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."

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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

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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. There was no blood, no obvious sign of injury. She looked just a broken, discarded doll. That memory of the crime of... Really, the crime at the

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time was a reality and it didn't penetrate, but over the years, it stays with me. That. You know, from a human, civilized point of view, such crime is unbelievable and yet it was. Repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. It wasn't just a single crime. 27,000 people at the time were murdered in Rumbula over two weekends. And that crime was repeated and repeated.

Max Michelson: Five months after the Nazis entered Riga, our entire community had been wiped out. In fact, the destruction was so precipitous that we didn't know really what happened until we were dead. Only a small work camp of men remained. The so-called Little Ghetto, housed by some 4,500 people. Mostly men. There were about 500 women, just about 20 and 30 children who had somehow hidden or were somehow saved.

Max Michelson: I should say that my own survival was a chance. My father had found a apartment in the eastern half of the ghetto. The western was emptied the first weekend. So that weekend I wasn't touched. By the second weekend, there had been a small work camp set up for men only and by that time, I knew enough to drag my father into the small work camp. My father were in the work camp. We had escaped initial evacuation of the ghetto because by chance our room was in eastern half of the ghetto, not effected by the first weekend.

Max Michelson: That Sunday, after the evacuation was over, we were able to cross over into the so-called Little Ghetto, the work camp. Many husbands and fathers chose to remain with their families, when others fled to the relative, temporary safety of the little ghetto. As my mother was no longer with us, leaving behind was not an issue.

Max Michelson: Unlike Jews in western Europe, in Latvia we had no support from the general community. A few Jews were hidden by their Gentile friends and acquaintances and even Latvians who were willing to help were denounced to the Gestapo by their neighbors. One exception was a case of a woman, [Freda] Michelson, not a relative, who had miraculous managed to escape at the Rumbula massacre site. She hid under a pile of discarded shoes and at night she was able to slip out. When she approached her former friends for help, Freda was repeatedly rebuffed and turned away. She was eventually sheltered and saved by a group of devout Seventh Day Adventists. Some of which didn't even know that she was Jewish.

Max Michelson: Freda was one of two or three who actually survived the massacre site, Rumbula. In notable heroism in saving Jewish lives was shown by one Jānis Lipke. He did not turn away any Jew who came to his house seeking help. With his why Johana and two friends, Lipke managed to hide and save as many as 60 Jews. Unfortunately, righteous Gentile were the exception to the general indifference and outright hostility we encountered among our non-Jewish neighbors.

Max Michelson: I should say also, we lived in an area of corruption. And while I knew of Jānis Lipke, I'd heard about Jānis and I knew even where he was, at the time, it never

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occurred to me that anybody would save a Jew without being paid for it. And I did not attempt to go to his place because I didn't have any money, nothing to... Listen, you let me talk, I'll talk all afternoon. So we have to go on, I'm sorry.

Max Michelson: Our living conditions had been poor in the large ghetto. Now, the overcrowding got worse. Together with eight other men, we shared an apartment consisting of one small room and a tiny kitchen. You entered the kitchen and there was a [inaudible 00:17:07]. It was a working class area and a working class building and there were eight such apartments. One room, a tiny kitchen room and at night we put mattresses all over the floor, side by side. Still, what was to come, our circumstances were almost luxurious. We had our own mattress, we were on our own. In the concentration camps, three of us shared a single straw pallet. We could only dream of such extravagance as we had in this small ghetto. Here we were not subject to constant surveillance by our jailers, and enjoyed a modicum of privacy, even in the crowded conditions.

Max Michelson: Life in the little ghetto was a numbing routine. Day in, day out, cold, shine, rain, snows, freeze, sleet, we trudged back to work in the city, and back to the ghetto. Always encountered by Gentile because after all, we couldn't know where we were going. By the way, I have some pictures of that. Rather than showing in between, I'll collect and we'll show them all at the end.

Max Michelson: Our jobs included janitorial work, maintenance tasks. We moved the looted into apartments being prepared for our German occupiers. The few surviving Jewish women, our mothers, wives, daughters and sisters, became cleaning women. Jewish artisans worked at their various crafts. Tailors, shoemakers, glove makers, et cetera. Good jobs were indoors. Especially if food could be found nearby, or clothing or boots could be stolen and traded for food later on. Taking anything back into the ghetto, however, was hazardous. The ghetto guards would check the returning columns periodically and anyone who was caught with food or any other item that they considered contraband would be killed on the spot.

