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Posts Tagged ‘Train Near Magdeburg’

“A gigantic misunderstanding.” The Ghettos of Krakow and Tarnow.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2014|

~Matthew Rozell, a history teacher whose project reunited hundreds of Holocaust survivors with the American soldiers who liberated them, takes a backwards journey to the authentic sites of the Holocaust, retracing the path of the survivors who are now his friends.~


A year ago I took one of the most transformative journeys of my life, with 24 fellow educators, to study the Holocaust and the Jewish resistance to it, in Washington, DC, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. I kept an extensive diary and took tons of photographs. And contrary to many assumptions, it was a journey that led to profound understandings about life, not death.  For the next several days, I have decided to go back and retrace my steps and try to process what unfolded for me.

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July 12.

After a very intense day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, after people in our own tiny group found the names of their murdered families in the Book of Life, we had a debriefing session at the hotel. The consensus is that for one to simply have the will to live, in a place where life was not valued, is an act of defiance and resistance. For one person to care for another under such circumstances, where one is not even considered a person, is extraordinary.

People did these unspeakable acts to other people. But the “monster” myth is just that.  I suppose it is one way of coping with the unthinkable. Let the perpetrators off the hook in a sense, labeling them “monsters”, not humans capable of deeply evil deeds,  and move on. Don’t you think it kind of absolves them of something? They are not human, after all,  so what does one expect of them?

Others may choose not to think about  such things at all. I certainly do not blame them. But to me, to not think about it is to forget, and to forget is as good as saying that it did not happen. But you can’t just talk about the history, the chronology. To really try to understand, one has to know the stories of the individuals who were here. To make it real, and the same goes for all history.

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1.4 million people visit here every year. That too presents its own set of challenges.

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July 13.

We are back with our guide Gusia. She is taking us to the Krakow Ghetto area, which will include the Oscar Schindler factory, now a museum.

According to his autobiography, “The Pianist” director and child survivor Roman Polanski recalled as a young child, his initial feeling in the Krakow ghetto here was  that “if only one could explain to them that we had done nothing wrong, the Germans would realize that it all was a gigantic misunderstanding.”

If only.

Assembly point, memorial, Krakow Ghetto.

Assembly point, memorial, Krakow Ghetto.

 

Old Town, in the Jewish Quarter. Gusia.

Old Town, in the Jewish Quarter. Gusia.

 

Restored Jewish Cemetery. Remuh. Wall constructed with gravestones destroyed by the Nazis.

Restored Jewish Cemetery. Remuh. Wall constructed with gravestones destroyed by the Nazis.

Tempel Synagogue, interior. Restored. Used a stable by Germans. Krakow.

Tempel Synagogue, interior. Restored. Used a stable by Germans. Krakow.

 

Now I have a story to tell, and this is where it begins, in Krakow, in 1939.

An internet search led a manuscript collector to my site. A five page typewritten document, written on the stationary and letterhead of the Nazi camp commandant at Hilersleben following the liberation of the Farsleben train in April 1945, traces the autobiographical journey of the Jewish girl from Krakow and the horrors, and miracles, that befell her. And yes, we did identify positively the author, who was still alive when the dots were connected.

 

page-1-compactI begin the story of my sad experiences in this terrible war as follows:

The First of [September] 1939. The war broke out. It was a terrible day for all people of Poland. After several days of battle the first German troops occupied Cracow. It was a fatal moment in my life. I was eighteen years old.

Until this day I did not know the meaning of fear, I was never afraid. I was standing near the window in my own room and looking down, my face was pale and tears were flowing down on my cheeks. I felt that now is the beginning of a new, bad life.

Krakow was to be one of the only cities not destroyed by the Germans, as it would become the seat of their “General Government” for the administration of the Occupied Territories in the East. It was, of course, to be “Judenrein”.

Just the second day of the German occupation all buildings were covered with orders and instructions. Everything was forbidden, we did not know what to do. All Jews of Poland were obliged to give up their foreign money and gold. After several days all Jews were obliged to leave their nice lodgings and move in the ugliest rooms of the town. After two weeks took place registration from people to work from 16-60.

Every day the German soldiers took people from the street to clean the town. All Jews were obliged to wear signs. In December was a search of all Jewish dwellings. The SS men took gold, money, and silver. Every man and every woman were compelled to take off all their underclothing. They searched very exactly. In the meantime they took away the nice furniture and nice clothing. All the goods of Jewish  shops were taken away and carried to Germany.

The population was disarmed and by November, 1939, the intellectuals all arrested. From the USHMM:

“Like elsewhere in the Generalgouvernement, the German occupation authorities required Jews in Krakow city and the surrounding areas to report for forced labor (October 1939), form a Jewish Council (November 1939) identify themselves by means of a white armband with a blue Star of David to be worn on the outer clothing (December 1939), register their property (January 1940-March 1940), and to be concentrated in ghettos (September 1940-March 1941).”

Gina was sent to the nearby Tarnow Ghetto the following August:

In the meantime they took all the intellectual people such as physicians, lawyers, engineers and sent them to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Two weeks afterwards the families of these people received advice telling them about their fathers’, brothers’, and sisters’ deaths. Every day they took new people and sent away. Every day was a searching conducted in another house. We suffered and suffered without interruption.
We changed our dwellings. The winter approached. Now we had new sorrow. We had no wood, no coal. We were frozen the whole winter. We caught a cold very often.
1941
With the beginning of the year 1941 began the great tragedy of our nation. One day we heard a firing in the street. What happened? Nobody knew. Everyone was afraid to look through the window. After some hours i went down and the streets were full of blood. I went to search for my sister. Where is she? Perhaps dead. At last she returned home. I was happy she was alive. When she entered the room I couldn’t recognize her, she looked pale and full of fear. She couldn’t speak and did not want to describe what she had seen.
Every few days this story repeated itself.
On the 10 of June everybody from 12-60 was obliged to register at the working office. The German ordered that every one working with them should be allowed to remain at his place. The people were very irritated. The all streets were full of poor people hurrying to find work.
I was a teacher as I mentioned before. What could I do now? Where to look for work? What could I do with my mother and grandmother? They were not able to do anything. What I felt in this day was impossible to describe.
At last I found work in a factory. My luck was that my sister had found work, too, and we were able to help our family.

1942

A NEW AKTION
The night of the 10 of June. Nobody was sleeping in the whole town. The Jewish office registered the whole night under the control of the SS groups. They were obliged to make a list of people who were unable to work.
Five o’clock in the morning…. I was with my sister in the room. The mother and grand-mother were hidden in our attic. Suddenly we heard a knock at the door. At the doors were standing two SS men with revolvers in their hands.
The first asked “Why have you not answered at once?”
I couldn’t answer.
After a moment he asked “Where is your family?”
“Nobody is at home” I answered.
The SS man: “Where is your mother hidden? If you will not tell me at once I will shoot you.”
I repeated harshly “I don’t know.”
He got very angry and told me once more: “I will shoot you both at once.”
We had known their methods very well, and we were ready every minute.
He searched in our dwelling but he couldn’t find my mother. After several minutes they went away.
On this day perhaps 20 men visited our houses and every one of them wanted to take my mother but nobody could find her. On this day they killed in the streets 10,000 people and 15,000 were sent away to  Belzec. From this village nobody returned.

Belzec, Poland. Half a million people murdered on this site. Half a million.

Belzec, Poland. Half a million people murdered on this site. Half a million.

This action lasted 8 days with two interruptions. During the free-time the grave diggers were obliged to bury the dead people.

