“..I feel as though half of me is fighting ..other half by trying to forget ..rather than remember ..and I realize that is probably what I have been doing all my life.” Yehudith Segal.

On November 24th 1921 Hitler stood before 2,000 self-induced and calculating right wingers, at the Munich Hofbrauhaus. Here, the scene was set for excoriating the Jews for Germany’s defeat. What we sense emerging is a rise in Hitler’s rabid hatred giving vocal expression to future demands being placed upon Jewish existence. For me, the removal from all, and even any mention of Hitler, or his cohort, would do little to expand upon reasoning through such incomprehensibility as confounds us. But here we are! The explicit demand’s of History places no excuse but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but every ounce of that entire truth before us. While Hitler would seek to impose the national brand of racist ideology, and right-wing politics, which is inherently nationalism racist and exclusive. Tragically, for the Jewish People, who still considered themselves only as an international collective grouping, they were victimised as a uniquely relevant People, at the vanguard of what brought them through 5,000 years of abuse, and the carnage of intolerance toward them.

“..At difficult times in your life ..you will pursue this book and find in it fresh sources of courage in .. existence of a People which has been perpetually overwhelmed with misfortune and has endured these vicissitudes with indomitable pride. A People that has no wish to die and will Never die.” Heinrich Graetz.

This leftist leaning has always been preferential, as the more left wing you are, the more socially minded and inclusive a People becomes. Hitler’s brand of hatred proved more than the closed off effort that was to simply wedge differences between People, it was to be a cataclysmic atrocity which gave rise to the term of Genocide, within The Holocaust. What I expect to achieve in writing here, and in taking you from the early days of Hitler’s burgeoning hatred for the Jewish People, is to a place where all hope had been diminished. But, and even one Jewish Female, Franciska Mann, could leave an indelible scar upon the value of humanity so as to imprint her decency upon a moral bankruptcy leeching through to history. I do not mean to ever override the importance of so many in Jewish History who stood their ground, but I wish to exemplify the role and presence of this single Jewish Female in the moulding of consequences which place stand out moments for all Jews during their entire period of torture.

“..We refuse to negotiate with ..Jews. I prefer 100 niggers in ..beer hall to one single Jew.” Adolf Hitler.

In this Blog piece, I wish to assure those of you who have long read from my work, I do Not mention the Nazis lightly. Nor do I wish to deliver any presence for any of them, except in my fuller accusation for their lowly cowardice in the face of innocent Jewish Men, Women and Their Children dredged through terror as the delivery of such horror consumed 6,000,000 of these Jewish People. Their former existence as willing participants in the Jewish Slaughter, delivered their brand of terror and by their name, I wish History to excoriate them from the pages of time. These nazi cohorts, collaborators and sordid in collusion, simply affords them far more oxygen than life itself should have given them. Their passing from the pages of History, should ensure these minor beings of humanity, have not remained recognised. Immediately they were removed from life, their copy book blotted, they should remain extinguished from recollection. But here I am, and along with a sense of duty to the scientific evidence’s required by History, mentioning those I would rather ignore, and indeed forget. Their name is simply dividing and splitting away from what is fully owed to the memory of these 6,000,000 Jews. Those Jews, so ritually Slaughtered, and by these very same individuals of hate, brutality, retain the legends of atrocity which are perpetually applied to them. The anonymity deserved within the exclusivity of their interred space, which The Holocaust term must assure them of, are indelibly linked to the very terms of the atrocity they fully indulged in, and complimented such terms as atrocity can be applied to their life.

“..our ..antisemites disdain to solve ..Jewish problem with shotguns and cudgels ..but what does that matter ..that they envy ..Poles ..Romanians their pogroms ..and ..work systematically to imitate them in our ..fatherland.” Alfred Wiener.

The very light caste out from the vibrancy of Jewish persistence has too long been overshadowed by the mere mention of that deeply odious darkness of the Perpetrator, the Participator and all of those too eager to simply do nothing to save even ONE more Jew. So in looking back, and as all of History, let alone this particular aspect of Jewish History points to, what so few abandoned Jews accomplished, in fighting back and resisting all they couldn’t know was intended for them, the Jews did in fact resist, fight back and perished doing so. Particularly during the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, we Recognise a Jewish call to halt the continued assault upon them. This rallying call, so as to stem the seemingly endless flow of Jewish Blood, met its inevitable end as morality took a back seat to the unethical treatment of the Jewish People. Those totally abandoned, somewhat demoralized unitary efforts at resistance, made Ghetto, Forest, and even Death Camps, ring to a crescendo of gun fire, improvised explosions, and the battle cry of a severely depleted Jewish People. There are of course the terrifying and increased evidence’s emanating from the sounds of transports East. What was becoming more and more accurately informed of, was that very truth which inevitably managed to stir to action at least a portion of what was left of the remnant of European Jewry.

