My Holocaust

Menachem M. Stern

16, Ha'neviim st.
Ramat Ha'Sharon 47279
ISRAEL

My holocaust is about memory. A memory of a child, thrown into a world that went mad. Memory that haunts me ever since.

It is about pictures, inculcated in my mind, resurfacing time and again from that time, to this day. It is not about memoirs, it is not about truth, and it is not about historical truth. It is about a soldier taking aim at my father who carries me in his arms. My father's screams: "Don't shoot! It is four o'clock the curfew is over! "His scream still echoes in my ears. The soldier lowers his gun. My first encounter with imminent death. It is about the long barrack in Płaszów camp, lit sparingly, when I arrived. It is about one torn pillow, donated by some merciful soul, from which the feathers are flying out, white feathers in the spooky barrack1. My holocaust is about my family some 250 strong that perished, leaving only a handful of us to tell the story.

YET, MY HOLOCAUST IS NOT ABOUT DEATH. MY HOLOCAUST IS ABOUT LIFE.
It is about people like us who lived in the pits of life, in hell on this earth. On this planet, persecuted, tortured and victimized by people... Not on another planet. The victimizers were not beasts; they were people like you and me... .

My holocaust is about my mother who gave me life several times: first when she decided not to have an abortion when the winds of war were already blowing, contrary to the advice of many. Then when she decided to break the law and not to register me in the "Children's House" which was liquidated with the liquidation of the ghetto and its children sent straight to Auschwitz. For the third time, when she told me to escape from Płaszów. The fourth time when she came looking for me after the war. Then after the war, when she decided to have another child, against my father’s wishes and had borne my sister- "so you will never be alone again" she said.

My holocaust is about my grand mother 2 . Widowed early in her life she managed through extreme poverty to raise her two sons. She was a pious and extremely observant Jewish woman. Yet when we were in the ghetto she told my mother to buy pork to feed me "So somebody will stay alive" she said.
My holocaust is about my father Nathan Stern and my uncle Yitzhak Stern 3 who "created" Oscar Schindler and enticed him to participate in saving 1100 Jews.
My holocaust is about Oscar Schindler who unwittingly participated in saving 1100 of my people. It is as well about Rudolf Kastner, who almost single handedly toiled to save whoever he could. It is about all these, recognized and not recognized as "Righteous among the nations" who saved Jewish lives, jeopardizing their own.

My holocaust is about aunt Golda, whose husband a wealthy industrialist came to Palestine in the summer of 1939, and lost contact with his wife Golda and two sons he left behind. It took him 1-1 years to arrange 3 South American passports for them. One day 2 Gestapo men and two Red Cross men came to the ghetto and presented her with the passports and train tickets. "You have to be within two hours on the train" they said, "It is the last one". Frantically she began searching for her elder son who was not around. He could not be located. She had to make a decision. She took with her, the younger son and the neighbor's son. Her son perished, and the neighbor's son member of the Israeli Knesset and Ambassador to Egypt and France.
My holocaust is about Pastor Niemöller who sounded his warning in 1934 4, later to be interned in Sachsenhausen for eight years, (1937-1945).

My holocaust is about Father Maximilian Kolbe 5 who stepped forward in Auschwitz and volunteered to be executed in place of another as the ultimate sacrifice.

My holocaust is about hundreds of Jewish shoemakers concentrated in an enormous hall a shoe factory in Paso work camp. It was Passover of 1943, praying in the camp was strictly forbidden, and the shoemakers were all religious. On Passover day the prayers include the great Hallel 6. So the shoemakers were sitting on their little stools in front of their iron lasts with their hammers, driving their nails and chanting silently Psalm 113: "Who is like the LORD our God, who is seated on high, took-took who looks far down upon the heavens and the earth? Took-took.

He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, took-took, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. Took-took He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the LORD took-took.

This was their Egypt, and there was no deliverance. Yet I have been delivered. Every year come Passover Seder when we reach Psalm 113, I pause and tell this story in honor of the shoemakers that were not delivered.

My holocaust is about Mr. Kukurudz alias Fein who smuggled me into Płaszów camp and Stefan Pemper a 14-year-old Jewish boy, who helped me escape from the camp in 1943.

It is about prostitutes in a bordello, near by Płaszów, who took me in lovingly handing me a glass of milk and shelter for few months .7

And my holocaust is above all about Mr., Jerzy Jaksch, his wife Ceśka, and daughters Marta and Tereza, who instead of pressing a coin or a potato into my little hand took it into his big warm and loving hand and took me to his home.

It is about grandma Sofia Teńczyńska, who gave me the papers of her deceased grand son, and took me into her tiny cellar apartment. And it is about her sister and husband, illiterate street sweeper in a tiny village with great courage and an enormous heart that accepted me for the late grand son and a good catholic boy.

It is about the poor village priest who gave me my first communion, and instilled the fear of a Christian God in me.

My holocaust is to live without parents in constant fear of being found out and caught. The fear of death for no reason. Just because of being different and thus hated.

It is about becoming a child again. The difficulty of recognizing my parents who came back broken and emaciated not resembling whatsoever the parents I remembered.

It is about becoming me again. Accepting my mother and father again, finding my creed and people and becoming an integral part of the remains.

