The Gallantry and Honour of the French WWII Military

 

 

June 27, 1940: ...But from what I've seen in Belgium and France and from talks I've had with Germans and French in both countries, and with French, Belgian, and British prisoners along the roads, it seems fairly clear to me that:  

                                       France did not fight.

 

If she did, there is little evidence of it. Not only I, but several of my friends have driven from the German border to Paris and back, along all the main roads. None of us saw any evidence of serious fighting.

The fields of France are undisturbed. There was no fighting on any sustained line. The German army hurled itself forward along the roads. Even on the roads there is little sign that the French did any more than harry their enemy. And even this was done only in the towns and villages. But it was only harrying, delaying. There was no attempt to come to a halt on a line and strike back in a well-organized counter- attack.

 

But since the German chose to fight the war on the roads, why didn't the French stop them? Roads make ideal targets for artillery. And yet I have not seen one yard of road in northern France which shows the effects of artillery fire. Driving to Paris over the area where the second German offensive began, an officer from the High Command who had missed the campaign kept mumbling that he could not understand it, that up there on that height, dominating the road and providing wonderful artillery cover with its dense woods, the French must have had the sense to plant a few guns. Just a few would have made the road impassable, he kept repeating, and he would order us to stop while he studied the situation. But there had been no guns on those wooded heights and there were no shell-holes on or near the road. The Germans had passed along here with their mighty army, hardly firing a shot. 

 

At no point in France and at only two or three in Belgium did I see a road properly mined, or, for that matter, mined at all. In the villages and towns the French had hastily thrown up tank-barriers, usually of blocks of stone and rubbish. But the Germans brushed them aside in minutes. A huge crater left by an exploded mine could not have been brushed aside in a few minutes.

 

D.B. in Paris, having seen the war from the other side, concludes that there was treachery in the French army from top to bottom -- the fascists at the top, the Communists at the bottom. And from German and French sources alike I heard many stories of how the communists had received their orders from their party not to fight, and didn't... 

 

Many French prisoners say they never saw a battle. When one seemed imminent, orders came to retreat. It was this constant order to retreat before a battle had been joined, or at least before it had been fought out, that broke the Belgian resistance.

Bordeaux, 1942: the entrance to the anti-Semitic exhibition “The Jews and France”.

 

The Germans themselves say that in one tank battle they were attacked by a large fleet of French tanks after they had themselves run out of ammunition. The German commander ordered a retreat. After the German tanks had retired some distance to the rear, with the French following them only very cautiously, the Germans received orders to turn about and simulate an attack, firing automatic pistols or anything they had out of their tanks, and executing complicated manoeuvres. This they did, and the French, seeing an armada of tanks descend upon them, though these were without ammunition, turned and fled.

 

Another mystery: After the Germans broke through the Franco-Belgian border from Maubeuge to Sedan,  

they tell that they continued right on across northern France to the sea hardly firing a shot. When they got to the sea, Boulogne and Calais were defended mostly by the British. The whole French army seemed paralysed, unable to provide the least action, the slightest counter-thrust.

 

On the whole, then, while the French here and here fought valiantly and even stubbornly, their army seems to have been paralysed as soon as the Germans made their first break-through. Then it collapsed, almost without a fight. In the first place the French, as though drugged, had no will to fight, even when their soil was invaded by their most hated enemy. There was a complete collapse of French society and of the French soul. Secondly, there was either treachery or criminal negligence in the High Command and among the  high officers in the field. Among large masses of troops Communist propaganda had won the day. And its message was: 'Don't fight'. Never were the masses so betrayed. 

A German military unit, marching down the Champs-Élysées; Paris, 4 July 1940  Yad Vashem

 

July 8, 1940: Tomorrow France, which until a few weeks ago was regarded as the last stronghold of democracy on the Continent, will shed its democracy and join the ranks of the totalitarian states. Laval, whom Hitler has picked to do his dirty work in France -- the notorious Otto Abetz is the main go-between -- will have the French Chamber and Senate meet and vote themselves out of existence, handing over all power to Marshal Petain, behind whom Laval will pull the strings as Hitler's puppet dictator. The Nazis are laughing.

 

July 9: The Nazis are still laughing. Said the organ of the Foreign Office Dienst aus Deutschland, in commenting on Vichy's scrapping the French Parliament today: 'The change of the former regime in France to an authoritarian form of government will not influence in any way the political liquidation of the war. The fact is that Germany does not consider the Franco-German accounts as settled yet. Later they will be settled with historical realism ... not only on the basis of the two decades since Versailles, but they will also take into account much earlier times'.

July 10: Hans came in to see me. He had just driven from Irun, on the Franco-Spanish border, to Berlin. He said he could not get over the looks of Verdun, which he visited yesterday. Not a house there has been scratched, he said. Yet in the World War, when it was never taken, not a house remained standing. There you have the difference between 1914-18 and 1940.

 

William L. Shirer ... The Journal of A foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 BERLIN DIARY  

 

Holocaust Encyclopedia

 

 

Elie Wiesel:  Israel advocate 1928 – 2016

"I wanted my language to be a monument to my people -- especially those who died."

"I wrote it [And the World Remained Silent ... Night] -- for the other survivors, who found it difficult to speak and I wanted to tell them, Really ... you must speak."