Max Michelson: There was one anecdote, and that was later on we had some German women living in part of the ghetto and a German soldier on her work job had given her a sandwich for her children. She was caught at the gate and executed in front of her children.

Max Michelson: My father became depressed. He must have realized that my mother was dead. At the time actually she wasn't dead, but she was killed later. But we never talked about it. Unable to face the daily trek into town, he found work inside the ghetto. On Bloody Tuesday, that was the day after the evacuation of the second half of the ghetto, the Latvian SS units combed the now empty ghetto for hideouts. For people who were hiding and those found were shot on the spot or again, taken to a nearby Bikernieki forest, which is in a slightly different area than the Rumbula forest, but in the same general direction, and killed there. And the little ghetto was emptied that day, and everybody who stayed in the ghetto that day was also taken away to Bikernieki and killed there.

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Max Michelson: When I returned that evening, the ghetto was empty and my father was not in our room, as he had been the previous days. He did not come back that evening, nor any of the days follows. And slowly I began to understand what had happened. I did not grieve. I was numb. I had seen people killed, I had buried many of the killed in the large ghetto during the burials [inaudible 00:21:40]. It was obvious what lay in store for all of us. My parents had disappeared. Nobody saw or reported them killed. There was no burial, there was no closure. At first I didn't even admit to myself that they had been killed. Slowly the overwhelming evidence of the wholesale murders convinced me that they too were dead. But only years later after liberation did I say Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead for them.

Max Michelson: The daily routine of the little ghetto was frequently interrupted by beatings, searches, selections and killings. Jews were outside the law. The penalty for any offense, real or imagined, was death. Death remained a constant presence throughout my years in the camps. It hovered over us, striking capriciously, out of the blue. The possession of a loaf of bread, a bank note, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, having the wrong facial expression, anything at all, became a pretext for killing us. In fact, no reason was even needed. A step out of line could provoke a murderous attack. I tried to avoid being noticed. Avoid eye contact, try to make myself invisible. At work, I worked purposely, carrying some tool. A hammer, a screwdriver, a wrench, just to give the impression that I was on some legitimate errand.

Max Michelson: Two years later, after the little ghetto was also closed, we were transferred to Kaiserwald, the concentration camp, built in Riga in 1943. Now we lost our names and became numbers. Then, in 1944, as Riga was about to fall to the advancing Russian Red Army, we were taken to Stutthof, a large concentration camp near Danzig, in what is now Poland. Unlike Auschwitz, Stutthof did not have large scale gas chambers or crematoria. Nonetheless, the death toll from malnutrition and disease was staggering. Concentration were notorious for the pervasive violence and brutality. The starvation diet, the cramped barracks, the narrow bunks that made sleeping at night, where the interminable role calls, mornings and evenings, were deliberately made to result in maximum and discomfort.

Max Michelson: All that, by the way, was a minimum of a food. You got dark water, which they called soup. There was a rotten piece of cabbage if you were lucky. And a quarter of a loaf of bread. Standing at attention for hours and hours, we were counted, recounted and counted again. And the count was never matched and they kept counting and counting. It was terrible. Everything was intended to make our existence unendurable. The Nazis encouraged brutality, rewarding the most violent among the criminal inmates with promotion to kapo, headman sort of group of prisoners, or other camp perks. It would be hard to imagine a more cruel and sadistic bunch of misfits.

Max Michelson: In Stutthof, luck was again with me. After just four weeks in that hell, 500 of us, part of the remnant of the Jewish community were sent to a small slave labor

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camp in Magdeburg, which was part of the Buchenwald satellite system. We worked in ammunition factories, 12 hours a day, alternating weekly between day shift and night shift and kept on the starvation diet. The Nazis were determined to work us to death. And again, I was just maybe a month or so away from the end when we were liberated eventually.

Max Michelson: I worked side by side with a German master. After a month of being together for the long 12 hour shifts, day or night, we did not develop any personal relationship. When I made a mistake, he became irritated, but unlike some of the other masters, he never hit me. On the other hand, beyond instructing me about my assignment, he never spoke with me. He did not ask anything about me. He had nothing to say to me. I found my master's attitude strange and disturbing, and I resented being treated as a non-person. In fact, I was a number. I was not a name, I was not a person. You lose your name, you no longer ate the same.