Martin Spett, who was also liberated with Gina by the Americans at Farsleben on April 13, 1945, was 14 and recalls:

We heard the columns of Jews under German, German escort at night. It was going constantly. They were passing our house because this was already on the outskirts of the city, the cemetery, and they were marching them to the woods behind the city. And as we found out later they they were all shot over there. During the day I looked out through the shingles. My father said I shouldn’t look but, anyway, I was a kid, I was curious. And the roof was overlooking the cemetery and wagons with bodies, dead bodies, were coming in. Groups, they were bringing in groups of Jewish people that had to dig ditches, and the bodies dumped in, and after those Jews that dug the ditches, they were shot also and pushed, by another group that came in after them, into those ditches, and lime was poured over, over the bodies, and the next group covered up those ditches and dug other ditches. They brought in [pause] they brought in [pause] pregnant women, and they didn’t use any bullets. They used bayonets [pause]. The screams of the mothers that their children, they, they tore the children out of their arms [pause]. And the screams of the children I still hear. (USHMM)

Gina continues:

Now the whole people were forced to move in one place, where they made a “ghetto”. After three months was a new action. In the meantime the SS men leaders killed everyday several persons. One of them couldn’t eat without shooting before. Before every meal he wanted to see blood.

SELECTION

On the 15 of September was a beginning of a new action. Every one of us received a sign on his work-card. There were two kinds of signs: 1) The first meant to live, 2) the second meant to die. I and my sister received signs to live. Our mother was hidden in a cellar.
On the 16 of September at 6 o’clock in the morning I was standing and waiting. I waited, for what? What could I expect? I was standing on a great square and the Nazi SS police started to make a selection of all old persons and children, putting them apart, whilst all young and valid persons were also put in a separate place.
Subsequently the children and old persons were shot before our eyes.
Now they took from the remaining young persons every tenth person standing in the turn and shot them too. I was lucky enough to be the eighth person and was thus saved from death from a pure  coincidence.
I had no news from my mother whom I had left hidden in the cellar of my house. I was anxious lest my mother should be brought on the square and shot. We had to wait standing on the square until 7 o’clock in the evening without getting any food, closely guarded by Nazi barbarian soldiers. At 7 o’clock in the evening they brought in mothers having small babies and shot all the babies in the presence of their mothers. At 9 o’clock in the evening they allowed us to go home, where I had a great joy to find my family alive. It was a miracle.
After these scenes had taken place all Jews had to leave their homes and go to new lodgings in the ghetto, where they had to be all concentrated. A barbed wire had to be put around the ghetto and no Jew was allowed to come out of this place. So our martyrdom continued: every day being sadder than the foregoing.
After two months of this ghetto life a new action took place, as a result of which 13 thousand people were murdered and 2 thousand people remained on in the ghetto. It was a miracle that the members of my family remained alive. After this took place, the German declared that no Jew would be allowed to remain alive, and I then decided to take up Aryan papers. One day in November I left my family with the purpose of finding work outside the ghetto with the idea of returning later to take them with me.

Gina as photogrpahed by her liberator George C. Gross, Sat. morning, April 14th, 1945. Farsleben, Germany.

Gina as photographed by her liberator George C. Gross, Sat. morning, April 14th, 1945. Farsleben, Germany.

Gina would survive, as would Martin, and I will continue her story as I visit the sites associated with her in the next post.

From the USHMM:

“The Germans decided to destroy the Tarnow ghetto in September 1943. The surviving 10,000 Jews were deported, 7,000 of them to Auschwitz and 3,000 to the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow. In late 1943, Tarnow was declared “free of Jews” (Judenrein). By the end of the war, the overwhelming majority of Tarnow Jews had been murdered by the Germans. Although some 700 Jews returned to the city after liberation, virtually all of them soon left to escape local antisemitism.”

Belzec, Poland. Half a million people murdered on this site.

Belzec, Poland. Half a million people murdered on this site.

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Theresienstadt- “Spa town”. The real Holocaust hoax.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2014| 1 Comment »

A year ago I took one of the most transformative journeys of my life, with 24 fellow educators, to study the Holocaust and the Jewish resistance to it, in Washington, DC, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. I kept an extensive diary and took tons of photographs. And contrary to many assumptions, it was a journey that led to profound understandings about life, not death.  For the next several days, I have decided to go back and retrace my steps and try to process what unfolded for me. Not weighty tomes, but maybe a picture and a note from the diary.

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July 10. Life goes on. But stop and wonder.

Now the tour continues to Terezin, or Theresienstadt. Forty miles north west of Prague and originally built in the late 18th century as a fortification and garrison town by Emperor Joseph II and named after his mother, Empress Maria Theresa. I will be at the site where the “Train Near Magdeburg” was destined to arrive-but never did, thanks to the US Army. But why there?

Terezin. Garrison town and later ghetto, and Small Fortress, later prison.

Terezin. Garrison town and later ghetto, and Small Fortress, later prison.

In the closing days of the war, as the Reich collapsed in the East, and began to be rolled up in the West, Theresienstadt was the destination of the three transports hastily evacuated from Bergen Belsen. As stated earlier, only one train made it there, but we have never heard of what happened to the occupants. It is known that as thousands of prisoners from other camps flooded into  Theresienstadt in the last month or so of the war, typhus and other epidemics broke out .

First we toured the Small Fortress, later the prison.

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Small Fortress in background.

Small Fortress in background.

 

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Inside the Small Fortress.

Inside the Small Fortress.

 

Inside the Small Fortress. That horrible sign again.

Inside the Small Fortress. That horrible sign again.

 

terezin gate

 

Inside the Small Fortress. The place is crumbling.

Inside the Small Fortress. The place is crumbling.

 

Inside the Small Fortress. Prison. No the two toned wall color is not on purpose. Evidence of recent floods. Note also cell doors.

Inside the Small Fortress. Prison. No, the two toned wall color is not on purpose. Evidence of recent floods. Note also cell doors.

 

Inside the Small Fortress. Gavrilo Princip, whose shots ushered in WW!, died here in Cell 1 in 1918.

Inside the Small Fortress. Gavrilo Princip, whose shots ushered in WWI, died here in Cell 1 in 1918.

 

Inside the Small Fortress. Barracks where many succumbed. Again note high water mark.

Inside the Small Fortress. Barracks where many succumbed. Again note high water mark.

 

Outside the Small Fortress.

Outside the Small Fortress.

And now, we move onto the former garrison town which became the ghetto.

Ghetto at Theresienstadt.

Ghetto at Theresienstadt.

From the USHMM:

“The Theresienstadt “camp-ghetto” existed for three and a half years, between November 24, 1941 and May 9, 1945. During its existence, Theresienstadt served three purposes:

1) First, Theresienstadt served as a transit camp for Czech Jews whom the Germans deported to killing centers, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps in German-occupied Poland, Belorussia, and the Baltic States.

2) Second, it was a ghetto-labor camp to which the SS deported and then incarcerated certain categories of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews, based on their age, disability as a result of past military service, or domestic celebrity in the arts and other cultural life. To mislead about or conceal the physical annihilation of the Jews deported from the Greater German Reich, the Nazi regime employed the general fiction, primarily inside Germany, that the deported Jews would be deployed at productive labor in the East. Since it seemed implausible that elderly Jews could be used for forced labor, the Nazis used Theresienstadt to hide the nature of the deportations.

3) Third, Theresienstadt served as a holding pen for Jews in the above-mentioned groups. It was expected that that poor conditions there would hasten the deaths of many deportees, until the SS and police could deport the survivors to killing centers in the East.”

Dutch Jews in the Theresienstadt

Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Europe were deported here between 1942 and 1945. Most were shipped East to their deaths, though many also died in the wretched conditions here, so crematoria were established.

And let’s not forget the famous “Red Cross” visit and propaganda show: “The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City”:

“Theresienstadt served an important propaganda function for the Germans. The publicly stated purpose for the deportation of the Jews from Germany was their “resettlement to the east,” where they would be compelled to perform forced labor. Since it seemed implausible that elderly Jews could be used for forced labor, the Nazis used the Theresienstadt ghetto to hide the nature of the deportations. In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a “spa town” where elderly German Jews could “retire” in safety. The deportations to Theresienstadt were, however, part of the Nazi strategy of deception. The ghetto was in reality a collection center for deportations to ghettos and killing centers in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe.