IT IS ABOUT THE PERSONAL BRAVERY AND DETERMINATION OF THE SURVIVORS TO GO ON LIVING, TO CREATE NEW FAMILIES, TO DIVEST THEMSELVES OF PAIN, SUFFERING, VENGEANCE AND HATRED, TO LIVE AND CREATE NEW LIFE.

It is about living for the past 59 years. Waking up at night, every night covered with cold sweat with nightmares that keep repeating themselves.
It is about the same question that keeps popping up almost daily "Why me? Why was I spared?" Why haven't I become one of the 1.5 million children annihilated?

In the last years I feel that I found at least a partial answer: I lived to tell the story. To convey a message. That is why I am here. In recent years I travel yearly with groups of high school students to Poland. We visit the sites of the concentration and extermination camps. I tell them about "my holocaust". I point out that what we see there is in my mind the limitations of power. We witness here the use of the most brutal power used ever by man against man. . "We witness here the use of the most brutal power used ever by man against man." I tell them. And I add: "Be careful and respect the dignity of your fellow men as he is your image". 8
And yet, we are here.
My holocaust is about conflicts not to be solved by sheer force.

I have dwelled on memory. Yet what purpose serves memory?
Remembrance has no value in itself.
Memories of past are of no use if we do not employ them for the future.
Do we?

We live in the age of violence. We live in the age of denial. On one hand there are those that simply deny the occurrence of the holocaust. It never happened. It's all a Jewish conspiracy. And we love conspiracies, especially Jewish conspiracies. On the other hand there are those that see holocaust everywhere. Every disaster becomes holocaust. They reduce the event as much as the group that denies holocaust existence.

Let me be very clear about it. The human being is murderous and violent. It is a basic part of each and everyone. Yet in the thousands of years of recorded history there has never been an event that unique.

Its uniqueness is based on the fact that for the first time in history there was industrialization of death. The raw material- people - has been defined the method of processing developed and established and the end product - human ashes and smoke achieved. That is to me the uniqueness of the period between the years 1939-1945.

All this has been created because of hatred. Unmitigated, raw hatred fed and intensified by a gigantic propaganda machine, until it exploded.

Yes it can happen again. It won't be the same. Maybe this time there are going to be different victims and different victimizers. How easy it is to switch from one to another, if we do not succeed to contain the little devil of hatred that dwells in each and every one of us. You have to remember there were children on both sides; there are children on both sides always. And not only children but also people - just like us.

I am but a non-significant member of the human species. I wish I could love every one. Yet being human, it is impossible for me. Love is the quality of higher might than mine. Yet I endeavor not to hate. This is possible. It is in my power. It is within the powers of each and every one. This is the lesson I learned through my experiences.
This is the message I try to convey to my high school students:
Let it be a lesson for all of us: "DO NOT HATE!"
If we manage so, maybe we shall know love.

As time goes by our numbers dwindle. Slowly we loose our witnesses. Mine are gone. We, who cannot forget, still bear witness.
I came here as your witness.
I leave feeling that maybe from now on you shall be mine.

Thus my holocaust becomes about pain. Let us not talk about Pardon. Not even about reconciliation. Let us talk about understanding, about feelings. As one feels pain one is oblivious toward the pain of another, We are still in pain. Our pain leaves us numb, as others are numb with pain, questions, doubts, and shame. So let us begin to feel for one another. Let us understand; let us soothe the pain so as to create a better world.

Tel: 97235402924
Email: mstern@inter.net.il
First Serial Rights Š Menachem M. Stern, 2005

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1 Years afterwards (1987) I visited Germany. I stayed in a hotel in Mainz. At night, weary and tired I lied down on the bed. The pillow was torn and as I put my head on, the feathers started to come out. I froze completely. I could not move. Pictures of the camp came back. The mud, the snow, the darkness, the tri-deck wooden beds, the bodies, the faces. I felt trapped, completely disassociated from the here and now, as if warped back in time. I lied on the bed all night without moving, as if paralyzed. As morning came I called the Israeli Embassy, to reassure myself of the present.

2 My Grandmother, Pearl Horovitz Stern, became the only woman out of 300 women on the “Schindler List” diverted mistakenly to Auschwitz, and later released, to die in Auschwitz.

3 Yitzhak Stern is the main Jewish character in Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler list”. It is based on the real life people: Yitzhak Stern, Nathan Stern, Mieczyslaw Pemper, and Abraham Bankier.

4 In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.” Martin Niemöller 1892-1984.

5 Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest who died as prisoner 16770 in Auschwitz on August 14 1941. When a prisoner escaped from the camp, the Nazis selected 10 others to be killed by starvation in reprisal for the escape. One of the 10 selected to die, Franciszek Gajowniczek, began to cry: My wife! My children! I will never see them again! At this St. Maximilian stepped forward and asked to die in his place. His request was granted...

6 Praise

7 This glass of milk ”painted” the picture in my early memory totally white. It became the only white picture in my holocaust memory. Due to the white appearance of this picture I was convinced that my first stop after escaping Płaszów was a hospital. Only some years after the war I discovered the true nature of the place.

8 My late father has been tortured severely both physically as well as mentally. Until his last day he dealt with his traumas in his own way. Yet what he considered as his greatest humiliation occurred in 1939, as the German army entered Krakow. My father (lawyer by profession) has been walking home from his office in his hat and three piece suit as he was stopped by a soldier and ordered to wash his motorcycle.
So. There he was on the street on his fours washing the motorcycle. This he considered to be his greatest humiliation.