"I have tried to fight those who would forget."

"Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices."

"We must always take sides Neutrality helps the oppressed, never the victim." 

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor 

 

"My father clearly articulated that the antisemite will always hate, even if they mask that hate as anti-Zionism -- as though it were something separable from antisemitism."

"Our object as Jews is to keep embracing our Jewish faith and heritage and our connection to our over seven million Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel."

Elisha Wiesel, businessman, activist, philanthropist

Jewish survivors in Buchenwald concentration camp, after the liberation of the camp in 1945  AFP/Getty 

 

Holocaust Remembrance Day is held each year on January 27. This year, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, premieres at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. Elisha Wiesel, 53, will speak of his father and his mission to ensure the world 'never forgets'. Elisha Wiesel is chair of the board of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Along with his mother, Marion Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, the Foundation was launched after the death in 2016 of father-and-husband, to continue the work Elie Wiesel dedicated his life to.

 

Directed and written by Oren Rudavsky the 90-minute film addresses the personal story and legacy of a man known as one of the world's most respected Holocaust survivors, known as well as a prolific author, humanitarian, passionate educator and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

 

Eliezer Wiesel was a boy of 15 when he was deported from Sighet, Romania with his parents and three sisters in May of 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau where his mother and younger sister Tzipora were killed on their arrival at the death-and slave labour camp. Elie and his father were selected to go to the slave labour component of the notorious death camp. 

 

By early 1945, as Germany was losing the war and emptying the camps by forcing starving, skeletal inmates on death marches, Elie and his father were sent on a march to the Buchenwald concentration camp where his father later died. In April of that year the camp was liberated by American soldiers. The Jewish orphans in the camp, Elie among them, were transported to France, where his sister Hilda recognized him in a French newspaper photograph.

 

The siblings reunited, along with their sister Beatrice who moved eventually to Montreal. Working as a journalist in France, Wiesel studied at the Sorbonne. "He overcame trauma by becoming a witness", noted a family friend. His memoir of a young boy's reaction to Auschwitz, originally published in Yiddish in 1945 was a 846-page recollection of pain, loss and suffering. Abridged and translated to French, it was published as La Nuit in 1958, and in 1960 as Night, in English.    

 

Night sold over six million copies in 30 languages, and he went on to write many more books. Moving to New York in 1956, Wiesel became a writer, teacher and academic, teaching at City College of New York, then at Boston University in 1976, as Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. "Your suffering is not what defines you, but it can inform you. It shapes you and then it is your job to make it the best tool you can", a former student added of her own mental journey under his tutelage.

 

Having suffered the most inhumane circumstances and losses in his young life, Elie Wiesel matured a determined human rights upholder, refusing to stand silent in the face of immoral human rights abuses, speaking up and bringing attention to some of the modern world's most shameful human rights atrocities. His trauma led him to undertake action of moral outrage against wrongs committed against the vulnerable. Human rights violations that took place in Rwanda, Cambodia, the Sudan and the former Yugoslavia engaged his moral outrage and his propensity to speak loudly, publicly, determined to move others to do the same.  

"[My father] never failed to stand up for Israel, asserting that only Israelis can best decide how to reach their goals of living in peace and security in an extremely hostile neighbourhood."

"And lastly, he insisted that we never relinquish our desire to have a positive impact on the world as a whole."

"He strongly resisted isolationism as a principle."

Elisha Wiesel  

 

The Cynical Hypocrisy of the International Community

"Relatively many people survived, which for example barely happened in sites which didn't have such a forced labour component."

"[As testimony to the past purpose of Auschwitz, maintaining the death camp as a memorial site has its value]: You have the gate [Arbeit Macht Frei], you have the wagon [transport]. You have the incredibly long railway platform which leads to the former crematoria and gas chambers."

Thomas Van de Putte, scholar specializing in Holocaust memory, King's College London

"I saw thousands of tortured people whom the Red Army had saved -- people so thin that they swayed like branches in the wind, people whose ages one could not possibly guess."

Boris Polevoy, Pravda correspondent, eyewitness to Soviet liberation of Auschwitz Jan.27, 1945

"This is the anniversary of liberation. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom."

"It is hard to imagine the presence of Russia, which clearly does not understand the value of freedom."

Auschwitz Museum director Piotr Cywinski

The entrance gate to the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz pictured on January 10.    Kacper Pempel/Reuters

 

The world is set to mark the 80th anniversary of the most dreadful mass atrocity that a country at war designed in an orgy of hatred against an ethnic population drawn from the countries of Europe whose citizenry included millions of diaspora Jews forced in antiquity from their ancestral homeland for exile abroad by a Roman occupation of the holy land that implacably put down an insurrection of Judean origin in a paroxysm of violence that millennia later was replicated with more modern and equally savage technological means of broader dimensions.

It is highly doubtful that Romans of the period felt it incumbent upon themselves to harvest the hair, skeletal remains, attire, gold dental fillings, marriage rings, to enrich themselves and produce stuffing for pillows, the production of soap from the remains of their victims as Nazi Germany felt disposed to do. The slaughter of children, women and men of all ages may be a casualty of war anywhere at any time when civilian populations bear the brunt of conflict that uproots and victimizes them in loss of home, necessities of life and life itself, but Nazi Germany brought its obsession with the extermination of Jews to a fine art.

This photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial shows a German soldier shooting a Ukrainian Jew during a mass execution in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, sometime between 1941 and 1943. This image is titled "The last Jew in Vinnitsa", the text that was written on the back of the photograph, which was found in a photo album belonging to a German soldier

 

It took an orgy of mass dementia to organize round-ups, persuade populations that a nest of vipers lived amongst them that German authorities prepared to save them from, infesting those non-Jewish citizens with a suspicion and loathing of Jews they had lived among for centuries to convince them that the goal of extermination would make for a more refined, pure society once the presence of Jews was eliminated. People adapted nicely and deliberately turned their faces away from the putrid agonies of exclusion and humiliation their fellow Jewish citizens suffered, glad when they suddenly vanished into slave labour camps since out of sight, out of mind was a great relief,

Now, generations after the Holocaust for most people inhabiting our familiar world the memory of mass annihilation is beyond faint and growing fainter. Just as the thousands of Jews who managed miraculously to survive have grown old and are growing older, their witness status soon to fade itself, in and out of history. To be sure, others besides Jews died; political prisoners, Poles, Roma, Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, but it was Europe's Jews that comprised the target focus.

 

This year, on the 80th anniversary memorializing the Holocaust, an estimated 50 survivors are expected to be present, and they will speak to the world once again of their loss, their ordeal, their endurance, their unforgettable memories. Two-thirds of the Jews of Europe perished in that orgy of hate and demonic destruction of human life. They were murdered in the death camps established all over Europe, places like Treblinka, Majdanek, Stutthof, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen among a plethora of others. 

There were survivors at Auschwitz for the simple reason that though it was a death camp it also was a labour camp. Where those who survived the journey to Auschwitz in crowded train transports were separated on arrival into groups deemed sufficiently healthy to work, the others directed to groups who would enter the 'shower rooms' where they were gassed to death with Zyklon B, their remnants cremated in giant furnaces, their ashes belched out of massive chimneys to nurture the surrounding soil.

Presidents, royalty, ambassadors, politicians, rabbis and priests will be among those in attendance to memorialize the fixation of a nation and a continent on the destruction of a tiny ethnic/cultural/religious group that had lived among them for  generations, enriching those countries with their presence as artists, scientists, teachers, factory workers, lawyers, doctors, justices, soldiers, entertainment figures, industrialists, bankers and journalists, bakers and cobblers.

 

The royalty, presidents, ambassadors, politicians and priests of the time who failed to exert their moral outrage over the persecution, then the demonization, then the isolation, then the ghettoization, then the imprisonment and finally the murder of six million Jews were in a very real sense complicit with the perpetrators of the vast act of genocide. Their present day counterparts are in a very real sense not much different than those during the Holocaust who couldn't be moved to make an effort at prevention and deterrence.

The rising tide of antisemitism which bears such an uncanny resemblance to that of the 1930s and 1940s and the growing calls of accusations against a tiny Jewish state established in its ancestral geography to restore pride in Judaic heritage but above all to give strength to the cry of "Never Again!" by its pledge to protect and guide Jews into the future is once again under existential threat. Collegial nations of the West, supporters of the Jewish state, have managed to remain on the sidelines once again, leaving Israel and Jews to their own defense.

The ruins of the sprawling Birkenau site stretch far into the distance

Moral Indignation Over Reality Does Not Expunge It

"It is appalling that the Canadian government could attempt for no good reason to subject innocent Canadians, their family members and descendants to public scorn."

"When the announcement is made, we will have to be ready to go to the Federal Court challenging the government's authority to ignore Justice [Jules] Deschenes' [Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, February 1985] ruling on confidentiality. To do so, we need to prepare now."

"All alleged war criminals, regardless of their ethnic, religious, racial or cultural origin, or where or when they committed their crimes should be bought to trial in Canada under Canadian criminal law."

"If evidence of wartime criminality by any person found in Canada exists, that information must be communicated to the proper authorities for investigation."

Ihor Michalchyshyn, CEO, executive director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress

Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, carrying a banner with a portrait of Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych (second from the right), march in the centre of the western city of Lviv on April 28, 2013. The march commemorated the 70th anniversary of 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division made up mostly of Ukrainian volunteers.  Photo:  (YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP/Getty Images)

When then-prime minister Brian Mulroney was lobbied by Jewish groups to conduct an investigation into the infamously well-known refuge that Canada had become post World War II for Nazi war criminals, he appointed Justice Jules Deschenes to head the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, back in 1985. Previous administrations were disinterested in examining the situation whereby known and unknown war criminals were living ordinary lives in Canada, protected by their postwar-acquired Canadian citizenship. 

The Commission created several documents, one titled Master List of Alleged War Criminals Resident in Canada with a List of Sources. 774 appeared on the list. Additional names of alleged war criminals, including Nazi scientists and technicians who arrived in Canada not as fugitives but as immigrants entitled to entry as landed immigrants simply because the immigration department appeared to find it unnecessary post-war to investigate backgrounds for war-incriminating evidence, brought the total closer to 900 names.