Ghetto at Theresienstadt.

Ghetto at Theresienstadt.

Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. The Germans intensified deportations from the ghetto shortly before the visit, and the ghetto itself was “beautified.” Gardens were planted, houses painted, and barracks renovated. The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October 1944.”

Smiling children during the propaganda visit. Most were sent on to their deaths afterwards. USHMM.

Smiling children during the propaganda visit. Most were sent on to their deaths afterwards. USHMM.

Fifteen thousand children passed through Theresienstadt. 90 percent were murdered.

 

Crematoria building and burials, memorial.

Crematoria building and burials, memorial.

 

On May 5th, the Fuhrer dead nearly a week, the Soviets approaching, the guards left. On may 8th, the last day of the War, the Red Army arrived.

We light candles. So we wind up our day, like all visits, with a group prayer for the dead and with solitary reflection for the living. We quietly make our way back to Prague, where life goes on.

People hurry about their business on the streets.

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But step lightly, lest your stride be interrupted, so that you must pause and look down. Then you may see the brass “stumble stone” embedded in the sidewalk with the engraving noting the former occupant of the dwelling here was deported to his/her death.

Prague. Stumble stone. Which is not stone at all, but will make you wonder.

Prague. Stumble stone. Which is not stone at all, but will make you wonder.

Life goes on. But stop and wonder.

What was, what is, and what might have been.

 

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“Belsen! I think they had been in Belsen.”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2014| 1 Comment »

A year ago I took one of the most transformative journeys of my life, with 24 fellow educators, to study the Holocaust and the Jewish resistance to it, in Washington, DC, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. I kept an extensive diary and took tons of photographs.  For the next several days, I have decided to go back and retrace my steps and try to process what unfolded for me. Not weighty tomes, but maybe a picture and a note from the diary.

Bergen Belsen on July 5, 2013.

Bergen Belsen on July 5, 2013.

“Belsen! I think they had been in Belsen.”

On July 5, 2013, we are on our way from the hotel in nearly Celle to this destination. Our first concentration camp of the tour.

Trying to remember the name of the concentration camp, the elderly gentleman exclaimed these words as he animated his story from the rocking chair across from me. I was in his daughter’s house on a brilliant July day, twelve summers before. It seems like a lifetime ago. But if I had not taken the time to go there and sit down with him, you would not be reading any of this.

People, mostly news media, get the story wrong all the time.  I had not invited the veteran to class because I had had his grandson. It was a series of coincidences that changed so many lives, but then again, I am sure there are no coincidences.

Is it a coincidence that I am making my first trip to Belsen on the day that he is being laid to rest in his hometown back in New York state? Or that by 8pm I will be traveling on the same spur of tracks toward Magdeburg, on which the Sherman light tank he was commanding sixty-eight springs ago came to the train with 2500 Jewish victims of the Holocaust onboard?

I was picking my young children up from daycare. I knew Tim, the other father there at the same time, picking up his young son. I had his older son in class at the time. Tim knew I liked to talk to World War II veterans, and he invited me to come over and speak to his father in law, a retired NYS Supreme Court justice, who was coming up to stay for the summer. So I took him up on it. What a great man, funny too. We conversed on tape for nearly two hours, and I was about to turn the camera off, and his daughter, Tim’s wife Elizabeth, spoke up:

Daughter: Did you mention the train at all? That was kind of interesting.
CW: No, I didn’t tell him about the train.
MR: What was that?
CW: Well, late in the war, again a nice, beautiful April day… we were shooting like crazy across the top of Germany and Major Benjamin of the 743rd was kind of out ahead scouting a little bit… he came back to the battalion and he pulled my tank and George Gross’s tank [fellow tank commander] out. He told us to go with him. So we did.
We came to a place where there was a long train of boxcars. … I can remember pulling up alongside the train of boxcars, Gross and I, and Major Benjamin. As it turned out, it was a train full of concentration camp victims, prisoners, who were being transported from one of their camps…Belsen!  I think they had been in Belsen, on their way to another camp…
So there they were. All of these people, men, women, children, jam-packed in those boxcars, I couldn’t believe my eyes. And there they were! So, now they knew they were free, they were liberated. That was a nice, nice thing. I was there for a while that afternoon. You know, you got to feed these people. Give them water. They are in bad shape. Major Benjamin took some pictures, and George Gross took some pictures too…

Bernd Horstmann, Custodian of the Book of Names, Matthew Rozell, History Teacher, July 5, 2013. Bergen Belsen, Evacuation transports exhibit.

Bernd Horstmann, Custodian of the Book of Names, Matthew Rozell, History Teacher, July 5, 2013. Bergen Belsen, Evacuation transports exhibit.

Twelve years later and here I am. I know some of the historians who work here-they have been to America to meet me- and I am going to see an exhibit that in fact incorporates some of the fruits of my labors. To date, we have reunited over 240 persons who were on that transport with the soldiers who liberated them. And I found the photographs that tell the story so well, photos that through the generosity of the soldiers who shared them with me, are now also in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, our national institution.

In brief context: 120,000 prisoners passed through Bergen Belsen, and not all of them Jewish. 52,000 died here, perhaps 30,000 of them were Jewish. Belsen actually began as a POW camp- 20,000 Russians died here in the winter of 1941-42. In 1943, Himmler (the head of the SS) ordered that an exchange camp be set up for Jews who might possess foreign certificates or visas to emigrate, perhaps to use to bargain for German families interned abroad. 14,000 people went through the exchange camp. In November, 1944, thousands of women, and some children, arrived from Auschwitz, to be “housed” near the exchange camp, including Anne Frank and her sister Margot. What they received, in their miserable condition, were 18 oversized old tents which promptly blew down during a winter storm shortly after their arrival. With the arrival also of brutal SS administrators and guards, conditions deteriorated rapidly as the winter of 1944-45 turned into spring.

The camp system began collapsing with the advance of the Red Army in the east and the British and Americans in the West. By the time the British arrived on April 15th at the camp gates, over 50,000 prisoners were suffering from extreme malnutrition, typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Nearly ten thousand corpses lay about as the crematorium had long since broken down. Anne and Margot were dead, as the first Yanks crossed the Rhine River at the end of March. Hundreds died on the day of liberation. A true scene of horror.

Shortly before the liberation, between April 6 and 9, 1945, 6700 men, women, and children from the exchange camp passed through the camp gates and marched several kilometers to the railhead that many had arrived at months or years earlier. Three train transports of cattle cars and shabby passenger cars were prepared and loaded. Some people were executed for attempting to steal sugar beets at the railhead .
The transports would be headed for the Theresienstadt concentration camp, which at the time was far enough from advancing Allied lines and indeed would prove to be the last camp liberated on the last day of the war (I will trace that route later in our journey). Only one train made it there. The other two were liberated, one by the Americans at Farsleben near Magdeburg, and the other by the Russians near Tröbitz.
The first train left Bergen-Belsen on 6 April 1945 and travelled for six days before coming to a stop near the village of Farsleben. It was this transport that the soldiers I interviewed came upon on Friday, April 13, 1945.

I promised no weighty tomes, but maybe it is too late. After an introduction to the history of the site, we  watch the silent movies shot by the British beginning the second day after the liberation. Perhaps you’ve seen the photos or the films.  If you see a photo of a soldier wearing a mask, maneuvering a bulldozer to push corpses into an open pit, that was Bergen Belsen. Just over a month later, the British commander ordered the lice infested, typhus ridden barracks put to the torch. So today, to some visitors, there is nothing here, just inviting walkways with interpretive signage and some markers. Woods, and open fields.