“..Unfortunately ..Father and I have been forced to travel to an unknown destination.” Jiri Bader.

I continually search my inner being, so as to prudently add Jewish names where I find them, to add fuel to that infinite need for the judiciousness that any trial of the guilty which might have moderately served them.  Along with those names unworthy of mention though, and to fulfil the deeper debt owed to those Jews who met the killers of them, we are compelled to deride those who acted with prejudice and a consuming hatred. But when the Jews were not then allowed to survive the hater’s intention, we should dismiss such spectres of inhumanity from the canard of reflective historical recollection. The contradiction is present though, with even naming that oddity that was Hitler and others of the hierarchy of The Final Solution that we identify them clearly as a consequence of their resolve to complete The Jewish Question, terminally.

“..war at last. War had finally come ..it’s procession of glory ..heroism ..and ..imminent fall of ..Nazis. A few weeks later ..saw ..a different face of ..real War. ..Mother had a Sister in Poland ..Oswiecim ..a town ..to become famous.. Auschwitz.” Marcel Liebman.

What appears essential here, as we reflect and look back, even upon the thoughts of Jewish Children, the glee for the theatre of War could not inform them of what carnage now awaited the Jewish People of Europe. No matter the fuller narrative, the very level of secrecy that never existed around The Final Solution, comes back to fully trouble all of History. As we struggle with fitting the atrocity into some narrative of understanding, The Jewish Question was being answered in catastrophic fashion. It is impossibly difficult for any nation to then suggest other than what it was aware of in relation to what was happening to their own Jewish Community. We know, especially in catholic Poland, not much escaped the attention of the church and yet, the role of christianity was wholly abandoned in failing to intervene in what Hitler had committed Poland to becoming. What awaited those Jews, through Church and humanity’s failures, and particularly for the Polish Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, was the Death Camp at Treblinka.

“..Standing between life and death ..convinced I’m going to die rather than stay alive ..I want to  say goodbye to my friends and my work. Ten years of work I collected ..tore to shreds and worked again. I was preparing an exhibition of my paintings ..and especially an exhibition of my portraits of a Jewish child. Now I try to save what I can and as much as can fit into that space. I leave ..rest at ..mercy of fate.” Gela Seksztajn.

When on April 17th. 1943, the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, with some remnants of Warsaw’s Jews, and while barely 70,000 of the Jews of Warsaw are still alive, very few of these were even capable of taking up their arms of response, with weapons they didn’t even have or could not obtain. On May 8th. 1943, and in the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto alone, the Headquarters of Jewish Resistance, 18 Mila Street, is surrounded and finally liquidated. All of those inside, the remnant of the remnants of Jewry within the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, included Mordechai Anielewicz and 97 of the Resistance Fighters. These who had fought and now died that Day, are recorded into History, acknowledging what Polish Jews did in defending their Nation, Poland. It is also written into the protest of nations who could have done more, if not to save them, to at least give them a fighting chance while fighting the common enemy. There was always a Jewish refusal to succumb to the Nazi brutality, and this is recorded earlier throughout the Nazis time invading sovereign states, and this too is to be recognised in a less accomplished manner in the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto.

“..What we were unable to shout out to ..World ..we buried in ..ground.” Dawid Graber.

The fighting spirit, the recoil from the terror which afflicted European Jewry is also to be detailed in Bedzin, Czestochowa, Vilna, and other places of Jewish residence. All of these efforts, these attempts at insurgency will point the way toward all future Jewish Persistence and even Resistance! No Jew today can have failed to recognise what Jewish Resistance was seeking to achieve, and upon their behalf as Jews. Tragically, few Jewish resister’s managed to Survive what was more than made ready for them. With more than 50,000 of Warsaw’s Ghetto Jews, who had been sourced from the Ghetto, and had been murdered in recent months, there was to be no more time for the excesses in the Slaughter to continue, which the few who chose to act, were still alive to do so. The compelling evidences of what had long been required was the silence from those Jews who had been transported ‘East’, never to be heard from again.

“..I have lived for a century ..and I know what it is to stare evil in ..face. I have seen ..very worst in mankind ..horrors of ..death camps ..Nazi efforts to exterminate my life ..and ..lives of all my people.” Eddie Jaku.

