The Restaurant Keeper
In the City of Toronto there was once
a restaurant owned by a man named Imre Finta.
Born in 1912 in Austria-Hungary, Finta spent
his years of youth in my hometown Szeged,
immigrating to Canada after the Second World War.
Settling in Toronto, in 1953 Finta bought
the Candlelight Restaurant but it did not go well,
so he closed it. Then he opened The Moulin Rouge
on Avenue Road at DuPont Street.
The old fashioned Hungarian gentleman greeted
his guests warmly, politely kissing the right hand
of his female patrons.
I had never dined at the Moulin Rouge
but I encountered Finta in a brickyard and
at the railway station of Szeged in the summer
of 1944. At that time I was eight years old
and Finta, aged 32, was a Captain
of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie.
He was also a Nazi collaborator who supervised
the deportation of 8,617 Jews to slave labour lagers
and death camps. I was one of them.
A few months earlier, on March 19,1944,
the German Army occupied Hungary
and Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest.
His Mission was to implement in Hungary
the “Final Solution”, a Euphemism the Nazis
used to disguise the mass murder of the Jews.
In June 1944, swearing gendarmes pushed
a group of Jewish prisoners from the ersatz ghetto
of Kistelek onto a freight train. My mother,
my three year old sister Vera and I were
among them. We travelled thirty kilometres to
Szeged where the gendarmes led us to
an abandoned brick factory that was turned into
a makeshift concentration camp.
The brickyard camp commandant was
SS captain Angermayer, whom I remember
as a tall and lanky silhouette moving among
the prisoners in a black uniform.
He was assisted by ruthless gendarmes
in cock-feathered hats, armed with
bayoneted rifles and swords,
who terrorized the captives.
Living conditions in the makeshift ghetto
were dreadful. Only one water tap served
almost nine thousand people and the latrine
did not deserve that name. Garbage was strewn
all over the place. The silence of the night
was broken by the screams of the mentally ill.
Captain Finta, head of the Department
of Investigations in Szeged, appeared
in the brickyard day after day.
Accompanied by a group of his detectives,
he repeatedly threatened to shoot every person,
who hides his or her own money and valuables.
This chief of “investigations”
and his police thugs had beaten and tortured
innocent Jewish men and women in order
to find and confiscate their private property.
Many of them committed suicide.
Aided by doctors and midwives, the gendarmes
conducted the bodily searches, including anal
and genital inspections. Not everyone in Hungary
was impressed though by the efficiency of police
investigations. Endre Hamvas, the Catholic Bishop
of Csanad, for example, was shocked and sent
a protesting report to church officials
on the brutal police searches.
On June 21, Finta initialled and submitted
a memorandum to the Mayor stating that
the German SS command decided to deport
the Jews from Szeged on June 25,27 and 28,
on three freight trains.
The deportations occurred under dreadful weather
conditions, amid thunder storms. A lot of rain
fell on the city in June. The dark skies opened
their gloomy gates. The heavens were weeping
for the sorrows of mothers, the anguish of fathers,
for the misery of the world.
Finta came to the railway station to oversee
how the gendarmes pushed us onto the crowded
cattle cars. About eighty people were squeezed into
each box car like sardines. The guards provided for
every car a bucket of water and another bucket
to serve as the toilet. When a woman called out,
“please, give us more water”, a gendarme replied:
“You don’t really need water because
you will be soon dead”.
Finta stood at the station cursing the Jews.
His former fiancée was among the deported,
and he told her that she was “a Jewish whore”.
Three months later his police career was over.
The advancing Soviet Army crossed the Tisza River
and on October 11,1944, had taken Szeged.
Finta did not wait for their arrival and fled from
the city.
After the war a Hungarian People’s Court in Szeged
tried him in absentia for his complicity in torture,
robbery, forcible confinement, kidnapping and
manslaughter. In 1948 it convicted Finta for
war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was
sentenced for five years of prison with forced labour.
Yet Finta was free. He and hundreds of other Nazi
war criminals arrived in Canada, hiding their
terrible secrets. They committed harrowing atrocities
in their own country. Then they fled and found safe
haven in Canada. Not knowing their horrific crimes,
Canada welcomed them with open arms.
However, in 1987 Finta was arraigned in Toronto
and prosecuted for war crimes. But, how do you
deliver justice half a century later? The crimes were
committed in another country, in a different era,
while the memories of the witnesses have faded.
Mind you, the judicial system is not about justice
but the power struggle between prosecution and
defence. And the Finta trial was very poorly
designed. He was not judged for robbery, torture,
kidnapping, deportation and murder but for
his mind set in 1944. Thus Finta managed to pass
the responsibility for his crimes to his superiors.
In 1990 the 78 year old Finta walked out
of the court hall as a free man, proclaiming his love
for the Jewish people. He did not forget to add that
he used to have many Jewish friends and that once
he even had a Jewish fiancée.
As his victim, I do not feel any anger or bitterness
over his acquittal. I do not believe in punishment
for revenge. Moreover, what sort of justice can result
from a trial? After all, courts cannot compensate us
for our sufferings, for our lost years of youth.
