was to deliver, burn, and scavenge the bodies of dead Jews. Filip Muller worked in the Auschwitz

Sonderkommando and when he could not bear to escort any more Jews to their deaths; he decided to be gassed with them, but an SS officer noticed him and said, “You bloody shit, get it into your stupid head: we decide how long you stay alive and when you die, and not you. Now piss off to the ovens!” (Bauer 226). When the Jews were brought to the largest under German control, Auschwitz, they were greeted by a sign saying, “Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work Makes One Free” (Auschwitz); however, nothing would free the 1 million Jews that perished there. A new term was needed to describe the systematic and purposeful murders of the

Jews during the Second World War. Polish scholar and attorney Prof. Raphael Lemkin formulated the term “Genocide” after WWII because before then there was no word to describe the systematic murder of an entire race. The study of the Holocaust helps us to understand the level of influence society has on the minds of people and to the violent acts peer pressure can generate. The agenda of shifted the precarious social position of the Jews dramatically, and caused the citizens of Germany to view them as an enemy of the state. To understand the Holocaust one must first examine the history of the mistreatment of Jews,

Germany post WWI with the formation of the Nazi party and the Holocaust in the country of

Hungary; as well as hear a first hand perspective of a survivor.

The Jewish culture has been openly persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years. In the

Middle Ages, highly respected leaders within the Church preached that the Jews were heretics.

This anti-Semitic belief within the Church came from the common misconception that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. The highly respected St. John Chrysostom, a priest in the

Middle Ages, relayed this anti-Semitic message to his congregation, “ The Jews sacrifice their children to Satan. They are worse than wild beasts and the synagogue is a brothel, a den of scoundrels, the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults, a criminal assembly of Jews, a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ” (Bauer 8). In more modern times, anti- Semitic works flourished and further biased the minds of people against the Jews. “The Protocols of the

Elders of Zion” is a famous forgery that was published in 1903 and 1905 and it is alleged to be the record of a meeting between the real rulers of the West and the Jewish elders at the first

Zionist Congress at Basle in 1897 (Bauer 45). According to The Protocols, “The elders met at the

Zionist Congress to plot the subversion of all civilization and the imposition of Jewish rule”

(Bauer 45). Truthfully, agents of the Russian police devised the Protocols in Paris between 1897 and 1899. The Protocols were meant to ruin the reputation of the Zionist movement by painting the Jewish community as a lustful nation seeking world domination. Anti- Semitic campaigns like the Protocols helped shift the public’s perceptions of Jewish people from hardworking individuals to a dangerous subgroup of humanity that was consumed by greed, and world domination. The connotation ultimately attributed to the persecution and mass murder of the

Jews hundreds of years later in World War Two.

World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1919 with the ratification of the Treaty of

Versailles. The treaty left the military of Germany weak, its economy devastated, and its citizens mortified. The treaty broke up the territories of Tsarist Russia, Austria- Hungary, and Germany by establishing the land into the new states of Poland, , and (Bauer).

The economic structures of the larger states of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany were thrown into severe crisis due to the tariffs imposed on them by the new smaller states. The Weimar Republic, established in Germany after World War I, was highly scrutinized. The humiliation felt by the citizens of Germany over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles only cultivated the weakness of the Weimar regime, while strengthening existing conflicts between the distinctive social groups in Germany. The Washington Post on July 31, 1934 commented on the result of the Treaty of Versailles, “ It was that abortive treaty that paved the way for Hitler and his Nazis and enabled them to delude the minds of a suffering people” (“Hitler’s Rise

Credited To Versailles” 9). The Washington Post is connecting the great dis-satisfaction with the

Weimar Republic to Germany eventually pursuing the leadership of Adolf Hitler. It was the vulnerability the Treaty inflicted in the German people that caused them to loose faith in the

Weimar Republic and seek out a stronger leader who could bring Germany back to its former glory. Adolf Hitler appeared to the German people as such a leader.

The image of the Jews in European society post World War I was one of forced isolation and homelessness, because they faced many stigmas that prevented them from integrating into society. The countries of Hungary, Russia, and Germany denounced the Jewish people as members of the community. Adolf Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf, “One thing had become clear to me: the party with whose little representatives I had to fight the hardest struggle during my many months were almost entirely in the hands of a foreign race; it brought me internal happiness to realize definitely that the Jew was no German” (Hitler 80). After WWI the Jews living in Eastern Europe grew to be far worse off than those living in Central or Western Europe.

In the West the industrial, developed states had the stability to accommodate the large Jewish middle class, but in the East there were no industries that could engross the Jewish middle class or to support a market that could generate employment for the Jewish traders. When the Great

Depression hit the global economy the peasants panicked and turned against the Jewish traders. Encouraged by the nationalist slogans, the middle class reverted back to viewing the Jews as foreign competitors that should be suppressed by the government. The countries of Poland and

Romania fulfilled the wishes of the citizens, and imposed new restrictions of the Jews. The Jews were around ten percent of the population of Poland, but they paid forty percent of the taxes and by 1931, almost fifty percent of Polish Jews were barely earning ten dollars a weeks (Bauer).

The growing normality of persecuting Jews and using them as scapegoats dangerously forebode a growing issue that eventually led to the rise of Hitler and the destruction of the Jews.

The Great Depression further destroyed the image of the Weimar Republic in Germany.

The Depression placed copious amounts of pressure on the welfare system in Germany, and the increasing number of people out of work triggered the Reichstag to become paralyzed over the complicated issues of taxation and benefits. In Hitler and the Nazis David F. Crew remarks about the shocking condition of the German economy, “By 1932, almost 30 percent of the entire population was officially out of work” (Crew 19). The gridlocked government was ineffective at addressing the extremely widespread economic suffering of its citizens. The lack of productivity caused larger segments of the population to become increasingly aggressive with their negative feelings concerning capitalism and democracy (Kassof). The Weimar Republics failure to pass a budget in 1930 forced President Hindenburg to declare Germany in a state of emergency and enact the 48th article of the Weimar Constitution. Article 48 was in place for three years and it provided President Hindenburg, the Chancellor, and his cabinet emergency powers to govern without the consent of the of the Reichstag or the lower house of the German parliament, in certain circumstances.

Germany was not the only country hindered by the Great Depression. Hungary’s largest export, grain, usually generated a large portion of the national income. When the stock market crashed the earnings from grain exports declined, prices and volumes dropped, tax revenues fell, and foreign credit sources dried up (Burant 41). Hungary a Country Study highlights the destructive situation the Great Depression inflicted on Hungary, “Government workers list their jobs or suffered severe pay cuts. By 1933 about 18 percent of Budapest’s citizens lived in poverty. Unemployment leaped from 5 percent in 1928 to almost 39 percent by 1933” (Burant

41). Peasants reverted to subsistence farming and the government had to assume large quantities of loans to prevent their economy from slipping any farther down.

Adolf Hitler, over several years rose from a soldier in WWI to the supreme Nazi leader of

Germany. However, Hitler was not always so popular. In early November 1923 the hyperinflation was spiraling out of control and to force Western Germany to pay its compensations for WWI France and Belgian populations were still occupying Germany. Hitler believed that the time was right to attempt to overthrow the new Democratic government by force. The coup was directed against the Munich government in early 1923 and the authorities easily squashed it. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison on the charge of treason, but he only served 8 months and was released (Crew 40). During his time in jail, Hitler wrote Mein

Kampf and in the book it is evident that he harbors deeply rooted hatred against the Jewish race,

“One did not know what to admire more: their glibness of tongue or their skill in lying. I gradually began to hate them” (Hitler 80). Once released from prison Hitler was convinced that the only way the Nazis could overpower the Weimar Republic was through legal, electoral means. However, when Hitler emerged from jail in 1924, only around 3 percent of German voters took the Nazis seriously (Crew 41). The Great Depression gave Hitler and the Nazi party a golden opportunity to gain favor in the public eye. The Economic gloom translated into votes for two political extreme parties, the Communist party or the Nazi party. The Nazi party, officially the National Socialist German Workers Party, was founded in 1919 in opposition of the Weimar

Republic. Hitler, leader of the fringe group, catered the Nazi party appearance to be appealing to the middle class in Germany. The middle class was incredibly anxious over the economic condition of Germany and the Nazi platform gave them comfort and decreased their fears of a new round of hyperinflation or of a Socialist Revolution (Kassof). The small Nazi party thrived and in 1930 they had grown to be the single largest party in the German parliament with 230 seats and 37.4 percent of the vote (Crew 41). This incredible rise in popularity was due to the

Great Depression, the weakness of the Weimar Democracy, and the Nazis ability to exploit the insecurities of German voters who are not satisfied with the existing political system.

Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January of 1933 due to the overwhelming majority the Nazi party held in the Reichstag. One year before Hitler was appointed chancellor, in an interview he stated, “ Jews have been the proponents of subversive anti-German movements and as such must be dealt with” (Hitler 286). The intense and reserved man was deeply connected to his beliefs that the Jews were the source of all Germanys problems. Once in power Hitler quickly accumulated as much power as possible. The Reichstag passed the

Enabling Act in 1933, by a vote of 441 to 94. The Act gave Hitler’s cabinet the power to institute new laws with the Reichstag’s approval. This essentially gave Hitler the legal authority to become dictator of Germany (Kassof). After the January elections Hitler passed several laws that broke down other laws that had the potential to limit the power of the Nazi state. Under the directive of Hitler, the Nazi party took control of the police force and slowly made all other parties liquidate their establishments between March and July of 1933. Hitler wanted to eliminate the other parties because it removed political competition. The lack of competition made it possible for the Nazi party to gain 91 percent of the popular vote (Kassof). Through destroying all other forms of community, outside the control of the state, Hitler was also able to control the flow of information and control public opinions. was so immersed in Nazi ideology after the war that he testified, “ To be frank with you, had we killed all of them, the

10.3 million, I would be happy and say, Alright, we managed to destroy an enemy” (Bauer 207).

On April 1st a boycott was called against Jewish businesses and later that year in May, pro-Nazi student groups organize large-scale burnings of Jewish books. To prevent foreign interference, the Concordat, an agreement between the 3rd Reich and the Catholic Church, was signed in 1933.

The Concordat allowed the Catholic Church to keep practicing their religion freely and also to manage its own affairs. Hitler used this agreement to gain favor within German society and it helped him to transition into a seat of power easily. With the implementation of the Nuremberg

Laws on September 15th of 1935, the Jews are stripped of their citizenship (Kassof). The Laws also defined what being a “Jew” truly entailed and made it illegal for Jews and Aryans to have sexual relationships. In Mein Kampf Hitler states, “ Systematically these black parasites of the nation ravish our innocent young, blond girls and thus destroy something that can be replaced in this world” (Hitler 827). The Olympic games of 1936 took place in Berlin, but the precarious situation of the Jews within society caused much controversy over whether Jewish athletes would be allowed to participate. The New York Times in 1933 reported on the situation saying, “Many if not most of the German athletic associations have either excluded Jews or have bared them from any position on their boards, thereby depriving them of he necessary training facilities” (“Olympic Progress is Made” s2). This shows that the Nazi propaganda has begun to effectively isolate the Jewish people within German society. The isolation of the Jewish people continues and finally, on September 1st, 1939, invades Poland and the Second

World War begins. The overarching goal of the Nazi party was to purge Europe and then the world of the

Jewish people. Hitler believed that the Aryans were the chosen people of God and the most intelligent race on the planet. In Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf Hitler states, “ If one were to divide mankind into three groups: culture-founders, culture- beaters, and culture-destroyers, then, as representative of the first kind, only the Aryan would come in question” (Hitler 398). The Nazi regime’s fear that the Jews were poisoning the purist culture on earth is one of the reasons they passed laws to separate the two groups of people. Laws passed by the Nazi government placed restrictions on marriages of Jews, businesses of Jews, education of Jews, healthcare of Jews, and even forced them to wear the star of David on their clothing so they could be easily identified.

