Victims & Survivors
Anne Frank - Diary ExcerptsAnne Frank is a Jewish girl who had to go into hiding in Amsterdam during the Second World War in order to escape the Nazis. She died in the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, in 1944, leaving behind a diary of her life during her years in hiding. She provides a beautiful voice of hope in the face of desperation and gives a powerful testimony of the experience of children during the Holocaust.
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"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed." - October 9, 1942
"Have you ever heard the term 'hostages'? That's the latest punishment for saboteurs. It's the most horrible thing you can imagine. Leading citizens--innocent people--are taken prisoner to await their execution. If the Gestapo can't find the saboteur, they simply grab five hostages and line them up against the wall. You read the announcements of their death in the paper, where they're referred to as 'fatal accidents'."
- October 9, 1942
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more" - July 15, 1944
"Have you ever heard the term 'hostages'? That's the latest punishment for saboteurs. It's the most horrible thing you can imagine. Leading citizens--innocent people--are taken prisoner to await their execution. If the Gestapo can't find the saboteur, they simply grab five hostages and line them up against the wall. You read the announcements of their death in the paper, where they're referred to as 'fatal accidents'."
- October 9, 1942
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more" - July 15, 1944
Diary Entry from the Lodz Ghetto
Excerpts from Night by Elie WieselBorn in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is a terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. (copied from the back cover of Night)
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It is with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor you have chosen to bestow upon me. I know: your choice transcends me. This both frightens and pleases me.
It frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? ... I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.
It pleases me because I may say that this honor belongs to all the survivors and their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.
I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I remember: he asked his father: "Can this be true?" This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?
And now the boy is turning to me: "Tell me," he asks. "What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?"
And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.
Of course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my peoples' memory and tradition, my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. For I belong to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude of our people. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my own: Israel, Soviet Jewry, Jews in Arab lands ... But there are others as important to me. Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. To me, Andrei Sakharov's isolation is as much of a disgrace as Josef Biegun's imprisonment. As is the denial of Solidarity and its leader Lech Walesa's right to dissent. And Nelson Mandela's interminable imprisonment.
There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.
Yes, I have faith. Faith in God and even in His creation. Without it no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all. Isn't this the meaning of Alfred Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear of war a shield against war?
There is much to be done, there is much that can be done. One person – a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years. It is in his name that I speak to you and that I express to you my deepest gratitude. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.
Thank you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the Nobel Committee. Thank you, people of Norway, for declaring on this singular occasion that our survival has meaning for mankind.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-acceptance_en.html
It frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? ... I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.
It pleases me because I may say that this honor belongs to all the survivors and their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.
I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I remember: he asked his father: "Can this be true?" This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?
And now the boy is turning to me: "Tell me," he asks. "What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?"
And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.
Of course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my peoples' memory and tradition, my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. For I belong to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude of our people. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my own: Israel, Soviet Jewry, Jews in Arab lands ... But there are others as important to me. Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. To me, Andrei Sakharov's isolation is as much of a disgrace as Josef Biegun's imprisonment. As is the denial of Solidarity and its leader Lech Walesa's right to dissent. And Nelson Mandela's interminable imprisonment.
There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.
Yes, I have faith. Faith in God and even in His creation. Without it no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all. Isn't this the meaning of Alfred Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear of war a shield against war?
There is much to be done, there is much that can be done. One person – a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years. It is in his name that I speak to you and that I express to you my deepest gratitude. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.
Thank you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the Nobel Committee. Thank you, people of Norway, for declaring on this singular occasion that our survival has meaning for mankind.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-acceptance_en.html
Roman Rosdolsky - A Memoir of Auschwitz and Birkenau
Bystanders & Liberators
Testimony from a Jesuit Priest |
Liberation 1945 |
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A Tribute to My Great-Uncle, Bramwell LeButt (1922-2014)My great-uncle, Bram LeButt, served in the U.S. Army during World War II with the 82nd Airborne Division, 325th Glider Infantry. He and the rest of the 82nd Airborne participated in the liberation of the Wobelein Concentration Camp just outside the town of Ludwigslust, Germany. After the war, the War Department chose the 82nd Airborne Division to represent all the U.S. Armed forces and march in the WWII Victory parade in New York City on January 12, 1946. Uncle Bram marched with the 82nd Airborne in that historic march 4.5 miles down 5th Ave. with 4 million people cheering the end of the war. His service and memory lives on in my family, and he is remembered fondly as a family man with great compassion, conviction, a gentle heart, and a lovely sense of humor. His service, along with the service of many other members of my family, including both of my grandfathers, Jack Smith and Richard Chapman, are a testament to the selflessness and courage of the Greatest Generation. May they rest in peace and may their sacrifice and that of their comrades never be forgotten.
