A Lucky Child

“Soon we were on our way to Poland. It took us a while to get very far, however, since we were trapped in the no-man’s land between Poland and Czechoslovakia. This strip of land measured some fifty yards from border post to border post. The borders were connected by a dirt road that cut through a field. On either side of the road ran a deep drainage ditch. The Polish border post was at one end of the road, the Czech at the other. As soon as we got to the Polish side of the border, the Polish guards would order us back to the Czech side. The Czechs, in turn, would not allow us to reenter. And so it went for days. To me, the strip of road seemed much longer than it probably was because of the many times we had to move from one end to the other, carrying or pushing our suitcases while the border guards kept yelling at us not to show up again.” 

An important and often overlooked issue facing European Jews at the time was their loss of citizenship. Germany denaturalized all Jews, and many other countries feeling Nazi pressure renounced the status of their immigrant Jews, which left them stranded in place, unable to escape. 

“But it was not to be. On our ‘lucky day,’ Hitler decided to invade Poland. When we arrived at the Katowice railroad station, where our transport was to be put together, the people from the British consulate told us that it was no longer possible to leave from a Polish port. Arrangements had therefore been made to get us to England via the Balkans.” 

Buergenthal’s story was one day late from not being told. If his departure date was one day earlier, he would have emigrated to England as a refugee and avoided the ghettos, labor camps, concentration camps, and death marches.

“The farmers would charge us for the use of their barns and sell us food. Often, the barns would already be rented out by the time we got there, and then we would have to sleep outside. Some farmers were kind to us; others were not. The latter frequently called us bad names. Here I first learned that we were Parzywe Zydzi—Scabby Jews.” 

A refrain in Buergenthal’s memoir is the hatred shown to the Jews by normal people, throughout their suffering. Be it ignorance, the influence of propaganda, or a genuine hatred, Buergenthal straightforwardly confronts the complicity of average citizens in the Holocaust. Passages such as this are particularly striking given that they were directed at a young child and his parents.

“We lived in Kielce for about four years until we were transported to Auschwitz in early August of 1944. Lived is probably not the right word to describe our incarceration in that bleary Polish industrial city, its ghetto, and two different work camps.” 

Buergenthal devotes many pages to describing the ghettos, often overshadowed in Holocaust literature by concentration camps and military battles. The harsh conditions, starvation, violence, and indiscriminate killing in the ghettos is striking. Often portrayed as slums arranged as waiting areas before transport to a concentration camp, Buergenthal describes them as very similar to the camps themselves, with slightly more privacy.

“As time went on, the Germans would, with ever greater frequency, conduct so-called razzias, or raids, in the ghetto. As a rule, these raids would begin with a contingent of heavily armed soldiers driving up to a house. They would storm inside, pull people out, and drag them into their trucks. Anyone who resisted was kicked and beaten. Some people were shot on the spot.” 

Razzias are an example of the indiscriminate killing that occurred in ghettos. Other examples include random beatings by German officers, rape, and officers who would stroll the streets shooting whoever they desired. These actions occurred daily.

“[M]oral resistance in the face of evil is no less courageous than physical resistance.” 

Buergenthal addresses criticism of European Jews for not engaging in more active physical resistance during the Holocaust. In the labor camps, Buergenthal observed the strength of moral resistance to confront a group whose goal was to destroy a religious ideology.

“I was ten years old on that sunny morning in the first days of August 1944 when our train approached the outskirts of the concentration camp of Auschwitz. Actually, as we were to find out later, we were on our way to Birkenau, located some three or four kilometers down the road from Auschwitz proper. It was in Birkenau that the gas chambers and crematoriums had been erected, and it was here that millions of human beings died. Auschwitz proper was merely the public front for the Birkenau extermination camp. Auschwitz was shown to visiting dignitaries, whereas Birkenau was the last place on earth many of the prisoners sent there were destined to see.” 

This is one of many passages in which Buergenthal challenges popular beliefs about the Holocaust while exposing the reader to the actual governance of the Nazis. They did not simply round up Jews and massacre them—they recognized the necessity of diplomacy and constructed facades for the public while hiding their atrocities. Popular knowledge is that Auschwitz was the most horrid concentration camp of the Holocaust, but it was merely a front. Birkenau, a place unknown to most, was where the true atrocities occurred.

“Now I had a new name: B-2930, and it was the only ‘name’ that mattered here. The number, now somewhat faded, is still here on my left arm. It remains a part of me and serves as a reminder, not so much of my past, but of the obligation I deem incumbent on me, as a witness and survivor of Auschwitz, to fight the ideologies of hate and of racial and religious superiority that have for centuries caused so much suffering to mankind.” 

Buergenthal’s tattoo is a reminder to him of his life’s mission to combat hateful ideologies and defend human rights. It is one example of many in which Buergenthal uses something negative to create positivity.