After the economic down turn following World War I and the increased pressure on Jewish businesses a relatively small percentage of Jews could earn a minimalist living (Braham 29).

Once in a position of power, Hitler swiftly put his “” in movement. Officially the first concentration camp, Dachau, opened on March 22 of 1933 and from then on deportations of

Jews, Gypsies, and many other minority groups from all over Germany and Europe occurred.

The on January 20th of 1942 was a meeting of senior Nazi Party members such as, Heydrich, chief Heinrish Muller, and Adolf Eichmann. The meeting was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of a multitude of government departments in the organization of the Final Solution. The Final Solution was Nazi’s plan of how to kill all the Jews in Europe during WWII. Prior to the meeting, it grew clear that the murder of European Jews was impossible to accomplish in the same manner used in the East. In the Western territories the

Nazis did not want to risk murdering the Jews where people could see the camps because it could bring opposition. Also, German industrialists such as, IG Farben wanted a surplus of affordable workers available in areas that were protected by the military (Bauer 201). Therefore, the Nazi committee decided that the best locations for the concentration camps would be in the East. At the conference Heydrich reported on the steps taken to fix the “Jewish question” he stated, “In lieu of emigration, the evacuation of the Jews to the east has emerged, after an appropriate prior authorization by the Fuhrer, as a further solution possibility” (Bauer 205). The position of the

Mischlinge or mixed raced people, was the subject of much debate; due to, the standards set by the Nuremburg law of 1935 which classified mixed race people as still being Jewish. The eventual decision over the Mischlinge was, “ (those) who were neither married to Jews, nor members of the Jewish community, nor behaved like Jews, be given the option of deportation to death camps of voluntary sterilization” (Bauer 206). Under the Law for the Prevention of

Hereditary Diseased Progeny passed July 14th, 1933 it was legal to perform unauthorized sterilizations on individuals the Nazis believed would taint the Aryan race. The New York Times on August 6th 1933 comments on the sterilization law saying, “It deals frankly and minutely with all the intricate issues involved, and its legal structure especially where is transcends the rights of the individual” (Enderis E3). The importance of the conference at Wannsee comes is that at that time the entire German establishment solidified their involved in murder of the

Jewish nation.

Germany and Hungary were allies during World War II. When regent Horthy appointed

Gyula Gombos prime minister of Hungary the acceptance of a radical right wing government began to escalate. Gombos was an advocate for a one- party system, revisions to the Treaty of

Trianon, withdrawal from League of Nations, anti-intellectualism, and social reform (Burant 42).

Under the leadership of Gombos, Hungary grew closer to Germany and the Hungarian government profited sizably. When Gombos signed a trade agreement with Germany, it drew the

Hungarian economy out of the Depression, but it also made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets. In Hungary a Country Study it emphasizes the codependence between Germany and Hungary, “ In 1928 Germany had accounted for 19.5 percent of Hungary’s imports and 11.7 percent of its exports; by 1939 the figures were 52.5 percent and 52.2 percent” (Burant 42). Hungary also blatantly used their relationship with

Germany to chip away the rules established by the . With aid from Germany,

Hungary doubled in size from 1938 to 1941. By the First Vienna Award, Hungary had acquired the Upper Province of Czechoslovakia and the Carpatho-Ruthenia (Braham 24). The Second

Vienna Award of 1940 gave Hungary the territories of from and following the defeat of Yugoslavia in 1941; it seized the Southern Region of Delvidek (Braham

24).

Hitler’s assistance to Hungary did not come without a price. In 1938 the Nazi government used the promises of additional territories, economic pressure, and threat of military invasion to manipulate the Hungarian government into supporting Hitler’s policies and adopting similar policies towards Jews. This push from Germany towards anti-Semitism inflated the large population of Hungarian anti-Semites. Hungary already had a history of anti-Semitic legislation.

In 1920 the Numerus Clausus Act was adopted against the wishes of the League of Nations

Minorities Protection Treaty. The Act limited the number of Jews allowed to enroll in institutions of higher learning to around 6 percent of total enrolled students (Braham 22).

Gombos’s successor, Kalman Daranyi, attempted to appease the Hungarian anti-Semites and the

Nazi’s by introducing the first Anti-Jewish Law into legislation on May 29th 1938, “ It set a 20 percent ceiling on the proportion of Jews in the professions and in financial, commercial, and industrial enterprises employing more than ten persons” (Braham 24). When Daranyi’s law failed, Horthy removed him from power and replaced him with Bela Imredy. Imredy was the author of the Second Anti-Jewish Law which “restricted to 6 percent the proportion of Jews allowable in such enterprises. It even provided a detailed and complicated religious and racial definition of who was a Jew” (Braham 24). Imredy composed the Law, but his replacement, Pal

Teleki, oversaw the implementation of the Law on May 4th, 1939. Before being removed from power The New York Times on May 15th 1938 captured Imredy’s statement on the budding alliance with Germany, “ His government would tolerate no compromise with a spirit of unrest.

He did not mention by name any Nazi groups, but it was inferred it was to these rapidly expanding organizations he referred” (“Hungary to Join Germany” M5). Finally, on November

20th, 1940 Hungary signed the Tripartite Pact. The Tripartite Pact allied Hungary with Germany,

Italy, and Japan (Burant 44). Following the alliance, the final Anti- Jewish Law was passed in

Hungary and went into effect on August 2, 1941. The Law made it illegal to marry or have any sexual contact between Jews and non-Jews.

Prime Minister Teleki committed suicide on April 3rd of 1941. Horthy named Lazlo

Bardossy, a radical right wing supporter, prime minister after Teleki’s untimely death.

Convinced that Germany would win the war, Bardossy sought to maintain Hungary’s independence by appeasing Hitler. In June of 1941, Hitler tricked regent Horthy into joining the

Nazi invasion against the Soviet Union. Consequently, Hungary entered the War against Western

Allies that following December (Burant45). The government of Hungary began deporting the first 40,000 Jews from the countryside in 1941; however, Horthy became unhappy with the governing style Bardossy exhibited and forced him to resign in March of 1942. In his place

Miklos Kallay was placed in power. Kallay, was a conservative veteran “Who aimed to free

Hungary from the Nazi grip” (Burant 45). Moreover, Kallay was faced with the possibility that if

Hungary wanted to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies, it could result in German occupation of Hungary. Trapped, Kallay attempted to maintain as much normalcy within

Hungary’s borders as possible, “Between 1942 and 1944 the conservative Kallay government, although passing a number of new anti-Jewish laws and making extremist anti-Semitic statements, still rejected German demands aimed at the deportation of Hungarian Jews”

(DEGOB). Nazi headquarters learned of a rumor that Kallay’s government was negotiating a cease-fire with the Allies and on March 19th of 1944 Hitler ordered German troops to occupy

Hungary (DEGOB). While under German control, Dome Stojay, a Nazi supporter, was promoted to the newly available position of prime minister, “ His government jailed political leaders, dissolved the labor unions, and resumed the deportation of Hungary’s Jews” (Burant 45). Andor

Jaross, Lazlo Baky and Lazlo Endre were all members of Stojays cabinet as well as being supporters of the Nazi movement. Under the new government, the deportation of Hungarian

Jews took place and between May 15 and July 9 of 1944 over 437,000 Jews were transported out of Hungary to Auschwitz- Birkenau. The Washington Post on April 11th of 1944 reported about the quickness with which Hungarian Jews were deported, “The application of anti-Jewish measures is swifter and more efficient, for the technique of the Rosenberg executioners had now been perfected as the result of experience” (Winkler 8). When the deportations stopped July 9th of 1944 the only Jews left in Hungary resided in the Capital city of Budapest. Many of the remaining Jews were forced to move into specially designated Jewish housing. Yellow stars identified the houses and around 1,981 buildings were supplied for the Jewish relocation

(Braham 156). Not all the Jews living in Budapest were lucky enough to move into designated housing. Jews living in the suburbs of Budapest were deported to the death camps with the rest of the Hungarian Jews from the countryside. Only those Jews living in Zone VI also know as,

Gendarmerie District I were spared deportation. It was the job of the Gendarmerie to round up the Jews and move them to the train station. Lazlo Berkowits recalls in his book A Boy Who Lost His Birthday that, “ Hungarian gendarmes appeared and ordered us to assemble. My father, my two sisters, myself, and about fifteen others were lines up at the gate and were marched off without explanation to a military compound” (Berkowits 31). The Hungarian Police force and the Gendarmerie were notoriously violent and callous. German leader Adolf Eichmann commented on their brutality, “In some cases my men were shocked by the inhumanity of the Hungarian police” (DEGOB). Hungarian

Jews were generally deported to the largest and most infamous camp in the Nazi regime,

Auschwitz. Trains were critical tools needed to carry out the Final Solution because without the train system it would have been impossible relocate the thousands of Jews in Europe. In order to reach the camps hundreds of Jewish prisoners were crammed into very small boxcars. Once inside the trains, the occupants were supplied no food, no water, and given no access to sanitation facilities. Consequently, many people died on the journey to the camps. It is estimated that between May 15 and July 9 more than 140 trains carried 437,000 Jews from Hungary to

Auschwitz (Braham65).

During the progression of the War, Hungary fell from Germany’s ally to being invaded and overrun by Germans. The Jewry of Hungary was relatively safe throughout the War, but after Germany invaded the Nazi regime quickly deported thousands of people, “Every tenth victim of the Holocaust and every third victim of Auschwitz- Birkenau, the larges Nazi extermination camp, were Hungarian” (DEGOB). The deportation of Hungarian Jews truly began in 1944. The Nazi regime was determined to exterminate the Hungarian Jews so; they turned all their efforts towards relocating Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. The camp complex

Auschwitz was composed of three sections. In 1940 Auschwitz opened near Oswiechium as a camp for Soviet POWS; however, over time the camp expanded through the use of forced labor.

