Anne Frank’s Classmates Remember Holocaust and Days of Hiding
“What we had was a ‘killing machine’--not just part of a normal war, but a
killing machine. We shouldn't forget this past, and we must remain informed
about what's happening today. What went on then should never happen
again.” Nanette Blitz Konig, best friend of Anne Frank (p. 127)
“By the end of the war, I looked like a skeleton. My hip bones were poking
through my skin. They weighed me when I'd already been in the sanatorium
for a while, and I was thirty-two kilos, barely seventy pounds. So I must
have weighed a lot less before.” Nanette Blitz Konig, who spent three years
recovering in the sanatorium after her release in 1945 from Westerbork, a
Nazi prison in The Netherlands (p. 132-3)
“The dates tell you that the children who arrived in Auschwitz and Sobibor
[Nazi extermination camps] were gassed immediately.” Nanette Blitz Konig,
viewing the plaque with the names and death dates of Jewish children
(including that of Anne Frank) of the Montessori School (now named Anne
Frank School) where she and Anne and many of their classmates went to
school before they went into hiding or were murdered by the Nazis (p. 160)
“My freedom.” Nanette Blitz Konig, when asked by a twelve-year-old boy at
the Anne Frank School, in 2008, what was the most cherished thing that had
been taken from her as a Jew during the Second World War. (p. 163)
“The informers were paid [by the Nazis]; and sometimes it was a matter of
carelessness on the part of those in hiding, or of those who were hiding
them as well. In any event, many people were betrayed. One third seems to
be the official figure, but I believe that half the Jews who went underground
were betrayed.” Lenie Duyzend, another female classmate of Anne Frank (p.
180-1)
(All quotes from We All Wore Stars, Memories of Anne Frank from Her
Classmates, by Theo Coster--also an Anne Frank classmate--English
translation published by Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)
Those few excerpts from the book may help to fix in your mind the
conditions under which millions of Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe managed
to avoid death during the Holocaust. I say “avoid death” because even the
word “survive” fails to give sufficient impact. Death by disease or starvation
was common, even while the Jews were “free,” in hiding from the Nazi
troops. Many did not manage to avoid death. Eighty percent of the Jews in
The Netherlands before the war did not survive.
Of the ones who hid and were discovered, they were sent in railway freight
cars to concentration camps. The cars were so crowded that individuals had
no room to sit down. Some literally died en route, of disease or starvation.
Those who were not fit to help the Nazis in some way, while in the camps,
were told they were to take showers to clean up the lice and filth that most
had accumulated. The showers emitted not water, but lethal gas.
Why, I wondered when I was younger, did so many go peacefully rather
than fighting to the death after they were captured? They were starving,
they believed that if they were sent to “work camps” they at least would be
fed. They didn’t mind working if they would be fed. Most didn’t work. They
didn’t live long enough to need to be fed.
They believed the “showers” would not only cleanse their skin, but they were
told that a mild chemical would rid them of lice and parasites. The “showers”
were to be a privilege.
They believed. They died. Six million of them.
Seventy years later, many of us have lost the message. Today we have
more Jew haters than in past decades. Why? Because those who hated the
Jews before and during the Holocaust continued to hate them after the war
was over. And, like the Nazis who invented modern day propaganda
methods, they continued to spread their word, relentlessly.
I recently defriended a man on Facebook. While he was a marvelous
resource for anti-establishment “facts” and video materials, he was also
rabidly anti-Jewish. Anything done in Palestine he could justify in some way,
whereas anything done by Israel he could “prove” was evil. He posted
between one and five anti-Israel or anti-Jew Facebook items every day. He
had 4000 Facebook “friends.” Read: followers of his propaganda.
Today we have the endless conflict between Israel and Palestine that tires
many of us so much that we want to ignore it. What many don’t realize is
that Palestinians, who wanted independence from their former masters
Jordan and Egypt for at least a century, not only lost the war (they
supported Germany), they also lost what they had hoped for so long would
be a free Palestine.
When the state of Israel was created after the war, from land taken from
countries that supported the losing side (Germany, home of the Holocaust),
Palestinians refused to give up their fight. Where previously Palestinians
and Jews had lived peacefully, side by side, in Palestine, when the Jews
succeeded in getting international support for the creation of Israel while the
Arab Palestinians failed to get their own official homeland, the Palestinians
vowed to never forget or give up their fight.
Palestinians, in general, may not be as well educated as the average Israeli.
But they learned their lessons about propaganda from their German allies.
They learned how to manipulate the media. They learned how to lie,
repeatedly and consistently, until eventually enough people believe the lies.
That’s what propaganda does, as demonstrated so well in the 1930s by
Hitler’s buddy Goebbels, the master propagandist.
Israel learned too, but from the Roman empire, not from modern day
militaries. Israel learned that when an enemy hurts you, you should hurt
your enemy back ten times as hard as it hurt you. That’s how Israel has
responded to attacks from Gaza and the West Bank.
Such principles of fighting back do not fit with modern morals and ethics.
Hitting back with far more force than you were hit with makes you a bully
today. Palestine tries to make Israel come off in the media like a powerful
bully. It’s working. Blogs and social media give anti-Israeli propagandists
free reign. White supremacists of the past have become anti-Israeli heroes
of present day, in the eyes of some people.
The most important key to successful propaganda is to say your message
with confidence. Truth is not important (in fact, lies are the preferred
content of propaganda), so long as the message is delivered with confidence
and determination. In propaganda, you never admit your own mistakes or
weaknesses, you always blame your opponent for what you did wrong and
you usually accuse your opponent of using the same dirty tactics as you use
yourself. The whole US experience in Iraq is an excellent example.
Please, when you think about Israel today, remember that Jews have
survived many extermination attempts over the past three millennia in
which they have been denied a land of their own (the Holocaust was but
one). How might you expect today’s Israelis to act when they finally got a
country to call their own? How would you react if six million of your culture
mates were gassed while millions of others were starved and abused?
Israel has acted badly, by modern standards, no doubt. Call it brutal. But is
the answer to disenfranchise Israel? Bullying of other kinds has not been
stopped by putting the bullies in jail. In fact, jail and punishment of other
kinds of bullies have created more bullying than they have solved or
prevented.
When enemies face each other as enemies, peace will never happen at the
table. Only when they face each other as similar peoples with common
interests is there any chance for peace.
Jews and Arabs are both Semitic peoples. Each is a collection of various
tribes of the past. Wherever tribal customs, traditions and mores of the past
continue today you will find conflict. Check out where conflict is happening in
the world today and which maintain tribal values and you will find an almost
perfect coincidence.
Not all Israelis subscribe to tribal values, but there are enough strong
minded purists to influence their government. Not all Arabs, or even
Palestinians, subscribe to the old tribal values, but there are enough that
peace talks always mean enemy facing enemy across the negotiating table.
Whenever political representatives face each other as being “different” peace
cannot be achieved. Only when they face each other as being the same
people, only with different opinions that need to be resolved, will there be a
viable possibility for peace.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for
Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book for teachers and parents
about how to raise children who can cope in today’s complicated modern
world. It’s a book about commonalities, not about differences, which is why
it works.
Learn more at http://billallin.com