Nor can they bring back to life the dead.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Related quotes
Travel in a Box Car of the Fuehrer
Armed with bayonet-fixed rifles
And hurling vulgar insults
Royal Hungarian gendarmes
In cock- feather- plumed hats
Shoved us with vicious force
Onto a shabby cattle car
In the railway station of Szeged.
And then they locked the doors.
With my little sister in her arms
Mother and I found ourselves
Amid eighty men, women and children
Squeezed together like sardines
In a hermetically sealed tin can.
The wagon was ill-ventilated
Its small windows were barred and wired.
The Jewish prisoner train
Departed slowly with the deported
Gathering clattering momentum
On a dreadful journey
Into the gloomy unknown.
The box car came with two buckets
One was filled with water
The other empty for human waste
And soon was filled to the rim
With urine and feces.
The car became a stinking latrine
Rolling on rusty wheels.
We travelled day and night
And sometimes the train
Made a halt on the open track
In the middle of nowhere
Waiting idly for a long time.
We arrived at the concentration camp
After a horrible voyage of three days
But not before the Hungarian gendarmes
Were replaced by SS guards
At the Austrian border.
During the ordeal of this voyage
I sat next to a sick old man
Who was lying on the floor exhausted.
My shoes were touching his face
And I began to play with my shoe lace
Passing it over his mouth and nose.
He had sighed and groaned in delirium
And when my mother noticed
She scolded me in an angry voice.
So I stopped and apologized
For my uncomprehending mischief
But the old man did not hear my words.
The train wheels kept rattling
Over the railway tracks
Across meadows and towns.
Some time passed
And then I looked at the old man:
He became very quiet.
Mother told me that he died.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Non Mi Va
Cosa c' che non va?
Fa' vedere, vieni qua.
Sai che alla nostra et
non sta bene, non si fa!
Non difenderti con l'innocenza
che fra l'altro non hai
e non chiedermi di fare senza,
finiresti nei guai.
Non mi va che stai sempre bene
che fai finta di godere, no,
non mi va, neanche un po'.
Cosa c' che non va?
Fa' vedere, vieni qua.
Sai che alla nostra et
tutto bene finch va.
Cosa c' che non va?
non sta bene, non si fa!
Non mi dire che quell'innocenza
veramente ce l'hai
e non chiedermi di aver pazienza
non ci riuscirei mai.
Non mi va che stai sempre bene
che fai finta di godere, no,
Non mi va, prenderti le mani,
restar qui fino a domani, no,
non mi va, neanche un po'.
song performed by by Vasco Rossi
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Balanite
Sono steso su un cielo-fan che opportunamente ho disteso per me
Ora commentami un giorno come non lo hai fatto mai
Io lo spero ancora, ancora
Spesso dormo su un cielo-fan
Qu le cose sfuggono e non mi spiego perch
Se puoi condensa il giorno, come non lo hai fatto mai
E fa male ancora
Eppure non stai per piangere
Torna la libidine prima o poi
Lo spero per te finta comodit
Torna la libidine prima o poi
Ho sonno e dormo un po' di pi
Perdo la lucodot ma la ritrovo sempre
L'orrore scenico perde tutta la comicit
Ed io mi chiedo perch
Davvero non stai per piangere
Torna la libidine prima o poi
Lo spero per te finta comodit
Torna la libidine prima o poi
Ho sonno e dormo
song performed by by Verdena
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Fate Hanged on a Hairbreadth
It was summer,1944.
The train stood at the railway station of Gyŏr,
halfway on the road
between Budapest and Vienna.
In the boxcars
there were over 3,000 passengers.
The Hungarian gendarmes squeezed
the deported men, women and children
like sardines into the wagons
and the prisoners were crying for help.
For the SS-Unterscharführer
assigned to the transport
it was just another job.
The corporal already directed
many similar trains to the east.
And those trains always went to the east
and to the same terminus.
However, this transport of deportees
was unlike the others.
The SS corporal made a fatal mistake
but the guards discovered this
only at the Slovakian border.
The train's number was not
on the list of transports
destined for Auschwitz.
The train stopped
at the Slovakian border.
Here the guards contacted
Colonel Adolf Eichmann by telephone
and informed him about the error.
Eichmann decided
that since the train traveled that far
it should continue to Auschwitz.
So the SS guards changed the serial number
of the train and replaced it with the number
of another train departing from Debrecen.
Thus, instead of the death camp
of Auschwitz-Birkenau
in Nazi occupied Poland,
the train from Debrecen
was sent to the distribution camp
of Strasshof in Austria.
As you see,
fate hanged in the war on a hairbreadth.
A freak of chance, a random accident,
an oversight of procedure,
or of a supposed algorithm,
could lead to arbitrary decisions
regarding the life or death of thousands.
Although Strasshof
was a brutal slave labor lager,
most people there,
about 14,000 of the 21,000 deportees,
survived the ordeal of the Holocaust.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Little-Known Death Factory
Operation Barbarossa,
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
commenced on June 22,1941.
Behind the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht forces
mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen,
went into action. They killed Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war and political commissars.