Auschwitz II or Auschwitz- Birkenau was constructed on October 8th of 1941 and it contained the larges prison population of the three sub- camps. Auschwitz- Birkenau, a death camp, was equipped with five large crematoria buildings in 1943. Each crematoria building was equipped with a disrobing area, a large , and crematorium ovens (Auschwitz), “ To accommodate larger numbers, the victims were led, usually unsuspectingly, to the disinfection baths, where they undressed and entered what looked like showers. Elaborate deception was practiced, people were told to mark the place where they had left their clothes so that they could find them after the shower” (Bauer 215). The third section of the Auschwitz complex was

Auschwitz III also called Buna or Monowitz. Auschwitz III, a slave labor camp forced the inmates to work at I.G Farben Buna- Werke factories. The inmates working in the factories were tasked with producing synthetic rubber products. Rudolf F. Hoess was the commanding officer at

Auschwitz from 1940 until his removal in 1943.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz- Birkenau the new prisoners were immediately forced to line up in rows of five, by gender. The prisoners lined up so that the SS physician could conduct selections. The atmosphere in Auschwitz was very unpleasant and, “ Electrically charged barbed- wire fences surrounded both the concentration camp and the killing center. Guards equipped with machine guns and automatic rifles, stood in the many watchtowers” (Auschwitz). The leading doctor in Auschwitz was Dr. Eduard Wirths. The Doctors at Auschwitz cared less for the wellbeing of humanity and more fore their grotesque experiments. The Nazis immediately gassed elderly people, sick people, mentally or physically handicapped people, young mothers and children, “ On average, 80 percent of the transports were murdered in the gas chambers of one of the extermination facilities” (DEGOB). Those Jews selected to go to the gas chambers were killed using Zyklon B. Zyklon B was originally used as a pesticide in World War I as a fumigating agent for lice-infested buildings. Due to the overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor sanitation in Auschwitz the Nazis originally used it to kill fleas and other vermin. It was not until late 1941 that the Nazis discovered that the Zyklon B gas caused people to die of asphyxiation.

Soon after that discovery the chemical compound was no longer used for fumigation, but to kill the Jews (Bauer 215). After being gasses, the dead Jews in the chamber were removed by the

Sonderkommando prisoners. The Sonderkommando moved the bodies to a series of ovens or massive burning pits, but before the people were cremated the Sonderkommando had to extract gold teeth and remove rings from the bodies. In crematoria I and II, 2500 people could be killed in thirty minutes, but “ The highest total of people gasses and cremated within 24 hours was rather more than 9,000. This figure was attained in the summer of 1944, during the action in

Hungary” (Bauer 218). Hungarian Jewry was in immediate danger and the Nazis were driven to eradicate them from the earth.

At the start of the mass deportations of the Hungarian Jews, the Nazis attempted to register and tattoo each new inmate that arrived in the camps; however, the registration system collapsed under the overload of prisoners. Consequently, tens of thousands of Hungarians were not tattooed with identification numbers. Most of the employable Hungarians were immediately transferred to other camps because by the end of the war, the Hungarian Jews became an essential pool of labor reserves for the Nazi party. When the Hungarian Jews arrived in

Auschwitz if they were not selected for forced labor or the gas chambers they were taken to massive showers. They were shaven, given one pair of striped clothing and one pair of shoes before being escorted to their barracks. The barracks had no windows and no insolation. Also, the barracks had only a bucket for relieving ones self in during the and up to 500 inmates would be lodged in a single barrack at one time (Auschwitz). While living in Auschwitz, it was normal for inmates to suffer from bad nutrition, unsanitary water, over crowded and lice infested living arrangements, unclean washing areas, endless hours of backbreaking manual labor and sadistic punishments at the hands of the SS officers. In a speech given to army soldiers in

January 1937, , credited with creating the concentration camp system, explained the role of the concentration camps, “ The order begins with these people living in clean barracks. Such a thing can really only be accomplished by us Germans; hardly another nation would be as humane as we are…the people are taught to wash themselves daily, and to use a toothbrush with which most of them have been unfamiliar” (Crew 94). Himmler promotes used this speech to further the propaganda concerning life in the camps. Himmler portrays the camps as wonderful in order to generate support from German citizen for the Nazi regime. In reality, the daily life of Auschwitz began with inmates being woken up early in the morning to stand for role call. After role call they were permitted to eat one small slice of bread and one cup of cold coffee. Then the work squads formed and marched to their work locations. Generally, the workday consisted of 11 or 12 hours of hard labor (Auschwitz). Finally, they would march back to the camps and undergo another long role call regardless of the weather conditions. Finally, they were given a measly dinner of turnip, cabbage, or rotten vegetable soup. The Hungarian

Jews were forced to work for hours on end with nothing more to eat than flavored water and if the German guard thought they were slacking, “ Every SS man enjoyed the right to beat, or even kill, any prisoner” (Braham 37). The Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27th 1945, but unfortunately only a few thousand prisoners remained at the camp. Almost 60,000 prisoners were forced on a death march from the camp shortly before its liberation (Auschwitz). Throughout its operation Auschwitz claimed the lives of over one million Jewish people and every third victim was a Hungarian Jew.

Historian, Daniel Goldhagen and Christopher Browning both agree that the German people extensively participated in the in the mas murder of the Jews through the excessive quantity of voluntarism they exhibited. However, Goldhagen feels, “The perpetrators’ beliefs, their particular brand of anti-Semitism, though obviously not the sole source, was, I maintain, a most significant and indispensible source of the perpetrators’ actions and must be at the center of any explanations of them”(Goldhagen 14). The central argument present in Goldhagen’s book is that German people did not have any averseness concerning the mass genocide of the Jews.

Goldhagen goes even farther and suggests that the Germans supported Hitler’s actions because all Germans thought of Jews as vermin. In Hitler’s Willing Executioners Goldhagen states, “ The perpetrators killed and made their genocidal contributions under the auspice of many institutions other than the SS. Their chief common denominator was that they were all German pursuing

German national political goals- in this case, the genocidal killing of Jews” (Goldhagen 7).

Goldhagen’s logic stems from the massive number of scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, parents, churches and media centers dedicated to slandering the reputation of Jews. Browning disagrees with Goldhagen’s assumption that all Germans were driven by a fundamental passion for anti- Semitism. Browning does recognize that the German citizens played a large role in the

Holocaust, but “ I doubt that most would have killed willingly and enthusiastically, motivated by the lethal and demonological anti-Semitism uniformly attributed to such ordinary Germans by

Goldhagen” (Browning 91). Through looking at the testimonies of ,

Browning discovered evidence that not all the Germans willingly followed Hitler’s agenda.

Throughout Browning’s paper the central theme is that the responsibility of the Holocaust somewhat rests with the citizens of Germany, but the blame more so rests with the Nazi party leaders. Browning believes that throughout the war German citizens were taught to think as a group, not individuals; however, 10-20% of the reserve policemen negated or dodged active duty by became “non-shooters”. This small sign shows that some Germans were apposed to the horrible mistreatment of the Jews. In a letter sent to Browning, a survivor who worked in the

Nazi head quarters of Auschwitz until 1941, “I came across men that in my opinion could not hurt a fly. Walter Stark, Max Maetzig, Walter Kraus, Joseph Grund, Polizeimeister Sebranke, his deputy Orlet, and so on. Two of them were willing to make out false papers and send me as a

Pole to work in Germany, apparently knowing what was to come.” (Browning 90). Goldhagen’s and Browning’s thesis’s are somewhat similar, but where as Goldhagen views all Germans as guilty, Browning sees the Germans more as victims of circumstance that were forced or coerced to committee these awful travesties against the Jews.

Clara Dan, a Romanian Jew, survived life in Auschwitz- Birkenau and them immigrated to the United States after the War. She recalls that growing up in Romania, “ I had a very normal life, I had friends I had a social life, and I was of the Jewish religion, we didn’t feel any different” (Dan 18). Until that point the anti- Semitic laws had not been enforced upon the

Jewish population in the farther-reaching lands of Hungary and Romania. Clara Dan lived in

Transylvania and up until she was 16, legal jurisdiction over her hometown belonged to

Romania, but the jurisdiction switched to the Hungarian government because of the War. She remembers wearing the stars on her clothing, being forced to give up her bike, and fearing walking the streets at night. The Jewish people all throughout Europe were living in fear by this time and still the concentration camps were nothing more than rumors “ It never dawned on us that they would kill us or do the things they did. We could not believe what was waiting” (Dan 25). Clara Dan attributes the rise in anti-Semitism to the point in time when the Hungarians began to manage Transylvania. “ The Hungarians hated Jews they were big anti-Semites, all they looked for was where they could get a hold of Jewish homes, Jewish money, Jewish people,

Jewish business” (Dan 20). Interestingly, Hungary even though it was an ally of Germany, was previously viewed as being a place where Jews could reach their full potential and where they would not face the same amount of persecution. However, the reputation of the Hungarian police force and the Hungarian Gendarmerie was one of violence, thievery, and blatant use of excessive force. The Gendarmerie were military trained and had the responsibility of policing the entire country and territories, while the police were just responsible for the capital, Budapest

(DEGOB). It is evident throughout the interview the Clara Dan blames primarily the Hungarians for her suffering, “No, no it was not the Nazis, it was the Hungarian soldiers you see it was all connected the whole situation, all connected with Anti- Semitism. That’s why the whole thing happened, because of the Hungarian Jurisdiction” (Dan 21). The police removed Clara Dan from her home in April of 1944 and like so many others she was tragically deported to Auschwitz-

Birkenau. Clara Dan recalls that she was in logger C, also known as the inhalation logger. “

Inhalation logger meant when the wagons were to short coming from Europe and the crematorium didn’t have enough people to burn they came to out logger and picked the old people, the sick people and the people they did not like to fill the crematorium” (Dan 28). Fully aware that she could be selected to die, Clara Dan was forced to wait around and wonder if she would have to give her life to fill an empty space in the gas chambers. Eventually, Clara Dan was liberated from Bergan-Belson, the last camp out of four she was sent to.

In order to better understand the perspective of Lazlo Berkowits, a Hungarian boy who survived life in Auschwitz- Birkenau and other camps, one must grasp the vast importance of anti-Semitism throughout history, the structure of Germany post World War I paralleling the rise of Hitler, and the unfortunate events that caused the Hungarian Jews to be deported an killed in

Nazi concentration camps. The Holocaust took the lives of around 11 million people, around 6 million of whom were Jewish (Auschwitz). When recounting his story, Filip Muller, a Jewish prisoner who was forced to work with the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, reveals how a group of girls inside the gas chamber foiled his suicide attempt. The leader of the group said to him,

“We understand that you have chosen to die with us of your own free will, and we have

come to tell you that we think your decision pointless: for it helps no one. We must die,

but you still have a chance to save your life. You have to return to the camp, and tell

everybody about our last hours. You have to explain to them that they must free

themselves from any illusions” (Bauer 225).