The documents were labelled secret and conveniently shelved, despite Jewish groups which had lobbied to have the investigation take place, then demanding that the result of the inquiry be made public. Justice Deschenes, having done his duty, felt it appropriate and declared his studied opinion that the Inquiry documents be withheld from public scrutiny. Among the large groups of named individuals a smaller number on the list are believed to be Ukrainian in origin, or people hailing from other eastern European nations, complicit with Nazi crimes.

Requests for the release of the documents have never been stilled under Canada's access to information law. It is Library and Archives Canada which must make the critical decision to release the documents. Or not. In June a secret meeting/consultation whose participants were present by specific invitation to attend; described as a "discrete group of individuals or organizations" were present to offer their opinion whether the list should be made public. 

 

Given the Jewish communities' urging over the years for the documents' release, it might have been thought they would be among those receiving invitations to attend. They were not. Given the reality that it was Jews in horrendous numbers that were the designated fascist victims of Nazi Germany's 'Final Solution', that Jewish groups, knowing of the presence in Canada of their persecutors, had a fully vested interest in having their presence revealed, thus finally forcing the government of the day to finally act. 

 

To divest recognized war criminals of their Canadian citizenship, to ensure, despite the passage of years, that their crimes, if proven in law, merited final accounting for.

Neither Holocaust survivors nor Holocaust scholars all of whom had advocated for full release of the documents, including the list of alleged Nazi war criminals, were included to attend the 'consultation' respecting the potential of releasing clearly incriminating documents. In the lead-up to Library and Archives releasing its final decision on the matter, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which had been among the invitees, is seeking funding to finance a legal challenge in Federal Court.

As a declared representative of the Canadian Ukrainian community comprising one and 1/3 million people, the organization is encouraging its contacts within the Ukrainian community to donate to a fund that would aspirationally be in the neighbourhood of $150,000 to launch their legal challenge against the release of the documents with the intention of sparing humiliation, ignominy, harassment and possible charges against those of the Ukrainian community named in the documents.

 

Canadians in general have hugely supported doughty Ukraine in its epic existential battle against the modern equivalent of the Soviet Union, against a tyrant who will stop at nothing to achieve his aims at dominating a smaller neighbour that has no wish to be other than fully independent of Russia, its ideology and grasping territorial ambitions. Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin have been recognized in the commission of war crimes in Ukraine. The conflict continues and so does Russian disinformation. Yet Ukraine itself and its expatriates must also recognize reality of the past.

Another issue identified was the awkwardness of the Soviet involvement in the Second World War; first as an Axis ally of fascist Germany, and later as a member of the Allied forces following Moscow's invasion of Russia. The Soviet Union, loathed by most countries in eastern Europe for its stranglehold on their sovereignty, capturing them all in a forced wide web of enforced 'socialism' within the United Soviet Socialist Republic. During the War and Holocaust years voluntary recruits from some of those nations augmented the Nazi SS, fighting alongside them, participating in deathly carnage.

 

Russia, before and after its invasion of Ukraine, had infiltrated Canadian news through social media to sow divisions between various groups in Canada, particularly through statements both unofficial and official alluding to Ukraine as 'fascist', and a 'neo-Nazi' state. Since Ukraine had ousted its former Russian-oriented President who represented the interests of Russian-Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine and Moscow, to release itself from Russia's imposed bondage, a campaign of Russian propaganda has painted Ukraine as fascist.

 

Russia's top prosecutor has asked the Supreme Court to designate the Azov Regiment, seen here in 2014, as a terrorist group

 

Ukraine most certainly had its fascism-inclined demographic that saw more in common with Nazi Germany than its Soviet occupier. And no one could argue that Ukraine was free from the ancient virus of antisemitism. And the fact that the infamous Azov Battalion was comprised largely of fascists infected with the virus of acute antisemitism. Attention was riveted on the issue of Canadian war criminals when in 2023, Canadian Members of Parliament offered two standing ovations to a 99-year-old war veteran, a Ukrainian-Canadian living in North Bay.

Until it was revealed that Yaroslav Hunka, hailed as a wartime hero in the Canadian Parliament, had done voluntary service in a Ukrainian Waffen SS unit, fighting for and with the Nazis. Canada was the involuntary, disinterested, oblivious recipient of large numbers of soldiers from a Ukrainian Waffen SS division following the war. Jewish groups and the Polish government made it clear that Hunka's unit was involved in war crimes; massacres of women and children.

In the final analysis, the Commission reached the decision that claims of large numbers of war criminals entered Canada were exaggerated, yet as a result of inadequate government screening post-war, it also stated that: "it would be rash to assume that significant numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators did not enter Canada". Investigations into the hundreds of individuals alleged to have been war criminals did not fall under the purview of the Deschenes Commission.

According to Professor Jared McBride, an American who had been a fellow with the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum, his researchers made use of declassified American government records alongside other materials, to compile a list of 275 alleged war criminals held to be most likely to be included in the Canadian records, although  his research is expected to add more names as their own investigation proceeds. 

 

The monument to Roman Shukhevych, commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army from 1943 until his death in 1950, at the entrance of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, Alberta, since mid-1970s. Critics of the monument say it glorifies a Nazi henchman who sided with Germany in hopes of winning independence for Ukraine.  Photo: (Photo courtesy of John-Paul Himka)

"Whether Library and Archives Canada [LAC] likes it or not, these names are going to be released to the public."

