The War Years
I’ve never been a big fan of Twitter. About fifteen years ago, when it was still a bit of a curiosity and not the cesspool of crazy we know and love today, I read about a rather clever use of Twitter’s data: a map of the world randomly displayed posts from all over the globe. If you had the inclination, you could spend hours contemplating stray thoughts from all of humanity.
I’d like to do something similar here. I’ve come across a variety of diaries, letters, speeches, and whatnot from the early 1940’s, so let’s see if I can make any sense of it. Some of it is quite uplifting, but be forewarned, some of it not so much.
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At the beginning of the war, many Palestinian Jews pledged allegiance to the King and joined the British army. Moshe Mosenson was one of them, and his correspondence was collected in “Letters from The Desert.” Here’s what he wrote home on August 5, 1940:
Here I am at the training camp. For the first time I see my home and my former life as if through a mist of longing. You asked me to tell you how I succeeded in persuading my comrades to let me go. During the discussion I gave voice to my fear that the volunteers would be chosen from among the men who could most easily be spared. I went on to say that the Kibutz was obliged to give of its best people to the first core of the Jewish volunteers, that it was the most devoted and deeply rooted, the fathers and veterans who should go. I was brought up in Palestine and have seen several mobilizations. I was a child during the last war, when the whole of Tel-Aviv followed the members of the Jewish Legion on their way to the railway station. Later came the riots at Jaffa. We lived in Nveh-Shalom at that time. The boys who had been killed at the Beit-Hachalutzim in Jaffa were brought close by our house. I saw their torn bodies. After the riots of 1929 that I experienced as an adult, there were the riots of 1936, and I was one of the defenders then.
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The “Warsaw Diary Of Chaim Kaplan”, also known as “The Scrolls of Agony”, contains this entry for October 10, 1940:
Clouds are covering our skies. Racial segregation is becoming more apparent every day. Yesterday an order was published that the Jews must make way before every German, both soldiers and civil servants in uniform. Making way means that the Jews must step aside until the Germans leave the sidewalk. You must always keep your eyes open and guard yourself against daydreaming and conversation lest you fail to do the proper honor to a Nazi you encounter. Today we have already had our first victims, who were beaten because of the order. You go out trembling, full of panic lest you meet a Nazi.
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Another letter from Moshe Mosenson, dated January 5, 1941:
Today we went to visit a nearby town, a typical Egyptian-Arab town. We were told that a number of Jewish families were living there. We wandered about the town for a whole evening, looking for a Jewish face. A Greek shopkeeper brought us to a Jewish moneychanger, who appeared confused at the sight of a dozen English soldiers in his shop. We greeted him with a “Shalom aleichem.” But there were some Egyptian Arabs in his shop at the time and we felt that he wasn’t too happy to receive us at that moment. He offered to lend us a young boy as guide and we were brought to the rabbi, who is called Chacham Bashi in the East. We followed the boy through dark alleys until we reached a tall house. The boy knocked on the door and someone called out: “Who’s there?” When the boy called out his name, they answered him and only then was the door opened. The Chacham was startled at the sight of soldiers standing on his threshold. We quieted him by saying that we were Jews, from Palestine. His face brightened and he received us immediately with touching warmth and made us come in. This was a very moving encounter. In the midst of the conversation the rabbi said: “My dear friends , we have not yet prayed Mincha; let us pray together. It will be a great honor for us.”
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Again from Chaim Kaplan, January 18, 1941:
All along the sidewalks, on days of cold so fierce as to be unendurable, entire families bundled up in rags wander about, not begging, but merely moaning with heartrending voices. A father and mother with their sick little children, crying and wailing, fill the street with the sound of their sobs. No one turns to them, no one offers them a penny, because the number of panhandlers has hardened our hearts.
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The Nazis set up Jewish Councils, also known as Judenrats, to administer the ghettos. Kaplan was quite critical of Adam Czerniakow, who ran the Judenrat in Warsaw. I am in no position to judge, but it’s clear that Czerniakow viewed himself as serving the Jews. Here are some entries from “The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow.”