The historian Raul Hilberg estimated
the number of Jewish men, women and children
murdered by the Einsatzgruppen
in the ravines of Babi Yar, in the forests of Riga
and many other places at 1.3 million.
On the outspread yards of a former kolkhoz,
a dusty Soviet collective farm,
the SS task forces set up a secret death factory.
Its horrible assembly lines creaked and cried
in the outskirts of Minsk of Byelorussia,
near the village of Maly Trostenets.
Here the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Gypsies
and other Byelorussian civilians.
And then, on May 19,1942,
the first transport of Jews from Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived.
Maly Trostenets became
a Vernichtungslager, an extermination camp.
Men, women and children
Were shot daily in the forests.
Others, thousands of them,
were killed in mobile gas chamber vans,
on the way from Minsk to Maly Trostenets.
Special groups of prisoners threw the corpses
Of the murdered into deep pits of mass graves.
The 'final solution',
the euphemistic code used in Hitler's Reich
for the extermination of the Jews,
was conducted in great secrecy.
The guards were ordered under oath
to shut their mouth.
The perpetrators of the massacres tried
to obliterate the evidence
that the camp ever existed.
As the Red Army advanced
the inmates were forced to exhume the bodies
from the mass graves and to cremate the corpses.
After they completed their terrible task
the guards killed them as well.
Finally, on June 28,1944,
the SS guards blew up the camp.
One of the victims who was shot by the Nazis
at Maly Trostenets was Vincent Hadleuski,
a Catholic priest and Byelorussian patriot.
Another victim who died here was Cora Berliner,
a German Jewess born in 1942 in Hannover,
She was known in her homeland
as a pioneer of social work and as an economist.
The Austrian-born soprano Grete Forst
was murdered in Maly Trostenets, too.
History has recorded the date: June 1,1942.
The psychologist Margarete Hilferding,
her compatriot, also lost her life here,
on September 23 of the same year.
No survivors of the lager are known
to be alive today.
Since the Nazis did not keep camp records
the exact number of people who perished here
in the genocide is unknown.
Estimates range from 200,000
to half million murdered men, women
and children. At least 65,000 of them
were Jews.
poem by Paul Hartal
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How Did You Kill Me?
All German concentration camps
will be run under total authority
of dread Death's Head Units of SS;
after 1934 a unified Nazi plan killing
with Prussian military precision
Theodor Eicke will command
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV):
under SS, Heinrich Himmler
author creator of Dachau in 1933
creator of eastern Europe's death camps
head of most extremely feared unit;
in Nazi Germany the Gestapo in 1934
put in charge of Ministry of Interior
June 1934 Night of the Long Knives
grim SS deed conducted with cold chilling;
efficiency the stamp of events to horrify
appointed commander of unified police
forces in Germany in 1936 unlimited power
Himmler made ‘cattle' trains run on time;
ensured profit camps ran on business lines
concentration camps will be fully integrated
into Waffen-SS by 1944 standard practice
rotate SS members in and out of camps entire;
SS knew shared war crimes against humanity
Himmler chief architect of the Final Solution
uses Einsatzgruppen death squads formed by
Deputy Heydrich in German occupied countries;
to murder mostly Jew civilian non-combatants
Heinrich Himmler demonic vile nasty monster
will assume responsibility for establishing
operating inhuman abhorrent concentration camps;
extermination camps in which millions of inmates
will die in extremely painful systematic mass
gassing ruthless, merciless, heartless, inhumane
treatment scientific ratio overwork malnutrition;
ghastly dissection vivisection medical experiments
Nazi vivisection selected victim human beings
cut up cut apart without any mercy pain killers
no anaesthetics alleviates nerve agony alive cuttings;
surgery conducted for Nazi experimental purposes
on ill fated living breathing man woman or child
medical experiments preformed for years repeatedly
to satisfy ambitions of rhetoric master race demons;
who unleashed unholy inferno upon civilized world
post World War Two judges at the Nuremberg Trials
declared the SS its sub-parts criminal organizations'
responsible for the implementation of racial policies;
of genocide war crimes and crimes against humanity.
No One Saved Our Souls From Demon Spawn Nazis?
Under Nazi Ideology the SS exterminated alleged racially
inferior Jews Poles Romani Slavic Russians chosen SS;
implemented Final Solution killing torturing enslaving
their selected target sub races in crimes against humanity.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Silvia
Silvia riposa dentro la stanza
con una mano sotto il cuscino
mentre di fuori spunta il mattino
che tra non molto la sveglier
Silvia si veste davanti allo specchio
e sulle labbra un po' di rossetto
andiamoci piano per con il trucco
se no la mamma brontoler
'Silvia fai presto che sono le otto
se non ti muovi!!! .... fai tardi lo stesso
e poi la smetti con tutto quel trucco
che non sta bene.. te l'ho gi detto'
Silvia non sente oppure fa finta
guarda lo specchio poco convinta
mentre una mano si ferma sul seno
ancora piccolo ma... crescer
'Silvia fai presto che sono le otto
se non ti muovi!!! .... fai tardi lo stesso
e poi la smetti con tutto quel trucco
che non sta bene.. te l'ho gi detto'
Silvia non sente oppure fa finta
guarda lo specchio poco convinta
mentre una mano si ferma sul seno
ancora piccolo ma... crescer
Silvia ora corre incontro allo specchio
dimenticando che sono le otto
e trova mille fantasie...