“Until then, I had been gripped with fear, fear of dying, for I realized that, having failed to escape, I was on my way to the gas chamber. But then something most unusual happened. Slowly, very slowly, my fear and anxiety faded away as I admitted to myself that there was no way out and that I would die in a few hours. The nervous tension that had hung over me like a cloud lifted. An inner warmth streamed through my body. I was at peace, my fear had vanished, and I was no longer afraid of dying.” 

Not yet 10 years old, Buergenthal had accepted death. He no longer feared it. His experience during the Holocaust forced him to rapidly mature in horrifying ways.

“Just when I was sure that it would only be a matter of a day or two before I too would die and be thrown out of the car, a miracle occurred. As the train moved slowly through Czechoslovakia, making frequent stops, we began to see men, women, and children standing on the bridges we passed under. They waved to us and shouted, and then loaves of bread began to fall into our train. […] Had it not been for that Czech bread, we would not have survived. I never learned how this magnificent campaign had been mounted, but as long as I live, I will not forget these angels—to me they seemed to be angels—who provided us bread as if from heaven.” 

Just as he straightforwardly confronts those complicit in the Holocaust, Buergenthal recognizes those who did what they could to help. He credits the seemingly mere act of providing bread with saving his life and the lives of countless others. This recognition later permits his acceptance of people as good and complex.

“[G]eneralizations about the Holocaust, about German guilt, or about what Germans knew or did not know do not help us understand the forces that produced one of the world’s greatest tragedies. Nor do they help explain what it is in our nature that enables human beings to plan and commit the genocides and the many other mass murders to which mankind has been subjected during my lifetime.” 

Buergenthal obsesses over human morality. He ultimately dismisses attempts to reason the decisions of various actors as futile and fruitless. As an adult, he turns his focus to establishing systems of justice to preserve human rights, providing structures to prevent horrific events like the Holocaust, rather than psychoanalyzing the decisions of individual persons.

“Work makes you free. This slogan, so utterly bizarre given its context, was no more bizarre than the policies that brought us to Sachsenhausen. In January 1945, Germany was fighting for its survival, and yet the Nazi regime was willing to use its rapidly dwindling resources—rail facilities, fuel, and troops—to move half-starved and dying prisoners from Poland to Germany. Was it to keep us from falling into the hands of the Allies or to maintain Germany’s slave-labor supply? The lunacy of it all is hard to fathom, unless one thinks of it as a game concocted by the inmates of an asylum for the criminally insane.” 

Buergenthal concludes that much of what he experienced does not make sense, and this is highlighted in the slogan inscribed at the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. The torment he endured seems though it could have only existed for the purpose of torturing Jews and served no other function for Germany or the Nazi party.

“Maybe we really have been liberated, I thought as I climbed on the desk and pulled down Hitler’s picture. I threw it on the floor, shattering the glass and the frame. I spat on it and stepped on his face so hard that my feet began to hurt, but still I went on until the picture was torn to pieces. Then I pulled out all the drawers from the filing cabinets and let the files fall to the floor. My work completed, I sat down behind the desk in the soft leather chair and picked up the telephone receiver. The line was dead, but I spoke into it anyway, telling my imagined listeners that Hitler and all Germans were dead. Then I pulled the cord out of the wall and limped over to the kitchen.” 

This is one instance in the whole of Buergenthal’s memoir that he acted in anger, spite, and vengeance. Throughout everything, Buergenthal, a child, never gave in to his emotions. Upon liberation, he let out everything that had been processing inside on a picture of the man who destroyed his life.

“[T]hey soon noticed that I ate very little That worried them, and they decided that they had to find a cure for my lack of appetite. When it appeared that the remedies they had come up with did not work, the shoemaker had an idea. “‘Why not try vodka?’ he suggested. And out came the vodka. First a spoonful, then two, and finally half a kieliszek (tumbler), followed by little pieces of bacon. It worked like a charm: within days, I began to eat normally.” 

One consequence of starving for years as his body developed was that Buergenthal’s stomach reduced in size. After liberation, even when presented with bounteous food, he could not eat. Polish officers offered vodka, which solved Buergenthal's eating problem.

“After leaving the area around Berlin, we would from time to time run into groups of German soldiers who would surrender to us without putting up any resistance. It was quite an exhilarating experience for me to see German officers tremble in fear in front of us, when only months earlier they had inspired fear in all who had to appear before them.” 

Buergenthal observes the powerlessness of individual German soldiers after their defeat. Without the structure of the Nazi party, they were powerless and unintimidating. Buergenthal, now in a position of power over the Germans, did not abuse his power. The child showed more humanity than they ever showed him.

“I was not sure whether to be happy or sad. Of course, I was happy that the war was over and that we had been liberated. But when the soldiers spoke of their families and of home, I was reminded that I did not know where my home was. I had no home without my parents, and I did not know where they were. I was sure that if I had survived, they must have survived too and that they would find me! In the meantime, my company was my home. But what would happen to me when all the soldiers went home? I decided that there would be time enough to answer that question, and for all I knew, it might never present itself since I was sure my parents would find me before the army was disbanded.” 