When, on May 10th. 1943, as the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to a crushing end, and as the Jewish Ghetto was reduced to a pile of rubble about 3 storey’s high, the light of Jewish bravery shone stronger and brighter over a Poland that had abandoned them. It would then be a week before the murderer in chief, Stroop, could then declare that all of Warsaw was ‘Junderein’, and in particular the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto. As 22,000 of these now detained Jews were marched away from the ruins, they were to transported immediately to Majdanek for ‘resettlement’ in this Death Camp. Thus had this Jewish defeat taken a most difficult step, in condemning themselves to the treatment which would be applied to them, as designated by Hitler’s murderous clause. Once more though, attempts were being made to supplant all fears and lure ever more Jews out of their hiding places and on into extinction. For the Jews themselves, the sheer fear alone, and the very detail of that uncertainty, must have been cruelly draining. Absorbing every moment of relief, and on May 11th. 1943, when Shmuel Zygielbojm commits suicide, is that all that is to be left to Jewish existence, another Jewish Death to add further to the deaths Hitler so clearly demanded. As to what Shmuel saw was the clear abandonment of his Jewish Community, his correct assessment should not have left him with death as an only viable option. This further loss to Jewish life only added to what was a clear dereliction of human responsibility, for all of Jewish life to be safely treated. Here then, there was this newer cynical ruse, and so as to further weaken any further Jewish resolve or resistance, it played its part in securing more Jewish victims. From deep within the rubble strewn Warsaw Ghetto, a Jewish lifeline that did not exist, was made to appear practicable, and even a magnanimous gesture. The Nazi’s however, were made aware that all of those Polish Jews who had been furnished with safe passage, from the issuance of Visa’s and Passports from Latin American Countries, would perish and would still not escape. The notion that Jews could still emigrate, to those various Country’s that would have them, was held tightly and wishfully to. Even for the many Jews, who had by now been living on the Aryan side of Warsaw, they came forward to gain access to such a hoped for promise and even received their emigration certificate. However, for all of these who then meet at the Hotel Polski for processing, the promise that they are to be these exchange Jews is captivating to a weakened sense of reality. For the many of those Jews once more corrupted by the promise of survival, the Camp at Belsen awaited. Yet here the ‘Star’ Camp for these far from privileged Jews, whose reasoning had been practicably obliterated, they did not consider that this too was but another lie, a ruse, a con. We recognise too that these Polish Jews are mostly those very Jews who were either emerged from the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, or from some secure hiding place outside the Ghetto Walls.

“..new arrivals were assembled in the yard outside crematorium.” Filip Mueller.

I mention here but one Jewish Female, Franciska Mann, and for specific a reason as she was amongst the many Jews who gave up their safety in search of an end to the awful nature of perpetual persecution. Here too though, and lured by the prospect of eventual emigration to Eretz Israel, and the prospect of safety, these seduced Jews joined the ranks of those other Jews all heading for the Camp system. For some, the Camp at Belsen awaited, and this in many respects accelerated the Jewish losses without the intervention of the systematic industrial and managed Slaughter the Death Camps provided. Here, a supposedly privileged, and though fraudulently afforded some semblance of hope, what was prepared for them was a deception awaiting their arrival. When, on July 3rd. 1943, the Nazi’s surrounded the Hotel Polski, and arrested its 600 Jewish inhabitants, they were all taken to Warsaw’s Pawiak Gaol. Here and in this moment, any pretence must have shaken the last resolves of hope from the very last strands of that perpetual hope which so many Jews had always held onto. Some of these ‘safe’ Jews were immediately shot in the prison courtyard, and while those Jews who still remained alive, and were further transported to Belsen, or straight to Birkenau or even to Vittel, death was an ever present. For many of these proposed states in South America, they too played along to what would be Hitler’s final gambit and refused entry to all too many Jews of Europe. Even for these remnants of Warsaw’s Jews, they too are to be included in what the World had already recognised was a murderous enterprise. While we struggle to this day to come up with the terms of reference that will deliver our own incomprehensible judgement upon the sadists of hatred, all remains beyond the comprehension of human understanding. For those Jews, and for Franciska Mann in particular, she too was moving inexplicably, but steadily toward the extermination process designated and designed for all the Jews of Europe.

