THE HOLOCAUST: A SURVIVOR’S TALE

Leon Greenman was very ill. He had spent thirty months in the Birkenau, Auschwitz, Monnowitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. His body was failing him. Starvation diets, freezing conditions, slave labour, constant beatings and now pleurisy. He drifted into sleep.

“I had a dream. And in that dream I saw a lot of family members but I didn’t see my wife and child. And I woke up and I said to my mate, whose bunk was next to me: ‘When the soup comes around, you can have my soup. I’m not going to eat anymore’. And he asked why not? And I told him about my dream. And a few minutes later he said to me.

‘Suppose you die and your wife and child do come back. Is that fair?’ And I came to my senses and I started living again. Right through, I didn’t want to believe that my wife and child were no more.”

160,000 German Jews, 3,000,000 Polish Jews, 106,000 Dutch Jews, 83,000 French Jews, 1,000,000 Russian Jews… 5,000 ‘handicapped’ German children, 120,000 ‘handicapped’ German adults, 25,000 German Gypsies, 10,000 ‘tramps,’ thousands of homosexuals… gassed, ovened, ashes. Sterilisation of those who were in any way genetically inferior to the “national comrade.”

Numbers. Historians can spend a lot of time arguing over numbers, times and places. Of who initiated what policies. Who gave what orders. What Hitler knew. What Hitler signed. What Hitler said. Was it really Himmler’s plan?

Is truth and justice to be measured by numbers? Is dignity, humanity, civilisation to be measured by exactly what, where and when? If a system gasses one person because of their religion, race or culture, is that system less evil than the one which murders 1,000,000? In the mega age of living by numbers, is it only the serial killers and mass murderers who deserve our attention? And why is that, if that be so? Is it the thrill of the massacre which attracts us, rather than the personal tragedies that each one in each million represents?

THE NAZI IS NOT DEAD

There is a danger that the Holocaust may lose the reality of each and every one of its victims and become a numbers game. The neo-Nazis are now trying to discredit it, hoping that they can rewrite history – gas and burn history – so that they can write the next chapter. They play the numbers game, the who did what, where and when game. They try to sow seeds of doubt so that they can reap a new Nazi Holocaust. David Irving and his fellow travellers are the little Hitlers in waiting. He has written his ‘history’ books, telling us the Holocaust never happened. He is waiting; waiting for us to forget, or waiting for us to wish to forget.

All history books are suspect. Because all historians are human, and all humans are subjective. And anyway most histories are written by the servants of the conqueror. If we want to find out what happened we must listen to the survivors. Then if we want to verify their stories, we can trace back the details they gave us. If one survivor’s story rings of truth then that is surely enough. Because how many more do we want? How do we measure suffering? Do we have to have mega numbers before the suffering becomes truly real, truly horrific? Yes, there were millions more like Leon, Esther and Barny Greenman. But the essential horror of the Holocaust was not the numbers it involved.

The essential horror was what one human could do to another human. That one SS officer allowed one baby to be gassed and ovened is the core of the horror. That humanity which had seemed to have advanced so much could reach back so far and stoop so low is what makes the Holocaust such a terrible thing. That one man, one woman, one child could have been murdered in such a planned, ordered and cold way, simply and only because they had a different religion, marks the Holocaust out.

Or does it? Last month, last week, today. The Serbian concentration camps. The Croatian soldiers wearing swastikas. Mass rape and torture. The starving city of Sarajevo. While the West looks on; participators by proxy. The petrol-bombing of immigrant hostels and the ever increasing attacks on handicapped people in Germany. Le Pen in France, who claims that the Holocaust was a “detail of history.” Derek Beackon and the BNP in Britain; hooligans with blood on their penknives. The “mild fascist” Irving.