Max Michelson: During lunch, when I received my usual clouded, dirty water, called soup, he unwrapped a very neatly packed small sandwich and ate it without ever throwing me a crumb. He didn't wear a Nazi insignia, and may not even be a Nazi party member. As far as I was concerned, he was not human. Just an out- and-out Nazi bastard. In the Spring of 1945, as the war was drawing to a close, the factories stopped working and we all, Germans and Jews alike, awaited for the end of the war. One day, we awoke to find our guards gone and the gate open. Together with three friends, and some others. I was in a group of four with three friends, we immediately ran out of the camp, went into downtown Magdeburg, which is all bombed out and climbed over a pile of debris and into the basement of a bombed out building. So we escaped.

Max Michelson: There were more adventures, we were caught again. Anyway, we ended up sitting for four weeks in the no man's land. The Americans came to the river, we had been sent over to report on the other side, but hid anyway, because the guard didn't go with us, and we sat in the garage of a private house for four weeks, waiting until the Russians, the Red Army came after finishing Berlin. And I was liberated on the day after the V-E Day, on May 9th, 1945.

Max Michelson: Totally emaciated and very sick, I spent three months in Soviet hospitals to regain my strength and after escaping to Berlin, I ended up in the American zone of occupation. By the way, I escaped, I was liberated by the Soviets, I spent three months in various Soviet's hospital, and when it came to be repatriated to Riga, I escaped from the Soviets to Berlin, and so on ended up in the... Yeah, I had no love lost for the Soviets either. [inaudible] So I ended up in the American zone of occupation. I was able to contact my uncle in New York, who brought me to New York City in January 1947. And in this blessed country I was able to start a new life, finish my education, marry and raise a family. That is the short version of my history. Thank you.

Max Michelson: Well, the question is, what personal quality did I possess to actually talk about it and so on. The talking about, I find that my survival didn't make any sense in the

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realistic way. I feel that I have the obligation... You can get this started if you want. I have the obligation to tell the story. This makes some sense for my survival At least I survived for a purpose. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense. The otherwise, I don't know, for me at least, in the camps it was a reality. This is a reality and you have to deal with it. You can't complain, you can't argue. There's nothing to argue about. The reality is that they tried to kill you and you tried to survive.

Max Michelson: Any other questions? Oh, yes?

Speaker 3: Were you able to reconnect with anyone after the war-

Speaker 4: Speak very loudly.

Speaker 3: Were you able to reconnect after the war with anyone from your-

Max Michelson: Was I able to reconnect after the war. The answer, yes, to the extent that there were people alive to reconnect with. I reconnected quite easily. It was really not a problem. But I really, in thinking about it, at the time it was interesting that I... When you lose your name, you become a nonentity. And even though at work in the German satellite camp, one of my friends who worked as an electrician sabotaged the elevator. He crossed wires, the elevator went. Nothing big, but they couldn't raise from first to second floors. It was a freight elevator.

Max Michelson: Our Jewish camp leader gave him a new number. And you wouldn't believe it, they couldn't find him. He was not the number, obviously he was not the same person. It's incredible. Incredible. Okay. Just a few pictures to illustrate the talk. Riga is here, Latvia, the three Baltic countries. From Riga concentration camp. In fact, my parents came from the western part of [inaudible 00:32:55]. A [inaudible] which was a German colonized in the 13th century and had a strong German influence. My family spoke German here in Latvia. My mother came from Vilnius, lived in [inaudible 00:33:15]. It was an arranged marriage. Anyway.

Max Michelson: Then when we were evacuated from Riga they evacuated by ship, which was another nightmare to Gdansk, and then later on to Magdeburg where the camp was. Next one, can you? Oh, that's just the timing, let's keep going. One more. These are my parents in 1939, '38. '39. Okay, go ahead. That's my family, 1930. That's me. My sister died in 1934 of meningitis. That's my grandmother who was the matriarch of that family. This is the Michelson side of the family. My mother, my father, my uncle Arthur, in Germany was married to my Aunt [Thia] and she's my aunt. Her husband married... And my cousin. By chance, he had been born in Melbourne in Australia, and was able to get British citizenship and spent the war years in...