The group of women then proceeded to push him out of the chambers. The nameless woman’s final request was for Muller to live because only then could the truth about the Nazi party be shared with the world. Memories live on in the testimonies of those who saw the events and survived, but it is what future people will with the information that is difficult. Howard Zinn argues that the message of the Holocaust has gotten lost over the years and the memory of the tragedy is misused to serve political purposes, the Zionist movement, and other un-related or significant aspirations. Zinn writes,“ All who have taken seriously the admonition, Never Again, must ask ourselves as we observe the horrors around us in the world, if we have used that phrase as a beginning or as an end to our moral concern” (Zinn). Around the world today horrible crimes are still being committed, but as a global society we do nothing, “In recent years, while paying more and more homage to the Holocaust as a central symbol of man’s cruelty to man, we have, by silence and inaction, collaborated in endless chain of cruelties. There have been massacre of Rwanda, and the starvation in Somalia, with our government watching and doing nothing” (Zinn). The women who saved Filip Muller wanted him to live on so their memories could change how future people treat each other and according to Howard Zinn we have failed to honor that, but the beauty of the future is there will be chances for redemption. That is why studying the Holocaust is imperative because it creates awareness that violence does not just come from gangs, thugs, rapists, murderess, and poverty, but that even the most highly respected political leaders, doctors, scientists, teachers and even parents have the capacity to participate in something as gruesome as the Holocaust. Those women who saved Filip Muller and Howard

Zinn share the common goal of raising awareness in the hope that people will speak up against corruption and fight to make a difference, so that the events of history will not re-emerge in the present.

Interview Transcription: Interviewee/Narrator: Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits Interviewer: Beverley Howard Location: Temple Rodef Shalom, Mclean Virginia Date: December 23rd , 2013 (Day of interview)

Beverley Howard: Good morning

Rabbi Berkowits: Good morning

BH: I would like to start out by asking you a little about your childhood in forgive me if I do not pronounce this right, Derecske Hungary?

RB: Yes, about my childhood?

BH: Mhmm

RB: Ok. I was born in 1928 in a small town of 11,000 people of whom about 1,800 were Jewish people. I had a family of five children. Three girls and two boys I was the middle child. Two older sisters and one younger sister and a little boy, a little brother. We were a very religious family as it was the custom in those days. Religion was taken very seriously both at home and in the community so I grew up very close to my faith and it was a very important party of my life.

BH: Your family was orthodox; you lived in an orthodox community right?

RB: Yes, yes it was an orthodox community and actually my life revolved around school regular and Hebrew school and the Synagogue the Synagogue was center.

BH: Mhmm. Well I know that in your book one line that really stood out to me was when you said and I quote, “ I never played with a non-Jewish child; I never had a conversation with a non-

Jewish child. Furthermore, I did not question it; our lives simply didn’t intersect”. Did you feel that it was at all different or out of the ordinary that Jews were not fully accepted or that there was that barrier?

RB: It was not a matter of acceptance. Of course we were not fully accepted, yes that’s correct.

We did not live in a Ghetto we lived in the entire village so to speak. A was a place bigger than the village it was more of a Township… and because… because, well lets say the positive first, there was tremendous activity between the non- Jewish people and the Jewish people because most of the stores were Jewish some of the crafts were Jewish, tailors, shoe makers, boot makers,

Dr. Burger was Jewish, and the farmers and us we were very closely intersected because they brought there crystalline to the market.

RB: (directed at my father who was adjusting the camera) Can you see from their well?

Andrew Howard: Yes, I can see quite well your fine. I am just adjusting one thing, but your fine.

RB: Ok, so every Monday and Friday there were markets and my mother and I would go the market to buy a chicken or vegetables or fruit. You did not buy these things in the store there was no refrigeration or so on, so there was constant activity between the people, absolutely.

BH: Would you say that one of your favorite, what was one of you favorite things you did growing up? Was it working in the flower market?

RB: Looking back I was very fond of the fact that I grew up in the lap of nature.

BH: Mhmm

RB: We walked to school, rain or shine. You know, there were no school busses!

(We laugh)

RB: No busses at all there was not need for it you know. It was the horse and buggy age. So I grew up quite sturdy like a country boy. Truly!

BH: Do you think that helped you later?

RB: Absolutely. It helped me tremendously later and the best part was that you knew the whole community and we formed life long friendships. I mean my friends to this very day; I mean unfortunately I lost them recently they died. From two and a half years old we were friends in school and even during the wars, as you read in the book. Jack, Arthur and I were together and we were liberated together, went to Sweden together, cam here (USA) together. We were closer than brothers we were chosen brothers and that’s better than... How many children are in your family?

BH: I have one brother, my mom, my dad, and Charlie who is our dog who kind of counts.

(We laugh)

RB: And a dog! So, you and your brother have to like each other? Do you like your brother? (He jokingly asks)

BH: We do we do!

RB: Good. My grandson and my granddaughter they fight like cats and dogs. I offered them yesterday a deal and it was a crazy deal. I said I will reward you, seriously, if within the next two years you make peace and learn to like each other. So my grandson said, “How much will you give me grandpa”.

(We all laugh)

RB: I mean it was this real conflict between them. I mean my granddaughter is older, she is six years older, and she has very strong opinions about things and she wants to act like a second mother and he just does not accept that.

RB: So, that’s a problem, but anyway, we had extended family my mothers cousins and their children and it was almost like living in a… Well…

BH: A little hotel?

RB: This is not a good comparison, I would say it is not a tribe, but that is a fantastic experience you know? So friendships were life ling friendships. Life long friendships were formed there and people knew each other very well and it was important. It was a good community.

BH: Mhmm

RB: That’s were I learned the significance of community.

BH: You build this community. You helped build it. (I am referring to the Temple Rodef

Shalom)

RB: I know, and as a matter of fact I wrote the book because there is no sign, I have been back to my birthplace several times, and there is no sign that we ever lived there. Even the buildings have been torn down. So I wrote this book as an act of love to commemorate them to give them reality and a kind of immortality and out of also anger. I was angry that they did not own up to what they have done to us.

BH: I understand that.

RB: They tore people out of their homes and shipped them out just like that. Imagine that the government issues an order that on such and such a morning, you know at five o’clock be ready to leave your home and take with you enough food for three days. They rented seventy horse drawn wagons to put people on and to ship them on an overnight trip to a major city. Where after a few days, they put them on freight trains to Auschwitz- Birkenau and then killed them they day they arrived. So they do not acknowledge that. They have something on… the synagogue was taken down except for a small part which is a clinic and they have a plaque on it which vaguely pays tribute to them, but it is a lie because it is a half-truth, they do not say what happened, “The tragedy that happened during the war” (as the plaque reads). A lot of tragedies happened during the war, but this was not a tragedy this was a crime.

BH: Yes

RB: You know? So I have survived and I have to tell the truth. I will tell the truth.

BH: That’s the best way. Now, speaking of not recognizing or remembering what happened correctly. Howard Zinn in his paper on the Holocaust believed that the memory of the Holocaust has been misused. I quote him when I say, “ All who have taken seriously the admonition, Never Again, must ask ourselves as we observe the horrors around us in the world, if we have used the phrase as a beginning or as an end to our moral concerns” Do you agree with him about his position?

RB: I am sorry I did not focus.

BH: Oh ok! Here I can read it again! Howard Zinn says…

RB: Who says that?

BH: Howard Zinn is a famous historian.

BH: He in his paper on the Holocaust,

RB: Yes

BH: talks about how the memory of the Holocaust is used to forward other things and how if we truly used the memory of the holocaust we would prevent these horrors from happening in the future and learn from them. Do you almost feel like the memory is misused or not taken in the way it should be?

RB: I often speak to both adults and school children, your age, seventh grade and older, but mostly for adults. Now, four hundred people at a time in various places; the Washington State Department, the French intelligence and so on. The Holocaust represents a crossing of a line in civilization that endangers the human existence because everything, the systematic murder of men, women, and children regardless of who they are or what they have accomplished for their country just because of their faith is a violation of all the significant principles that western civilization is built on. It is a challenge to everything that you and I really value and that is important to normal civilized life. If you can murder six million people in the most technologically effective way use modern transportation, transportation management. Use the fruits of science such as; chemistry, they used poison gas to murder within an hour thousands of people. They murdered a million 1,100,050 children. What good is science? What good is religion? What good is the great Cathedral? What good are they? What good is art and literature?

What good is the Law? This was done legally! You understand that? They passed Laws!

BH: Mhmm, like in Hungary with the three anti- Semitic laws?

RB: In Hungary to! In Parliament! I went to visit Parliament and it looks like a great building a civilized building you know? And I was in there and I said, “This place is a lie”. It claimed to be a Parliament of freely elected democratic people; you passed laws here authorizing the transportation of 650,000 Jewish men, women, and children in 6 weeks out of their homes, out of the country, and into Poland.

BH: Dead.

RB: Most of them murdered within the hours of their arrival. This is a threat. An example of what can be done in the heart of Western civilization where law is vital and religious values are suppose to be protecting people. What is there to protect to defend people if this can happen? It did not happen Africa and it did not happed in Asia. Well in Asia later in Cambodia. When the

Communists took over they took the entire capital city and murdered them because all these successful people in the capital city were a threat to their system. Just like that and suddenly you know, the genocide in Rwanda, you know the Tutsi and the Hutu. Somebody interviewed a Tutsi and a Hutu and asked him why do you kill the Tutsi and he said, “Because he is a Tutsi”. Why do you murder 6 million Jews? Because they are Jews. Scientists, I mean, never mind who they are they have contributed tremendously. Hungarian Jewry tremendous, great scientists! Nobel

Prize Winners, most of the Nobel Prize winners in Hungary were Jews.

BH: Yeah, Albert Einstein! You know he was German, but still!

RB: There were three great Physicists who came here (USA) and worked in Los Alamos on the

Atomic Energy project. I don’t want to single them out because lord knows they were children here (during the war)! Start with that, my classmates. The point is that a line has been crossed in our civilization that endangers you and me and everything. That this was made possible and countries sat on their hands. Do you understand that?

BH: Mhmm. I do.

RB: We were abandoned.

BH: I think it is just…

RB: Ok, now the problem is everywhere people get tired of hearing this. We never spoke with people like you before. I did not write my book till I was seventy years old because number one; people who were not involved in this were not ready to listen to this. It was too devastating to hear this and then the immigrants would come and tell their stories and say, “Well you know we all, everybody suffered during the War”, but this is a different story. This is a horrendous crime against civilization its-self. So, I wrote the book for two reasons as I said. Out of love for my community so that there memory should not be forgotten. This was a living community, a beautiful community; and out of anger because people deny, “Oh the Jews are complaining about anti-Semitism and they are complaining to much. They use this because they want to get restitution” are you kidding! Sometimes I think Germany did this because they needed to confiscate Jewish wealth to finance the war.

BH: Yeah, speaking of previously I remember you saying that the temple, just to go back to like you growing up.

RB: Yes

BH: The temple when you growing up were the center of your community.

RB: Yes

BH: I know that a lot of the temples were buried out of spite during the process of the war.

RB: Yes, absolutely. There was a kind of hatred directed against us that was totally irrational. A kind of hatred that was unimaginable. This is why, for example, one of the reasons why they succeeded. We could not imaging that the German people who were really among the most civilized…

BH: You viewed them as civilized before?

RB: Quote on quote, “Civilized”. Would really be, I don’t want to insult the barbarians because it would be an insult to the barbarians. There was unprecedented violence against the very foundation of civilization.