The Nazi is not dead, perhaps will never be dead. And as the survivors of the Holocaust get old and pass on, the danger is that their stories will not be passed on. We need to listen to them. We need to learn from them that Nazism/Fascism/Racism is the human being at its most base, most disgusting low. That Nazism is about cold, mechanical cruelty. That the first step to Nazism is to look down on anybody who has a different religion, skin colour, sexual preference, culture or whatever, to you. That you start on the path to Nazism when you think for one moment that you are inherently superior to anybody else. Because no individual person has any innate superiority over another.

We all have individual gifts but these gifts can never elevate the worth of our life above another’s. Anyone who thinks like that is not civilised. Anyone who behaves like that is a Nazi in training. Training to murder without mercy, to live without conscience and to gas and burn away innocence, justice, beauty, love . . .

My number is 98288

Leon Greenman was born in the East End of London. He spent most of his childhood in Holland, where he had many relations. It was in Holland he met Esther Van Damme, a Dutch woman who was living in London. He moved back to London to be close to her, and in 1935 they got married. Soon after their marriage they returned to Holland to look after an ageing grandmother. In March 1940, their son, Barny, was born.

In May of that year the Nazis over-ran Holland. Realising that it would be dangerous for Jewish people, Leon gave their passports to non-Jewish friends for safe-keeping. It was a bad mistake. When he went to get them, so that the family could get back to England, he discovered that their friends had panicked and burned the passports.

The British Consul had closed down and constant approaches to the Swiss Consul were proving fruitless. On 8th October 1942 they were arrested and were taken to Westerbork, a Dutch transit camp. On the 17th January 1943 they were put on a train that would take them to Birkenau. The journey took thirty-six hours.

“No food. No drink. Nothing for the children,” he explains. “I sat opposite my wife. They were still passenger trains; later on they were cattle trucks. We took in turn our baby in our arms so that the other could get some sleep. I remember that I told my wife during the passage . . . I said, ‘If I don’t come back for one another reason – I might become ill – I give you permission to marry. But marry a good man who would be good for our child’. And she said, ‘Yes and if I don’t come back, you may do the same. Find a good woman who’ll be a good mother to our child’.”

When they arrived at Birkenau they were herded out of the trains. “The women went to the left and the men to the right. A few minutes later one of the women cried out and ran towards her husband who stood amongst us. But she never reached him. Halfway an SS officer clubbed her down. And she fell to the ground and he kicked her in the tummy. An incident which I’ll never forget. The first Nazi criminal act.

“Then he turned around and chose fifty men, by putting his club on our shoulders and gloved hand. “Du, du, du und du!” Four or five young ladies were selected as well, probably for Dr Mengele, the Angel of Death, who experimented on women and on twins and on children.”

“We had to march away. Thirty yards further we had to stop. Along comes a truck and stops in front of us. I’m short. I’m always in the front so that I can see what’s happening. And the truck was loaded with women and children. And in the centre of that lot stood my wife, baby in her arm. I called her name but she couldn’t hear me; the engine of the truck was going. But I recognised my wife and child. How could I? It wasn’t quite light; there was a blue light shining on the platform

“Well, let me tell you. My wife had made at home, before we left – she was ready for it – from thick velvet red curtains, which was the fashion of that time in Holland, two garments; one for herself and one for the baby. Covering the shoulders and half the body, and leaving the top in a kind of pointed head. And those two points were looking at me. And then the truck went on and I never saw them again.”

The fifty selected men had all their body hair shaved off, were doused in paraffin as a disinfectant, and were then sent to a barracks. A kapo (manager) came in. “One of our men asked, where are our wives and children? He never gave an answer, but up went his arm and his finger to the roof. Down it came and he walked along. He came back and another man asked about our wives and children. Again the arm went up like that. Later on we knew what it meant.

“The next day we went into another barrack and we got tattooed our number. You lose your name; your name is never mentioned. You’re a prisoner and you get a number. And if they want you they call your number. My number is 98288. ‘Neun acht zwei acht acht! Wo bist du!?’ And then you got to come straight away. You don’t let them call out your number two or three times because when you then appear, they beat you up. And when they hit they know how to hit. And don’t you lift a finger or don’t you dare to say a word. Just accept it.