...che non la lasciano pi andar via...
...che non la lasciano pi...
...andar via
song performed by by Vasco Rossi
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Holocaust Latvia Begins
Holocaust Latvia begins
on June 22,1941 when
the German army invaded
the Russian Soviet Union;
and the Baltic States
of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia which had
by Soviet military forces;
recently been occupied
after a proud period
of independence after
World War One finished.
Murders of Jews
Communists began
almost immediately
by Einsatzgruppen;
perpetrated by German
killer squads known
as Special Task Groups
Special Assignment Groups;
the German Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo
the Security Service of the SS
the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
The first recorded murders
were on the day after invasion
on the night of June 23,1941
in town of Grobina near Liepāja;
six Jews were killed
in the church cemetery
by Sonderkommando
1a members deployed;
with the 14th Army
Nazi German
Einsatzkommandos
were a sub-group;
of five Einsatzgruppen
mobile killing squads
up to 3,000 men each
composed of 500 to 1000;
officials of dread SS
Schutzstaffel (SS)
and Gestapo thugs
their vile missions;
the annihilation of Jews
Gypsies Soviet political
Commissars to kill Jews
all Polish intellectuals;
Romani, communists
NKVD collaborators
in captured territories
behind the advancing;
German front lines
Nazi occupiers
were also aided
by a unit of native;
Latvians known
as Arājs Commando
Latvian auxiliary police
Wehrmacht commanders;
bolstered the strength
of the Einsatzgruppen
with regular-army troops
whenever required.
Latvia July 29,1941
forty mental patients
from Lódz in Poland
are taken from hospital;
executed in nearby forest
July 31,1941 Hermann
Göring instructs SS Reich
Security Service chief;
Reinhard Heydrich
to evacuate eliminate
all European Jews
in German-held territory;
Göring's letter mentions
'complete solution'
to European Jewry
Jews purified in death;
July 1941 Germans
establish a Jewish
ghetto at Dvinsk Latvia
July-August 1941;
Jews are murdered
by the tens of thousands
throughout western
Soviet Union Lithuania;
Romania and Latvia
who are the murders?
German Einsatzgruppen
Romanian troops militia;
Ukrainian peasants
Lithuanian civilians
August 1941 German
slaughter of Jews;
at Cesis Latvia
is celebrated
by German troops
security police;
celebrate with
a Totenmahl
'death banquet'
August 1941;
in Belgium
collaborationist
military
organization;
Legion Wallonie
Wallonian Legion
is established
September 29-30 1941;
Babi Yar Kiev
Soviet Ukraine
33,771 Jews
killed in two days;
by SS and German
police units
November 30 and
December 8 1941;
at Rumbula forest
near Riga Latvia
25,000 Jews
killed in two days;
Einsatzgruppen
will murder
over one million
people in occupied;
territories the first
Nazi organized
policy mass killing
of European Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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What Is A Jewish Poem?
WHAT IS A JEWISH POEM?
What is a Jewish poem?
‘Shema’ is a Jewish poem
Perhaps the Jewish poem-
'Shmoneh Esreh' is comprised of Jewish poems
Nineteen prayers as one-
Our history is filled with Jewish poems-
From the beginning with Abraham and Sarah
Those who have given so much beyond our understanding -
Jewish poems everywhere -
Is each Jewish life a poem and a story also?
Or is it only those who give something to our people and history
Who are worthy of Poetry?
I have known many Jewish poems
People the great world will not know the names of
People who whether they walked humbly or not
Made the lives of others better in some way –
Kindness is perhaps the ultimate Jewish poem
And Justice also-
And Jewish poems are not without their contradictions –
As I write this poem in Jerusalem in the land of Israel
I think of the small Jewish world of Troy New York where I came from so many years ago
And miss so many people no longer of that and this world –
Longing for Israel for two thousand years was the Jewish poem
Living here now is a blessing and a gift
I thank God for.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Prisoner of Sobibor
On an early autumn day
a train coming from Minsk rolled
into the railway station of Sobibor,
a village in the Lublin district of Poland.
The passengers of the train
were unaware that the outskirts
of this dusty small town
concealed a dreadful Nazi death camp
where gas chambers poisoned victims
with carbon monoxide.
It was September 23,1943,
and a Soviet prisoner of war,
First Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky
was also in one of the boxcars
of the deported Jews.
His mind in captivity
wandered restlessly.
He thought about his family.
And he thought about the war
and about Mother Russia
and of daring plans of escape.
In the Great Patriotic War
Sasha fought bravely
against the German invaders
in the Smolensk Oblast,
defending the road to Moscow.
as the Red Army was retreating.
A Wehrmacht unit captured him
in the fall of 1941 in Vyazma.
Sasha found it ironic that here
in 1812 the Russians defeated
a French army of Napoleon
retreating from Moscow.
Before his arrival in Sobibor,
Sasha had already spent long months
in various prisoner camps.
Then, during a strip search,
the Nazis discovered
that he was circumcised
and as a Jew they deported him
to Sobibor.