Matthew Rozell and the ruins at Belsen, 7-5-2013. Jerrilyn Miller photo.

Matthew Rozell and the ruins at Belsen, 7-5-2013. Jerrilyn Miller photo.

But on closer inspection, we see the outlines of the past in the ruins. We walk to barracks ten of the exchange camp. You can see the outline at the woodline. Some of the foundation stones are marked with the names of those who passed through them. We retrace the steps from the barracks to the latrine, now many meters away off a footpath in the enveloping woods. Nature reclaims. Out of the corner of my eye, down the long narrow strip mowed to infinity where a fenceline once ran, I see a large deer guide out of the woods, pause and look my way, and vanish just as soon as it appeared. Is it obscene to find in this place now a feeling of inner peace, to find beauty in the stillness of a grey afternoon? Maybe so.

DSC00490Back out to the camp. The solemn monuments marking the mass graves. 1000 Tote. One thousand dead. 2500 Tote. Two thousand five hundred dead. And on and on, elevated mass graves. On to the commemoration room.

Candles are lit, stones are placed, the prayers are recited in Hebrew and English, led by Pauline, the only other New Yorker on the trip with me. We are all moved.

Now I think of Carrol Walsh, the tank commander who led me to this story, the liberator who did not want to be called a hero, or even a liberator. His own memorial service is today, half a world away, but I am here in this place to remember him as well. It is altogether fitting and proper. And I am sure that cosmically, it is also something destined to be.

This evening we depart from Hannover to Berlin. It is pretty crazy and unsettling at the Friday evening platform. 27 people have to run for the train, as the track has changed, with hundreds of others. Our original seats are taken, so we have to find other due to a mixup. But we do not lose anyone, and as I settle in next to a kind stranger, made welcome, I notice our station stops along the way- Brunswick. Magdeburg.

This was not planned, either. We are roughly following the route of the train, and the 30th Infantry Division in 1945. What take us 35 minutes to cover, takes 6 nights and 7 days in April 1945.

We tripped the wires of the cosmos. Today was the culmination of something incredible I am still trying to figure it all out- but this trip is helping me to place in proper context the elements of the greatest crime in the history of the world. As we leave this place of obscene beauty and peace, I think of  the I think of  the survivor’s words:

Remember Me.

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~THE TRANSPORT TO LIFE~ 69 Years On.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 13, 2014| 1 Comment »

 

Cover of After Action Report for April 1945.

Cover of After Action Report for April 1945.

Today is the 69th anniversary of the liberation of the train near Magdeburg. How fitting it was/is falling at Passover time.

Emails and greetings are flying back and forth through the liberator/survivor network that we created.  Liberator Frank Towers always sends a message on this anniversary to the survivors.

From my one of my survivor friends:

Hello to all of you ‘my twins’ on our 69th birthday and to those who fought to give back our lives. Like the years before, there are no words enough to express our thanks to them.

How appropriate is this year for us who celebrate Seder to read, as an addition to the Hagaddah, Frank Towers’ beautiful greetings remembering OUR liberation from not just slavery but certain death.

Here is the opening of my new article. You can see the rest in the previous post.

Blessings to all on this reflective occasion.

 

 

~THE TRANSPORT TO LIFE~

With the end of the war in sight, a startling encounter takes place between Jewish victims of the Holocaust and American combat troops who have survived nine months of grueling combat across Northern France, Belgium, Holland and now Germany. In 2001, interviews conducted by a high school history teacher and his class paved the way for several joyful reunions between the survivors and their American soldier liberators over sixty years later.

 

The photograph  is striking.

Query the word “train” and Holocaust” in an image search and the results returned generally show victims being deported to killing centers.

This is the opposite.Matthew Rozell

It is a cool spring morning. In the background, down the hill, are two cattle cars. At the opening of the sliding doors on one of the cars we can see a figure sitting on the edge, perhaps too weak to climb out yet soaking up some energy from the warming April sun. In front of him, a wisp of smoke seems to rise from a small makeshift fire that others have gathered around.

This is an appropriate backdrop for the drama unfolding in the foreground. Trudging up the hill toward the photographer, now only a few steps away, are a mother and her young daughter. The mother has her hair wrapped in a scarf and is clutching the hand of the girl with her right hand. Her left hand is extended outward as if in greeting; her face is turning into a half smile in a mixture of astonishment and enveloping joy, as if she is on the cusp of accepting the belief that she and her daughter have just been saved.

The little girl is shooting a sideways glance away from the camera. Her expression is one of distress- she looks terrified. On this morning in Germany in 1945, she may very well be responding to the two Sherman tanks that are now clanking up to the train, behind the photographer who is in the jeep with the white star.

Following the mother and daughter up the hill towards the soldiers are two other women. One welcomes the tanks with outstretched arms and a wide grin as she moves up the hill. The other follows behind her. She appears to be crying.

It is Friday, the 13th of April, 1945. Led by their major scouting in a jeep, Tanks 12 and 13 of the 743rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army have just liberated a train transport with thousands of sick and emaciated victims of the Holocaust. Major Clarence L. Benjamin snaps a photograph, which will be inserted into his official report back to headquarters.

But what have they stumbled upon? Where have these people come from?

And what do the soldiers do now?

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Prism.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

PRISM SPR. 2014 I’ve had an article published in the Spring 2014 edition of PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators, an “internationally renowned, annual, peer-reviewed journal” published by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education of Yeshiva University of New York, reaching readers in 35 countries and in all 50 American states. It is important to me to set the record straight and allow others the opportunity to read how this  history unfolded.

“In preserving and investigating the history, in interviewing liberators and Holocaust survivors, and in working with museums and memorial sites, Mr. Rozell and his students are also creating new knowledge, the highest form of academic achievement. Most importantly, in studying about the Holocaust, he and his students are also helping to rescue the evidence that can help stem the rising and dangerous tide of denial before it is too late.”

You can read the full edition here. The article appears on page 94. Obviously space did not allow for the full story to be told but that will come out in the book, so if it appears that a supporter, survivor or liberator friend has been left out, that is not the  real case. As always, thanks for your support, and thanks to editor Dr. Karen Shawn for recognizing the significance and the potential.

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A story of finding inner peace sixty years beyond the events of World War II.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2013|

A Conversation with Rona Arato, author of THE LAST TRAIN: A HOLOCAUST STORY

By Sharon Salluzzo

In The Last Train, Rona Arato deftly tells her husband Paul’s remembrances of his life between April 1944 and November 1945. Paul was five years old when he, his ten-year-old brother, Oscar, and their mother (his father had already been taken away to a work camp) were taken from their home and forced into a ghetto, put in boxcars and taken to a farm in Austria, and finally to Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp. In April 1945, Paul and his family were again put in boxcars. American soldiers, who were in combat at the time, liberated the train near Farsleben, Germany. The physical and psychological horrors endured by Paul make a very strong impact. Rona lets the events carry the book.

But the story doesn’t end there. In September 2009, Hudson Falls, NY history teacher, Matt Rozell, held a Holocaust Symposium and a reunion for the train survivors and the soldiers who liberated the train. They spoke with students, and with one another. It was a time of great emotion, constantly moving between sorrow and joy. I am so glad that Rona included Paul’s remarks to the students in her book. I was fortunate to be in the audience at the symposium, and I will never forget listening to Paul as he spoke. I grew up having seen a photograph that Paul waited sixty years to see. My father was one of the U.S. soldiers who liberated the train. I sat next to Rona at dinner that last night of the reunion. She said she wanted to write Paul’s story. Four years later it has now been published. I am delighted to share a conversation I recently had with her.

Sharon: What kind of preparation did you have to do in order to write THE LAST TRAIN?