BH: Did anything happen at your temple? Maybe not a burning, but did anything happen at your temple that was used to degrade the Jewish community?

RB: Was what honey?

BH: Used to degrade the Jewish community.

RB: There was a problem between Christians and Jews and that is anti-Semitism and unfortunately, the Church was not on our side. It is a different kind of attitude towards the Jewish people in Hungary. This is up and down, but it is one thing to say, “I don’t like Jews” because of such and such and such and such. It is another thing to have the government’s power to make this, “I don’t like you, and so I am going to kill you”.

BH: What was the…

RB: Do you understand?

BH: Mhmm

RB: I went to, for example, I went to the Church after Communism fell. I have family there so I visit from time to time and I wanted to see the inside of the Church and carved into the Pulpit was in gold letters the following phrase, “God Loves”. I said to myself, “If this was God in the

Pulpit why didn’t you teach it?”

BH: Yeah, yeah.

RB: There were outstanding Christian people who at the price of their lives or the danger to there own families. Saved and hid Jews, but officially it did not help us at all.

BH: I remember in you book you talked about how one day the Arrow Cross took all the Jewish men into the temple and sheered there...

RB: Yes, their beards.

BH: Yeah

RB: Including the Rabbis. Yes they looked like, have you ever seen sheep shorn (we laugh) and they cut their wool. That’s how they looked; I said, “oh my God the Rabbi”. They looked like shorn sheep!

BH: Did you understand why that happened? Were you scared?

RB: No, you always want to think of the best and war times are a crazy time. The adults did not discuss it with us, no.

BH: No?

RB: Well obviously it was bad.

BH: Did you know at that time, when Hungary signed Tripartite Packed in 1940, which allied

Hungary and Germany?

RB: I was an eleven yeah old boy.

BH: So you did not understand what was going on?

RB: We did not read newspapers and it was obvious to the adults that this war is a tragedy. There would be some kind of news.

BH: That would flow?

RB: That came in from what was going on in Poland because once Germany invaded Poland the citizens began to turn against the Jewish people. Some news leaked into Hungary that some terrible things were happening, but nobody knew about Auschwitz- Birkenau.

BH: Really?

RB: That was the main annihilation center, but there are six of them in Poland. You can check them out, their names I have been to Poland to and have seen some of these place. There was systematic murder.

BH: No one knew?

RB: Oh, they knew! Oh yeah, you can’t not know it. These things happened in sight of people. I was in Majdanek, a camp in the heart of the city of Lublin and you can’t help but know these things. Suddenly, all your neighbors disappear, what do you mean you don’t know? You empty all the Jewish homes of people, in my village of what did I say, eleven thousand people. I am sure that some of them were eager and looking to move into some of the houses. Yes, yes.

BH: When the war was starting I know that in Hungary they deported the Jews later and they pass three large anti -Semitic laws. One of them it determined the types of professions Jews could have

RB: They did it systematically. First they deprived you of your civil rights, second they deprived you of being in your profession, and they deprived you of making a living.

BH: Whom you can marry.

RB: Finally, they deprive you of your possessions and then they deprive you of your life.

BH: Did that affect you in the countryside or was it more predominate when you moved to

Budapest?

RB: Let me put this this way. Let me say this big statement so it makes sense. The war broke in out 1939, September 1. I was eleven years old. I was born in 1928. You have to understand that there are no newspapers in this town, but there were radios, but not everybody had radios. I was coming home from school and there were people standing on the sidewalk under somebody’s window. Most of these houses were one level and the window was right next to a sidewalk. You could walk by somebody’s bedroom you know? People were listening to the news, September 1

1930 and I said, “What’s the excitement?” and they said, “the war broke out Germany invaded

Poland”. My reaction was, I do not like Geography, but Poland is far away this has nothing to do with me, but it had everything to do with me and everything to do with you. Because as I said, the impact on the world is tremendous. This is not the same world. Then, so Hungary joined

Germany. Anti-Jewish laws were introduced and they affected everything including, Jewish men no longer served in the army as soldiers, but they drafted Jewish men of military age for forced labor, attached to the military, cleaning Mein fields you know. Just walking them through the

Mein fields so that if they blew up they blew up. Digging tank traps and so on. It exposed them to; most of them did not come back. They were taken to the Eastern front where the Hungarian army versed the Russian army, a good army, most of them perished. So who was left at home?

The older people, the kids like me, so 18 and older

BH: They left.

RB: were drafted. Older people, young women, mothers with children, were totally defenseless of course. By 1944, even though Germany had already lost the war by 1944. The Hungarian

Jewry was still intact at home, except for the men who were in forced labor. Germany needed the trains for their soldiers for their army to come back from the Eastern front; the annihilation of

Hungary Jewry took precedence. The freight trains were used for the deporting 650,000 men, women and children within six weeks. So, that was the situation. Now, my father and I and my sisters left my small town. My mother and two small siblings stayed home. Father got a job with a big cemetery and I got a job raising flowers and my sisters worked as nannies. We sent money back home hoping that the war would be over soon so we would all go back. It never happened.

Because I lived in the suburbs of Budapest there was countryside and the countryside of Budapest was cleared of Jews. Somehow, Horthy wanted to save the Jews of Budapest because they were key to the functioning of the city.

BH: Do you, in some ways, feel any almost gratitude towards Horthy for stopping the deportation of the Jews? Do you believe that that was the kind of the hope in the darkness that those Jews in Budapest were allowed to stay intact?

RB: They would have been if they had time, the Nazis ran out of time. Budapest would have been destroyed. About 80,000 Jews out of 800,000 survived and some people like myself survived, some people from the forced labor survived, but there is no Jewish life in Hungary now in the countryside. There are beautiful synagogues and cultural centers and in Budapest there are

80,000 Jews now, but the whole generation was raised with the connotation that they were not allowed to study religion. Those who survived, some of them even hid their Jewishness because even the Communists were against the Jews because we were bourgeoisie, counter revolutionaries. So, it’s a double whammy because their children are now discovering that they are Jews their parents are finally telling them.

BH: Surprise!

(Laughter)

RB: So there are Jewish rock bands and Jewish music festivals and all of that, but even now in

Hungary there is an anti-Semitic party. Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe is like a virus you cannot cure it.

BH: I know you moved to Budapest with your Father and two sisters. Can you tell me about that experience?

RB: I was fifteen years old by then and I had a job and my father had a job. I was raising flowers it was part of, well about 600 people worked in this well what do you call a business where people scientifically raise plants? Like, when you want to buy landscaping for your house?

BH: A nursery.

RB: Yeah, but this was not commercial this was for, believe it or not, the central Jewish cemetery. It was like Arlington cemetery it was so beautifully tended. You could drive a car in there it was absolutely unbelievable and 600 people worked their tending graves and planting flowers and we raised flowers such as; Begonias, Geraniums and so much and so on. I was a country boy so that was good and I knew! By now I was reading newspapers.

BH: Mhmm, so you understood.

RB: I would go to the movies and see newsreels about the war and you knew it was going to be over soon, but it wasn’t.

BH: Were you scared?

RB: I was arrested July 19, 1944. The Red Army entered Budapest a few months later.

BH: Wow. I know that a previously interviewed Holocaust survivor her name was, Clara Dan.

She was a Transylvanian Jews and she lived in Romania.

RB: Yeah, well Transylvania really became part of Hungary again. It was mostly Hungarian it was taken from Hungary after the First World War.

BH: She speaks a little bit about the Hungarian police force.

RB: Yes.

BH: She says here is a quote that she gave, “ The Hungarians hated Jews they were big anti-

Semites, all they looked for was where they could get a hold of Jewish homes, Jewish money,

Jewish people, and Jewish business”. I was wondering if you ever felt similarly towards the

Hungarian police?

RB: Oh absolutely! They were brutal.

BH: They were brutal.

RB: I mean they were trained to, yes they were part of the state and they were there to exact the state policy period. I mean they were not forever like that. This was the police that were there to exact state policy. That’s the same everywhere, here to.

BH: When Germany invaded Hungary in 1944 were you there? Did you witness them finally invading?

RB: Of course I was there. I actually, well I had a beautiful voice and I wanted to join a great chorus in Budapest in one of the great synagogues and I was admitted. Germany occupied

Hungary in March and I don’t remember if it was the 18th or 19th, but my first rehearsal was on the 20th, but when I got to the rehearsal nobody was there because they had all gone into hiding.

BH: When you were captured by the Hungarian police on July 8th of 1944 and you were taken to the facility what was that first night like when you were captured?

RB: You are stunned because I have never had anything to do with the police just like if you were arrested for no reason and hauled into a military barracks and held over night and then in the morning they took us down on the boat or the barge down and then you disembark from an abandoned brick factory. I saw for the first time people who are sitting on the ground, thousands of people men and women. Interestingly enough not too many children I don’t think. For the first time I saw dehumanization.

BH: Was it overwhelming? Were you more so confused or scared?

RB: I was very sad. It was a beautiful summer day, gorgeous and I thought, “What am I doing here?” I was there with my father and two sisters and actually I snuck back into the city. There was a column of people lined up in front of the office, a sort of office, and I asked them, “Why are you lined up” and they said, “We have permission to go back into the city under guard to pick up some personal belongings because we were arrested from the trolley cars in the city”.

They would do that sometimes; stop the trolley car and say, “All Jews out”. I said, “Me to”, but

I did into tell my father or sisters so I marched into the city with them under guard and was supposed to meet the guard at some point and come back, but since I did not have any contacts in the city and I was kind of a naive country boy to.

BH: So you went back?

RB: I should have thought about; go to the main synagogue and see what they suggest, maybe there is there a way for you to hide or find a place to sleep overnight. Instead of that I said that I did not tell my father so he is probably worrying about me, “Where is my boy”. I had some many in my pocket and I bought two loaves of bread on the black market and I went back.

(We gasp)

RB: Interestingly, those two loaves of bread we ate for three days from Budapest to Auschwitz-

Birkenau. I was very close to my, I was not this independent spirit you know.

BH: What were you thinking when they told you to just get into the cars you know, how was the journey?

RB: What was I thinking? The ordered people to march towards the railroad and there are the open wagons and they say, “In there”. People just went in there after all they were armed you know. You don’t argue with the armed police because you always hope for the best. Maybe, they want us to go to work.

BH: You did not know.

RB: Some did, but of course they were killing jobs, miens and so on.

BH: Once you arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau what did that first day consist of?

RB: First of all, it was so hot and 80 people and you could not sit or stand and all that. I remember everything clearly after we got there, but I do not remember I must have been either sleepy most of the time, but I don’t recall the details of that trip in the wagon, but once we got there the train came to a halt after three days and we heard strange voices outside in foreign languages, I have never been or traveled outside of Hungary. They opened the door and that fresh air came in and it was wonderful. We jumped out and they said, “Everybody out leave you things there”. Of course some people came with food and clothes and everything was confiscated right then and there. They were going to sort it out and ship it back to Germany for people living in bombed out cities. Anyway, so I was glad to get out and suddenly I see this place as far as I could see there were barracks and barbed wire, people in striped prison clothes. There was nothing human about this place you understand? If you landed on some planet in outer space, your totally disorientated, “What is this place Papa?” They separated the men from the women.