Photographs my Uncle Bram took of the mass burial of victims of Wobelein Concentration Camp. General Gavin of the 82nd Airborne Division was so appalled by the Wobelein Camp that he did not have the victims buried at the camp but rather in the town square of Ludwigslust, the German town nearest the Camp.
A letter my great-aunt, Elizabeth (Betty) LeButt wrote to my Uncle Bram on May 21, 1945. In the letter, she alludes to communication he had sent her regarding the liberation of the Wobelein Concentration Camp and the horrible atrocities he witnessed there. (Right) Below is the text of her letter:
My dearest Bram, It's 9:30am now and I have just finished reading my four wonderful letters from you which arrived yesterday - they were dated the 6, 7, 8, and 9th - even the latest wasn't too recent. Believe that these were the most informative and interesting letters I have received from you since you left the States - could be that my anxiety sort of doubled up my enjoyment of them. Your letters more than verified my belief that you were with the British 2nd Army in the vicinity of the Elbe River - I think I wrote and told you about hearing from your Div. on the Army Hour on May 6th which is when your first letter was dated. They told of the droves of prisoners who had both been taken and had surrendered. Funniest thing Bram - I just cannot get over how I felt at just about the time when you were at the front. It was almost as though I could feel that something was amiss over there. That was my first real contact with "feminine intuition" - was very much relieved to learn that you had not done any flirting around in your lil glider - I don't think that's going to be such a "walk-away" - Having the good ol' terra-firma underfoot is, at least, security of a sort - you and I - we just got in on the finale over there, didn't we. Of all the things that have happened to you since you "went abroad" I regret most of all your having to view some of those German atrocities we over here have been reading about in our newspapers. Malcolm Bengay, editorial advisor for the Free Press, was amongst the first newspaper editors to visit those awful concentration camps at Gen. "Ike's" request - he is a wonderful writer but even he admits that his literary talent could not do justice to the horror of what he saw in Germany. Because, I trust I know you Bram, I know what an imperishable mark viewing those terrible sites will leave upon your heart and mind - only hearing about those things second-handed has made me realize, more than ever, the wonderful benefits of kindness and charity and good fellowship - Now as never before we can honestly say, "It's great to be an American" - we're fun-loving and crazy as loons but, at least, our consciences are clear and our hearts can be happy without remorse. |
Private Bramwell LeButt in Ludwigslust, Germany, May 1945.
82nd Airborne Victory Parade in New York City - Jan 12, 1946 A Nazi arm band that my Uncle Bram brought back to the United States after the war - courtesy of my cousin, Mim LeButt (Above)
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Personal Testimony Reflection Questions:
Victims & Survivors
1) After reading the first-person testimony of Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, Roman Rosdolsky, and the Lodz Ghetto diary entry, select one of those testimonies and describe your thoughts, feelings, and impressions as you read his/her story. What words or phrases stand out to you and why? What is it about their story that is compelling for you?
Testimony from a Jesuit Priest
2) What do you think about this priest's story of being a bystander? How would you define the term "bystander?" Can you think of a time in your life when you have been a bystander to someone else's suffering?
3) What factors stopped the priest from helping? Explain your answer.
Liberation 1945
4) What were your thoughts, feelings, impressions, or questions as you listened to the survivors talk about their experiences being liberated from the concentration camps? Describe what you experienced watching and listening to their testimony in as much detail as you can.
5) What were your thoughts, feelings, impressions, or questions as you listened to the liberators talk about their experiences entering the concentration camps for the first time? What were some of the things they saw and experienced? Describe what you felt and were thinking while watching their testimony in as much detail as you can.
1) After reading the first-person testimony of Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, Roman Rosdolsky, and the Lodz Ghetto diary entry, select one of those testimonies and describe your thoughts, feelings, and impressions as you read his/her story. What words or phrases stand out to you and why? What is it about their story that is compelling for you?
Testimony from a Jesuit Priest
2) What do you think about this priest's story of being a bystander? How would you define the term "bystander?" Can you think of a time in your life when you have been a bystander to someone else's suffering?
3) What factors stopped the priest from helping? Explain your answer.
Liberation 1945
4) What were your thoughts, feelings, impressions, or questions as you listened to the survivors talk about their experiences being liberated from the concentration camps? Describe what you experienced watching and listening to their testimony in as much detail as you can.
5) What were your thoughts, feelings, impressions, or questions as you listened to the liberators talk about their experiences entering the concentration camps for the first time? What were some of the things they saw and experienced? Describe what you felt and were thinking while watching their testimony in as much detail as you can.