Rona: I often tell people that when I married Paul, I married the Holocaust. While it was at the symposium at Hudson Falls High School that I became determined to write Paul’s story, I have been accumulating information and background since our marriage. To get a better understanding of his background, I interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoa Visual History Foundation between 1994 and 1998. Paul had applied for family reparations after the War, and I read the outlines. Occasionally, he would tell me some of his experiences. In the late 1970s or early 80s, he and I visited Karcag, Hungary, Paul’s hometown. It was still under Communist control and very much the way it was when Paul lived there. The roads were mud. Some of the people were still pumping their water from the community well. I was able to get a feeling for his life and what they had been through. Writing this book was an emotional journey but also a fascinating journey. I heard the testimony of other train survivors during the symposium. One of them, Leslie Meisels, had worked with Paul for years before they discovered they were both on that train. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? Of course I was doing research through books and online websites right up to publication. In fact, I had to call my editor and say “Stop the presses!” as I discovered a key fact. We had thought that these Hungarian Jews were rounded up and sent off by Nazi SS guards. Paul and I learned that it was actually Hungarian Gendarmes under SS troops who were sent by Adolf Eichmann. Paul said to me, “No wonder I could understand them. They were speaking Hungarian.” The end papers of the book are a copy of the transport page from the Bergen Belsen Memorial in Germany. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum checked facts for me. And my editor was wonderful in telling me where I needed to fill in background information.

Sharon: Paul has his sixth birthday during this time. How do you get into the mind of a six-year-old boy who is held in a Nazi Concentration Camp?

Rona: While Paul’s childhood in Hungary and mine in the United States were very different, the timeframe was the same. It was easy for me to go back to what it was like growing up in the 1940s. I have a good imagination and can close my eyes and remember what it felt like to be that age. In addition, my grandchildren are young, and I am able to observe them and their reactions to situations.

Sharon: There are a number of photographs, including Paul’s parents as a young married couple, and Paul’s nursery school picture. How were these preserved?

Rona: Their house in Hungary was bombed, so there were no pictures left there after the war. Some photos were sent to Paul’s uncle in Cleveland. After the war, almost every town made a Yizkor book – Yizkor is the Hebrew word for memorial. These books chronicle the history of the town, the Jews who lived there before the war and list those who did not return. Paul’s nursery school picture comes from the Karcag book. When Paul and I visited Karcag, we photographed the water pump and the Synagogue. Some of the photos in the book were taken by the soldiers on the days the train and the camp were liberated. Did you know that the photograph of the woman and her daughter emerging from the death train is now on a list of the 40 most iconic Jewish pictures?

Sharon: That is amazing, Rona, because until a few years ago, it was known to only the soldiers who liberated the train. My Dad kept it in his top dresser drawer. When he told his story to (history teacher) Matt Rozell, Matt put it on his website. The Internet has been a powerful tool in spreading this story.

moment-of-liberation1.jpg

Rona: That was how we learned about the work Matt Rozell was doing. My son read an article on the Internet about the train and sent it to me. I gave it to Paul who recognized it as the train he had been on. We contacted Matt who said he was organizing a symposium at Hudson Falls High School. It was there that Paul and your Dad (Carrol Walsh) met. I included that wonderful picture of Paul and your Dad embracing right after Paul said, “Give me a hug. You saved my life!”

Sharon: Not only is it a great picture of Paul and Dad, but it captures the feeling of all the survivors who had spent a lifetime searching for the soldiers who saved them.

Sharon: How did you approach the actual writing and selection of words and language?

Rona: I wrote the story in English, not Hungarian, but I wrote in a way they might have spoken. I tried to use the vernacular of the time. We don’t have a record of their exact words but we do know how they would have spoken, and what they were feeling at the time. When I have included Hungarian or Yiddish words, I have included explanations for them. Writers always need to listen to how people speak.

Sharon: THE LAST TRAIN recounts historical events for which you have created dialogue between characters. How would you classify this book?

Rona: I would call it creative nonfiction, or fictionalized nonfiction. The events that happened to Paul are all true. Occasionally, I needed a bridge between incidents or to show the passage of time. When I created a scene, I discussed it with Paul for authenticity. For example, I included a scene in which Paul sights the return of the storks, and has a conversation with his mother. I needed something to create a sense of time and place, and what they were feeling in the absence of Paul’s father. When Paul told me there were storks that returned every spring, I knew I had found the bridge I needed. My intention was to recreate the history. To bring the reader along, the writer needs to show the drama of the events.

Sharon: There are many heart-stopping scenes: when Paul is confronted, nose-to-snout with the ferocious German Shepherd dogs; when he is separated from his mother and brother at the train station; when he sneaks through Bergen Belsen to visit his uncle; and, of course, when the SS guard shoots the boy standing next to Paul.

Rona: I was not going to include that last event. I thought it was too strong for my audience. I was telling my editor about it, and he insisted that I include it. He said it was important to tell exactly what happened.

Sharon: What did Paul think of the way you portray him?

Rona: When he first read it he said, “You are making me look like a bratty little kid.” I responded, “Well, you were!” But what I actually meant by that is he acted like a typical 5 or 6 year-old in that he was terrified. But his own distinctive personality also shows through where he was both feisty and stubborn. These were important traits to have.

Sharon: Why did you include the reunion in the book?

Rona: The reunion was approximately 60 years after their liberation. It was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing shared experiences of my life. The powerful feelings shared by the soldiers and survivors radiated to their families and to the students at the high school. They were reunited because a high school history teacher interviewed a soldier and the information was put on his website. For the survivors and soldiers to share this experience with the students is so important. These students will share what they heard with their children. They are the ones who will pass along what happened. It was a life changing experience for everyone involved.

Sharon: What has surprised you most about the publication of THE LAST TRAIN?

Rona: That the audience goes beyond middle school and high school. Their parents and other adults are reading the book and responding.

Sharon: What would you like to see children and adults take away from this book?

Rona: This is a universal story of survival. I want my readers to see how this family and their extended family took care of each other and watched over each other. Paul’s mother was suffering with typhus and her young sons literally propped her up at roll call so the soldiers would not see how ill she was. Oscar became a father figure for Paul. He told Paul to stand up straight and not to cry. In the camps you don’t break down. I want my readers to be able to say, “Thank God I have the right to show my emotions. It’s okay to be a kid.”

Sharon: Thank you for speaking with me today. Paul’s family returned to Hungary, but life changed tremendously. He eventually came to Canada. Is there another book here?

Rona: There very well could be! It was not easy getting out of Communist Hungary.

The Last Train offers so much in terms of discussion points. It makes a huge impact in its 142 pages. It would be a great introduction to a study of the Holocaust for high school students. It is also accessible for 10 year-year-olds. Adults will truly understand the importance of both parts of this story. Of course there are the general topics of World War II and the Holocaust but there are also topics of bullying, physical and psychological fears, strength and courage, mother-child relationship, sibling relationship, family and friendship, defining a hero, the impact of a photograph, and hope. It is a story of captivity and deliverance; a story of new-found friendships, deep respect and a sense of inner peace discovered sixty years beyond the events of World War II.

WATCH PAUL ARATO SPEAK TO STUDENTS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Rona’s presentation on THE LAST TRAIN includes a Power Point display including original photographs. It is suitable for children nine and up as well as adults. For more information about Rona Arato, her books and her presentations, visit www.ronaarato.com.

To book Rona for a visit, go to www.childrenslit.com/bookingservice/arato-rona

If, after reading The Last Train, you would like more information about the train to Magdeburg and the Hudson Falls High School symposium, please go to Matt Rozell’s site: https://teachinghistorymatters.com/. By the way, train survivors are still contacting Matt from all around the world. Frank Towers, the lieutenant who oversaw the liberation, has made it his life’s work to locate any remaining survivors. To date, about 350 have been found.

found at http://www.clcd.com/features/th_Rona_Arato_Final.php

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Keep tossing pebbles.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2013|

Francis Curry, WWII Medal of Honor, with students.

