Remembering
the Dark Night of Auschwitz
Part Two
By
Scot and Maurine Proctor
Auschwitz began as a Nazi concentration camp for Poles, condemned
for no reason to extermination by hunger, exhausting work, criminal
experiments or by mass murder. Then in 1942, Auschwitz became
the biggest center for the mass extermination of European Jews.
Jews deported to Auschwitz, from as far away as 1500 miles,
were killed in gas chambers immediately on arrival without registration
or identification. For that reason it is difficult to determine
how many people were murdered there, but estimations range from
1.1 to 1.5 million Jews and political prisoners.
In 1941 S.S. Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler singled out the
camp in Auschwitz as the site for the proposed total eradication
of the Jewish population, the so-called 'final solution.'
Ironically, most of the Jews condemned to extinction in Auschwitz
arrived believing that they had been deported for "resettlement."
What was actually happening in the camps, where humans were
gassed like insects, was beyond the comprehension of the outside
world, too much to take in or believe. As Vice-President Richard
Cheney noted, the Holocaust did not happen in some far-off place
but "in the heart of the civilized world."
Elie Wiesel in his classic book, Night, captures the disbelief. He grew up
in a village in Transylvania, knowing a man called "Moshe
the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life…Then
one day they expelled all the foreign Jews from Sighet. And
Moshe the Beadle was a foreigner." Several weeks passed
and then months. Moshe was forgotten, until one day he appeared
again in the village.
"He told his story and that of his companions. The train
full of deportees had crossed the Hungarian frontier and on
Polish territory had been taken in charge by the Gestapo. There
it had stopped. The Jews had to get out and climb into lorries.
The lorries drove toward a forest. The Jews were made to get
out. They were made to dig huge graves. And when they had
finished their work, the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion,
without haste, they slaughtered their prisoners.
"Each one had to go up to the hold and present his neck.
Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used
them as targets. This was in the forest of Galicia, near Kolomaye.
How had Moshe the Beadle escaped? Miraculously. He was wounded
in the leg and taken for dead…
"Through long days and nights, he went from one Jewish
house to another, telling the story of Malka, the young girl
who had taken three days to die, and of Tobias, the tailor,
who had begged to be killed before his sons…
"Moshe had changed. There was no longer any joy in his
eyes. He no longer sang. He no longer talked to me of God
or of the cabbala, but only of what he had seen. People refused
not only to believe his stories, but even to listen to them.
"'He's just trying to make us pity him. What an imagination
he has!' they said. Or even: 'Poor fellow. He's gone mad.'
"And as for Moshe, he wept.
"'Jews, listen to me. It's all I ask of you. I don't
want money or pity. Only listen to me,' he would cry between
prayers at dusk and the evening prayers.
"I did not believe him myself. I would often sit with
him in the evening after the service, listening to his stories
and trying my hardest to understand his grief. I felt only
pity for him.
"Once, I asked him this question:
"'Why are you so anxious that people should believe what
you say? In your place, I shouldn't care whether they believed
me or not…'
"He closed his eyes, as though to escape time.
"'You don't understand,' he said in despair. 'You can't
understand. I have been saved miraculously. I managed to get
back here. Where did I get the strength from? I wanted to
come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that
you could prepare yourselves while there is still time. To
live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm
alone. No I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see
how it is, no one will listen to me…"
Click
here to go to Part 3 of Remembering
the Dark Night of Auschwitz