"Instead of moving toward a path of openness and transparency about its record on allowing war criminals into the country and its failure to prosecute them, the Canadian government held a secret meeting to discuss the secret names from the secret report from 40 years ago that still has not seen the light of day."

"Moreover, they invited to this meeting the same people who helped to keep the report under wraps four decades ago."

Professor Jared McBride, specialist, Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, UCLA, U.S. Holocaust Memorial fellow

"Why did I survive? I question that myself. I was in second grade before the war and out of 30 classmates, only two of us survived. Why am I so special? I don't know the answer. I believe in God and I'm still here. To all survivors, I say be happy."

"I realized it was a selection [Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp] to kill us. I used to put sand in my shoes to make myself [appear] a little taller. Mengele came to me and asked, 'How old are you?' I said, 'I'm 14'. He said, 'You're a liar', and took his gloves and hit me over the face."

"He told me to drop my pants and my shirt and told me to turn around. He than asked, 'How come you're so dark?' I said, 'I only have one shirt. When it's a hot day the sun is out. I want to preserve that shirt, so I remove it and this is how I got a suntan'."

"I don't know if he liked my suntan, or if he liked my answer. I have no idea. He just passed me by and took the guy next to me to be killed."

91-year-old Holocaust survivor, Dr. Arnold Clevs

“To all survivors, I say, be happy,” says Holocaust survivor Dr. Arnold Clevs, left, with Zikaron BaSalon host Eylon Levy. Photo by Aviva Engel

 

Dr. Clevs was eight years of age when he, his parents and six-year-old sister were forced to relocate to the ghetto in their town in Lithuania. The family employed a live-in housekeeper, a young Lithuanian women who Dr. Clevs described as having grown up with the Clevs children. One day she appeared with a Lithuanian collaborator who came into the house and selected whatever was there that appealed to him. The young woman accommodated her companion. Dr. Clev's mother asked of her 'Could you bring us some bread?'. But they never saw her again.

There are approximately 149,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel. Among them many were children, or babies born during the war. Monday will see the commemorative arrival of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this occasion, a ritual ensued where survivors and others seeking to honour the millions of Jewish children, men and woman who perished as a result of Nazi Germany's institutionalized killing apparatus visit the death camps, a solemn occasion to look back while simultaneously looking forward.

Although 80 years have passed, the memory of those whose lives were extinguished burns bright in the hearts, minds and souls of the survivors. Memorial candles will be lit in millions of Jewish homes, in memory of those who died so prematurely because they were Jews. On October 7 of 2023, some of those Holocaust survivors experienced a scenario reminiscent of what they had lived through generations earlier when the terrorist group Hamas that governs Gaza flooded into Israel to torture, murder and kidnap civilian Israelis.

A group called Zikaron BaSalon meaning Remembrance in the Living Room dedicated to helping Holocaust survivors in their adjustment to normal life, spring into action when incidents occur that overwhelm the survivors with past memories leading to uncertainties and re-emergence of the trauma they suffered. The group knew that in the follow-up to October 7 they would be needed to help heal more recent wounds as Israelis mourned their dead and were tormented about the fate of the hostages, among them their loved ones; children, the elderly, women and men.

"When the war broke out, we realized that we were not dealing with the typical scenarios that the country is used to -- this was something different. The first group that needed our attention were the survivors, whom we knew would not only be fearful, but likely also reliving their childhood traumas. I spoke to a 93-year-old-survivor who said, 'Get me a uniform and a weapon and I'm going in'. But for the most part, Holocaust survivors were really, really traumatized like the rest of us by what they were seeing."

"These Holocaust survivors have endured the absolute worst of humanity, yet they have rebuilt their lives, created families, communities and businesses, and contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel."

Sharon Buenos, global director, Zikaron BaSalon

The immediate action undertaken was to establish an emergency call centre offering emotional support and assistance with food, shelter, medication and transportation to medical appointments for the Israelis who were left homeless after October 7, evacuated from the southern Israel area, from the towns and kibbutzim where their homes were destroyed their belongings looted, their friends murdered. The displaced Israelis were in a state of shock, particularly the children, some of whom had witnessed unbelievable savagery and loss.

Survivors of the Nova music festival and children from the regions across the border from Gaza, attacked on October 7, were connected by Zikaron BaSalon with Holocaust survivors for mentoring and a unique type of emotional assurances. A living room was set up at the Dan Acadia Herzliya Hotel for child evacuees of a community on the Gaza border that suffered agonizing casualties. Currently living at the hotel with their families, the children interacted with Holocaust survivor Hannah Gofrit who at the age of four until she was ten suffered under the Nazis.

Dr. Clevs spent two years in 11 different slave labour and concentration camps. After liberation, he was reunited with his mother and sister. He raised a family in Chicago where he practised dentistry, and eventually moved to Israel. A fellow survivor who had been in Auschwitz-Birkenau with Dr. Clevs as a 16-year-old, now living in Sderot, southern Israel, is 97.  Asked how he managed, living in a town with missiles arriving sporadically, he responded: 'It's a hell of a lot better than Birkenau'.