The transport that took him to the camp
was an unusual one, because the Nazis
selected 80 men for work,
instead of gassing them.
Sasha was chosen along with 79 others
to build new storage facilities in the lager.
Now, exhausted and hungry,
he was chopping wood
with other prisoners.
They hoisted their heavy axes
and then let them fall
on the tree stumps.
SS Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel,
a squad leader, guarded the group.
He routinely punished prisoners
for slowing down
with twenty-five lashes each.
Once, when Sergeant Frenzel
was busy in beating a prisoner,
he noticed that Sasha
took a moment of rest.
'Russian soldier, you don't like the way
I punish this fool? ' Frenzel asked.
'Well, I give you exactly five minutes
to split this stump. If you make it,
you get a pack of cigarettes.
But if you miss even by one second,
you get twenty-five lashes, too.'
It looked an impossible assignment
but Sasha was still young and strong.
He started to assault the stump
with all his strength,
fuelled with the hatred of the enemy.
He finished the task in less
than the allotted time of five minutes.
Impressed by the performance,
Frenzel handed Sasha
a pack of cigarettes.
Many prisoners
valued the luxury of smoking
even more than their scarce food rations.
But Sasha refused to take
the highly prized commodity.
'Thanks, but I don't smoke', he said.
Then he lifted his axe
and went back to work.
The SS guard was puzzled and furious.
He turned around and left.
However, he returned soon
with a piece of bread
and some margarine.
It was a very alluring delicacy
for a starving man
and Frenzel handed the food to Sasha.
But, again,
Sasha declined the SS man's offer.
'Thank you', he said, "the food
we are getting here satisfies me fully.'
This was obviously a lie
and Oberscharführer Frenzel
became even more furious.
Yet at the same time
he admired the strength,
the pride and moral backbone
of the prisoner.
The SS man was at a loss how to react.
But he did not whip Sasha.
He just turned on his heels and left.
A few weeks later a revolt broke out
in the Sobibor death camp.
Sasha played a central role
in organizing the uprising.
In the afternoon of October 14,1943,
the prisoners killed
most of the German SS men
and some of the Ukrainian guards
in the camp.
Three hundred prisoners,
from a crowd of nearly six hundred,
managed to break through
the barbed wire fences and mine fields
under a hail of fire of the guards.
This daring uprising
was the most successful mass escape
of prisoners from a Nazi lager
in World War II.
But only about 50 of the escapees
survived the war.
Sasha was one of them.
He found his way to the partisan forces
fighting in the forests against the Fascists
and later joined again the Soviet Red Army.
Seventeen years after the war,
In 1962, Karl Frenzel was arrested
in Germany for his participation
in the mass extermination
of 250,000 Jews at Sobibor.
Witnesses testified that Frenzel
was a sadist murderer.
He brutally had beaten to death
scores of prisoners, whereas others
he shot through the head.
A survivor of the death camp,
Esther Terner-Raab
saw the SS sergeant grabbing a baby
and slamming the infant's head
against the side of a boxcar.
The Hagen Trials in Germany
continued for four years.
In the end,
the court found Karl Frenzel guilty.
It sentenced him to life imprisonment
for war crimes
and crimes against humanity.
poem by Paul Hartal
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An Oak Wood Piano on Kristallnacht
The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
On all sides.
The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.
The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.
One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.
Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
Two days later of his wounds.
The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
During the night of November 9-10,1938, in every place
Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
And Jewish institutions.
Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany
Nearly two hundred synagogues. They burst into Jewish houses,
Broke the glass of Jewish businesses and beat up Jews wherever
They found them. About ninety people were murdered
And thousands of others were wounded in the street violence.
The Nazis also arrested thirty thousand Jews and sent them
To concentration camps in Buchenwald, Dachau,
And Sachsenhausen. And on top of all this, the Reich
Cynically imposed a billion mark penalty
On the Jewish Community to pay for the damages.
In Berlin hundreds of truncheon swinging storm troops
Led the mob in smashing up the glass plate windows
Of Jewish stores. In the Jewish neighbourhoods of German
Cities the Nazis lit bonfires. They threw on them to burn
Torah scrolls, prayer books and whole libraries. Thousands
Of Germans joined the Storm Troops in the atrocities.
But many resented the pogrom. People watched in horror
The roundup; they cried silently behind their curtains.
On a third floor balcony in Leipzig
Storm Troops shattered a balustrade and pushed
An upright oak wood piano over the edge. It plunged like
A black wingless dragon and fell helplessly to the street.
It crashed on the pavement with a shocking clamour.
Its wooden casing had split. The strings stripped bare
Stood in the middle of the wreckage as an orphan harp
Screaming with a heartbreaking outcry.
poem by Paul Hartal
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The 60th Anniversary of D-Day
The Jewish World has much to praise
Those that fought on that Great Day,
To release the World from tyranny great,
Which could have sealed the Jewish Fate,
Had Germany not fallen before
The Allied Armies knocking at their door.
On the beaches of Normandy they fought,
On 6th of June 1944 began that onslaught.