All the young women with children, all the pregnant lady’s, older people and then on the other side were all the people capable of work including my father and I. We went into the camp they took our clothes away, cut our hair, and gave us prison clothes and that was our arrival to this kingdom of the concentration camp universe, which was totally nothing that you knew about what is right and wrong of normal life nothing was applicable, you understand?

BH: I know the living conditions were deplorable in Auschwitz, but how did they compare to the two other major camps you were in, Braunschweig and Wobbelin?

RB: Ok, I did not know anything about Braunschweig or Wobbelin then, but Auschwitz-

Birkenau remember if you were capable of work, like my father, they did not stay that long, they were shipped out to work in factories or mines or whatever. Most of them never survived. My father by then was 50 years old and 50 then was old anyway, and of course with the inhuman conditions he shortly perished. I never saw him again and my mother, younger brother and sister were killed immediately when they arrived there. By the time they processed us it was about 11 o’clock at night and I was slung into a barrack full of teenagers like myself and in the morning I saw my classmates there.

BH: Arthur and…

RB: There were a thousand teenagers in this barrack, sleeping on the floor like herring in a can.

You know?

BH: Like Sardines?

(Halfhearted laughter)

RB: They counted the prisoners in the mornings and evenings and so there were two columns facing each other between the barracks and I see five of my classmates, I said, “Oh my god, I’m so glad to see you”. They had gotten there three weeks before.

BH: That’s…

RB: Then about three weeks later I saw (his voice breaks) some chimneys smoking in the distance and I thought it was a bakery and then the Polish transport came and one of the asked me, “Well what do you think those chimneys are?” I said, “They are a bakery. There are tens of thousands of people here.” It must have been at least a hundred thousand people, men and women. He said, “You Hungarians are so naïve, stupid. That’s where they burn people.” I never…. Just a couple of weeks ago I was in the beautiful city of Budapest.

BH: Now, Heinrich Himmler in a speech he gave to soldiers, he was promoting the propaganda about the Jews and he said, “The order begins with these people living in clean barracks. Such a thing can really only be accomplished by us Germans; hardly another nation would be as humane as we are (RB laughs) … the people are taught to wash themselves daily, and to use a toothbrush with which most of them have been unfamiliar”. How does this make you feel?

RB: The propaganda was totally, I mean irrational lies, lies, lies and that’s what people do during the war they lie!

BH: It was almost like

RB: The state lies to hide its crimes, but people in Germany were aware. There were concentration camps all over Germany.

BH: Yeah I know.

RB: Thousands! In any case, so I was in danger because there were selection and people were taken away to the gas chamber and one selection, as you read in the book, one of my friends

Arthur he passed. My friend Jack and I flunked. We were not tall enough.

BH: So you were going to go to the gas chambers?

RB: We were going to the gas chambers, but the strong boys were on this side of the road (he points to the left of the room) and we were lingering around like a herd on this side (he points to the right of the room). So Jack says we have to sneak across into the strong boys other wise we are going to be in the gas chamber. So this man, this SS guy was patrolling here (he motions around the room) and he bent over to tie his shoelaces or something with his shoes and we snuck across. The guys were angry they said, “Dammit you endanger us, get back” and we said,

“Gahemmm…

BH: No way!

(Laughs)

RB: … shut up!” By this time we were tough.

BH: Yeah, you weren’t, you had grown up. You had to grow up.

RB: That’s how we saved ourselves from going to the, but I lost a kid. I say I lost it. I did! I walked to school with him. He was an only child and we walked to school in summer and winter in the bitter cold. His mother I will never forget, when he was heading to the gas chamber I said,

“Oh my God, his mother was worried about him catching cold”. She would say, “Close your coat! Its to cold out!” and it was cold, and I said, “He is heading for the gas chamber”. That is

Auschwitz- Birkenau, that’s the Holocaust.

BH: Now…

RB: That’s what we talk about and if I talk to people about this I want to talk to them about the sanctity of human dignity. You violate human dignity and you are heading towards and age of barbarism and by the way, that is an insult to barbarians. We are going back to the barbarians because there is no word to express the Nazi cruelty, the Nazi violation of human dignity.

BH: You did not stay at Auschwitz, Auschwitz- Birkenau for the whole time.

RB: We stayed there till November.

BH: Then in 1945 you and your friends were taken from Auschwitz and sent to Braunschweig?

RB: No it was 1944, 1944 in November.

BH: Ok, I am sorry I had a type-o.

RB: There was a, let me tell you so its clear. They wanted auto- mechanics.

BH: Oh wow. So, it was a work camp?

RB: So my friends and I looked at each other and said, “We are auto-mechanics of course!” I had never even sat in a car.

(Laughter)

RB: I knew about a great factory outside of Budapest where they manufactured busses. So I said,

“ Well, we learned in Csepel” and so we shipped out on November 11th out of Birkenau, which was really a triumph to get out of their alive. As agreed when the train began to move we sang,

“Dammit lets get out of there!” You know?

BH: Were you with Arthur and Jack?

RB: Yeah Arthur and Jack and this transport. This time I did not mind it being crowded in the wagon again, 80 or 90 people. I don’t know we had some food; we had some food with us, some bread and so on. We arrived in Braunschweig, which was a work camp, a small work camp. We were assigned to a factory and we marched in the morning and came home in the dark 6 days a week, but if they did not beat you or shoot you, they were allowed to shoot us, or you did not get sick you had a chance to survive and we were there till March.

BH: What kinds of work were you forced to do in the camp?

RB: Most of us were assisting older; see the young Germans were in the army, so these older mechanics were repairing trucks or whatever so it was a very big industry, but we were in that part. It was a very big factory, but the allies were bombing it almost daily. So, eventually we shut down the factory and shut down our camp and they marched us to another camp. They did not know what to do with us.

BH: So you just kept relocating?

RB: Yeah, they just relocated us. From there to still another camp, but this is totally insignificant. Finally, they said they were going to take us to Sweden. Actually, they were negotiating, Himmler was negotiating with the Swedes, representing the allies and they wanted trucks or something in exchange for prisoners. Sweden was willing to take us in, but either the train was bombed on which we were now traveling or the bridges were bombed. We never got there. So, finally after three weeks on the train back and forth nobody wanted to accept there were no more camps so finally they dumped us in a small camp.

BH: Wobbelin.

RB: Fortunately, it was in April and we were not there longer than ten days. There were some

Belgians, French and Russian prisoners, but half of them were dead lying around. There was no discipline anymore and on May 1st the SS ran away and we were discovered by accident by the

American Army, the 82nd Airborne…

BH: By accident!

RB: …because the camp stank so bad from the dead. The jeep pulled in, it was on patrol and they said, “We did not know you were here”. Some of us spoke English, I did not, but there were some of the older students who did study English. They telephoned back to the head quarters and said, “ Hey, we got a camp here with prisoners. Please, hurry up!” So, they came a couple hours later and they started shipping out the dying the dead. They could not help. So eventually, the commander of the 82nd Airborne ordered the city of Ludwigslust, if you want to study that.

BH: So you are in Wobbelin at this point?

RB: You are near Wobbelin. They ordered them to dig up a mass grave and bury 200 prisoners between the Cathedral in the heart of the city and the castle where the Prince of the state resided, the Prince of Mecklenburg. Today there is, I have been there several times, I may be going back in May. There is an institute there that teaches the history of the camp and the Nazis so I support them.

BH: Back when you were in Braunschweig camp I know that lice, fever and dysentery were constant problems throughout the war because of all the unsanitary conditions. How did you deal with it?

RB: You know something; you know something. That was not true of the camp in

Braunschweig. There were only about four barracks and we were able to wash.

BH: Really?

RB: We had lice, but we took care of that. I don’t want to tell you how though.

BH: Hmm, all right I understand.

RB: In my barrack I don’t recall anybody dying there. We did not get normal food, but we got regular food. Some soup and some bread because they had to feed us something so that we could do some work.

BH: Because by that time in the war, Germany…

RB: There were no gas chambers and no beatings. None of that, so if you didn’t get sick, I mean and you got used to not having winter clothes even in the winter. I adjusted, maybe I was a strong country boy so I was used to the cold, but somehow we survived there. Somehow we were strong enough to march a daylong march to another camp and we were there for a while and from there…

BH: Was that Ravenbruck?

RB: Pardon? No, no that was Vattenskada. It was not in my book because it was insignificant.

BH: Ok

RB: It is like going from one post to another, and at some point….

BH: After a while did they all just kind of, after a while did you just become numb to the violence?

RB: Yeah, I did not mention the unimportant places even Ravenbruck which was at one time a big camp was not that important for me. Except for that we were there for a while and there some people, well I was sleeping next to another man in the bunk and in the morning I saw that he was dead. So, I just got out of the bunk and moved to another place.

BH: The last camp you were sent to was Wobbelin as you said. Although you were only there for ten days this was the camp where, at that point, you were so weak. What made this camp specific to you?

RB: I was not weak as a matter of fact. I do not think I was weak at all until the very end.

Neither was Jack nor Arthur because otherwise we would have died.

BH: Really?

RB: Somehow we were strong, you know? We did not get sick. There was something to eat because they gave us before they shipped us in that train to Sweden they gave us American Red

Cross packages. Believe it or not!

BH: Really!

RB: Yeah, we were supposed to be American POW’s.

BH: Oh

RB: It was full of canned goods that we did not eat because they would have killed us. That would have killed us. What do you call that? Canned ham or Spam or whatever it was called, but there was chocolate there and some cookies and some stuff like that and we may have eaten that.

So, on the night of May 1st they put us in the train again. I did not know what they wanted they may have wanted to do something terrible, but they could not do it. In the morning they said,

“Everybody back to the camp”, but they no longer had authority in their voices. We did not line up and I lay back down on the ground and went to sleep. My buddy Jack woke up earlier than I and said, “Wake up! The SS have run away!” and I said, “Ehhhohh let me sleep some more”, but

I did wake up and it was a gorgeous spring day, a little cold and I say, “Its over!” That was an unbelievable feeling!

BH: What did you feel?

RB: If a baby comes out of the womb and talks he would say the same thing I did, “I can’t believe it! Put me back there! It was comfortable in there it’s cold out here!”

(Laughter)

RB: So I was born again, naked.

BH: Well, how did your faith help you survive? I know that a quote in your book mention’s that while you were imprisoned, “Reading the prayer book was an act of passive resistance, an assertion of self.”

RB: Yes, the point is that the thing that kept us going is that we wanted to survive and tell what happened here.

BH: You needed to live.

RB: We were angry and that would have been the only victory, you know the real victory over them. It was a triumph. If I never achieved anything else in the world except survive all that it would have been sufficient for me and we did get to Sweden eventually.

BH: You did, you did go. What was that like being out there?