Max Michelson: Anyway, that's too much, sorry. Uncle, he was murdered in Riga. My aunt Clara, she was a Latvian citizen living in Paris and was murdered at Auschwitz. Interesting enough, she happened to be in Paris also under the German

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occupation. British citizen, they didn't touch her. She spent the war years as a housekeeper. She [inaudible 00:35:05], Latvian citizen, got murdered, deported. Anyway. Let's go on.

Max Michelson: That's the Riga synagogue, the Gogol Synagogue in Riga before the war. In July 5th, 1941, university students from a fraternity, [Latonia 00:35:32], which was a particularly anti-Semitic fraternity, arrived here. There were refugees from Lithuania as at the time in the thing. They locked them, gasoline on the door and burnt the thing down.

Max Michelson: Next.

Max Michelson: That's what it looks like today. Actually, I took this picture in 1995 when I visited. After that, it become independent.

Max Michelson: Next picture.

Max Michelson: That's the ghetto. We lived in the eastern part of the ghetto. This is where our apartment was. Then they had the work camp. The work camp was in this area and I dragged my father from here into... At that time, my father really was already quite depressed. As I said, I had the sense that the work camp had at the moment, at least, a better sense of survival and managed to be there.

Max Michelson: Next thing.

Max Michelson: This is a picture of the Riga ghetto. These were from the outside, from the Gentile side. With a sign in Latvian and German that anyone approaches the fence from either side will be killed. They'll be shot. This is a picture of one of the houses, the guards, after the evacuation. The evacuation to the murder site was so precipitous when the German Jews who were later brought in to live in parts of the ghetto, found unfinished food on the plates on the table.

Max Michelson: Next.

Max Michelson: This is another view. At the time, this is already when one side was the German Reich Jewish ghetto and the Latvian side was here for just the men's ghetto and there was a main street. Go ahead.

Max Michelson: Oh, this is interesting. This is a work column of Jewish workers in Riga and there's a German soldier with a bike who was the escort to tell them where to go. That was coming either to or from work.

Max Michelson: Go ahead. That's what the ghetto looks like today. Except for the barbed wire fence, it's very little difference. There are a few new buildings. Back here, you can see this was a typical building of the ghetto area. Very impoverished area of Riga.

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Max Michelson: Go ahead. Yeah, that's a better view. This is what the ghetto looked like. One more. Oh, and this is a building where we lived in the ghetto. There were four apartments. This is the main room here, the kitchen and doorway, and another kitchen, another main room. Four on each floor, eight apartment all together. I think we lived... No, we lived in the back. This is from the street side.

Max Michelson: Go ahead. This is the site of the Rumbula as it appeared in 1997. At the time, under the Soviets, it was not admissible that the Jews were killed. The fascist victims, it says in Latvian, Russian and Yiddish. For the fascist victims. They didn't admit that they were Jews. This was sort of the wrong thing to say under the Soviets.

Max Michelson: Go ahead. These are the mass graves that were there.

Max Michelson: Go ahead. Then in 202, Germany paid for a rather elaborate monument, with more of descriptions and menorah and so on.

Max Michelson: Go ahead. That's it. Okay, more questions. Yes?

Speaker 5: How did you feel when you returned to Riga for the first time after the war? It was 1995?

Max Michelson: Question is how did I feel after I visited Riga? I visited in 1993 the first time after Latvia became independent again. I have to tell you, first of all, I was not about to visit Riga under the Soviets. Having been a Soviet citizen before that, I didn't take any chances. But in Riga... Riga was, for me at the time, was a very familiar place. Very little had changed there. A few new buildings. There were new outskirts built, but the center of Riga was what I remembered before. Even the doors had not been painted. The only problem was, the people weren't there.

Max Michelson: Rather, I wasn't comfortable in Riga. I visited two more times. I went three times altogether. Once with my wife to sort of introduce her to the background, and then with each of my sons. And they weren't bad, but I was quite uncomfortable. You know, you go through the streets, "Oh, my cousin lived here, and my uncle lived there," kind of thing. Nobody was there. There were two, three people that they knew, but most of the people who were there at the time were people who had escaped to the Soviet Union.

Max Michelson: Any more questions? Yes?

Speaker 6: Right now we're really seeing an increase in these anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, anti-immigrant sentiments, especially in Europe and the United States. I'd just be curious on your opinion of that.