Those courageous men who fought and died,
Remembered by comrades still alive,
On this, the 6th June 2004,
Sixty years after they fought that war.
© Jonathan Goldman [JGthepoet] - 6 June 2004
poem by Jonathan Goldman a.k.a JGthepoet
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Grandma
Above the bed
Old photos stared down
Solemnly from the wall.
Behind the glass frame
Grandpa wore
His grey uniform
Of the Great War;
Grandma her sombre dress.
She died before I was born
And grandpa shortly after.
The only grandparent
That I knew was
My mother’s step mother.
For some reason
She did not get along well
With my parents
But I basked
In the warmth of her
Pampering indulgence.
In the manner
Of old peasant women
She dressed in long black
Garments that covered
Her delicate frame,
Hanging down
From her fragile shoulders
Like late autumn leaves.
I think I was about
Three years old
When I became very sick
With dysentery.
Grandma took me
To her house to recover.
I lost my appetite
And her remedies
Included a daily dose
Of red wine
Which she served me
In a small crystal glass.
Holding my hand in hers
Sometimes she took me
For a walk in the streets.
As we passed
The men removed
Their hats
To greet her.
In the summer of 1944
The gendarmes came
And pushed her onto
A crammed cattle car
For a horrible journey
Across Nazi occupied Europe
From Hungary to Poland.
At the end of the voyage
Grandma was murdered
In the gas chambers
Of Auschwitz.
Her body was burned
In the fires of ovens
Her ashes soared
With the flames
Of the chimneys,
Carried by the winds
To the skies,
Rising higher and higher
To the planets
And the stars.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Nazi Death Squads Enter Eastern Europe
Einsatzgruppen ultimate genocide killing machines
plans so heinous Satan glorified as his SS hells legions;
task forces sowed vile atrocious monstrous Nazi deeds
SS paramilitary death squads systematic mass killings;
originally killing by indifferent civilian herd shootings
typically seek primary target Jews Gypsies Communists;
political categories Polish intellectuals Soviet prisoners
early prey physically mentally handicapped homosexuals;
rabid intolerance eradicated Nazi perceived imperfections
great musical voices minds selected for mass executions;
Einsteins Stephan Hawkings earth rare intolerated genius
unique human diversity frog marched to foul gas chambers;
Einsatzgruppen operated throughout invasion territories
occupied by German armed forces following invasions;
like Poland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Einsatzgruppen systematically carried out evil operations;
ranging from repellent murder of individuals to operations
which lasted over two or more days vast horrific massacres;
at Babi Yar Kiev Soviet Ukraine 33,771 killed in two days
at Rumbula forest near Riga Latvia 25,000 killed in two days;
who testifies 33,771 Kiev Jews were massacred in two days
at Babi Yar official reports by Einsatzgruppe to headquarters;
infamous September 29-30 1941 SS and German police units
auxiliaries under awful guidance of Einsatzgruppe members;
(mobile killing unit) C slaughtered their naked Jewish victims
as quarry marched into a ravine Einsatzgruppe detachments;
shot all women children elderly without mercy in small groups
in subsequent months following the massacre German authorities;
stationed at Kiev rounded up killed thousands more Jews
at Babi Yar and non-Jews including Roma (Gypsies):
executed too were Soviet prisoners of war Communists
100,000 people estimated murdered at Babi Yar massacres;
Latvia during first six months of Nazi occupation Germans
local collaborators slaughtered 90 percent of the 95,000 Jews;
July 1941 invasion 40,000 Jews live in Riga in fear first days
of occupation savage attacks are launched upon Riga's Jews;
racist pogrom arresting beating torturing raping Riga Jews
Latvian 'civilian' nationalists begin burning synagogues;
with families inside thousands are driven toward beaches
nearby woods shot murdered a surviving 32,000 victims;
are forced into 2 separate overcrowded slave labour ghettos
males 16 to 60 are selected war effort 'productive' workers;
Jewish women children old disabled people will be corpses
German abominable massacres indict humanity forever stains;
Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders
of over one million people in occupied territories;
Einsatzgruppen were the first Nazi organizations
to begin as organized policy mass killing of Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Junle Law And Refusal To Forgive
When Israelis captured Eichmann and
decided they would put him up for trial
many people thought their conduct vile,
claiming Israel's acts were grossly out of hand.
The Washington Post said this was 'jungle law, '
while William Buckley called on Israel to
forgive its enemies. Arendt, a Jew,
called Hausner 'a Galician who knew
no languages.' No Jews would turn their cheek
towards the enemies not just outside,
but those within, and chose to override
complaints of those who said, 'We must be meek.'
Few understood the shift in paradigm
initiated by the judges, Jews
who were not merely plaintiffs who accuse,
but people justly punishing a crime.
This poem was written fifty years after execution of Adolf Eichmann, at around midnight on 5/31/62.
Franklin Foer, reviewing Deborah Lipstadt's The Eichmann Trial in the NYT,4/8/11 ('Why the Eichmann Trial Really Mattered') wrote:
To write about the trial of Adolf Eichmann is to put its most notorious court reporter, Hannah Arendt, in the dock. In the nearly 50 years since its publication, her account of those proceedings, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem, ' has come to overshadow its subject. The book, it is true, commands attention. It is a breathtaking admixture of genres (history, philosophy, journalism) and contains strong, often unconventional, moral judgments (especially her contempt for the Jewish leaders who cooperated with their murderers) . It aims to render grand historical conclusions but remains unintentionally and inescapably personal.