RB: We discovered we could not eat normal food. So, the military government set up hospitals in converted high schools. We were suddenly put into this wonderful room with a clean bed and the first time I had been into a bed with clean sheets. Oh! That was fantastic! That was fantastic, but we could not eat normal food. We could not keep it down so we had to eat cereal and not oatmeal, but close to it. You know, soft food like that for a couple weeks and eventually we could eat normal food. Then the invitation came from Sweden saying, please come we have schools for you, you can stay for as long as you want if you would like to stay in Sweden, fine if you want to leave fine. It really, it really was like entering paradise.

BH: The historian Goldhagen argues that it was the fault of the German people that the

Holocaust happened, but another historian argues that it was more the fault of the German political society at that time. Who do you blame for your experience?

RB: Who do you blame, where do you begin? The fact is that the German people elected Hitler in a democratically elected (coughing) in a democratically free election. Einstein said that, “ If you fill the stomach they will listen to you”. There is no justification for what Germany did.

They were humiliated, they lost the war and so on and Hitler swore to destroy German pride and

German employment and jobs and all that, but there is no justification for that. Everybody knew the country was full of concentration camps; Hitler could not have done without the Jews service. Of course, you can say that by then the German civilians were afraid of the Nazi state to, they were victims to. Listen, there were PHD’s in the Nazis. This system was not built by idiots, this was done by intelligent people. Systems managements, Chemists, Engineers…

BH: They all, everyone contributed.

RB: These people were hired and I read a report on how the gas chamber and the crematoria were built. They built them; they engineered them so the fat of the very people they were killing would be used as fuel to keep the temperature in the ovens hot. It was science. This was a failure of science, of philosophy, of religion, of faith they all failed. Do you understand that? That is the depth of the tragedy. All the major institutions that we really on to build a civilized community failed as far as the Jewish people are concerned.

BH: I just want to ask you a little bit about your recovery. Did you find it hard to reintegrate back into society?

RB: Are you kidding? What would be so hard to be free? To be free and be 17 and a half are you kidding! You saw the picture in the book do I look sad?

(Laughter)

BH: No, you were skiing!

(Laughter)

RB: We were all smiling! Are we smiling, don’t we look happy? Dammit we beat you!

BH: Exactly, did you ever find out…

RB: Not only that we went on to create beautiful lives. None of us became criminals; none of us went to jail.

BH: Did you ever find out what happened to your family?

RB: Yes, my two sisters survived. My father perished, my mother and my little brother and sister perished. My sister, one of them, well they both went back to Hungary. One of them could not stay anymore, could not stand it. She was a little more courageous and so she went back to

Germany to a deeply displaced persons camp where she met her husband. Eventually, they wound up in Israel and by the time she died she had 3 children, 10 grandchildren and now the grandchildren are having children. My other sister, actually she stayed with a distant aunt before in 1944 and she went back to them. They are the ones with all the photos you see in the book.

She married someone, a man who came back from the forced labor in Russia. Whose wife and two children were killed, so he married my sister and they had two children. The children are now grandparents and I am the Uncle of the grandparents.

BH: Wow!

RB: So we have four generations of kids.

BH: Now, I know that you enlisted in the American army once you arrived and were sent to

Hawaii.

RB: No, I did not enlist I was drafted. Yeah, I was drafter and it was one of the best things that happened to me because I became a chaplain’s assistant because of my Jewish education I know so much. I knew all the music that you needed for a service to so I sang. Eventually, through my

Chaplin, I was admitted to the seminary on a full scholarship. They thought I walked on water!

AH: I bet.

RB: I do, but I know where the rocks are!

(Laughter)

BH: Yeah.

RB: That was a joke!

BH: That’s when you finally figured out that you wanted to be a Rabbi?

RB: I finished my collage education and five years in the seminary. Then came here and have been here ever since, over 50 years.

BH: At the Temple?

RB: Small congregation. See that place (he points to the photo behind us) that’s 1970 we are about to move into the sanctuary. This was the library; we are sitting in this room. That is this room! That (points to the wooden chest in the front on the room) is the ark we started with, that’s all we had! We used to go from church to church to an office building to an office building and a year later we bought 7 and a half acres here and by 1970 we built and we have been going ever since.

AH: It is a beautiful place.

BH: It is, it is. In closing I just wanted to ask you, do you believe that by living out your life as a happy and successful person it shows that you are more than someone who lived, but that you survived?

RB: I am going to ask you to speak slowly.

BH: Right, sorry!

RB: It was a good question, but it was to fast for me.

BH: I said, in closing do you believe that by living out your life as a happy and successful person it shows that you are more than someone who just lived, but truly survived?

RB: This is my revenge! The revenge is to live well and to do something. I do not care about revenge and I speak to German youth over there when I go to Germany. They invite me and they pay for my transportation and so on. There is an institute there and I only have one message for them. They ask me, “ If you have suffered so much in Germany, why did you come back to visit?” I said, “I heard that Germany has a new face and you are the new face. Now, after what you heard you have chance to restore German honor by the kind of society that you are going to build, now that’s your job”. They ask me if I hold them responsible. I say, “ You were not even born then, chances are your parents were not born”. So my purpose in talking to them is to say, “Hey, build a beautiful country. You have a great country here, a very rich, great institute of learning. You came out of the most powerful country of Europe, show them.” I speak about human rights and human dignity and build a society that will let us protect it, that’s your job.

You are not guilty of anything, those who did it they are guilt. Maybe your grandparent’s generation, but Albert Einstein was much harsher than I. I am serious. I have a small book of quotations from him about all kinds of stuff about science and he said, “ I hold the entire German people responsible for the murder of my brothers and sisters. This is the people that on the one hand is very proud of itself and they like to be subservient to power and they are very dangerous”, but he as a youngster denied German citizenship. His family went to Italy and then to Switzerland. He never again, for a brief period he went back to Berlin to be a scientist and he was working with others, but he never went back to Germany after that ever, his anger was unforgivable or unforgiving. I am, what good does your anger do for you? I mean bitterness, there is just so much room in here you know? If you fill up with bitterness and hatred then there is no room for anything else. Fortunately, I am not that natured. I am maybe a little more than I should be, more forgiving, but that was never an issue for me to forgive them or not? Do I forgive the ones who killed my mother… of course not! What does it mean? It is to late, but to be filled with the kind of hatred… there is not enough hatred to compensate for that murder. Do you understand? There is no way for humans to react to that kind of new cosmic barbarism.

There is not word for it! As a matter of fact, do you notice how I hesitate about finding the right word?

BH: Yeah.

RB: There is no way for normal to describe this, in normal human terms because human terms do not apply to their phenomenon! The concentration camp universe and it was created by people.

BH: Thank you for letting me interview you!

RB: So before you leave I just want to tell you two more things.

BH: Ok!

RB: It is really the key to my thinking and that is that we have a job to do. God gave you two gifts. A gift of the mind and of free will. With the mind you require knowledge. Knowledge is power. How do I know that? Well, I went back to the bible and well, everybody knows about

Adam, Eve and the apple, but that is not important unless, you are a phylogeny. God takes Adam out to the animals and says, “ Adam these are the animals and what ever you name them, will be their name”. I said to myself, “ Well, couldn’t God name the animals, I mean he made the

Earth”. So, he must have given Adam a capacity to name the animals; this is a mule, this is a cow, this is a bird, this is a whatever. That is science! Go and classify my creation! Boom, boom, boom, boom. Well, knowledge is power. We have atomic energy now. How are you going to use it? Nuclear physics, are you going to have nuclear medicine or nuclear bombs? Do we have a choice? Are we free to choose? Are you free to choose to make decisions?

BH: Yeah, you are. That’s why God gave everybody free will.

RB: There you go! I am Rabbi Berkowits so, I went back to a medieval philosopher to put my mind at ease and he said, “ Free will is given to you the moment you are born (slaps the table).

You are responsible for the choices that you make. Nothing is destined for you, you create your destiny.” Ahh, now we see, here is my revenge. I have two weapons now. The gift of the mind and free will. I tell these German students you are free to choose and I tell you the same thing and that’s what I tell adults. It’s kind of scary because we are responsible for the choices we make. God has done Gods part, leave him alone and let him rest. You know? Now we can work with that instead of sitting on the ground moaning and groaning and saying, “ I hate this I hate this”. Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, be a grown up! You have two wonderful instruments you can do a lot of good.

BH: You can also do a lot of evil.

RB: It is possible! That goes into interpersonal relations, that goes into are we responsible for the people who sleeping on the streets instead of having a shelter from the cold. Is it not a shame that we have people going hungry in this country when we have restaurants where people could eat?

We are responsible and that’s what God wants us to be. God gave you two gifts, let go. People talk about politicians. What is it, the shining city on the hill? Buildings of light? Be a little bit more concrete. Homes for the homeless; food for the hungry; medical care for those who and so on and so on. That is religion, action.

Audio Time Index Log Sheet

Interviewer: Beverley Howard Interviewee: Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits Date of Interview: December 23rd, 2013 Location: Temple Rodef Shalom, Mclean Virginia

Minute Mark Topics Presented in order of Discussion

0 Childhood in Hungary

5 His Book, “The Boy Who Lost His Birthday”

10 What the Holocaust means to him vs. Howard Zinn’s interpretation

15 Roll of educated people in the Holocaust

20 Anti- Semitism in Hungary and the Church

25 The effect the Anti- Jewish Laws had on Jewish Hungarians

30 Move from Derecske Hungary to Budapest

35 His capture and deportation

40 Arrival at Auschwitz and experiences in the camp

45 Leaving Auschwitz and going to Braunschweig

50 Different Camps he was placed in and Liberation at Wobbelin

55 His experience of liberation from Wobbelin

60 Who he blames for the Holocaust

65 His life after the War

70 His journey of discovering his calling as a Rabbi

75 Albert Einstein resentment towards Germany vs. his own resentment

80 The role of free will in life

Interview Analysis

Heinrich Himmler, one of the masterminds behind creating the Concentration system, gave a speech to soldiers in January of 1937 on the treatment of Jews in the camps. He said, “On the whole, education consists of discipline, never any kind of instruction on an ideological basis, for the prisoners have, for the most part, slave-like souls; and only very few people of real character can be found there… The discipline thus squeezes order out of them” (Crew 94). This propaganda speech is a blatant lie about the treatment of Jews in the concentration camps.

Historians, with the aid of oral histories, have been able to accurately record the distressing truth through the eyewitness accounts of survivors. Without a historical record on what life was like for the truth could have been distorted by the Nazi propaganda. The ability to differentiate between truth and fabrications is one asset of Oral history. Through Oral history people in the future can examine first hand accounts of individuals who lived through the event and then gain insights on different opinions and experiences. Historians agree that the Holocaust was a tragedy, but there is controversy within the historical community about who is responsible for the Holocaust and what role propaganda played in influencing the German people. All of this raises the following question, are the German people, or the Nazi Government responsible for the

Holocaust? The connection between the propaganda cycle and the willful ignorance of the

German people ultimately caused Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits to reinforce the use of propaganda by the Nazi government as a method of persuasion, but contradicts by disputing who was truly to blame for the Holocaust.