May 2, 1941: Nossig told me about a Jewish mother who abandoned two children in the street, disclaiming to the crowd that they were hers, although, they kept on crying: “Mummy!” A charity collection box with a few pennies was stolen from a telephone booth.
May 10, 1941: Food is dreadfully inadequate. The workers were to receive 6½ ounces of bread, 2.2-2.9 pounds of potatoes, sugar, marmalade, meat, coffee, etc. There are no potatoes, and they receive 4-5 ½ ounces of bread. There is no fat whatsoever. The camp huts have spoiled straw to sleep on and wind is blowing through the walls. There are no showers and restrooms.
May 12, 1941: On the streets they are snatching handbags and stealing bread. The Order Service warns that in the near future the transport of bread from bakeries might no longer be safe. The old women who carry bread have their baskets protected with wire nets at the top.
May 18, 1941: On the whole a quiet day.
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Renia Spiegel is not well known, although before the war, her younger sister was quite famous as the “Polish Shirley Temple”. Renia’s mother managed her sister’s career and was in Warsaw when the Germans invaded. The rest of the family was in eastern Poland, which was occupied by the Russians. Renia was devastated by the separation from her mother, and she wrote about her endlessly. Still, most of her thoughts were about school, gossip, boys, parties, and her poetry; not that different from any young girl you might run into. This from the “Diary of Renia Speigel”, June 26, 1941:
I can’t write. I’m weak with fear. War again, war between Russia and Germany. The Germans were here, then they retreated. Horrible days in the basement. Dear L-rd, give me my Mamma, save all of us who have stayed here and those who escaped the city this morning. I want to live so badly. A piece of shrapnel fell into our house. These have been horrific days. Why even try to describe them? Words are just words. When your whole will, your whole mind and all your senses hang from the flying missiles and beg: “Not this house!” You’re selfish and you forget that the missile that misses you is going to hit someone else.
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The next selections are from a fascinating book: “The Good Old Days.” This is a unique collection of German memories of the Shoah. We start with Blutordenstrager Felix Landau, who was stationed in Ukraine. Although he had a wife and children, he seemed more preoccupied with his young mistress Gertrude. Here’s a collection of diary entries from July, 1941:
We arrived in Lemberg. Shortly after our arrival the first Jews were shot by us. As usual a few of the new officers became megalomaniacs, they really enter into the role wholeheartedly. This morning I found out that we can write, and it looks as though the post will actually be dispatched. So while listening to wildly sensual music I wrote my first letter to my Trude. While I was writing the letter we were ordered to get ready. EK with steel helmets, carbines, thirty rounds of ammunition. We have just come back. Five hundred Jews were lined up ready to be shot. Another eventful day. In the morning the workers I had ordered failed to appear. I then went to the Council of Jews and informed them that if 100 Jews did not report for work within an hour, I would select 100 of them not for work but for the firing squad. Barely half an hour later 100 Jews arrived together with a further seventeen who had run away. I reported the incident and at the same time gave orders for the fugitives to be shot for refusing to work, which happened precisely twelve hours later. Tomorrow I am going to make a concerted effort to ask about my Trudchen coming here. Then I’ll write a long letter to Trudchen. Good night my dear little rascal, please still love me, think of me, and stay true to me.
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Next from “The Good Old Days”, Wehrmachtoberpfarrer Kornmann, a chaplain in the German army submitted this report on August 21, 1941:
Yesterday toward 1500 hours two military chaplains from a military hospital unit in this area came to see me and the Division’s Catholic Military Chaplain and reported to us that nearby, some 500m away, about 80 to 90 children from babies to school age were being held in the upper story of a house. The children could be heard from a long way off shouting and crying and as they had already been there 24 hours, the soldiers quartered in the neighboring houses were being sorely disturbed at night. The two military chaplains had been made aware of the presence of the children by the soldiers themselves. Together with the two chaplains and my Catholic colleague, I went to the house in question and saw the children lying and sitting about in two small rooms. They were partly lying in their own filth, there was not a single drop of drinking water, and the children were suffering greatly due to the heat. A man from the nearby Ukrainian militia was standing guard downstairs. We learned from him that these were Jew children whose parents had been executed. There was one group of German soldiers standing at the watch post and another standing at the corner of the house. Some of them were talking agitatedly about what they had heard and seen. As I considered it highly undesirable that such things should take place in full view of the public eye, I hereby submit this report.