'The Eichmann Trial, ' by Deborah E. Lipstadt, can't entirely avoid Arendt, but it does manage to keep her largely offstage until the very end. Lipstadt has done a great service by untethering the trial from Arendt's polarizing presence, recovering the event as a gripping legal drama, as well as a hinge moment in Israel's history and in the world's delayed awakening to the magnitude of the Holocaust.
Aside from Eichmann's trial, in 1961, the Holocaust has been the subject of at least two other memorable legal battles. The first, of course, was the Nuremberg tribunals — proceedings that occurred amid the ruins of war and concentrated on the crimes of the Nazis, giving little voice to the still dazed survivors of the genocide. The second featured none other than Lipstadt herself. In 2000, she found herself the defendant in a British libel suit unsuccessfully brought by the writer David Irving, who protested her characterization of him as a Holocaust denier. This experience has made her a sensitive guide to the awkward complexities of squeezing the crimes of the Holocaust into the constricting confines of the courthouse.
The book begins with the daughter of an Argentine man dating the son of a German refugee. The Argentine man was himself German-born and half Jewish. Many fathers expect the worst from the boys their daughters bring home — but the man's suspicions about this one's family grew thanks to the boy's obvious anti-Semitism and his evasive answers to basic biographical questions. The man began to assume the worst and outlined his fears in a letter to a German prosecutor who happened to be Jewish. The prosecutor enlisted the man and his daughter in a stealth operation, and in the course of her snooping, the possibility arose that she was stalking Adolf Eichmann. When her father reported this astonishing finding to the prosecutor, he forwarded the tip to the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.
The Mossad wasn't initially enthusiastic. But once it grasped the importance of its target, it unleashed a risky kidnapping scheme, what Lipstadt describes as the prototype of the brash, clever operations that are the foundation of the Mossad's mythic reputation. The Israelis drugged Eichmann and dressed him as an El Al crewman to get him past the Argentine authorities.
Much of Western opinion, Lipstadt reminds us, was not pleased. Argentina demanded Eichmann's repatriation, and the American establishment agreed. The Washington Post editorial page condemned Israel's 'jungle law'; The Christian Science Monitor equated Israel's claims to those of the Nazis. William F. Buckley Jr. said the kidnapping was symptomatic of the Jewish 'refusal to forgive.' Even the American Jewish Committee asked the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to cede the prosecution to Germany or an international tribunal. But these challenges only made Ben-Gurion a more vociferous champion of the trial.
A principal villain of Arendt's book is Gideon Hausner, who had recently been installed as attorney general and who assigned himself the first chair in the prosecution. He was a strange choice for the job. There was little in his background as a commercial lawyer that suggested he had the courtroom skills to battle a cunning defendant, which Eichmann turned out to be. Indeed, Arendt accused Hausner of being more of a demagogic politician than a rule-abiding barrister. She disparaged his emotionalism and his aggressive effort to pin every crime of Nazi Germany on Eichmann. In one of her less-than-¬attractive letters from the trial, Arendt accused Hausner of having a 'ghetto mentality' and of being a 'typical Galician Jew,... one of those people who don't know any language.'…
It is always bracing to recall the world in which the Eichmann trial was held — where the slaughter was largely unacknowledged (and even unknown) . That's why Ben-Gurion and Hausner were spectacularly right to exploit the Eichmann prosecution for pedagogical purposes. They forced the Nazi genocide onto the front pages of the world's newspapers. Nearly 20 years after the fact, the Holocaust finally began to find a place in the public consciousness that reflected the size of the atrocity. (Indeed, the trial was largely responsible for making 'Holocaust' the universal term for the genocide.) Critics of the trial insinuated that the Israelis were somehow transgressing the bounds of fairness and justice by pressing these larger points. But Ben-Gurion and Hausner served precisely these goals by giving a voice to Eichmann's victims.
6/1/12 #10380
poem by Gershon Hepner
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As long as Nazi violence was unleashed only, or mainly, against the Jews, the rest of the world looked on passively and even treaties and agreements were made with the patently criminal government of the Third Reich.... The doors of Palestine were closed to Jewish immigrants, and no country could be found that would admit those forsaken people. They were left to perish like their brothers and sisters in the occupied countries. We shall never forget the heroic efforts of the small countries, of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and of individuals in the occupied part of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives.
quote by Albert Einstein
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Schindler's List
Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party. He was a, womanizer, war profiteer, and saved the lives of 1,100 Jews during the holocaust. He was enigmatic - one man against overwhelming odds who made a difference.
'Save one life and you save the world.'
The tide of evil swept across Europe
And darkness eclipsed the light
Nazi jack-boots stamped down
Upon the necks of the oppressed
Torture and executions were the rule
And for the Jews... Hitler's Final Solution.