The interview with Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits was an eye opening experience and throughout the interview he recounted the story of his suffering and joys while living under the

Nazi occupation. He was born on February 29th of 1928 in the small town of Derecske, Hungary. In the small town of 11,000 people only around 1,800 of them were of the Orthodox Jewish faith.

The small community Berkowits lived in was centered on the teachings of the Torah and around the temple. He grew up without many of today’s modern technologies, “No busses at all there was not need for it you know. It was the horse and buggy age. So I grew up quite sturdy like a country boy. Truly!” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 31 in interview). He attributes his country upbringing to a factor that saved him during his time in the concentration camps. Berkowits reminisces about the close friends he made in his hometown, but he goes on to explain that when he returned to Derecske after the war “There is no sign that we ever lived there. Even the buildings have been torn down.”(Berkowits qtd in Howard 33 in interview). Berkowits remained oblivious to the true nature of the war until he moved to Budapest at age 15. Rabbi Berkowits, his father and two older sisters moved away from their small town to the capital city in search of work. Berkowits worked with his father in the cemetery tending flowers, “I was a country boy so that was good and I knew! By now I was reading newspapers” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 46 in interview). Even though he was no longer unaware of the war when he was captured on July 8th of 1944 by the Hungarian Police he felt, “Stunned because I have never had anything to do with the police just like if you were arrested for no reason and hauled into a military barracks”

(Berkowits qtd in Howard 48 in interview). After a night in an abandoned brick factory he was shipped in a cattle car to the first of five camps he would stay in, Auschwitz- Birkenau. When describing his first impression of Auschwitz- Birkenau he says, “We went into the camp they took our clothes away, cut our hair, and gave us prison clothes and that was our arrival to this kingdom of the concentration camp universe, which was totally nothing that you knew about what is right and wrong of normal life nothing was applicable” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 51 in interview). While in Auschwitz, Berkowits was reunited with his friends Jack and Arthur. The boys survived life in 4 other camps together Braunschweig, Watenstedt, Ravensbruck and

Wobbelin. Finally, after just ten days in Wobbelin the U.S 82nd Airborne accidently discovered the camp, “because the camp stank so bad from the dead. The jeep pulled in, it was on patrol and they said, “We did not know you were here” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 57 in interview). After they recuperated in Sweden, the boys traveled to the United States in 1948. When he looks back on his experiences during the war, he is not filled with hatred. He says, “ Do I forgive the ones who killed my mother… of course not! What does it mean? It is to late, but to be filled with the kind of hatred… there is not enough hatred to compensate for that murder” (Berkowits qtd in

Howard 68 in interview). Instead of filling his mind with hatred, Berkowits dedicated his life to

God and has dutifully served Temple Rodef Shalom as a beloved Rabbi for over 45 years.

The cycle of Nazi propaganda was endless during the war and it attributed greatly to

Hitler’s rise to power. Through propaganda Hitler was arguably able to influence peoples views and opinions about Jews and the Nazi party. The Germans used the Jews as scapegoats for economic struggles. When the Great Depression hit the global economy, the German peasant’s panicked and to avoid a revolt the German government pinned the economic distress on the Jews through supporting nationalist thoughts. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “ One thing had become clear to me: the party with whose little representatives I had to fight the hardest struggle during my many months were almost entirely at the hands of a foreign race; it brought me internal happiness to realize definitely that the Jew was no German” (Hitler 80). The separation between viewing the Jews as Germans made it reasonable in the public eye to cast them away because they were perceived as lesser than the Aryans and a threat to the German state. In a speech given to Nazi soldiers, Heinrich Himmler boasted about the wonderful conditions in the concentration camps, “The order begins with these people living in clean barracks. Such a thing can really only be accomplished by us Germans; hardly another nation would be as humane as we are… the people are taught to wash themselves daily, and to use a toothbrush with which most of them have been unfamiliar”(Crew 94). Nazi soldiers were stationed at the camps, but because the

German culture at that time viewed Jews as less than people, it was made acceptable for them to live in squalor. Himmler, credited with creating the Concentration Camp system, was more than aware of the subhuman conditions in the camps, but he was using this speech as an opportunity to spread lies to the public and ease their guilt when they saw Jews being arrested because according to Himmler; they were going to a decent place. Rabbi Berkowits remembers, “The propaganda was totally, I mean irrational lies, lies, lies and that’s what people do during the war they lie. The state lies to hide its crimes” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 53 in interview). Rabbi

Berkowits acknowledges that while ridiculous, the propaganda was powerful enough to redirect the German peoples anger over their defeat in WWI and the Great Depression towards the

Jewish people. Germans wanted to view Hitler as a positive force because the regime pulled the

Nation out of a severe economic crisis. The worship of Hitler allowed the Nazis to cover up the true nature of the camps behind convincing propaganda. The lies were tactics meant to hide the crimes of the Nazi party. Rabbi Berkowits recounts, “They murdered a million 1,100,050 children. What good is science? What good is religion? What good is the great Cathedral? What good are they? What good is art and literature? What good is the Law? This was done legally!

You understand that? They passed Laws! (Berkowits qtd in Howard 36 in interview). The Nazi party had full control over the legal system and any anti-Semitic act that served to the ultimate goal or “Final Solution” was immediately passed into law. In Hungary, the anti-Semitic Laws restricted the professions Jews could participate in, activities they could partake in, and even classified what constituted the make up of a “Jewish” person. Steadily, the Nazi government took the rights of the Jews away and nothing was done to stop them. Oral history allows us to understand the enrapturing nature of the Nazi propaganda and it allows people to understand how it instilled a dangerous moral system in the German nation. That moral system allowed German citizens to be willful spectators of the murders of millions of Jews.

The Holocaust was an unfortunate string of events that ultimately led to the tragic deaths of over 6 million people. The concept for the “Final Solution” came from Nazi leader

Adolf Hitler, but was he entirely to blame for the execution of his plan? Historian Daniel

Goldhagen argues that, “ The perpetrators killed and made their genocidal contributions under the auspice of many institutions other than the SS. Their chief common denominator was that they were all German pursuing German national political goals- in this case, the genocidal killing of Jews” (Goldhagen 7). The historian Goldhagen believes fervently that the responsibility of the Holocaust rests with the people of the German nation. A historian who opposes Goldhagen’s interpretation stems from Christopher Browning. Browning believes, “ I doubt that most would have killed willingly and enthusiastically, motivated by the lethal and demonological anti-

Semitism uniformly attributed to such ordinary Germans by Goldhagen” (Browning 91).

Browning discovered evidence that supports his opinion that not all Germans willingly followed

Hitler’s agenda and thus he places the blame more so on the Nazi leadership. Rabbi Berkowits blames not only the German citizens and the Nazi government for the Holocaust, but the world itself at that time. Other nations during the War and before the War knew of the precarious position of the European Jewry, but they did not intervene. Rabbi Berkowits said, “A line has been crossed in our civilization that endangers you and me and everything. That this was made possible and countries sat on their hands” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 37 in interview). While some of the blame rests on the world, to the Rabbi, most of it rests with Germany “The fact is that the German people elected Hitler in a democratically free election. Everybody knew the country was full of concentration camps; Hitler could not have done without the Jews service. Of course, you can say that by then the German civilians were afraid of the Nazi state to, they were victims to. Listen, there were PHD’s in the Nazis. This system was not built by idiots, this was done by intelligent people” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 63 in interview). In order to run the Nazi state the government had to hire scientists, mechanics, engineers, doctors, soldiers, and many others because that’s what it takes to build a functional regime. Regardless if they knew about the Concentration camps, the German citizens saw that the Jews were being forcibly removed from their homes, but they remained silent. It is not only the German citizens who said nothing to stop Hitler it was the world. America was still recovering from the Great Depression and was therefore reluctant to get involved in World War II. Also, the anti-Semitic nature in Europe had been present for hundreds of years. In 1290, England forcibly removed all the Jews within its boarders and did not allow them to return until 350 years later. The ongoing struggle of the

Jewish people in Europe was ignored and thus anti-Semites like Adolf Hitler were allowed to instigate the genocide of millions of Jews. The significance of Rabbi Berkowits not indicating a specific perpetrator for the Holocaust is that it places responsibility on the global community.

Goldhagen and Browning understand the Holocaust as being a specific groups fault, but the survivors see fault in all people. This oral history project has added another layer to the understanding of the holocaust and it contributes to reshaping traditional views historians have on the Holocaust itself.

Throughout this process I have struggled and achieved. I learned the importance of

time management and also gained emotional maturity. It was difficult to learn about the

appalling events of the Holocaust, but I felt it was an amazing experience to hear Rabbi Birkowits’s story. In retrospect, I would not have prepared quite as much for my interview. I was slightly nervous during the interview and I wish that I had relaxed and allowed the conversation to flow, but I still had a great time. The major lesson Rabbi Berkowits stressed throughout the interview was the concept of free will. We all have the ability to enhance our knowledge, but it is what we use that knowledge for that counts, “ Well, knowledge is power.

We have atomic energy now. How are you going to use it? Nuclear physics, are you going to have nuclear medicine or nuclear bombs?” (Berkowits qtd in Howard 69 in interview). I have a great respect for Rabbi Berkowits because in the face of all his challenges he turned to God and decided to overcome them. I think that is the biggest lesson of all, perseverance and faith can accomplish anything.

Appendix I

(Crew 68)

The Nazis sponsored a boycott of Jewish owned stores in April 1933. The SA man in the image is standing guard outside of a Jewish store to scare away customers. The sign reads, “

Germans defend yourself! Don’t buy from Jews”. This photo demonstrates the intentional persecution of Jewish people that was implemented throughout Nazi controlled Europe.

Appendix II

(Auschwitz)

This image is of a German children’s book. The title reads, “The Poisonous Mushroom” and is published by Der Stuermer-Verlag. Stories such as these were used to perpetuate the anti-

Semitic values in younger generations. The Nazis believed that if they instilled the Nazi values in young people the practice would live on in the future.

Appendix III

(Auschwitz)

This is an image of the entrance to the super camp of Auschwitz. Most of the Hungarians were deported to Auschwitz- Birkenau, the death camp, and immediately exterminated. On average 80 percent of the transports were murdered in the gas chambers in one of the extermination facilities at Auschwitz (DEGOB). The sign above, “Arbeit Mach Frei” translates to “Work makes one free” however, it was a lie meant to decrease panic among new arrivals.

Appendix IV

(Understanding Auschwitz Today)

Auschwitz is the most infamous Concentration Camp in history. The main camp

Auschwitz I was located near Oswiechium. Auschwitz I was primarily a work camp, but it did contain a crematorium. Auschwitz II or Auschwitz- Birkenau (depicted above) is known as a death camp. Auschwitz III or Monowitz was a forced labor camp. Prisoners in Monowitz worked in the Bruna synthetic rubber factory or the in the I.G Farben factory.

Appendix V

(Auschwitz)

This image is of prisoners working to build a sewage system in Auschwitz. The

backbreaking work was relentless and the conditions were filthy. Prisoners survived on 600

calories a day, but the physical labor added to weakening individuals faster.

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