The individuals of the Holocaust: The victims and the perpetrators - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
Recently, I got given the opportunity by my school to take part in the Lessons from Auschwitz Online Project, to further my understanding on the events that took place during the Holocaust. I was joined by over a hundred other sixth form students from across the UK and I found it quite amazing that so many young people, whether they already had knowledge on the Holocaust or not, had decided to get involved and educate themselves on such a raw and often confusing historical time period. However, whether selfishly or unselfishly, I decided to take part in this project set up by the Holocaust Educational Trust for myself. I am a big believer in educating and bettering yourself before taking the responsibility of preaching your truth to others, so although I already knew a lot about the Holocaust, I endeavoured to find out more so that I could pass on my valuable knowledge to you, in the hope that you can reciprocate the action for others. Today, I'm sharing with you what I learnt about the individuals of the Holocaust, both the victims and the perpetrators alike.
The Holocaust was the murder of approximately 6 million Jewish men, women, and children by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War. During our live sessions with the Auschwitz team, we spent quite a while unpicking and improving this definition of the Holocaust. We suggested what does "approximately" mean in this context, we debated whether it was just the Jewish community who were involved in the Holocaust, and we communicated whether anti-Semitism began during the "Second World War." However, I'm bringing this definition to your attention today because it's most familiar to us and there's a couple parts to this that I would like you to be aware of. Notice how "6 million, Nazi Germany, and collaborators," are all collective words used to describe both the victims and the perpetrators, as well as possibly the bystanders, that were all somehow involved in the Holocaust. I've heard many definitions of the Holocaust in the past and all of them are very much similar to the definition you've just read above. In every definition I've heard, I found it incredibly easy to let myself gloss over the words 6 million especially, because I've always referred to the victims of the Holocaust as one collective group of people, completely unknown to us personally. However, to not understand the distinct and different personalities of all the Jews, the Nazi war criminals, and the bystanders of the Holocaust, is to ignore the motives behind what led the Holocaust to happen in the first place. I've learnt that everyone during that time was an individual, with a life, friends, and possibly even a family, that simply cannot be ignored. To help you understand this notion, I'm going to be giving you some personal stories that will open your minds about the shear complexity of the Holocaust.
Prior to the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the town of Auschwitz went by the Polish name of Oświęcim. Around 50% of the population of Oświęcim was Jewish before the Holocaust and whilst we would expect a Jewish hot-spot like this town to be an epicentre for anti-Semitism, the Christians of Oświęcim lived a relatively harmonious lifestyle with the Jewish people, and the Jewish community of the town was allowed to prosper as a result. Jewish people in Oświęcim were successful labourers and they worked in a variety of different professions; they were lawyers, clerks, doctors, and insurance agents. As well as this, Jewish people ran many successful small businesses in the town that dealt with necessities that everyone depended on such as clothes and food. The 400 year old Great Synagogue, located at the centre of Oświęcim, next to other Christian churches, was a physical symbol of the acceptance that was widely seen across the town as it was a communal place for, not just the Jewish community, but people of different cultural and religious backgrounds to congregate in peace. When we look at the Holocaust, it is easy for us to forget the cultural diversity of all those millions of people who were all somehow involved. In November 29th, 1939, after their invasion of Poland, the Nazis completely destroyed the Great Synagogue. Not only was this an attempt by the Nazis to completely deface the Jews from history, but it was also an attempt to destroy the physical symbol of acceptance that many Christians had gained with the Jewish people, to create the environment that Jews were always hated by others and proliferate anti-Semitism in return. By learning about the diversity of small communities like Oświęcim, we can help combat the hatred that the Nazi ideology created, and we can start to see behind the veil of the millions and view everyone involved as individuals.
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The contrast in Eva Clarke and Kitty Hart-Moxen's survival testimonies, shows us that the journey to Auschwitz was different for all the Jews who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
Rather astonishingly, Eva Clarke was born in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria on the 29th of April, 1945. Prior to her pregnancy with Eva, despite the sexes being segregated inside the concentration camps, Eva's mother fell pregnant with Eva's older brother Dan. Unfortunately, Dan had sadly died of pneumonia at the tender age of 2 months old. After her baby's death, Eva's mother went on the treacherous journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau to try and find her husband and she was unaware that she was pregnant with Eva at the time. The death of Dan meant that Eva was able to live, because both mother and baby would have been killed by gassing at Auschwitz had Eva's mother arrived with a baby Dan in her arms. Eva's mother was subsequently moved to Mauthausen after the Nazis tried to evacuate the labour camp that she was transferred to in Dresden. Eva's mother gave birth, just days before the liberation of Mauthausen, from the shock of discovering where she was. Had the gas chambers not been destroyed by the Nazis prior to their arrival, both mother and baby would have been killed.