Max Michelson: Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, deja vu. It's more of the same. During the Holocaust, they didn't want the Jews here, now there is another catastrophe going on, they don't want the Muslims here. It's unconscionable. I think I read

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somewhere that the US had admitted 2,000 plus Syrian refugees. I think it's a disgrace. The fact, yes, we have to carefully vet the people, that we don't want to admit terrorists, because there are terrorists among them, but the great majority are just trying to save their lives. And as such, it's... Well, let me not go there, because then I'll get into the whole immigration policy is broken. And it is terribly broken and I hope something will be done at some point.

Max Michelson: You know, the family, these are Brazilians, four children are American citizens and the parents live in fear of being deported. And the man works, she works, I mean, they're not terrorists, they're nothing, it's just... But you know, the history of the US has been that way all along. From before the Holocaust. "We are here. Now let's close the gates."

Speaker 7: Max, can you talk about how you understood and understand now, the enthusiasm of your Latvian neighbors for murdering Jews? What was the context [crosstalk 00:43:37].

Max Michelson: The question was how do I understand the enthusiasm of Latvian neighbors for killing-

Speaker 7: What was the pre-history that made them-

Max Michelson: The immediate history for was, we were occupied by the Soviets for a year, and among Jewish socialist and communist circles, the Soviets were welcomed. Not by the bourgeois Jews who had just lost all of what they had, but by the... And the myth perpetrated by the Nazis and by their Latvian collaborators was the Soviets were all Jews, and they took it out on the Latvians. The head of the NKVD, the Russian KGB at the time, was in fact a Jew, but so were a lot of Latvians. Latvian communists have themselves a very long history of working for Lenin and so on.

Max Michelson: Yeah, but the myth perpetrated was all the Jews were guilty, and now we can take revenge. The fact is basically, in any society, when the civilized veneer comes off, you can do whatever you want without... They do. Does that answer your question? Yeah.

Max Michelson: Oh?

Speaker 8: Hi, I was wondering if Latvia as a country, as a government, as a people, have acknowledged their complicity in this, and like the German people always teach the new generation about the horrors of what they have done, does that-

Max Michelson: The question is have the Latvians acknowledged their role during the Holocaust? The answer is basically no. I have to tell, Germany is essentially the only country in Europe that has acknowledged, made peace with themselves, so to say. "This is what we did, it was terrible, and we try." In Latvia, is not. They celebrate the Latvian legionnaire days. They sort of quasi-comment, but it's not. They have

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not. They're no different. France was terrible. The Vichy government, interestingly enough, they were still fighting the Dreyfus affair. The army felt humiliated and know they could take revenge. That was Jewish policy in Vichy.

Max Michelson: The difference was, there were more righteous Gentile of people who helped in France than in Latvia. Latvia, you can count them on one hand. Yes?

Speaker 7: Could you talk a little bit, Max, about your process of deciding that you wanted to speak about this and write about your experiences? When did that happen and was there a precipitating event?

Max Michelson: Well, when I came out of the Holocaust, I had almost blinders on. Get an education. For five years I did manual labor and manual labor is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, except as a life's vocation, it was not my choice, so get an education and secondly, start a family and build a family. Within six months, I was in college, when I got to US. Within a year and a half, I was married and we went from there. It took about 25, 30, 35 years before I really sort of had established myself and at that time I decided it's time to start speaking. I was very, very nervous. I spoke at the local synagogue. I dragged my wife along for support.

Max Michelson: So anyway, but having started, I don't refuse anyone who wants me to talk. I don't go sort of selling, pushing it with anyone, and I have to tell you, I've spoken in big groups, small groups, interviews, about 400 times over the years. Then as I made notes for speaking, the notes got more and more elaborate and eventually, adding the family history, became my book. It just grew, so to say, it was not a one decision, "Now, I'll talk." It grew. A part of it was the Six Day War in Israel. At the time, it was a very anxious time, it was always a worry of a repeat of the Holocaust.

Max Michelson: That gave me the sort of a push to participate more in the Jewish community, my wife and I were quite active in the Framingham Jewish community and so on. But also, always was asked to talk, I'm here. Yes?

Speaker 9: When you moved to America, did you meet many other Holocaust survivors?