Schindler was a German businessman
Successful and enjoying the good life
Wining and dining in the best restaurants,
Making love to beautiful women
Driving fast cars and befriending high ranking SS
While using the black market to make huge profits.
When he saw the treatment of the Jews
Forced to wear the Star of David
Humiliated and beaten, murdered in the streets
Living in ghettos like animals in a zoo
Transported in cattle trucks to death camps
A divine light flickered within his conscience.
And as the flame grew steadily brighter
He purchased a factory employing Jewish labour
Saving them from the gas chamber
Created a list of names and bribed the SS
Risking torture and execution
Schindler saved as many lives as he could.
Those he saved call themselves 'Schindler's Juden'
And after the war Israel honoured him
Giving him the title of Righteous Person.
And he planted a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous
Where it still grows as a sign of one man's morality
Oskar Schindler is buried in Israel.
poem by Colin Ian Jeffery
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Peaked Cap; Skull-And-Crossbones Badge
stripped of citizenship rights
stripped of wealth all property
herded into walled off ghettos
denied medicines adequate food
forced to wear star badge of shame
thousands choose their own death
by suicide as starvation disease cull
shipped to Nazi concentration camps
shipped in tightly closed cattle wagons
shipped without food water for terror days
old sick weak die during locked in journeys
upon arrival selected forced labour or gassings
when your thin enough limbs like fragile sticks
thrown into proud efficient ovens to burn bones
Mercedes Benz;
caught in blizzard;
of monsters making;
a flurry of residue ash;
drifting fluttering down;
from overcast ashen sky;
sniffing charred wind;
flicking off ash flakes;
from spotless windshield;
a trim double-breasted suit;
for this top ranking Nazi official;
a fine young; decorated SS officer;
walks brazenly; beside party official;
SS uniform; tailored to poster fear;
project respect;
for absolute authority;
people fall ill at sight;
peaked stylish cap;
skull-and -crossbones badge;
Death’s Head collar patch;
Waffen-SS uniform field-grey;
a fine uniform;
produced by Hugo Boss;
dignitaries to inspect;
production of Waffen-SS;
uniforms produced;
under forced labour conditions;
in concentration camps;
midsummer storm human ash
incinerated remains of murdered
used up slaves Jews undesirables
gassed burned in Hitler’s death camps
in patented J. A. Topf & Soehe ovens
name proudly handsomely emblazoned
with the name Topf in Gothic brass letters
Nazi Topf family ovens
used to incinerate millions
leaving almost no evidence
Aushwitz Buchenwald Dachau
a proud family heritage
we “designed and built dozens
of crematoriums for the Nazis”
when a tyrant regime slaughters
innocent women children in the streets
rounds them up in the night ships
them off in cattle wagons to genocide camps
brands their flesh murders millions
in slave starved exterminations experiments
it is time for a moral; civilized world; to take action;
but the allies; will hide shocking facts; from the public;
deny knowledge; you must understand; those trains;
resources; could be carrying munitions; weapons of war;
taking troops to the front; costing allied lives; desperate;
Nazis will break out; at the Battle of Bulge; could win war.
The sad indictment of History remains;
the allies; could have stopped; the final
solution; but deliberately choose not to;
no Nuremburg Trial ever tried them; will
you? Who has authority to try such a case?
The decision by Topf & Soehne; to build
crematoria; for Auschwitz; enabled Nazi
industrialized; mass murder. Six million
Jews were murdered during the Holocaust;
a fifth; were killed at camps; at Auschwitz.
Least We Forget
along with
homosexuals,
Gypsies,
Polish
political
prisoners,
Soviet
prisoners
of war.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Buoni O Cattivi
Si pu spegnere ogni tanto il pensiero
smettere almeno di crederci per davvero
e non essere pi schiavi per lo meno
di un'idea come di un'altra, di un mistero
sembra che non sia possibile dimenticarsi di s
e giudicandoci ognuno con gli altri
convincersi che
se non lo sai
buoni o cattivi
non la fine
prima c' il giusto o sbagliato
da sopportare
si pu spegnere ogni tanto il cervello
smettere almeno di usare solo quello
si pu far finta che non ci sia niente
anche quando ti tremano le gambe
sembra che non sia possibile dimenticarsi di s
e giudicandoci ognuno diversi
convincersi che
se non lo sai
buoni o cattivi
non la fine
prima c' il giusto o sbagliato
da sopportare...
... che di per s maledetto
perch divide
mentre qui tutto
dovrebbe solo unire
song performed by by Vasco Rossi
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Holocaust
In a cold and silent world, weeping people wait,
Hoping and praying to not face this solemn fate.
But even thought they were quiet, as quite as they could be,
They were still found in the dark ghettos, the whole Jewish family.
The cries from the little ones so confused and so afraid,
Were ignored by the wretched Nazis, who caused heartbreak in that day.
They led them on a tearful trail toward to dreaded Auschwitz place.
And treated them like guinea pigs. testing them face to face.
Not to care in the world did the Nazi leaders possess,
Toward the unfair treatment to which placed the Jews in distress.
And all these fears and terrors led up to this fatal loss,
Of all the millions of innocent Jews killed in the Holocaust.
poem by Brenda Kodesh
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