Before World War II started, Hitler said to the Germans needed to kill “ without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of polish decent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need.”  People disliked by Hitler were sent to ghettos, then later concentration camps, death camps, or labor camps. Starting in March 1942, many people were killed.  During the next 11 months, 4,500,00 were killed.  By the end of World War II 6,000,000 Jews were killed, including 1,500,000 children.  Some people forget about the non-Jews, though.  Five million non0Jews were killed.  Three million of these were Polish Christians and Catholics.  Non-Jews of Polish decent suffered 100,00 deaths at Auschwitz.  Polish Christians were the first to be killed in the German death camp.  Almost the entire Eastern European Gypsy population was killed during the Holocaust.  Many non-Jewish persons in interracial marriages with Jews in Germany were forced to choose between divorce or concentration camps.  Disabled people were said to be useless and they were put to death.

People of different religions were sent to camps.

Survivors remember horrible things from the Holocaust.  Blanka Rothschild remembers sharing one glove with all her friends in a ghetto.  Cecilie Klien-Pollack, a camp survivor, said prisoners sometimes tried to save bread for the next day incase they wouldn’t get any, if there was a search that day, and the guards found the bread, they would beat the prisoners and take the bread.  Solomon Radasky, another survivor, said if you got up in the middle of the night you were shot, and they also threw live children in crematoriums.  Steven Springfield survived a death march and helped his brother survive by carrying him, in fear that he would be shot. 

People survived in different ways.  Eva Galler is one of few that survived by jumping off the train on the way to a concentration camp.  Being hidden in a home of a women whom she didn’t know saved Jeannine Burk.  Lonia Goldman and he husband survived by lying in a dark cellar “grave,” lined with straw for 18 months.  Lisa Dowidowicz and her family survived by living in a woman’s underground potato cellar for 16 months.

Liberating armies entered the death and concentration camps of central and eastern Europe in 1944-1945.  Twenty seven thousand died in camps after liberation.  Some died from eating more than they could handle because their stomachs had shrunk so much.

These prisoners died a day before their camp was liberated.

I feel like I have a personal connection with Survivors of the Holocaust.  My grandfather, Harold R. Porter, was a 22-year-old who had just graduated from the University of Michigan and was serving as a surgical technician in the United States Army during World War II.  In a series of letters home to his family, he described the conditions present and his medical care of the survivors.  His letters have been donated to the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kansas.

In a letter dated may 7, 1945; he wrote that he was quarried in the concentration camp at Dachau.  “It is undecided whether we will be permitted to describe the conditions here, but I’m writing this now to tell you a little, and will mail it later when we are told we can.”

“ It is difficult to know how to begin.  By this time I have recovered from my first emotional shock and [am] able to write without seeming like a hysterical gibbering idiot.  Yet, I know you will hesitate to believe me no matter how objective and factual I try to be.  I even find myself trying to deny what I am looking at with my own eyes.  Certainly, what I Have seen in the past few day will affect my personality for the rest of my life.”

“We knew a day or two before we moved that we were going to operate in Dachau, and that it was the location of one of the most notorious concentration camps.  While we expected things to be Grisly, I’m sure none of us knew what was coning.  It is easy to read about atrocities, but they must be seen before they can believe.  To think that I once scoffed at Valtin’e book “ Out of the Night” as being preposterous!  I’ve seen worse sights than any he described.”

He stated that the trip to Dachau was pleasant, “ with the cottages, rivers, country estates and Alps in the distance, was almost like a tourist resort.  But as we came to the center of the city, we met a train with a wrecked engine-about fifty cars long.  Every car was loaded with bodies.  There must have been thousands of them-all obviously starved to death.  This was a shock of the first odor, and the odor can best be imagined.  But neither the sight nor the odor were anything when compared with what we were still to see.”

A friend of his reached the camp two days before he did, and as Harold arrived, the friend took him to the crematory.  He described the scene.  “ Dead SS troopers were scattered around the grounds, but when we reached the furnace house we came upon the stack of corpses piled up like kindling, all nude so that their clothes wouldn’t be wasted by the burning.  There were furnaces for during six bodies at once, and on each side of them there was a room twenty feet square crammed to the ceiling with more bodies-one big stinking rotten mess.  Their faces were purple; their eyes were popping, and with a hideous grin on each one.  They were nothing but bones and skin.  Coyle had assisted at ten autopsies the day before 9wrearing a gas mask) on ten bodies selected at random.  Eight of them both women and children in the stack in addition to the men.”