Crowd of thousands gathers in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square to hear testimonies from Holocaust survivors and hostage families on May 5, 2024, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Charlie Summers/Times of Israel)

Accepted As Jews Who Play Sports

"We wanted to show that we're still here -- that we're accepted, that we weren't ended in 1933."

"I've been there from the first day. I never imagined that we -- as a Jewish team -- would ever be playing a Cup game against a Bundesliga team. So for us, and for me personally, it's a huge joy."

"I have many German friends, Christian friends. I never speak about it. Perhaps his father or grandfather was in the SS, for me everything is open."

"It was 80 years ago. It's past. Now, we try to be accepted as Jews."

Marian Wajselfisz, co-founder, Makkabi Berlin 

"This is something we're extremely proud of. We're here and whoever is ready to play for us, and is also open to playing for a club with Jewish origins and some sort of Jewish culture, we're absolutely happy to integrate people into our teams."

Makkabi Berlin Board Member Michael Koblenz

"Sometimes I feel tired, but when I see the kids, I forget about the tiredness, I'm happy."

"It doesn't matter about religion, or what you are. It's not important."

"The only important thing is that you like to come and play football."

Senegalese defender Papa Alpha Diop, 36-year-old Muslim

The Makkabi Berlin team pose for a photo before a practice match, in Berlin, July 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Ciaran Fahey)

 

In 1898 the Bar Kochba Berlin sports team was founded for the specific purpose of promoting participation in sports for Jews living in Germany. At its peak there were over 40,000 club members. Jewish athletes were forced to play in separate competitions when National Socialist Party (NAZIs) came to power. By 1938 they were banned outright from playing as a Jewish team. And needless to say before long, Jewish players of any sport were banned from playing altogether.

Makkabi Berlin, founded in 1970 as a successor to Bar Kochba Berlin by Holocaust survivors who wanted to revive the tradition of Jewish team sports, lost its 1971 match played in Berlin in a score of 15-1. That was then. Today, Makkabi represents the first Jewish club to play in the season-long tournament for 64 of Germany's best professional and amateur football clubs in the German Cup.

Back in 1935 when the annual competition was initiated under fascist Germany, Jews were forbidden from being involved. Now, fifth-tier Makkabi will be playing against top-tier Wolfsburg. Marian Wajsefisz, one of Makkabi Berlin's co-founders, survived the Holocaust along with his immediate family members, thanks to a Polish couple who gave them haven, hiding them for close to two years in the cellar of their home.

 

Makkabi Berlin co-founder Marian Wajselfisz points to the date below an old photo of the team during an interview with The Associated Press, in Berlin, July 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Ciaran Fahey)

 

Other Makkabi clubs exist in Germany -- Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf -- as well as other Jewish sports and social clubs worldwide. With its 550 members teams are fielded in a number of sports by the Berlin club, that includes basketball and volleyball. There is no mistaking the identity of the Makkabi Berlin club; its mission as a Jewish club remains central to its identity, featuring the Star of David on its crest. Membership, however, is open.

The soccer team has welcomed players with a number of religious faiths, from fifteen countries. Membership includes Jews, Muslims and Christians. Papa Alpha Diop joined the Makkabi Berlin 2017, a Muslim from Senegal. He has taken on duties above his team activities, overseeing the club's youth wing, coaching its under-ten team where children as young as five are able to join its activities.

The Wolfsburg team Makkabi is competing against on Sunday won the German Cup in 2015. It competes in the Bundesliga against teams such as Bayern Munich. Makkabi qualified for this year's German Cup through its win of the Berlin Cup in June for the first time, earning promotion to the fifth tier through winning the Berlin league last season. 

The normal sports ground for Makkabi is named after former national team player Julius Hirsch, whose grandson was invited to the match. His grandfather fought for Germany in the First World War. Julius Hirsch won club championships with Karlsruher FV and Furth, playing for Germany at the 1912 Olympics. The final chapter of his life excised his loyalty to Germany and his war heroism. His reward was delivered at Auschwitz, where he was murdered because he was Jewish.

"The popularity, visibility and success of Jewish sports clubs symbolizes the growth of established Jewish life in Germany and the world", was a statement issued by the World Jewish Congress, "delighted and proud" to acknowledge Makkabi's sporting achievements.

Volkswagen owns the Wolfsburg team, the very auto manufacturer that Hitler was so proud of, 'the people's auto', and which used forced labour in its manufacturing during World War II; Jewish slave labour. German antisemitism went underground for quite a while, following the war's end and the full revelations of Nazi Germany's annihilation of Europe's Jewish population. But it has seen a resurgence.

 

Makkabi Berlin coach Wolfgang Sandhowe instructs his players before a practice match, in Berlin, Wednesday, July 26, 2023. When Makkabi Berlin takes the field on Sunday Aug. 13, 2023, the soccer club founded by Holocaust survivors will become the first Jewish team to play in the German Cup. (AP Photo/Ciaran Fahey)

"If anyone has any problem with us or has any antisemitic background, we're open to discuss, we're open to inform."

"But we don't want to hide and just be in the victim's role. We want to be active."

"And I  think that's also a huge part of the success."

Makkabi captain Doron Bruck

Polish Ire Over Factual Holocaust History

"I will not finance an institute that maintains the kind of people who simply insult Poles."