Francis Curry, WWII Medal of Honor, with students.

FOUR years ago today the most incredible week concluded with former soldiers and the Holocaust survivors they saved watching this newscast together in cocktail lounge of the Georgian Resort in Lake George along with teachers and students from Hudson Falls High School. Thank you Tara, Mary, Lisa, Rene, and all the staff. And to ABC World News for recognizing the importance of the occasion, and to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Bergen Belsen Memorial for their attendance and support.

A teacher’s job is to toss pebbles. Several of the participants are gone now, but the ripples here became huge, and no one will forget what they meant, where they came from, or what they have led to.

Watch a story about how a teacher fellow from the Museum reunited Jewish prisoners with U.S. Army soldiers who liberated them from a train near Magdeburg, Germany, on April 13, 1945.

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Stamps and Miracles.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2013|

I met Leslie Meisels exactly four years ago today, when he and  Ariela Rojek and Paul Arato drove all the way down from Toronto, Canada to meet their actual liberators.

Leslie is one of the most gracious men I have ever met; I am honored to have him as one of my friends and am proud to be in on what he calls the latest miracle of his life.

I wrote to a reporter/columnist in Toronto, Canada, several months back to comment on a story that she had written, and she then had the opportunity to interview several of my survivor friends in the community who had been liberated on the Train Near Magdeburg. She struck up a friendship with Leslie, and this ebook resulted.

A sample:

When I first reached Leslie Meisels on the phone one afternoon in late April and asked for an interview, he told me to hold on a minute — he needed to get his day planner.

I thought he was joking.

Leslie is 86. What could he possibly be doing to fill up a day planner?

A lot, it turns out.

He has a wife, two daughters, four grandchildren. He is an active member of the North York Philatelic Society and a committee member of Circle of Care, an organization that provides services for Holocaust survivors. And he is a regular speaker with the Holocaust Education Centre’s survivor speakers bureau. This spring there were weeks when he addressed four different groups of students about his experience during World War II.

This was one of those weeks. He squeezed me in. I wanted to talk to him about the Holocaust and, more precisely, about his liberation from the Nazi murderers by a dozen surprised American soldiers who found Leslie and about 2,500 other captives near the end of the war, packed in cattle cars on a German train.

An email from an American teacher had tipped me off to the fact that a number of Toronto Holocaust survivors had recently been reunited with their liberators.

Leslie was one of them.

Of course, you can’t talk about liberation without talking first about enslavement. So, sitting on the couch of the neat, spacious penthouse condominium he shares with his wife, Eva, in Thornhill, Leslie started proudly with his family history in eastern Hungary.

Then came his carefree childhood. Then the introduction of anti-Semitic laws, the ghetto, the trains, the months of slave labour and the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where more than 70,000 prisoners — most of them Jews — were killed.

Our interview lasted more than three hours, fueled by many cups of coffee and servings of fresh cheese palacsintas (crêpes) whipped up by Eva.

I noticed Leslie’s hands while we spoke. They are enormous — each finger twice as thick as mine, the palms like dinner plates. They are a working man’s hands, without any of the dirt. Everything about Leslie is immaculate — his neatly clipped and cleaned fingernails, his ironed pants and pressed dress shirt with a silver pen poking from its breast pocket, his freshly shaven face. His stories of being treated like a rabid dog were cast in relief by the careful pride he took in his appearance. There is an Old World elegance about him.

But the thing that struck me most about Leslie was his cheeky humour. His brown eyes narrowed and sparkled repeatedly as he took a “side step” to tell me about the girl he was “necking” with while a slave labourer or a refugee. Despite the horrors he endured, or perhaps because of them, Leslie maintained his champagne spirit.

Near the end of the interview, a question bubbled in my mind: what did you take with you? The Nazis had invaded Hungary in 1944. They ordered all the Jews in Leslie’s and other towns to first leave their homes, and then to leave town altogether on a train we now know was headed towards slavery or murder. What would you take if you could carry only a small bag or pillowcase to hold your belongings?

“Underwear,” Leslie responded, “and my stamp collection.”

I wrote that down and moved on. There were a lot of overpowering details in Leslie’s stories, and I still needed to hear about the reunion. But the stamps snagged my attention. There was a boyish innocence about them.

What happened to those stamps, I asked him over the phone a couple days later.

He responded: “I still have them. My mother sewed them into the lining of my jacket.”

Imagine that! Most Jews had all their clothing and belongings stripped away upon entering the concentration camps. You can see their boot brushes, ceramic pots and dolls piled up behind glass cases in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland. That Leslie managed to keep his jacket was surprising enough. But that fragile pieces of paper survived the horrendous conditions — well,that seemed miraculous.

I drove back to their condominium for a third interview, this one in Leslie and Eva’s little office. I asked to see some of those stamps.

So Leslie pulled out his master list — a two-page typewritten list of all the stamp albums he has. There are dozens and dozens. He found one with his early Hungarian stamps and pulled it down from the shelf. Inside he’d arranged thousands of stamps in neat rows.

When I expressed surprise at the number of stamps he had, he smiled and opened a drawer in his desk.

“A crazy stamp collector saves all the stamps he comes across,” he said, pulling out a Tupperware container brimming with stamps. “When there are many, many, many, he bundles them up . . . and stores them away. I have millions of stamps.”

Leslie’s wife calls herself a “stamp widow.” She says he spends hours with his stamps a day. He loves them still, like he did when he started his collection 78 years ago. He loves the precision of arranging them. He loves the challenge of collecting a full set of stamps. He loves their colours and their stories. Every stamp, he says, depicts a story of a place, a historic moment or figure, a cause. “You can learn about the world through stamps,” he said.

As we flipped through his collection and he began to tell me the rest of his story, I could see snatches of it reflected in his stamps.

It is the tale not just of an idyllic childhood followed by the horrors of the Holocaust, but also that of a man who lived under Communism, escaped, lived for two years in a refugee camp, arrived in North America with nothing and then built up his life for a second time. Just as every stamp embodies a public story, a bit of history, Leslie’s stamps also tell the story of his life, its joys and deep sorrows, its disasters and its miracles.

************************************************

He is giving his 25th lecture on the Holocaust since April.

“Put yourself in my shoes,” he says to the Cardinal Carter Catholic High School students. “I think you are between 16 and 18, right? You can feel what I felt when I experienced those horrors.”

“They have to know,” Leslie says. “Otherwise, it will be forgotten and could be repeated.”

He talks for just over an hour, pausing only twice for a sip of water.

The stories pour out of him — of the deaf village elder who was strung up by his wrists to a cattle car, of the SS guards with their dogs who laughed at the sight of him naked with his grandmother and mother, of the hunger. He stirs in life lessons — like how his woodworking knowledge saved his life in Bergen-Belsen. “You are the same age as I was,” he says. “Never think you are studying for your teachers or your parents. Whatever you are putting in your head, you never know how it will serve you in life.”

But Leslie’s descriptions are muted at times. He clutters his sentences with clauses and chooses math over graphic detail to describe some horrors. The train crowding, for instance, affords each person a “square foot.” He mentions the bucket but doesn’t fill in the details of how that meant people were forced to defecate in their pants. He is old-school; talk like that seems degrading. Or perhaps the pungent details are too dangerous for him, scratching away the protective layers on his memories.

A girl in a powder-blue sweatshirt in the second-last row appears to have fallen asleep.

Is he getting through to them? Like most Holocaust survivors,

Leslie won’t be around to recount these stories for much longer. That inescapable truth adds an urgency to his message. Who then will bear witness?

Holocaust survivor Leslie Meisels, left, signs a program for Hudson Falls senior Taylor Bump during Wednesday's "Remembering the Holocaust, Repairing the World" event. Meisels, who currently lives in Toronto, stressed the importance of relaying his experience to young people "so they remember and fight against discrimination, hatred and injustice." Jason McKibben Glens Falls Post Star

Holocaust survivor Leslie Meisels, left, signs a program for Hudson Falls senior Taylor Bump during Wednesday’s “Remembering the Holocaust, Repairing the World” event. Meisels, who currently lives in Toronto, stressed the importance of relaying his experience to young people “so they remember and fight against discrimination, hatred and injustice.”
Jason McKibben Glens Falls Post Star

He finishes his talk and asks for questions. The girl in the powder- blue sweatshirt from the back asks two. The second one is: “If you could go back, would you change any decisions you made?” She was listening, just with her eyes closed. Holocaust educator Ruth Ekstein says she often sees that — “the most fidgety kids you want to strangle, they are absorbing the most.” The content is so painful, it forces people to scratch and shuffle, or to close their eyes.

“Never allow this to happen to someone in the future, if you see an injustice,” Leslie tells the group. “Never just look at each other as equals. Treat each other as equals.”

************************************************

The last miracle

In 2001, Matt Rozell went to the home of one of his students in Hudson Falls, N.Y. Rozell is a high school history teacher there. He regularly assigned his Grade 10 students to interview the veterans in their family about World War II as a way to bring history alive.

That summer, he decided he would do the interviewing himself.

The veteran was retired New York State Supreme Court Justice Carrol Walsh Jr.

After two hours, when the interview was ending, Walsh’s daughter elbowed him and said, “Did you mention the train at all?”

“What?” Walsh said.

“The train.”

So Rozell asked to hear about this train, whatever it was.

Walsh told him about the beautiful, sunny day in April 1945, when after 10 months of fighting their way through France, Belgium,and Holland, and into Germany, his tank and his buddy George Gross’s tank were pulled out of the battalion to check out an abandoned train. An army scout had come across some Finnish prisoners of war in bad condition who reported they had escaped ,the train and that it was packed with prisoners.

Rozell posted the moving interview, as well as Gross’s astonishing photos from that day, on the school’s oral history website, where it sat quietly for four years.

That is, until a grandmother from Australia contacted him to ,say she had been a little girl on that train. The next month he got another email, and another, and another.

In September 2007, Rozell hosted the first reunion of Walsh and three survivors from that train. An Associated Press reporter wrote a story about the day-long event which was published around the world.

Paul Arato’s son Daniel read the story on the Internet. Arato was the 5-year-old boy who witnessed the birthday “present” of a bullet to the head in the Bergen-Belsen roll call. He was also a ,Hungarian Jew who grew up not far from Leslie. He, too, escaped Hungary in 1956 and resettled in Canada. An industrial designer, he was a work associate of Leslie. At the end of a business meeting, the topic of the Holocaust somehow came up. They discovered, to their shock, that they had both been on that train from Bergen-

Belsen. Paul, in turn, told Leslie about the Hudson Falls reunion.

Two years later, they both ventured down to Hudson Falls for a second reunion — a three-day symposium that brought together nine survivors and seven soldiers, including two of their liberators

— Frank Towers and Carrol Walsh.

On the drive down, Leslie was very excited. The initial meeting, over dinner, was spectacular.

“No words can explain the feeling of shaking hands, hugging, laughing and crying with the people who gave me back my life on April 13,” he says. “I never ever imagined that would happen.”

He calls the veterans “angels of my life.” They, in turn, said they were just doing their job.

Leslie and Walsh became close friends. They talked regularly on the phone. They spent some time together in Florida, before Walsh died last winter at the age of 91.

Leslie calls that friendship the last miracle of his life.

Leslie’s 17-year-old granddaughter, Jessica, visited Auschwitz last spring while participating in the two-week educational trip March of the Living. She left behind a small, hand-written sign that said: “I am marching in honour of my grandparents Eva and Leslie Meisels. As well as a soldier, Carrol Walsh.”

******************************************

Leslie's StampsLeslie’s Stamps: A Saga of the Holocaust and Escape to Freedom

He had an idyllic childhood in a small Hungarian town where, it seemed, there was no animosity between the Christian majority and Jews like him. But with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, everything changed for Leslie Meisels, who ended up in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his family. Through his wartime ordeals, Leslie carried his stamp collection, started when he was 8, in the lining of his jacket. In Leslie’s Stamps: A Saga of the Holocaust and Escape to Freedom, award-winning Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter tells the dramatic story of Leslie’s life through his stamps. It is a tale of love, courage and the power of the human spirit.

Leslie’s Stamps: A Saga of the Holocaust and Escape to Freedom is available for $2.99 at http://starstore.ca/collections/star-dispatches-ereads/products/leslies-stamps and itunes.com/stardispatches.

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Now it’s personal-Page 599-The Guns at Last Light.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 27, 2013|

guns at last lightI’m recovering from a foot injury and it has given me time to finish Rick Atkinson’s latest release, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 in his Liberation Trilogy. With school around the corner, I am excited to be teaching a couple dozen seniors once again about World War II, and in the springtime, the Holocaust.

I’m happy with Mr. Atkinson’s coverage of the heroics of the 30th Infantry Division-he even made a research pilgrimage to Hill 314 in Mortain, where elements of the 30th held off against a Hitler-ordered panzer counterattack for 6 days, saving the Allied breakout in Normandy in August 1944. 

If you are a follower of this site, you will know that that division is dear to my heart, not because of any blood relations who fought in it, but because they named me an honorary member of their Veterans of World War II Association for my work in the classroom and in uncovering and reuniting the story of the liberation of the concentration camp train at Farsleben, Germany on Friday, April 13, 1945.

So you can imagine my excitement when I ran across this passage last evening from page 599 of Rick’s book. He writes about some of the chaos that unfolded as POWs, slave laborers, and concentration camps were liberated in Germany:

“Instead, starvation, revenge, indiscipline, and chaos often created what Allied officers called a “liberation complex.” SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces ] had presumed that refugees “would be tractable, grateful, and powerless after their domination for from two to five years as the objects of German slave policies.” As an Army assessment concluded, “They were none of these things.… Newly liberated persons looted, robbed, murdered, and in some cases destroyed their own shelter.” Freed laborers plundered houses in the Ruhr, burning furniture for cook fires and discarding slave rags to dress in business suits, pajamas, and evening clothes ransacked from German wardrobes. Ravenous ex-prisoners licked flour off the floor of a Farsleben bakery. In Osnabrück, “rampageous” Russian slaves died after swilling V-2 rocket fuel discovered in a storage yard. Others smashed wine barrels and liquor bottles in a Hanover cellar, drinking so heavily from a sloshing, six-inch-deep pool of alcohol on the floor that several collapsed in a stupor and drowned before U.S. MPs could close the entrance.”

So I did a double take: Ravenous ex-prisoners licked flour off the floor of a Farsleben bakery. I checked his notes-page 801, sure enough, 30th Division G-2 report. I know I have read this before in my research of primary source documentation, originally sent to me by Frank Towers, one of the liberators.  Here it is.

30th Division Medical Detachment Diary & Log

Of course, the backstory surrounding the document above is the story that I have to tell- the soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division and the attached 743rd Tank Battalion, the Holocaust survivors whom they stumbled upon, liberated, and were reunited with 62 years later at our high school and subsequent events.  I’ll probably share the Benjamin photo with Mr. Atkinson on his FB page. 

Anyway, I recommend the book to any of my followers interested in the history of World War II in the European theater, and am really pumped to teach some very excited and motivated students this year, including the grandson of the tank commander who was sent to investigate the train.

This is how you “do” history, and how the teaching of history can sometimes take on a life of its own. So cool to be a part of it, and to read something in a best seller and be able to grasp the incredible backstory that awaits to be told.