Max Michelson: Did I meet many other Holocaust survivors when I came to America? Basically, not really. Part of it was there was a very limited number of survivors from Riga who I kept in touch with, maybe a handful, 10 or something like that. Most of the survivors were from Poland and I now know more people in the various organizations that participate, but at the time I did not and I didn't go searching them out, really. As I say, I was busy, work and family, that was it.

Speaker 9: What kind of welcome did you get from Americans when you came here?

Max Michelson: What kind of welcome? "Interesting," I get from Americans when I came to New York City. "Oh, this is very interesting. Some day you must talk to me about it."

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And in fact, I had a friend at the time, when we were together at this party or something, I said, "When would you want me to come?" I got a kick from my friend, said, "That was not an invitation." No, I think it worked both ways. For us, the survivors, it was still to raw to talk about, and for the general population, they didn't want to hear it. It took, for me, as I say, 25, 30 years before I really started to talk.

Speaker 10: Did you have any spiritual practices or ways that you walked through the days of your life? Values, commitments, [inaudible 00:51:19], hope? How does one make being able to survive an experience like this?

Max Michelson: The question is how did I survive? Did I have a spiritual experience? I had a tremendous amount of hope. I was sure that if I survived, a decent life was waiting for me. That was clear. The question whether I did or didn't survive was not the question. I didn't know. Basically, for me, is you live one day at a time. You get up in the morning and try to avoid getting killed that day or whatever, and just keep on going that way. There's an immediacy, an immediacy and reality that you have to deal with. Where do I hide? Where do I go? And the answers are by no means clear. Is this better here or better there? Well, they're both traps. Which trap is better, who knows?

Max Michelson: From my point of view, it's a total preoccupation with trying survive the moment, and there's no time for metaphysical thoughts or things. Well, the part of it, I do have to say, I do not have faith that God will interfere or anything. As far as I am concerned, God wasn't there. I don't ask why or where He was or why He wasn't there. The fact is, He wasn't there. And if He had been there, and had been involved, I would say, "That God I don't like." But for me, at least, I can excuse Him, He was absent, for whatever reason. He was absent.

Max Michelson: Yes?

Speaker 11: Thank you for speaking today. For many of us, this is a very unique opportunity to hear from someone who's lived through this. I just wonder, after all your experiences and after your many years of reflection, do you have any general observations to share about humanity? Capacities for good, evil? I don't know, you must-

Max Michelson: Do I have general observations of humanity? You know, we came out, we said, "Never again," and the fact is that's not true. It happens all over. Rwanda, you know? I really must say I don't have much faith in humanity. If the police is there at the corner, it works. But the moment they turn away and say, "You can do what you want," it falls apart. I'm sorry.

Speaker 12: Yeah, I just had a question about the days leading up to-

Max Michelson: I'm sorry, I can't...

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Laurel Leff: Louder, honey.

Speaker 12: I'm sorry. So the days leading up to when you were exiting the camp and the guards left and the gates were opening, were you aware of what was happening in the war? Did you know that it was-

Max Michelson: The question I think, if I reword it, is was I aware of what was happening during the war in the world? In general, yes. In Riga, when we were in the ghetto and working in the city, we had some access to radios. The BBC was a good source that we tried to hear. In the camps, the access was limited, but you can sort of see when the Germans had victories, every time retreating in Russia, we knew the geography. After Stalingrad, we knew the thing was over. The war was over, Germany had lost. Maybe nobody else knew, we knew this was clear. Whether we would survive or not, that was another question. That we clearly didn't know. You try, you hope. But we kind of knew. We knew not all the details, but we knew basically what was going on.

Laurel Leff: All right, one more and then we'll have to conclude.

Speaker 13: Did you ever have a positive interaction with a Nazi soldier?

Max Michelson: A positive interaction with a Nazi soldier. First of all, I should say, not with, if at all, with a German soldier. Separate. Not all the Germans were Nazis, even so at the time that was our point of view. But the fact is they were not all Nazi. There were few interactions here, there. They became discussions. We knew, "Oh, so and so." It was something nice to talk about. I have to say that from the German point of view, there was always some ideolog in the unit, and God forbid any of the soldiers should be nice to a Jew. They immediately would be shipping to the Eastern front. The Eastern front, Russia, was really the... That was the hell, and they all knew it. And to some extent, even the Nazi killers did so because that was the job that kept them from going to the Eastern front. Okay, thank you very much.

Laurel Leff: That was amazing, Max. So next I want to-

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