Early Testimonies of Jewish Survivors of World War II
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Tragedy and Triumph Early Testimonies of Jewish Survivors of World War II Compiled and Translated by Freda Hodge ABOUT THIS BOOK In this collection Freda Hodge retrieves early voices of Holocaust survivors. Men, women and children relate experiences of deportation and ghetto isation, forced labour camps and death camps, death marches and liber ation. Such eyewitness accounts collected in the immediate postwar period constitute, as the historian Feliks Tych points out, the most important body of Jewish documents pertaining to the history of the Holocaust. The fresh ness of memory makes these early voices profoundly different from, and historically more significant than, later recollections gathered in oral history programs. Carefully selected and painstakingly translated, these survivor accounts were first published between 1946 and 1948 in the Yiddish journal Fun Letzten Khurben (‘From the Last Destruction’) in postwar Germany, by refugees waiting in ‘Displaced Persons’ camps, in the American zone of occupation, for the arrival of travel documents and visas. These accounts have not previously been available in English. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Freda Hodge holds degrees in English, Linguistics and Jewish Studies, and has taught at universities and colleges in South Africa and Australia. Fluent in Hebrew as well as Yiddish, she works at the Holocaust Centre in Melbourne conducting interviews with survivors and families. Copyright Information Tragedy and Triumph: Early Testimonies of Jewish Survivors of World War II Compiled and translated by Freda Hodge © Copyright 2018 All rights reserved. Apart from any uses permitted by Australia’s Copyright Act 1968, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the copyright owners. Inquiries should be directed to the publisher. Monash University Publishing Matheson Library and Information Services Building 40 Exhibition Walk Monash University Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia www.publishing.monash.edu Monash University Publishing brings to the world publications which advance the best traditions of humane and enlightened thought. Monash University Publishing titles pass through a rigorous process of independent peer review. Second printing ISBN: 9781925523676 (paperback) ISBN: 9781925523881 (Knowledge Unlatched pdf ) www.publishing.monash.edu/books/tt-9781925523676.html Series: History Design: Les Thomas Cover image: Joseph Schleifstein, a four-year-old survivor of Buchenwald, sits on the running board of an UNRRA truck soon after the liberation of the camp. 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph 90250. Further information about Joseph Schleifstein can be found in the Addendum. A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. More information about the iniative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author(s) and that no alterations are made. For details go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CONTENTS About this Book ............................................ iii About the Author ........................................... iii Acknowledgements ...........................................ix Foreword ...................................................xi Introduction: The Early Testimonies of She’erit Hapletah in the Aftermath of World War II ...........................1 Freda Hodge Why Do We Need Historical Commissions? ......................16 By M.Y. Feigenbaum PART ONE ......................................19 1 Mielice Labour Camp ....................................21 Josef Kas 2 Life and Death of the Jews in Dubno ........................30 Moishe Weisberg 3 The Transport from the Death Camp Balkenheim ..............41 Maurice Kraus 4 The Last Road for Twelve Hundred Bialystok Children. .44 H. Shprung-Levkowitz 5 In Radun ..............................................50 Leib Levine 6 A Chapter about Siedlice ..................................58 Getzl Weisberg 7 The Slaughter at the Edge of the Sea .........................63 Miriam Zweig TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH 8 In the Braslav Region ....................................67 Moshe Treister 9 Sobibor ................................................76 Yekheskel (Chaskiel) Menche 10 Through Ghettos and Concentration Camps: Nemencine, Ozmiana, Czeczmer, Kovno, Ponevezh and Eastern Prussia ......81 Leah Rudovshevski 11 Treblinka ..............................................88 H. Shperling 12 In the White Russian Forests .............................100 Moshe Meyerson 13 In Camp Kaldycheva ....................................111 Yudel Samsonovitz 14 The Last Resistance Fighters in Bialystok Ghetto ..............116 Rabbi A. Burstin 15 Experiences of a Jewish Aryan ............................119 Anna Holtzman 16 The Large Factories in Kovno Ghetto .......................124 Moshe Segalson 17 Volozhin ..............................................132 Yosef Schwartzberg 18 Myadel and Surroundings ................................137 Henia Menkin 19 In a Hungarian Work Battalion ...........................143 Moshe Dov Taub 20 Death of a Runner ......................................148 Cessia Shilling 21 In Auschwitz with Two Small Children .....................151 Esther Weiss vi Contents 22 Memories of the Ghetto of Stanislavov. .166 Lusia Gerber 23 The Fortress of Death (in the Ninth Fort of Kovno). .170 Michal Gelbtrunk 24 Resistance Movement in the Ghetto of Kovno ................ 174 Rochie Ben Eliezer PART TWO .....................................183 The Children’s Narratives in Fun Letzten Khurben ................185 1 My Experiences during the War ...........................189 Josef Shuster 2 My Experiences during the War ...........................193 Ella Griliches 3 My Experiences during the War ...........................195 Fania Olitzki 4 My Experiences during the War ...........................199 Arieh Milch 5 My Experiences during the War ...........................202 Yaakov Levin 6 My Experiences during the War ...........................209 Genia Shurtz Addendum ...............................................216 Select Information Pertaining to the Testimonies .................216 Bibliography ..............................................220 vii Jews perished in extermination camps, execution sites, ghettos, slave labour camps, and on the death marches. The testimony of those who survived constitutes the main record of what was done to Jews during those years. The murderers also kept records, often copious ones. But the victims, the six million who were done to death, could leave no record. A few fragments of diaries, letters and scribbled messages do survive. But in the main, others must bear witness to what was done to the millions who could never tell their own story. Martin Gilbert, Preface, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy, (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1986, p. 18) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to the Jewish Holocaust Centre, Melbourne, for affording me the opportunity to have my book published. In particular, my heartfelt thanks go to the Director of the Centre, Warren Fineberg, and to Dr Michael Cohen for the encouragement and unwavering support which they offered to me, during the whole period from my initial proposal to the actual publication of the book. Special thanks are due to Dr Michael Cohen for his meticulous proofreading of Tragedy and Triumph. My sincere thanks go to the Kadimah Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library in Melbourne for giving me access to the 10 volumes of the journal Fun Letzten Khurben whenever I had need of them. To my husband Norman who was always willing to discuss my ideas and to make suggestions, I wish to express my great appreciation. I thank those who gave of their time when I turned to them for help with an obscure word or phrase in the translations from Yiddish to English, thus ensuring the accuracy of the translated material. FOREWORD It took half a century to challenge the myth of the postwar silence of Holocaust survivors. Since then numerous publications and projects have retrieved the early voices. Freda Hodge’s collection of testimonies under lines this trend. Carefully selected and painstakingly translated, she has edited compelling survivor accounts, published between 1946 and 1948 in the Yiddish journal Fun Letzten Khurben (‘From the Last Destruction’) in postwar Germany. It is the first edition of its kind. The survivors were Yiddishspeaking refugees from Eastern Europe, classified as ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs). They were waiting in DP camps in the American Zone of occupation for the arrival of travel documents and visas in order to con tinue their long journey to freedom. The title of the edition points to the dual nature of modern Jewish experience. ‘Tragedy’ refers to Khurben, the Yiddish term common at the time for the destruction of European Jewry. Others spoke of the Jewish Catastrophe, a term used since the beginning of the mass murder. The term Holocaust entered the discourse in the 1950s, in the Englishspeaking world, followed by the terms