“They didn’t make us do work in Birkenau. But what they made us do . . . Turn your jacket inside-out. Make an apron out of it. Walk to a heap of sand. Next to the sand is a man with a shovel. He shovels two heaps of sand into it. You walk thirty yards away and you deposit it there. And when that heap is over there, you take that heap back again.”

one of the unluckiest men

From Birkenau they were marched the four miles to Auschwitz. Leon was to spend six months there. His day began at about, “say four, quarter past four. You heard the gong go and you had to get from underneath your blanket. No cushion. A broken mattress. You used your jacket folded up as a cushion. I put my boots on, without shoe laces. I had pieces of wire in them; it was a quick way of tightening. You left the barrack and went to another one. Cold water was there. You washed yourself. Saw that your head was clean. You had no hair, that was clipped straight away when you got into the camp.

“You queued up after that for your little piece of bread. Not more than… If you could cut it, it was about three thin slices. Perhaps once a fortnight, a little margarine, a square half an inch. Or one sugar-spoon of jam. And then an enamel bowl with a half a litre of something. It wasn’t coffee, it wasn’t tea, it was a brown-looking liquid. That was your ration of a morning.

“In the afternoon, in the fields where you worked, at half-past twelve, came the lorry with the metal containers. And you stood in the queue, and the kapo took the big spoon and in your enamel bowl he poured a half a litre of watery soup, consisting of water and leaves. Nothing else. You weren’t there to live. You were there to work and to get thinner and thinner and to die. Then you packed up after working all day, and marched back to the camp. In the Winter-time you had to be back at half-past four/five.

“And you got to your camp, you went into the barrack to wash yourself. No soap, no towel. None of that, no luxury whatsoever. But you had to be clean. No dust on your head because they’d beat you up. No dirty feet, so I washed my feet every night. Because the kapo could lift up the blanket and if he saw dirty feet, the whole ward was awake and he beat you up as an example. I was beaten up many times. So I saw to it that my feet were clean, that my head was clean.

“You got your half litre soup in the barrack, say six o’clock, and that was it. Then there were three gongs: one at quarter-past eight, one at half-past eight and one at a quarter-to nine. And at a quarter to nine you had to be in your barracks and in bed. The lights went out in the barracks and you could sleep. And that was the only peace you had, when you could sleep; tired out from hard labour.

“The work? Thirty or forty trucks filled with cement. Thousands and thousands of bricks. Cable; Siemens cable. We had to build a camp. We had to build the factories outside the camp. Now, if the SS was watching you you had to do it non-stop. It was walking and carrying, walking and carrying.”

Every three weeks or so a ‘fitness selection’ took place. “All the barracks were locked. You had to strip and walk past a doctor and a kapo, who would be sitting behind a little table. And if he looked at your bum or whatever it was, and if you couldn’t walk properly, you went to the left and within two days you went to the gas chambers.

“I remember about one time I stood in the queue. There was the SS at the table. I was waiting to walk on, and for no reason, somebody behind me pushed me out of the queue, and the SS saw it. He didn’t like that. He jumped from his table, came to me and kicked me between the legs. I fell to the ground but I didn’t stay there. I stood up, bore my hurt. And he looked and then walked back to the table, and I went back in the queue.”

Near the end of his stay in Auschwitz Leon would make a discovery that would haunt his future thoughts and dreams. A contingent of Jews had arrived from Holland and one of them sought him out. “The man introduced himself and says, ‘I’m Mr Jacobs. You,’ he said, ‘You’re one of the unluckiest people I ever met. Your train had left fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, when your name was paged in Westerbork camp. Come directly to the office. The documents recognising your Britishness, now they have been found’.”