"[Poles] were the greatest allies of the Jews, and if it had not been for the Poles, many Jews would have died, many more than were killed in the Holocaust."

Polish Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek

 

"[Engelking's comments represent] scandalous opinions [they are an] anti-Polish narrative."

"We know that there could be tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of such cases [of Poles recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, for having helped to save the lives of Jews during World War II]."

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Moraiecki

 

"[The] political attack [on researcher-historian Barbara Engelking are representative of censorious tendencies to be regarded] ...as extremely dangerous and unacceptable."

"We object to the idea of making a subject that calls for meticulous and nuanced research -- as carried out by Professor Engelking -- part of an election campaign."

Letter of protest with over 600 signatures of Holocaust scholars 

"[The feelings of disappointment expressed by Jews during the war are a [fact; they appear in almost every account of those who survived the Holocaust, as well as those who managed to leave a record of their fate, but did not survive."

"The essence of scientific research is a dispute, but a brutal personal attack on a scientist and an outstanding authority in her field cannot be called a dispute."

The POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews 

Polish researcher Barbara Engelking, left, attends a news conference alongside Holocaust survivor Krystyna Budnicka about an exhibition in the Warsaw ghetto at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, on April 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

"A non-Jewish Polish resistance fighter hid my father-in-law in his attic for nine months."

" He took immense risks, for him and his family. He was afraid of being denounced by his neighbours."

"After the war, my father-in-law asked for the man to be recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem."

Reuven, husband of Michaela Najberg 

 

"It’s very moving to see this exhibition."

“We’ve grown up with our grandfather’s stories. This exhibition is amazing and we have no resentment about what happened."

"Polish fascists supported the Nazis but it was Poles who protected my grandfather after the Ghetto’s destruction in 1943 and until the Liberation."

"And now Poland is a democracy. I live in London where I have many Polish friends in London. You can’t judge someone on their great-grandparents’ behaviour. My friends are good people, we share the same values."

Edan Najberg, 35

Visitors perusing the “Around Us a Sea of Fire” exhibition at the Polin museum in Poland on April 18, 2023.  David Gormezano, France 24

Polish researcher-historian Barbara Engelking, renowned for the level of her scholarship has come under fire from authorities in Poland who took umbrage at her statement that Poles could have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust. In a television interview that took place a week ago, the historian noted that Polish Jews felt disappointed in their Polish neighbours during the war, as she referred to what she described as "wide-spread blackmailing" of Jews by Poles during the country's Nazi German occupation.

Since that interview, both the historian and the independent television broadcaster faced threats including the threat of consequences by Polish government institutions, all of which succeeded in transforming the matter from a furor over historical accuracy -- as opposed to injury to national pride, and turning the issue into an item for the country's political campaign leading up to a fall election in Poland.

 

Pro-government media in support of Poland's conservative government describe historian Engelking's remarks as an attack on the nation committed by one of their own, accusing her of distorting the historical record, failing to give due credit to Poles who risked and occasionally lost their lives in their determination to give aid to their Jewish neighbours.

This is, in fact an ongoing controversy, part of an emotional debate in Poland over Polish-Jewish relations that has rumbled for years. The issue of the manner in which Poles behaved toward Jews during the war -- when brutal crimes were committed by the German occupation against Poles considered to be similar to how Jews were viewed by Nazi Germany subhuman -- and against Jews scheduled for extermination has caused limitless friction for years.

During the German occupation of Poland, some Poles aided Jews despite such help proffered to a people doomed to death being an act punishable by execution by occupation forces. There were Poles who denounced or blackmailed Jews, their motivation pure antisemitism along with personal gain. And then there were the Poles whose lives were consumed with fear, seeking to survive the war and choosing non-involvement in the perils faced by others.

Polish nationalists insist that though some Poles preyed on Jews, a generalization of society at large is unwarranted. Scholarship highlighting Poles who betrayed Jews in their opinion represents a historical distortion when the reality, they claim is a history of Polish heroism of those who resisted the German occupation. Statements such as Researcher Engelking's they assert, risks shifting responsibility of German crimes to Poles.

The controversial statements were spoken on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising while the researcher was being interviewed by private broadcaster TVN, relating to an exhibition she had helped to curate on the fate of civilians in the ghetto: "Around Us A Sea of Fire", which saw its opening a week ago. In response, the Prime Minister of Poland referred to over 7,000 Poles recognized as righteous gentiles by Israel's Holocaust institute, Yad Vashem.

Poland's minister of education threatened the institution where historian Engelking works -- the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, part of the Polish Academy of Sciences -- to have their funding reviewed. Jews had lived in Poland for a thousand years in the thousands of years of the Diaspora. At the time of the Second World War there were 3.3 million Polish Jews, only 380,000 of whom managed somehow to survive the ordeal of mass extermination, Nazi Germany's institutionalized 'Final Solution'.

Three million non-Jewish Polish citizens were targets of Nazi Germany's plan to rid the world of 'sub-human' trash. Now, Poland's state broadcasting authority has launched an investigation into TVN, owned by the U.S. company Warner Bros. Discovery. A report by the broadcaster claiming that St.John Paul II had covered up instances of clerical abuse in his native Poland before becoming Pope has also brought it government criticism.