“..Polish Jews knew. ..schillinger had taken a fancy to ..a body ..she had a classic figure. ..he walked up ..took her ..hand. ..naked Woman ..scooped ..gravel ..threw it is his face ..dropped his revolver ..Woman snatched it ..fired ..into his abdomen…naked crowd turned on us. ..Woman fired ..again ..at ..chief ..wounding. ..chief ..SS men made off. ..we managed ..drove them all ..into ..chamber with clubs ..bolted ..doors .called ss to administer Cyclone B. ..we’ve had time to acquire ..experience.” Tadeusz Borowski.

On October 23rd. 1943 there were 2 Jewish transports to arrive at Birkenau, the smaller one was some 1,035 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children, all arriving from Rome. Some 149 of these Jewish Men and 47 of the Jewish Women of these 1,035 were to be spared the immediacy of selection for Gassing, as they entered the Death Camp proper. The second arrival, which delivered Franciska from amongst a Belsen transport of 1,800 Polish Jewish Men, Women and Their Children. All of these Jews, who were purportedly free from the ‘resettlement’ programme, and who none the less arrived at Birkenau for ‘resettlement’ there, could not have understood the significance of one departure from a Camp to the arrival at another Camp. As was the case for all arrivals, this transport arrived at the ramp of Birkenau Death Camp and here too the ruse continued. The Polish Jews, even some remnants of Warsaw Ghetto Jewry’s last stand, arrived in passenger trains at Birkenau and not Bergau. They were still informed that this was their last stop before their departure for Switzerland. Here they were told of the Swiss requirement to disinfect, and this was to be done at the behest of the Swiss authority’s. Then, taken to Krematorium II, especially cleansed for the arrival of these tricked, and no longer so called privileged Jews, the Women and Children are scolded into believing they will be showered and disinfected. The signs did not betray the truth for any Jews who entered this portal to eternity.

“..quackernack and schillinger were strutting back and forth in front of ..humiliated crowd with a self important swagger. Suddenly they stopped in their tracks ..attracted by a strikingly handsome woman with blue black hair who was taking off her right shoe. ..Woman ..as soon as she noticed that ..2 men were ogling her ..launched into what appeared to be a titillating and seductive strip tease act. What happened next took place with lightning speed ..quick as a flash she grabbed her shoe and slammed its high heel violently against quackernack’s forehead. He winced with pain and covered his face with both hands. At this moment ..young woman flung herself at him and made a quick grab for his pistol. There was a shot. schillinger cried out and fell to ..ground.” Filip Muller.

However, and despite this disinfecting assurance, and while these Jews had all their documentation for freedom to protect them, many of them were reluctant to undress. However, and along with this reluctance to expose their very being, came the lashings and beatings, which was uncontrollably savage, with the ss wielding large sticks. The deep wounding, and the beating senselessly of these Jewish Women and Their Children forced them into abject submission and surrended. All the SS preparation was about to break down and all it now needed was a spark, and Franciszka, a stunning Polish Jewish beauty provided that spark. Amongst the ss present were: ackerman, boger, emmerich, gorges, hustek, kurchuss, quackermack, schillinger, schwartzhuber and voss.

“..schillinger told ..Women to undress ..and 1 Woman said she did not undress in front of men. In consequence of this he raised his whip ..his cane ..he always walked around with a cane ..and he wanted to strike her. At this point ..she drew a revolver and killed him with one shot. From ..time we received this information schillinger never appeared in ..camp ..naturally ..because he had been killed.  Dr Aharon Beilin.

Immediately, the remainder of the Jewish Females, and some of the Jewish Children, were led into the undressing room. Here, and right beside the Gassing Chamber they were pressured and ordered to fully undress for disinfection. As History informs us, though it is relayed in many varying forms of description, one of these Jewish Females stood taller than even civilisation had at this time. In the case of ss scharfuhrer josef schillinger and ss oberscharfuhrer walter konrad quakernack, their acts of attentive leering and lust, are purely for their own self gratifying ends. Even Hitler’s law of Rassenschande is set aside for personal nazi demands over the Jewish Female form, and by many such deviants, so many of the Jewish Females paid an inordinate and doubly personal penalty toward the atrocity.

“..We were really facing death. ..suddenly you see how you yourself were saved from death. It is hard to believe that ..moment is documented.” Dula Kogan.