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Remember Me.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2013| 3 Comments »

Bergen Belsen on July 5, 2013.

Bergen Belsen on July 5, 2013.

I am in Europe on a study tour of the Holocaust with 25 fellow educators of the United States. I am typing this as the morning breaks in the heart of Berlin, Germany. I had hoped to be able to get on-line and write more frequently but that is just not possible. There is too much to do while we are here visiting these authentic sites. But it is time to stop and reflect on some of the things that I have seen and experienced.

Our itinerary includes stops in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. The power of visiting these sites after studying them so long can not be overstated.

Bergen-Belsen. For me, visiting this place after studying it in depth in relation to the exchange camps that were here was a powerful experience. Readers of the blog know of the stories of many of the survivors of Bergen Belsen who were in the exchange camp and their liberation on April 13, 1945 at Farsleben. Two days ago I got the back story of the exhibition panels you see here, that feature the photographs and the work that our project has uncovered.

In brief context: 120,000 prisoners passed through Bergen Belsen, and not all of them Jewish. 52,000 died here, perhaps 30,000 of them were Jewish. Belsen actually began as a POW camp- 20,000 Russians died here in the winter of 1941-42. In 1943, Himmler (the head of the SS) ordered that an exchange camp be set up for Jews who might possess foreign certificates or visas to emigrate, perhaps to use to bargain for German families interned abroad. 14,000 people went through the exchange camp. In November, 1944, thousands of women, and some children, including the Frank sisters, arrived from Auschwitz, to be “housed” near the exchange camp. What they received, in their miserable condition, were 18 oversized old tents which promptly blew down during a winter storm shortly after their arrival. With the arrival also of brutal SS administrators and guards, conditions deteriorated rapidly as the winter of 1944-45 turned into spring. The camp system began collapsing with the advance of the Red Army in the east and the British and Americans in the West. By the time the British arrived on April 15th at the camp gates, over 50,000 prisoners were suffering from extreme malnutrition, typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Nearly ten thousand corpses lay about as the crematorium had long since broken down. Hundreds died on the day of liberation.

I'm here. Finally. Jerrilyn Miller photo.

I’m here. Finally. Jerrilyn Miller photo.

So here I am. The bus guides swiftly through the beautiful German countryside. A night in the picturesque town of Celle the evening before has us well rested. The fields and forests bid us peaceful feelings as we move with our rendezvous with the past. It feels as if as we move we are stepping back in time.

Memorial site, Bergen Belsen.

Memorial site, Bergen Belsen.

We see the road signs for the memorial and I think many of us on the bus draw a collective breath as it turns into the parking lot of Gedenkstatte (Memorial) Bergen Belsen. It is surrounded by trees. We are the only persons, besides staff, who are here. As we disembark off the bus, Tif ties an Israeli flag around her neck so it drapes like a cape. It is quiet. But the birds are singing.

Now I remember that in 2007 I was beginning my first communications with Christian and Bernd, then staff members at the Memorial. They were excited about the opening of their new exhibition hall and education center. Two years later they would fly over, with the historian Thomas, to take part in our 2009 reunion. So now I am here for the first time to see them again.

We meet the staff, who are still preparing for us. I’m listed on the program at lunchtime for a talk about the exchange camps and how the project is incorporated into the exhibition. Bernd enters the room and greets me warmly.

After an introduction to the history of the site, we  watch the silent movies shot by the British beginning the second day after the liberation. Perhaps you’ve seen the photos or the films. Belsen, in 1945, was the last stop, the terminus of the Holocaust, as one historian has described it. It was a scene of horror. If you see a photo of a soldier wearing a mask, maneuvering a bulldozer to push corpses into an open pit, that was Bergen Belsen. Just over a month later, the British commander ordered the lice infested, typhus ridden barracks put to the torch.
So now we are on the grounds of the former camp. As we exit the exhibition memorial hall, we are confronted with a long narrow corridor of concrete that we must pass through, reinforcing the fact that we are moving from present to past. And now we are here.DSC00432
To some visitors, there is nothing here, just inviting walkways with interpretive signage and some markers. Woods, and open fields. But on closer inspection, we see the outlines of the past in the ruins. We walk to barracks ten of the exchange camp. You can see the outline at the woodline. Some of the foundation stones are marked with the names of those who passed through them. We retrace the steps from the barracks to the latrine, now many meters away off a footpath in the enveloping woods. Nature reclaims. Out of the corner of my eye, down the long narrow strip mowed to infinity where a fenceline once ran, I see a large deer guide out of the woods, pause and look my way, and vanish just as soon as it appeared. Is it obscene to find in this place now a feeling of inner peace, to find beauty in the stillness of a grey afternoon? Maybe so. But I feel it.
Back inside, Bernd is talking to our group at the Exhibit where the evacuation transports from the exchange camps are outlined with the photographs of Major Benjamin and Dr. Gross. He explains that between April 6 and 9th, 6700 men, women and children were evacuated on three transports. The “lucky” train was liberated by the Americans on April 13. Friday. One train did make it to the destination of Theresienstadt, where the occupants were liberated the last day of the war. On April 23rd, the third train was liberated by the Red Army at Trobitz, across the Elbe.

Bernd Horstmann, Custodian of the Book of Names, Matthew Rozell, History Teacher, July 5, 2013. Bergen Belsen, Evacuation transports exhibit.

Bernd Horstmann, Custodian of the Book of Names, Matthew Rozell, History Teacher, July 5, 2013. Bergen Belsen, Evacuation transports exhibit.

Bernd explains that as the exhibition was being planned, his colleague Christian discovered the photographs that I had been given by the Dr. Gross to place on my website. It altered their vision of the exhibition and he described their excitement as the corroborated the testimony of the soldiers with the photographs. Yes, this is the Farsleben transport. Yes, this is the transport that the Americans called “The Train Near Magdeburg”. My fellow teachers ask questions, and learn more about the exchange camp. They are putting faces to the victims when they see the pictures. I am happy to share this experience with them. I am here, and I am seeing it for the first time with them. They are part of this experience, at our first major stop on the trip. Later, on the bus, some are excited to see the Benjamin photo in the official Bergen Belsen guidebook. In my being caught up in the presence of the moment, I neglected to purchase one for myself, but there it is. I was not even aware of it.
Back out to the camp. The solemn monuments marking the mass graves. 1000 Tote. One thousand DSC00490dead. 2500 Tote. Two thousand five hundred dead. And on and on, elevated mass graves. On to the commemoration room. Candles are lit, stones are placed, the prayers are recited in Hebrew and English, led by Pauline, the only other New Yorker on the trip with me. We are all moved. I think of Carrol Walsh, the tank commander who led me to this story, the liberator who did not want to be called a hero, or even a liberator. His own memorial service is today, half a world away, but I am here in this place to remember him as well. It is altogether fitting and proper. And perhaps it is also something destined to be.

This evening we depart from Hannover to Berlin. It is pretty crazy and unsettling at the Friday evening platform. 27 people have to run for the train, as the track has changed, with hundreds of others. Our original seats are taken, so we have to find other due to a mixup. But we do not lose anyone, and as I settle in next to a kind stranger, made welcome, I notice our station stops along the way- Brunswick. Magdeburg. We are roughly following the route of the train, and the 30th Infantry Division in 1945. What take us 35 minutes to cover, takes 6 nights and 7 days in April 1945.
Today was also something destined to be, the culmination of something incredible I am still trying to figure it all out- but this trip is helping me to place in proper context the elements of the greatest crime in the history of the world. As we leave this place of obscene beauty and peace, I think of  the I think of  the survivor’s words:

Remember Me.

Remember. Bergen Belsen, July 5, 2013.

Remember. Bergen Belsen, July 5, 2013.

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