“While we were inspecting the place, freed prisoners drove up with wagon loads of corpses removed from the compound proper.  Watching the unloading was truly horrible.  The bodies squashed and gurgled as they hit the pile and the odor could almost be seen.”

“Behind the furnaces was the execution chamber, a windowless cell twenty feet square with gas nozzles every few feet across the ceiling.  Outside, in addition to a huge mound of charred bone fragments, were the carefully sorted and stacked clothes of the victims-which obviously numbered in thousands.  Although I stood there looking at it, I couldn’t believe it.  The realness of the whole mess is just gradually dawning on me, and I doubt if it ever will on you.”

‘He noted, “there is a rumor circulating that the war is over.  It probably is- as much as much as it ever will be.  We’ve been expecting the end for several days, but were not too excited about it because we know it does not mean too much for us as far as our immediate situation is concerned.  There was no celebration-it’s difficult to celebrate anything with the morbid state we’re in”

He wrote again of the conditions at Dachau on May 10,1945.  “I’ve told you before about the thousands of dead bodies here.  They are not nearly so ghastly nor horrible as our patients, the “living corpses.”  Ghandi, after a thirty day fast, would still look like Hercules when compared with some of these men.  They have no buttocks at all, and on some their vertebrae can be seen rubbing on their stomach.  It’s unbelievable that they could still be alive.  And the odor of a ward is nearly as bad as the odor of a crematory.’

These survivors greeted liberators.

“There are weird wails, sobs, groans, rattles, gnashing of teeth, and above all the chant of men praying.  I’ll never forget as long as I live.  I have picked up complete bodies with two fingers to carry them to the crematory.  This job could go on forever; the number of patients for practical purposes is infinite.  Normally we’re a 400-bed hospital.  We’re prepared to take over 1,200 here.”

A letter dated May 11,1845, includes the following statement.  “There most amazing thing to me is that other camps could be worse.  But the prisoners that this is a “concentration “ camp, and that the elimination camps are, by far, the worse in every respect.”

He noted the condition of the patients on May 13, 1945.  “ The patients are recovering and we’re having regular food riots in the wards.  They don’t understand why we give them so little, but if we don’t it all comes up within minutes after it went down because they haven’t eaten for so long.  You can imagine the babble and confusion when one ward of 110 patient has about eight or ten different languages being spoken at once.”

 In a letter dated May 15,1945, he stated “the patients each had an orange for breakfast the other day.  Everyone was excited, but some were too weak to even peel theirs.  More and more of them are beginning to look like people and less like animals.”

Some survivors were happy to be liberated and some were not.  Survivor Helen Waterford was joyful after liberation: “The lilies of the valley were never more beautiful than in May of 1945…. I walked out of the gate at the Women’s Labor Camp in Kratzau, Czechoslovakia-FREE! I threw myself into the large field of the dainty little flowers, embracing as many as I could, overwhelmed by their fragrance, which filled me with joy, hope, rebirth, and a new security.”  Survivor Hadassah Bimk was joyless after liberation: “For the great part of the liberated Jews… there was no ecstasy, no joy at our liberation.  We had been liberated from… the fear of death, but we were not free from the fear of life.”  When survivors tried to return to their homes after the Holocaust, many found that their homes had been destroyed or taken over by others.  Survivors had very little after the Holocaust.  Survivor Blanka Rothschild remembers after the war, “I had no money, I had no clothes, I had no luggage, I had nothing.”  Survivor Solomon Radask remembers his hometown of Warsaw looked like a cemetery lot to him, because 85% of the buildings were destroyed.  It was even dangerous returning for some, because anti-Jewish riots broke out in some polish cities.  Many had nowhere to go so they ended up in displaced persons’ camps.  They waited to be sent to places like the United States, South Africa, or Palestine.  Some Jews tried to enter Palestine without legal papers.  When they were caught some were sent to camps on Cyprus.  Others survivors were deported back to Germany.  When Congress passed a new immigration law, about 140,000 Holocaust Survivors come to America after 1948.

Survivors had different opinions on how they survived.  Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a prisoner in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, said how he survived.  “I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the suffering of the moment, and I observed them [the death camp ordeals] as if they were already of the past.” Some said they survived only to seek revenge against the Nazis.  Others said it had to do with ruthlessness.  Psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim, survivor, thought people who were more religious had a better chance at surviving.

Allyson Porter

7^th Social Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust Project

Spring 2003

Bibliography