In contrast, Kitty Hart-Moxen was born on the 1st of December 1926, in Bielsko, Poland. She lived with her older brother, her mother, and her father. Kitty came from a liberal Jewish family and later attended the non-religious but Jewish dominated School of Notre Dame after the war had broke out. Her family made numerous attempts to flee the Nazis once they had invaded Poland in 1939, making the dangerous journey to Russia in an attempt to escape the Lublin Ghetto and later they even split up for a better chance of survival. However, after obtaining fake identification, Kitty and her mother were able to obtain work in secret at the IG Farben factory. However, they were betrayed by other workers and consequently sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the 6th of April 1943. Both Kitty and her mother managed to survive 2 years at Auschwitz through obtaining the gruelling job of working alongside dead prisoners. Life was incredibly difficult for Kitty and her mother. Everyday at Auschwitz, they feared for their life and they had to fight everyday, sometimes sacrificing friends along the way, just to survive.
When we look at the Holocaust, it is easy for us to imagine that the experience for every Jewish person was the same because we don't learn a lot about the individuals who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. However, by hearing Eva Clarke and Kitty Hart-Moxen's contrasting survival testimonies, we can see that whilst both experiences were just as traumatic as each other, every Jew was an individual who went through a different journey at Auschwitz.
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Although it is important to begin to see the individuality of the victims involved in the Holocaust in order to better understand the challenges that they faced, it is equally as important to see the individuality behind the perpetrators, those Nazis who performed horrific acts, in order to understand what led them to choosing the Nazi ideology. What I found the most shocking in my discoveries in the Lessons from Auschwitz Online Project, was that the Nazis were ordinary people just like you and me. Rudolf Höss was the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Initially, he served at Auschwitz from the 4th May 1940 to November 1943 but later served again from the 8th May 1944 to 18th January 1945. As Höss was serving at Auschwitz for so long, he decided to bring his wife and five children to live with him in a villa adjacent to the camp so that he did not have to commute from his work to his family at home. I still find it despicable that someone can live comfortably inside a villa whilst people are dying and are living in squalid conditions just next door. However, we must continue to remember that whilst the Nazi ideology was evil and toxic and corrupted the minds of many people, those who chose to follow it were in fact ordinary. As many people often described, Höss walking down the street would often be mistaken for an average, quiet man who was quite easy to ignore. That's perhaps what makes it so scary because the Nazis did not start off as despotic, bad people but as they were influenced by the Nazi ideology, they chose to carry out some pretty distasteful actions. Hence why it is important to learn about the individuality of the perpetrators of the Holocaust just as much as the individuality of the victims because that is the only way we can understand the evil ideology of the Nazis.
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Now that you've learnt all about these different and unique stories from the different people involved during the Holocaust, I would just like to finish off on the Book of Names. The Book of Names can be found at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site. It is a very large book that spans the length of a corridor and contains the recorded names of the Jews who had died at Auschwitz. Although the Nazis burned a lot of their concentration camp documentation in order to conceal evidence and deface Jewish people from history, those family members who had managed to survive the concentration camps, were able to put in the names of those who died in order to make sure that they were not forgotten. Unfortunately, only 4.2 million names out of the estimated 6 million names of those Jewish people who died in the Holocaust, are recorded in the book. This means that for those approximately 2 million other family members who were wiped out completely, their names cannot be remembered. However, at the memorial site, their is a big space placed purposefully between the end of the book and the adjacent wall, to physically mark out the amount of space required to complete the book. This gives the unnamed a presence and an acknowledgement that they were there during the Holocaust. Today, I've talked to you a lot about the individuality of everyone involved and you've heard about the testimonies of Eva Clarke and Kitty Hart-Moxen who still have a voice to broadcast their own journies. Now, I'm giving a voice to those who were disintegrated by the Nazis from the face of history. They too were individuals and they too deserve to be remembered as individuals in the Book of Names.
Unfortunately, much to my disappointment, anti-Semitism, racism, and prejudice still exist today and might still continue to exist for as long as humanity endures. However, by learning about the individuals of all those involved in events like the Holocaust, some of that bigotry can be fought back because people will have more of a connection to and have more of an understanding of the victims, the perpetrators, and the bystanders who were all involved. As long as we can change the mind of that one extra person, that one individual that we meet on our journey through life, we've already started to take back what was lost during the Holocaust.
How can we best remember the individuals of the Holocaust? Do you have anything that you would like to add? Let me know in the comments below (or message me via Instagram or Facebook) and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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