Critics of the government view the situation as an attempt to exploit the issue in hopes of swaying voters prior to the election, since the ruling party is at risk of losing votes to a far-right party, which has been surging in popularity. Leading Poland's Liberal media and commentators to give warning that media and academic freedoms are being stifled.

"The government is playing a political game [with a 2018 bill which punishes 'whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich by a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years']. They’re manipulating the statistics of the people who helped the Jews during the war. They exaggerate the figures because they only want to hear about this version of history. It’s a narrative that appeals to many people, the story of the Poles who helped the Jews, but it does not reflect the historical reality at all." 

"In my family, my grandfather’s brother was denounced by one of his childhood friends and killed by the Germans. However, his son was sheltered by another Polish family during the war and survived. So it’s complicated."

"By wanting to forbid people from speaking out against the Poles that collaborated with the Germans, the government is politicizing history. This isn’t just about limiting public debate and threatening academics and all those who research the Holocaust. Jewish organizations continue to protest against this law."

Krzysztof Izdebski,  lawyer, former leader of the Jewish community in Poland

Anette Weynszteyn (centre), stands beneath a photo of her mother. Suzana Schnepf-Kolacz, the exhibition curator, and Polish historian Barbara Engelking, are to her right and left at the POLIN museum on April 18, 2023.  David Gormezano, FRANCE 24

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

"Photographs depicting the smoke over the ghetto as well as in the streets and courtyards inside the ghetto, burnt-out houses, firefighters putting out the flames, posing on the roof of a building or eating from mess tins in the street." 

"It seems that Leszek Grzywaczewski tried his best to record these scenes, realizing the importance of documenting events inaccessible to the eyes of people on the other side of the ghetto wall."

POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw

 

"The Germans began to systematically burn down the buildings, turning the ghetto into a fire trap." "The Jews fought valiantly for a month until the Germans took over the focal points of resistance."

"It was the first popular uprising in a city in Nazi-occupied Europe."

Yad Vashem, World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Israel

  USHMM Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943

On October 12, 1940, German military authorities occupying Poland decreed establishment of a ghetto in Poland's capital, Warsaw. The decree required all Jewish residents of the city to move into a designated area sealed from the rest of the city. The ghetto was enclosed by a wall 10 feet in height capped by barbed wire, closely guarded to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. 

 

The population of the ghetto was increased with Jews compelled to move there from nearby towns, the final total of ghetto residents estimated to be over 400,000. Ghetto residents were forced to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, equal to an average of 7.2 persons per room. Food was scarce and hunger was rampant.

Some young men and women ventured out of the ghetto over the walls at night or through underground sewer tunnels, to bring back outside news, to return with food, and eventually some joined the Polish Underground movement. Others brought back whatever weapons they could find. Over time a cache of weapons was built representing the armoury put to use in time by the resisters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Comprised mostly of young Jews who resolved to fight and to die in the effort. And they did -- accomplishing both goals.

Photographs of the period have been placed at various memorial sites; mostly photographs taken for recording purposes by German forces, addicted to record-keeping and maintenance. As though proud of their accomplioshments and determined to ensure a precise accounting of all measures taken in the extermination of Europe's Jews. To indicate how efficient and proficient they were, tasked by their Fuhrer to rid the world of the presence of Jews.

 

Smuggling was how most people in the ghetto got food, and children were often the ones sneaking out of the ghetto to do it. nieznany/unknown via Wikimedia Commons

A newly discovered cache of personal photographs, the property of a young Polish firefighter of the time, highlights the destruction the Nazis brought to the tight little enclave where Jews were fenced in, many dying of disease or starvation. When the German military became aware of a planned uprising they must have been astonished that a paltry few ill-equipped Jews had the temerity to fight back, and in fact manage to counter an offensive and keep the Germans at bay for a month; a rag-tag, starving group of Jews countering the mighty German military.

The German authority had begun slowly selecting Jews for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp wth its goal to "eliminate the Jewish population". An estimated 265,000 Jews were deported from July to September of 1942, wth another 35,000 killed outright in the ghetto itself. This brought Jewish resistance groups to plan a response. The illusion that anyone would survive the ghetto  when the war eventually came to an end dissipated as the ghetto incarcerants began to realize they were all slated for death.

 

Starvation was omnipresent in the Warsaw Ghetto for both young and old. Blid Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

 

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was sparked by the evacuation of Jews to certan death. During the final days of the uprising the Nazis ended the Jewish resistance by setting the ghetto on fire. The German military called on Warsaw firefighters to make certain the blaze "did not spread to the houses on the 'Aryan' side", according to the POLIN Museum, located on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto.

A yuung Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski, 23 years of age, began snapping pictures while pursuing his duties as a civilian firefighter. Images show buildings on fire, smoke billowing, firefighting crews and Jews evacuated from the ghetto. The photographs, since the negatives were found by a son of the photographer, represent the sole known photos taken by a non-German.

A dozen of the 48 shots on the roll of negatives were published previously as prints, held at the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Jewish Historical Institute. The POLIN Museum now possesses photographs never before seen. The negatives are now to be featured in an exhibition titled "Around Us a Sea of Fire" in honour of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising's 80th anniversary, at the POLIN Museum.

Jews captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19–May 16, 1943. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD