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Vienna 1938. A young Jew is humiliated by being forced to vandalise Jewish property. A local Nazi Party official supervises. “I had learned from my parents [who were German Nationalist supporters] that one could have antisemitic opinions without this interfering in one’s personal relations with individual Jews. There may appear to be a vestige of tolerance in this attitude, but it is really just this confusion which I blame for the fact that I later contrived to dedicate body and soul to an inhuman political system, without this giving me doubts about my own individual decency. In preaching that all the misery of the nations was due to the Jews or that the Jewish spirit was seditious and Jewish blood was corrupting, I was not compelled to think of you or old Herr Lewy or Rosel Cohn: I thought only of the bogy-man, ‘The Jew’. And when I heard that the Jews were being driven from their professions and homes and imprisoned in ghettos, the points switched automatically in my mind to steer me round the thought that such a fate could also overtake you or old Lewy. It was merely the Jew who was being persecuted and ‘made harmless’.” MELITA MASCHMANN, HEAD OF THE LEAGUE OF GERMAN GIRLS SECTION FOR 14–18-YEAR-OLDS IN THE HITLER YOUTH 96
Witnesses to genocide From the day Germany occupied Poland, violence, brutality and cruelty were the rule. The devastation inflicted on Poland by the Nazis was enormous and its consequences continue to be felt today. Moreover, the Poles were forced to witness the Holocaust directly. Some responded by collaborating with the Nazis, for instance by denouncing fugitive Jews or turning over families they had been paid to hide. In contrast, thousands of Poles put themselves in grave danger trying to help Jewish friends and neighbours, risking not only death, but also the lives of their families. Before the war, Polish-Jewish relations were complicated. Jews suffered discrimination, and relations between the groups were often characterised by mutual mistrust and enmity.Yet during the war even convinced antisemites sometimes helped Jews. They may have done so for religious reasons, or because they had been neighbours. The Polish national resistance organised a group (Zegota), whose only task was to save Jews. The struggle against the Nazi enemy sometimes even enabled the groups to work together. Few still realise that apart from Jews and “Gypsies”, no group suffered more at the hands of the Nazis than the Poles. Many surviving Polish Jews (about 300,000 of some 3 million) returned home, where they were often met by coldness and outright hostility. Pogroms and individual attacks caused many to flee again.Today, many Poles are taking a renewed interest in their nation’s Jewish past, including abandoned prayer houses and cemeteries. But the Jews are gone. I thought of Campo dei Fiori In Warsaw by the sky-carousel one clear spring evening to the strains of a carnival tune. The bright melody drowned the salvos from the ghetto wall and couples were flying High in the blue sky. At times wind from the burning would drift dark kites along and riders on the carousel caught petals in mid-air. That same hot wind blew open the skirts of the girls and the crowds were laughing on the beautiful Warsaw Sunday. Someone will read a moral that the people of Rome and Warsaw haggle, laugh, make love as they pass by martyrs’ pyres. Someone else will read of the passing of things human, of the oblivion born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only of the loneliness of the dying. FROM CAMPO DEI FIORI BY CZESLAW MILOSZ, 1943 97
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In 1997, the former Swedish Prime M
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STéPHANE BRuCHfELD AND PAuL A. LEV
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Table of contents 6 foreword 7 Chil
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Children as guinea pigs
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“I intend to deal with the Jewish
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ment were realised in Europe and th
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1919 1933 16 Sept. Adolf Hitler joi
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Anne frank Anne Frank was born in F
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In 1926, the state of Bavaria passe
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The handicapped and “asocials”
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Persecution Although German Jews nu
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International reactions When Hitler
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The November pogrom On the morning
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The ghettos are formed During the M
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Life in the ghetto The first ghetto
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to the toilet. (…) They die durin
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Death in the streets Death was ever
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1940 Jan. First trials to gas
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The deportation “to the East”,
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At the Umschlagplatz, people someti
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Separations On 12 July 1942, Hertha
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An expert on “the Gypsy nui
Page 47 and 48: 1943 18 Jan. The first rebellion in
Page 49 and 50: “Buses arrive in Hadamar several
Page 51 and 52: The Einsatzgruppen “Operation Bar
Page 53 and 54: Sweden and the Holocaust At the beg
Page 55 and 56: “Fundamentally, our ability and o
Page 57 and 58: The “new Germany” as seen from
Page 59 and 60: Reactions to the November pogrom Th
Page 61 and 62: “Business as usual” - everyday
Page 63 and 64: “Do we not even now remain silent
Page 65 and 66: “One day, these heinous crimes wi
Page 67 and 68: Sweden’s Foreign Office fights g
Page 69 and 70: The White Buses and other res
Page 71 and 72: What does the Holocaust mean for Sw
Page 73 and 74: from bullets to gas After Germany
Page 75 and 76: Sign at Treblinka: “Attention War
Page 77 and 78: Franz Stangl Discussions about the
Page 79 and 80: Pictures from Birkenau in this book
Page 81 and 82: Women and children “of no further
Page 83 and 84: Working in hell The so-called Sonde
Page 85 and 86: “Most of you will know what it me
Page 87 and 88: Annihilation through work The Germa
Page 89 and 90: Resistance and rescue One of the mo
Page 91 and 92: The Warsaw ghetto revolt After more
Page 93 and 94: The death camp revolts Of all the a
Page 95 and 96: swear an oath of allegiance to Hitl
Page 97: The democracies close their doors N
Page 101 and 102: “These past few days the Jews fro
Page 103 and 104: The Holocaust - lessons to be learn
Page 105 and 106: O you who know did you know that hu
Page 107 and 108: “My past is always at my side, bu
Page 109 and 110: Lindberg, H., Svensk flyktingpoliti
Page 111: p. 101 Levi, P., p. 37. p. 101 Delb
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