STACKED LIKE LOAVES OF BREAD

After six months in Auschwitz he was moved to Monnowitz, where he was to spend seventeen months. There he was to be experimented on. “I was standing in a queue to have a bandage around my arm. I had holes in my heels from bad shoes. While I was standing waiting for a bandage, a man in a white coat came along and looked at all the men standing there. And he stopped at me. He looked me over. I daresay my body seemed alright. And he took my number. I never gave it a thought.

“The next morning I was called out of my bunk. I had to follow him. He gave me a coat and clogs and I had to follow him out of my barracks and over a square into another barracks. And when I got there I saw a lot of tubes and bottles and I guess it was to do with medicine. I had to sit in a chair. It was a doctor who took me there and there was another doctor in the room. And they started talking to one another and messing about with tubes and all that. And I was sitting there waiting, and I said, ‘What am I here for? I’m an Englishman and I want to know’. And one doctor said, ‘We want to examine your bladder’. I said,

‘But I got nothing wrong with my bladder’.

‘Quiet,’ he said.

“I was there about a quarter of an hour, and then I heard one say to the other. ‘I don’t think he’s coming. We better take him back’. So I got out of the chair. They gave me the coat and the clogs and I walked with the doctor out onto the square and into my own barracks.

“The next morning the same thing happened. Within a minute of sitting in the chair, the door opened and in came an SS officer. A beautiful new uniform; decorated. He passed by me and went to a window and he called out in German: ‘Anfangen’. (Commence.) My legs were widened. They were strapped to the chair. My arms were strapped to the chair. They took a twelve inch or twenty inch instrument. They placed this in through my penis and pumped me full with water out of a big bottle. I let go. The doctor said, ‘Don’t let go.’ I held it. And they took the instrument out. Put it back again; were turning and twisting it and looking through it. And then I heard one doctor say to the other – loud enough so that the SS could hear it – ‘This is an Englishman’.

“And then the SS turned around so quickly and came to me and said, ‘Are you British?’ He had an American sound in his voice and I gathered he was an American-German. I said, ‘Yes, Sir. I’m British and I’m here a prisoner with my wife and child. And perhaps you can get us out. Because we need not be here. We’re British subjects’.

“‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to go to the political department. I’m only here to supervise the medical department’. And he walked away from me and he stared again out the window. And the doctors went on with me; putting that thing in, pulling it out. And then they were hurting me. I felt the bottom of the thing going into my tummy. I said in English: ‘They’re hurting me now’. Without him moving away from the window he said, ‘Lass ihn gehen. (Let him go.) He need not come back’. And then the doctors stopped. They let me back to my bunk. And for the rest of the week, every day when I had to pee, I peed blood.”

In the concentration camps any sign of resistance was immediately and ruthlessly crushed. On the second day at Birkenau he had learned a brutal lesson; that to publicly resist or disobey was futile. “I saw one of the men being beaten up. He was bleeding all over; out of his nose and mouth and ears and head, right in front of me. He had gone out of the barracks without asking permission. They dragged him back and beat him up terrible.

“I went in my bunk and I lay there and I prayed to God and I asked God to protect my wife and child from this life going on here. And I named a lot of names of my family and friends. I ended up saying, please protect me from being beaten up from what I seen today. And please don’t let me die from hunger. Protect me when they want to beat me up. And I promise you when I come out of here, I’ll tell the outside world what’s happened. This is what I’m doing up to now. I’ve kept my promise.”

However, like many others, he still found his own ways to resist. “I resisted on the quiet, in this way. I had a way of carrying bricks; four bricks on top of one another. I had a way of putting them down so that the middle two would break in half. And when you came the next day to that place where you were working, you saw heaps of broken bricks.”

Survival was a constant battle of mind over body. “I can’t think of anything but to know that one day it’s going to end. Try to fight being hungry. Which I did by going into a couple of barracks when possible and singing a few songs; when the kapo gave me a little soup. But it wasn’t always successful. Sometimes you were kicked under the barrack.”

