Philip N. Backstrom Survivor Lecture Series Transcript 2016, Max Michelson

Holocaust Awareness Week Philip N. Backstrom, Jr. Survivor Lecture Series Max Michelson 2016 Laurel Leff: My name is Laurel Leff and I am Chair of the Holocaust Awareness Committee and [inaudible] I'm glad to see you all here. We are going to listen to Max Michelson. I learned a bit about Latvia during last semester, during my America and the Holocaust class. A student, [Mackenzie] [Boyden 00:00:23], who I am delighted to say is here today, along with another student from the class, Shelby [Cole 00:00:28]. Mackenzie wrote an essay about the memorial book created by the Jews who had lived in Latvia, to show as the book put it, "How much world Jewry and ourselves lost by the annihilation of this community, which numbered almost 100,000 souls." Laurel Leff: Now, most Yizkor books memorialize communities built around cities and towns where Jews were murdered, and in fact, my first encounter with Yizkor books, and to some extent, with the Holocaust itself, was as a child perusing my grandfather's Yizkor book from Białystok, the Polish city where he was born. A striking thing about the Latvian Yizkor book, and therefore the Diaspora community that prepared it, is that the horrible Nazi genocide project is seen as affecting not just the city of Riga or the many towns around it, but the entire Latvian nation. Laurel Leff: Our speaker today, Max Michelson, also sees himself as telling the Latvian story, and not just a story of Riga, the city where he was born and lived before he was sent to a concentration camp. It's a Latvian story because Latvia had a distinct history and Jewish community and it's also a Latvian story because of the response of the non-Jewish Latvians to first the Soviet and then the German occupation. Michelson tells both parts of the story in his affecting memoir, which is right here, that manages to be both erudite and emotional, universal and personal. It's also available on Amazon in paperback, so that's also a good thing. Laurel Leff: He tells of Jewish life before the war, and a brief period of Jewish life in Latvia during the Nazi occupation. Brief because most Jews were murdered in the Riga ghetto's liquidation in November, 1941, just a few months after the German occupation. Most importantly, he tells the story of the 100,000 souls who perished. Among them, his parents, and too many relatives and friends to name. As Mackenzie, my student, quoted the Latvian Yizkor book, which was published in 1971, "25 years passed since we ceased to die, but it took a long time before we began to live. We are so glad and grateful that Max Michelson, as part of his life in America, had the courage to tell his story and the generosity to share it with us today." Page 1 of 14 Laurel Leff: So, Max. And he just likes to be known as Max [inaudible 00:03:22]. Max Michelson: Good afternoon. You'll excuse me, but I'll be sitting down. Max Michelson: Bon appetit, for those who haven't finished eating. Yes, go right ahead. Having almost to death, it's very important for me. Eat. Eat. Max Michelson: Okay, dear friends, I'm here this morning to talk about the Holocaust and my own experiences during the war years. More than that, I've come to honor the dead and warn the living. On this occasion, I'm not your fellow American from Newton. I speak as one of the victims. It would be presumptuous for me to talk for all the six million, but I do think I may speak for the Latvian Jews, and more specifically, for the Riga Jewish community of which my family and I were long- time members. Max Michelson: Riga, the capital of Latvia, had a thriving Jewish community of more than 45,000. About 12% of the Riga population. Most perished in the Holocaust. Less than 1,000 of them survived. I knew many of Riga's Jews. My relatives, my friends and acquaintances, my fellow inmates of the ghetto and the camps. I am of them. My own survival is most implausible. More like a miracle. By all the laws of probability, I too was killed in Riga. Having survived, I have the obligation to bear witness to the crimes and barbarous inhumanity perpetrated against us. And so I'm here today to speak for the victims. I am the voice of the vanished community of Riga. Max Michelson: For us in Riga, the war started on June 22nd, 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union. By July 1, Riga was overrun by the Nazis, but persecution started even before the arrival of the German army. Overnight, we became the prey. We were hunted in the streets and killed. Dragged from our apartment, taken to police headquarters, to be mocked, raped, tortured and killed. Some of us were thrown into prison, a temporary way station, to being killed. The voluntary police and local thugs took the lead in our persecution. After the war, it became clear that the killings were authorized and encouraged by the SS. Max Michelson: At the time, it seemed all a local effort, sparked by the anti-Semitic hatred and greed for our possessions. And I should say, permission was given to killed, and the population responded. Not just in the general population, but a lot of the members responded by killing enthusiastically. Once the law goes out, the killing began afterwards. Max Michelson: I was 16 years old and had finished third year high school. Our family had recently moved to a suburb. Not known in the area, we were not touched during the first days of the occupation. I was anxious, restless and never stayed home during the day. Some days later, upon returning home late one afternoon, I found my mother gone. She had been taken, supposedly to work. Being 11 years younger, she volunteered to go in my 60 year old father's place, as he was not well at the time. I never saw my mother again. We heard that she was in Page 2 of 14 prison, together with some other Jewish women, and was later killed. Had I been home that day, I too would've been taken and killed. Max Michelson: Decrees of dehumanization and degradation controlled my life. I may not walk on the sidewalk. I may not ride the street cars. I may not take taxis or the horse- drawn rental carriages in Riga. I may not go the parks, to theaters, to museum. I must wear yellow star on my breast. No. Two yellow stars, one on my breast and one in the middle of the back. The yellow star on the breast was too easy to hide. You put the raincoat and walked like this. On the back, had to be sewn on. It had to be sewn on everywhere. Max Michelson: My food rations were only half as large as those for the general population. And by the way, I couldn't use the general food stores, there was special food stores for Jews, and the food wasn't always delivered. Deliberate starvation of the Jewish population started right at the beginning and it only got worse. I must shave my head. I may walk in the city streets only with a Gentile escort. The Gentile escort could be a young girl, a young boy, an old woman, it didn't matter. It had to be a Gentile escort, because of course Jews could not be trusted to find their ways alone on the street. Yeah, that's the way it is. And so on and so on. Max Michelson: Within six weeks of the occupation, we were forced to abandon our possessions in our apartments. We were herded into an overcrowded ghetto. Here, surrounded by barbed wire, we were guarded by armed SS troops. Not German, by the way, Latvian SS troops, who shot to kill if you so much dared approach the fence. Caged like rats, we were ready to be exterminated. Max Michelson: On two successive weekends, November 30th, that was I think a Saturday, and December 7th. That was the following Sunday. Not that Sunday, a week later Sunday. The ghetto was emptied. We were told that we would be relocated to the unspecified work camp farther east. 30,000 of us, men, women, children, were marched six miles to a nearby forested area, Rumbula. There, after being forced to strip, we were machine gunned and dumped into prepared mass graves. And I should say, the whole Nazi higher echelons, the SS leaders and so, were there to watch. The killers, by the way, were German SS troops. Max Michelson: During the evacuation, many people were killed in the Ghetto itself. Most of the dead were old people and young children, who had been unable to keep up with the marching columns, or who had been shot on the spot. And that first Sunday, shortly after the evacuation was over, I was [inaudible] to a burial detail on the old Jewish cemetery, which was in one corner of the ghetto. The dead were being brought to the cemetery and dumped on top of the old graves, while my group were digging a large grave in the frozen ground. Max Michelson: The most vivid memory of that burial detail was the site of a neatly dressed infant girl, certainly no older then 6 months, who was lying on top of one of the old graves.

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