Even after the war, the struggle was not over for many separated families, who often did not know whether their relatives were alive or dead, or how to find each other. Buergenthal survived the war, but that left him a child alone, who didn’t know if any of his family members also survived or how to find out.

“They hated it, however, because to get to the post office they had to pass a nearby Catholic orphanage, where the Polish kids would bombard them with stones or try to beat them up while hurling antisemitic curses at them.” 

The war did not extinguish antisemitism, which still exists today. Immediately after the war, the Nazis were forced to accept Jews in their society, but they did not do so willingly.

“It was not easy for her to find herself back in the Göttingen she remembered from her once-happy childhood and then the Nazi period. Almost as soon as the Nazis had come to power, most of Mutti’s non-Jewish school friends acted as if they had never known her. They would cross the street when they saw her approaching or look the other way in order not to have to greet her. She was treated even worse the two times she returned to Göttingen from Lubochna to visit my grandparents and show me off, her new baby. Now, after the war, these same women embraced her on the street and acted as if nothing had happened in the past.” 

This is another passage which illustrates the troubles of European Jews after the war. Personal relationships were especially difficult. Neighbors who previously betrayed Jews now again lived among them. Old friends turned enemies were again friends. The end of the war did not end the struggles of European Jews.

“For Mutti, the pictures were a treasure trove. All her family pictures, including photos of her parents, my father, and me, had been lost in the camps. Erased with the destruction of these pictures, it seemed to her, was proof that her family had ever existed. Now Mutti could again look at those images of a happier life long ago, before the Nazis destroyed it all. It was the first good thing that had happened to her since her return to Göttingen.”

Almost universal among Holocaust survivors was the feeling that their families had been erased. They weren’t just tortured and murdered—all their belongings and mementos were lost. After a point, records of their names were not even preserved at the concentration camps. Mutti receiving family photos of her parents and her husband provided proof that her family and her life prior to the Holocaust existed.

“It took me much longer to realize that one cannot hope to protect mankind from crimes such as those that were visited upon us unless one struggles to break the cycle of hatred and violence that invariably leads to ever more suffering by innocent human beings.” 

This is Buergenthal’s reasoning against vengeance and hate. He chose to grow beyond the atrocities committed upon himself and his family and to achieve a higher level of human development for the good of humanity.

“Mr. Biedermann once told Mutti that teaching me was an experience like none he had ever had. On the one hand, he told her, I was a child who lacked even the most rudimentary educational background and needed to be tutored as if I were a six year old; on the other hand, I had the life experience and maturity of a grown-up and could discuss subjects with him that no child my age would normally be aware of or interested in.” 

Buergenthal did not receive any formal education during the Holocaust, but he did receive another kind of education. Consequently, he was completely uneducated in the traditional sense, but wise and mature in another sense. He eventually caught-up on the formal schooling and his maturity then advantaged him significantly.

“None of my classmates had ever met a Jew, but, as some told me later, they had seen Nazi cartoons depicting Jews as dark-skinned, alien-looking people with long crooked noses, black beards, and rapacious faces that were intended, because of their caricatured ugliness, to illustrate the repulsive character of Jews. That is probably why some of my classmates asked, on first learning that I was Jewish, whether I really was a Jew, for, as they put it, ‘You do not look like one.’ Others were surprised that I was good at sports, quite strong, and not afraid to defend myself when challenged by the class bullies. They had obviously been exposed to Nazi propaganda that described Jews as weaklings, cowards, and lacking all aptitude in sports.” 

This passage illustrates the power of propaganda, especially among young impressionable minds and those devoid of the free flow of information. Most of the children in Buergenthal’s school had never seen a Jew and could not research Jews independently, so when presented with a propaganda caricature version of Jews, they had no reason not to believe it. Much of human tragedy can be derived from ignorance in this way.

“The years I spent in Göttingen after the war were very important in helping me cope with my attitudes toward Germany and Germans. Those were not easy years for Mutti or me, and we often envied some of our fellow Kielce survivors who had ended up in Sweden right after the war. They did not have to face the economic hardships we faced in postwar Germany, nor did they have to struggle with the emotions we felt when contemplating the possibility that we were living amid murderers. At the same time, by living in Germany not long after our concentration camp experience, we were forced to confront those emotions in a way that helped Mutti and me gradually overcome our hatred and desire for revenge. Later, in America, I realized that many of my Jewish friends and acquaintances who had come to the United States before the war and thus escaped the Holocaust were much less forgiving than Mutti and I. I doubt that we would have been able to preserve our sanity had we remained consumed by hatred for the rest of our lives. Many of our relatives and friends in America never understood what we meant when we tried to explain that, while it was important not to forget what happened to us in the Holocaust, it was equally important not to hold the descendants of the perpetrators responsible for what was done to us, lest the cycle of hate and violence never end.” 

Living in Germany after the war was difficult, but Buergenthal thought it necessary for the survivors to overcome their anger. He gained perspective that those who moved elsewhere immediately after the war or fled Europe before the war missed. It also enabled him to view the humanity of the descendants of Holocaust perpetrators to not inflict on them the same pain their parents inflicted on him.