By January 1945 the Russians and the Americans were advancing. Monnowitz was evacuated and they were all marched back to Auschwitz. From there the inmates were marched – again in the freezing snow – the ninety miles to Gleiwitz. There was fighting around Gleiwitz and the next evening they were packed into a cattle train.

“We couldn’t stand up. We tried sitting in one another’s spread legs, we couldn’t do that, so we just dropped on top of one another.” The journey took five days. Every day of the journey several men died. They were stacked “like loaves of bread” in the final wagon. There was no food or drink.

By the time Leon Greenman arrived in Buchenwald, he could no longer walk, and had to be helped out and into a barracks. There he would see the starving, the dying and the dead. “If any of you ever saw in a fish market a bucket with live eels moving backwards and frontwards in the jelly. These humans beings, absolutely bone and skin, were crawling on the floor, slowly on their bodies, to a leaking tap. Pulling themselves up and letting the drops of water drop into their mouths. And then they let go, sunk to the floor. And then they were helped to a corner where they simply died.”

the prospect of a new Holocaust

On the 11th April 1945 at about four o’clock, General Patton’s Third Army liberated Buchenwald. That morning when Leon Greenman got out of bed and looked out the window, “there was no SS in the watch-towers. It was all dead quiet. Only a little airplane was flying around. Then I saw hundreds of men come back from the woods where they had been taken days before to be killed. And then about six o’clock we heard that the Americans had liberated the camp.

“I wandered around the camp and I found myself in front of the ovens. Inside the ovens I saw the remains of bodies burned, bones, ashes. A little way from that there were four large containers, loaded to the top with bones and ashes, which had been shovelled out of the ovens. And I said, I’ve got to have something to show when I get out, and I have some in a box here.” (He lifts up a small box, which is wrapped in brown paper. He unwraps the paper. Behind a clear plastic case, nestled between yellowing cotton, a piece of burned bone rests among ashes.)

750 men, women, children and babies had left on that train from the Dutch transit camp. “From those 750 people, two men came back after three years. I was one of those two. This is the truth, so help me God. Where is my wife and child? Where are the 60/70 members of the family?”

It is very, very difficult to comprehend that a species which claims to have a ‘soul’, which claims to have a conscience, which claims to be morally superior to other life on this planet, could have created the Holocaust. But what is even more disturbing is that a new Nazi/Fascist movement is on the rise throughout Europe. Fifty years on – the blink of an eyelid in the history of this planet – those whose would support another Holocaust have their jackboots rising.

Leon Greenman sees many similarities between what happened in the 1930s and what is happening today. “It started like that in Holland, where it began for me. We had Mussert, the Dutch fascist leader in Holland. And they began very, very slowly.

“I remember with the voting system they only had very, very few points, and they didn’t get into Parliament, and the world thought that it was just nothing. But when the Nazis came into Holland, they were there in great strength. They had forsaken their country, Holland; they became Mussert Nazis. And 25,000 young Dutchmen went to the front fighting for Hitler against the Russians.”

He talks about how the orders for today’s neo-Nazis come from Germany, just like in the 1930s. About how they can seem weak one moment then mushroom the next. About how they must be stopped before they achieve any real power, because when they do achieve power they will brook no opposition, because, “Those who are against the Nazis must die. That’s Hitler’s words.”

For Leon Greenman, the only way to stop the growth of Nazism is for the people of Europe to unite against it. “I feel that the German people who are against the neo-Nazis in Germany are waiting for the British anti-Nazis, for the Dutch anti-Nazis, for the Irish anti-nazis, for the French anti-Nazis, for the countries who are against the Nazis, to wake up and form one big might against them. Then they will be gone.

“They have no place in our lives. They are only there to make our lives a misery. I know. And the six million Jews and the four million non-Jews, and the thousands of Gypsies that were killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz and elsewhere, their ghosts are crying out and calling out to us: ‘Stand up and get those people away. Close up their quarters. They are doing no good, and they are doing a great harm’.”