We know from history also, and as it is recorded along individual lines, because there are those who bring us their evidence, as it was evidences and discovered by witnesses, leave history with much to be further explored to further shame this World of ours. However, and for this one Polish Jewish Woman, Franceska Mann, who was aged 26 at the time, and would not survive, her lessen to us gives us hope that the spirit of humanity cannot be completely lessons by the pressures imposed upon it. Though Franciska did make it away from Belsen, she was merely an arrival away from doom. At Birkenau, and as one of those Jews who are from amongst the 1,800 ‘privileged’ Jews from Belsen, nothing other than the rancid brutality of despicable nazis awaited their treatment and their eventual demise.

“..roundups of September 1942 ended ..most spectacular ..most intense days of .. persecution. In a matter of weeks ..some 13,000,000 Jews had been arrested ..transported to ..death camps.” Marcel Liebman.

I do not draw conclusions from these losses and know I cannot be certain of the statistical nature of the Jewish losses. Here though, and while a Jewish Survivor places before us, an impression, an indent, a belief that 13,000,000 Jews could have been transported to the Death Camps, historical assurance cannot be convincing enough to doubt such an assessment. For us, we are those who stood aside and while I do Not look entirely at the Jewish People to find resistance, I recognise their inability to seek assistance for attempting to do so. It is written into the very fabric of the Jewish willingness to see only the good in human kind that fully betrayed them, all 6,000,000 of them. However, my reflection is always an accusation as to why We, the non-Jewish World, allowed for The Holocaust to happen, and why 6,000,000 Jews were given no choice but to comply with what was ordered of them. This brings me to when one of those whose life is taken from us, and it happens to be the vibrancy of Franciska Mann. Franciska is an Actor, a talented Ballerina and an accomplished Dancer and even a resister of the Nazi intention for all of the Jews, which certainty cannot be included in the knowledge of all Jews. Though her response is both legendary and well equipped to teach the World a rare lessen, today we are delivered toward a position which seeks to dilute the very references which have been accrued by those Jews who perished, and by those Jews who managed to Survive. The unbridled spirit of a Jewish People might be crushed, but their very will to survive cannot be contained by any means open to the inhumanity of human kind. Franciska Mann stands amongst the best of a deceased Jewish Community, devoured before our very eyes, and with our ears resounding to the bitter pleadings for help. Franciska is but one Jewish Female who stood before the abyss of human degradation and shone a light upon its potential to erase the darkness.

“..to all freedom fighters ..to everyone who has ever spoken against oppression .. persecution ..inequality. Keep speaking your truth .. fighting your battles. ..bravery won’t be forgotten.” Ellie Midwood.

WE the non-Jews are those who stood aside and WE non-Jews are those guilty of those very crimes against YOU, the 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jewish People. I do Not look at the Jewish People to find that they have long developed resistances, nor do I doubt their ability, and actual deeds in doing so. It is written though, and into the very fabric of their willingness to see only the good in human kind, that humanity did not fully embrace them. The Jewish Parent who continually holds their Jewish Child’s hand, and all the way into an oblivion they had no choice but to enter, this is a powerful resistance. The Jewish Child then, who refuses to abandon their Jewish Parent exemplifies what is an accomplishment in resistance. My reflection is always an accusation as to why WE, the non-Jewish World let The Holocaust happen. So please never see WE, which I adopt in my own words, as other than a non-Jew speaking for the 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews. I fully appreciate The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a position of hope for a Jewish future, but it is not an exclusively resisting scenario. It is Not the only armed uprising, and as such it is not a stand-alone Jewish resistance from within the devastation for the Jewish resolve to live. The Killing of the newborn Jewish Baby, in hiding, in the Camps, before the torture, or thrust alive into the furnace flames, this is a Jewish Mother’s resistance. Such resistance alone requires a particular bond between People which belongs to all of humankind. What marks the non-Jew as the wrong doer, and upon both sides of the participation in the atrocity, or even with an indifference to the catastrophe, extols the virtue of such a gift as would save some of these Jews from the sheer brutality and horror which awaited them.

“..I was not a typical prisoner ..but I saw and heard everything. ..mortality rate in the women’s camp was as high as 350 a day. They died from disease ..exhaustion ..beatings ..hunger. ..Rats attacked ..dead and ..living. At first ..I thought crematoria was used only to cremate bodies of people who had died ‘natural’ deaths. Then one night I saw Women being driven into ..gas ovens ..screaming ..begging for mercy. ..15 minutes later ..I saw ..smoke becoming thicker ..rising from ..chimneys. Then I knew. ..Hungarian Jews they sent so many to ..gas chambers ..crematoria were too full. So they built a pyre outdoors ..threw bodies into ..fire. I saw ..SS officer throwing a live baby into ..fire.” Dr. Ella Lingens-Reiner.