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And now back to the desert, with Moshe Mosenson’s letter of October 29, 1941:
As winter is beginning, let me tell you the story of a blue sweater I intend to send you. I still don’t know how, but I’ll write you about it. Close by our camp is a camp of New Zealanders. One of them, a boy of nineteen, is very friendly with me and visits me often. When he doesn’t find me, he always leaves me with some chocolate, or some good cigarettes. His name is Tate. He really is a youngster, clean-cut, kind. Tate has a girl in New Zealand, a girl who lives with his mother. His mother and his girl knitted the sweaters for him in the evenings. He insisted that I take one of the sweaters. I refused. One morning I awoke and found the sweater in my tent. Apparently, he had visited me at night and had left the sweater there quietly, without my noticing anything. On the next day I said to him, when I met him, that I didn’t need it, but he stood firm. Finally I told him that I’d send the sweater to you. The love of a mother and a sweetheart are woven into it, and it will reach you because of a soldier’s friendship.
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I did not learn this until recently, but the Jewish community in Shanghai was started by refugees during the first World War. I read the following report by Yehoshua Rapoport, dated November 1941, in “The Jew In The Modern World”:
A quarter century ago the dual storm of war and revolution brought a few Jews to East Asia. Jewish life began to breathe weakly and anemically in Harbin, Tianjin, and Shanghai. There were Jewish libraries, clubs, lectures, and performances. There was even a Yiddish newspaper in Harbin. The Jewish pulse, however, grew even weaker. No transfusions of new blood were available; a part of the Jewish blood that had been brought along dried up due to emigration; the rest atrophied due to anemia. However, as it turned out, it was still too early to say kaddish….Storm no. 2 again drove a small Jewish community to East Asia. It is told that when one of the pyramids was opened [by archeologists] a few wheat kernels were found that had dried out in the thousands of years they were buried. But a little earth and sunshine were enough for the dry kernels to sprout. The inner vitality sufficed to preserve them for centuries. The Jewish seed contains no less vitality.
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Also from “The Jew In The Modern World”, this by Hans Frank, the German governor-general of Poland, December 16, 1941:
One way or another – I tell you quite openly – we must finish off the Jews. The Fuehrer put it into words once; Should united Jewry again succeed in setting off a world war, then the blood sacrifice shall not be made only by the people driven into war, but then the Jews of Europe will have met their end. We will have pity, on principal, only for the German people, and for nobody else in the world. As an old National-Socialist I must also say that if the pack of Jews were to survive the war in Europe while we sacrifice the best of our blood for the preservation of Europe, then this war would still only be a partial success. I will therefore, on principle, approach Jewish affairs in the expectation that the Jews will disappear. They must go.
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On a happier note, more correspondence from Moshe Mosenson, December 29, 1941:
Before I sit down to reply to your good, healing letter, let me tell you about something very moving that happened to me. Tate’s mother and sister in New Zealand sent me a wonderful package for New Year’s and in it they enclosed this letter: “Dear Moses, I don’t know you. But I know my dear son’s taste in people. If he likes you so much, you must be worthy of his love. Please accept his mother’s love, too. My son has written me a great deal about you. Please accept our modest gift and remember that, far from the battlefields we, the mothers and daughters of New Zealand, are praying for the triumph of justice over evil. With a mother’s love, Eleanora Tate.”
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Chaim Kaplan, February 23, 1942:
We live in fear of the future. I was told by an acquaintance of mine who has seen the official documents that thousands of Jews have been killed by poison gas. It was an experiment to test its effectiveness. Now that spring is approaching, we fear a new plague because of the frightfully bad sanitary conditions which exist in the ghetto. The negligence of the Health Department, which is under the aegis of the Judenrat, has turned the ghetto into a garbage dump and a huge public privy. Frozen water and sewage pipes have forced us to make latrines of stairways and yards. We are surrounded by stinking filth, and when the spring thaws melt the frozen dung heaps who knows what ghastly diseases will be let loose on us then?
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Adam Czerniakow, also February 23, 1942:
In the morning at the Community. 27F. Beautiful weather. Are we approaching spring? One fellow asks another: What is the news from the front? I have no idea, my apartment is at the back, was the reply. The widow of the bandit Tine, on the instructions of the police, returned the possessions of her husband with the exception of the cap pistol, which the Sicherheitspolizei people wanted to be delivered to them. The matter of releasing the prisoners from the central Jewish detention facility is not moving forward. I am spitting blood from my ceaseless efforts, unfortunately to no avail. A conversation with a caretaker who has been scolded for the filth in his building: “What do you think I am, a janitor?”
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From the “Diary of Renia Speigel”, about a month before she was murdered, June 7, 1942:
Wherever I look, there is bloodshed. Such terrible pogroms. There is killing, murdering. G-d Almighty, for the umpteenth time I humble myself in front of you, help us, save us! L-rd G-d, let us live, I beg You, I want to live! I’ve experienced so little of life. I don’t want to die. I’m scared of death. It’s all so stupid, so petty, so unimportant, so small. Today I’m worried about being ugly; tomorrow I might stop thinking forever.
Think, tomorrow we might not be
A cold, steel knife
Will slide between us, you see
But today there is still time for life
Tomorrow the sun might be eclipsed
Bullets might crack and rip
And howl, pavements awash
With blood, with dirty, stinky slag, pigwash
Today you are alive
There is still time to survive
Let’s blend our blood
When the song still moves ahead
The song of the wild and furious flood
Brought by the living dead
Listen, my every muscle trembles
My body for your closeness fumbles
It’s supposed to be a throttling game, this is
Not enough eternity for all the kisses.
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When Czerniakow was first ordered to assemble the Warsaw Judenrat, he collected enough cyanide capsules for all the council members in case it ever became necessary. He swallowed one a few days after he wrote this on July 23, 1942:
In the morning at the Community. Worthoff from the deportation staff came and we discussed several problems. He exempted the vocational school students from deportation. The husbands of working women as well. He told me to take up the matter of orphans with Hofle. The same with reference to craftsmen. When I asked for the number of days per week in which the operation would be carried on, the answer was 7 days a week.
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One of Chaim Kaplan’s last entries, July 30, 1942:
The seventh day of the expulsion. Living funeral pass before the windows of my apartment – cattle trucks or coal wagons full of candidates for expulsion and exile, carrying small bundles under their arms. Their cries and shrieks and wails, which rent the very heavens and filled the whole area with noise, have already stopped. Most of the deportees seem to be resigned to their fate. Only an occasional sound, the tear-drenched echo of a protest, is heard from some unfortunate seized while she was engaged in the activities of everyday life. Misfortune descended upon her unforeseen. She knew that there was an expulsion, but she was almost positive that it would never come to her. And behold, it is come! Woe to her! Alas for her soul! But her shrieks and plaints are sown upon the wind. It is finished, decided. She is going toward a new “life.”
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From “The Jew In The Modern World”, on the deportation of children from the Lodz Ghetto, Mordechai Rumkowski, September 4, 1942:
The ghetto has been stuck a hard blow. They demand what is most dear to it – children and old people. I was not privileged to have a child of my own and therefore devoted my best years to children. I lived and breathed together with children. I never imagined that my own hands would be forced to make this sacrifice on the altar. In my old age I am forced to stretch out my hands and beg: “Brothers and sisters, give them to me! – Fathers and mothers, give me your children…Yesterday, in the course of the day, I was given the order to send away more than 20,000 Jews from the ghetto, and if I did not – “we will do it ourselves.” The question arose: “Should we have accepted this and carried it out ourselves, or left it to others?” But as we were guided not by the thought: “how many will be lost?” but “how many can be saved?” we arrived at the conclusion – those closest to me at work, that is, and myself – that however difficult it was going to be, that we must take upon ourselves the carrying out of this decree. I must carry out this difficult and bloody operation, I must cut off limbs in order to save the body! I must take away children, and if I do not, others too will be taken, G-d forbid.
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Moshe Mosenson wrote two letters on November 5, 1942, this one to his daughter:
We are pursuing the German armies who are fleeing before us. It is good that way, my daughter. We have pushed them far away from the place where they threatened our country. That danger is over now. But the job is not finished yet, my child. There is still a great deal of suffering in store for us before the day of victory. But here in Africa, we have given them a real blow. If only you could see the German tanks all burned and their planes that didn’t even manage to get into the air, you would be as happy as I am. If only you could see the German prisoners, too numerous to count. There are flocks and flocks of them. They are no longer so proud and arrogant as they were. We are attacking them from one side and our American friends are attacking from the other. And after we clean Africa up we will go on and fight them in their own country, until we wipe out the Nazi-Fascist plague completely. Then, my daughter, we will go home again.
And this one to his wife:
I have heard that my friend Tate, the New Zealander, is among the dead. I can’t rid myself of this thought. Jim, the old soldier, wept when he told me about Tate’s death. His face, he said, was calm and he was smiling in the wonderful way when he was alive. His body was full of holes; only his face was untouched.
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From “The Jew In The Modern World”, in his last communication as ghetto revolt commander, Mordecai Anielewicz, April 23, 1943:
It is impossible to put into words what we have been through. One thing is clear, what happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans ran twice from the Ghetto. One of our companies held out for 40 minutes, and another – for more than 6 hours. The mine set in the “brush-makers” area exploded. Several of our companies attacked the dispersing Germans. Our losses in manpower are minimal. That is also an achievement. Yechiel fell. He fell a hero, at the machine-gun. I feel that great things are happening and what we dared to do is of great, enormous importance. It is impossible to describe the conditions under which the Jews of the Ghetto are now living. Only a few will be able to hold out. The remainder will die sooner or later. Their fate it decided. In almost all the hiding places in which thousands are concealing themselves it is not possible to light a candle for lack of air. The dream of my life has risen to become a fact. Self-defense in the Ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men and women of battle.
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Again from “The Jew In The Modern World”, not to be outdone, the German general in charge of suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Juergen Stroop, May 16, 1943:
The number of Jews taken out of the buildings and arrested was relatively small during the first days [of the operation against the Warsaw Ghetto]. It transpired that the Jews had taken to hiding in the sewers and in specially erected dugouts. Whereas we had assumed during the first days that there were only scattered dugouts it transpired in the course of the large-scale action that the whole Ghetto was systematically equipped with cellars, dugouts, and passages. In every case these passages and dugouts were connected with the sewer system. Only through continuous and untiring work of all forces we succeeded in catching a total of 56,065 Jews whose extermination can be proved. To this figure should be added the number of Jews who lost their lives in explosions, fires, and so on, but whose numbers could not be ascertained. The Polish population for the most part approved the measures taken against the Jews. The large-scale action was terminated on May 16, 1943 with the blowing up of the Warsaw synagogue at 20:15 hours.
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Ending on a high note, this is one of the last letters written by Moshe Mosenson, this one to his daughter, November 4, 1943:
In your letter you have good news for me when you tell me that you and your comrades have joined the Noar Haoved. This is a holiday for me, my daughter. If you could only know how happy it made me to think that both you and your father were in the same movement. Do you know that when your grandfather and grandmother dreamed of returning to Zion, while they were still in the Galut and wished to come to Palestine and to join the ranks of its builders, they had to rebel against their parents? Parents did not wish their children to leave them and go to Palestine in those days. There was a battle of the generations, between fathers and sons. The fathers did not understand the desires and aspirations of their sons and the sons had to be ruthless and to hurt their parents. In this ways a great deal of pain and suffering and humiliation were inflicted both on the parents and their sons. And afterwards, too, when these pioneers built settlements and had children, there were some among them who did not wish to continue with the work that their parents had begun. They felt estranged from work and from the agricultural life, and many farms were abandoned for lack of heirs in the new generations. We have been fortunate enough to see one generation holding out its hands to the generation before it.
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And that’s the way it was. Now, go and study.
