LETTERS FROM HELL PART TWO

Leben im Schatten des Todes

Damals waren sie Kinder - Zeitzeugen berichten über den Holocaust in der Ukraine

VON SUSI BOXBERG

Boris Zabarko: Nur wir haben überlebt, Holocaust in der Ukraine. Zeugnisse und Dokumente. Dittrich Verlag, Köln 2004, 469 Seiten, 24,80 Euro.

"Wie lange wir in der Grube saßen, weiß ich nicht. Ich erinnere mich nur, dass viel geschossen wurde. (...) Aber ich fühlte weder Kälte noch Hunger noch Feuchtigkeit. In der Dunkelheit ging ich zu dem Iwanowezki-Wäldchen, von wo die Schüsse gekommen waren und sah die Gruben. Ich hörte Schreie von lebendig begrabenen Menschen (...). Da verlor ich das Bewusstsein. Was weiter geschah, weiß ich nicht. Ich erinnere mich nur, dass ich vergeblich versuchte, aus der Grube herauszuklettern. Es gelang mir, herauszukommen und ich ging zurück auf die Felder. (...) Nur ein Gedanke kreiste mir durch den Kopf. Ich hatte zusammen mit Toten in einer Grube gelegen und war von oben bis unten mit Blut beschmiert und ausgezogen worden, wie alle anderen, die man umgebracht hatte. Aber ich lebte!"

Jelisaweta Brusch war 16 Jahre alt, als ihr dies widerfuhr. Sie ist eine Jüdin aus der Ukraine, die den Holocaust überlebte. Eine von wenigen, die heute noch leben und über die Gräueltaten von Wehrmacht und einheimischen Polizisten berichten können. Sie und 85 weitere Zeitzeugen dokumentieren in dem Buch Nur wir haben überlebt, aufgezeichnet von dem ukrainischen Historiker Boris Zabarko, eine Zeit, die sich in ihre Seelen eingebrannt hat.

Zwei Tage im September

In der Zeit des faschistischen Vernichtungsfeldzuges wurden in der Ukraine 1,5 Millionen Juden an mehr als 600 Vernichtungsstätten ermordet. Allein an zwei Tagen, dem 29. und 30. September 1941 wurden in Babi Jar bei Kiew 33 771 Juden umgebracht. Auf Plakaten waren die Juden von Kiew aufgefordert, sich zu "Umsiedlungsmaßnahmen" einzufinden. Diesem Befehl waren über 30 000 Menschen gefolgt, die zur Schlucht Babi Jar außerhalb der Stadt getrieben worden waren. Dort mussten sie ihre Wertgegenstände abgeben, sich vollständig ausziehen und in Zehnergruppen an den Rand der Schlucht stellen. Dann wurden sie niedergeschossen.

"Ich denke oft darüber nach, wie es passieren konnte, dass Vater und ich überlebten", schreibt Naum Epelfeld. "Ein ganzer Staat arbeitet gegen uns. Mit einer starken Armee mit einem enormen Gewaltapparat: Gestapo, SD, Gendarmerie und schließlich die ukrainische Polizei." Epelfeld war damals 13 Jahre. Ein Kind. Wie viele der Zeitzeugen in seinem Alter kann er all die Bilder nicht verwinden. Die Erinnerung daran quälen diese Menschen bis heute. Sie mussten mit ansehen, wie ihre Verwandten ermordet wurden. Sie litten Hunger und Kälte, waren geplagt von Läusen und schutzlos dem Fleckentyphus ausgeliefert. Sie zogen als Waisen durch ihr niedergebranntes Land, ständig auf der Flucht vor ihren Mördern. Es verwundert nicht, dass sehr viele von ihnen nach der Befreiung durch die Rote Armee weiter mit ihr Richtung Westen zogen, um Rache zu üben. Wer kann es ihnen verdenken?

Boris Zabarko, selbst Überlebender des Ghettos von Schargorod, nennt dieses Buch sein Hauptwerk, ein Gedenken an sein Volk. Es ist ein dickes Buch und der Leser ahnt, dass viel Recherche-Arbeit in ihm steckt, denn der Umgang mit dem Holocaust ist in der Ukraine noch heute ein Tabu. Erst Anfang der neunziger Jahre entstanden Organisationen, in denen sich Juden engagieren konnten. Zuvor hatten die meisten Gefangenen, die in KZs verschleppt worden waren, darüber den Mantel des Schweigens gelegt. Doch nun konnte Zabarko beginnen, seine Interviews zu führen. Einige Briefe, die ihn erreichten, waren mit Tränenklecksen übersät. In Kiew erschien das Buch 1999 auf russisch. Den Herausgebern Margret und Werner Müller ist es zu verdanken, dass es heute, fast 60 Jahre nach der Befreiung der Ukraine, in deutsch zu lesen ist.

Der Ort der Erschießung

Das Buch ist schrecklich, im Sinne des Wortes. Jede einzelne Erzählung ist erschütternd. Wir kennen die Zahlen der Opfer und die Orte des Mordens. Aber es ist etwas anderes, wenn dem Leser einzelne Menschen und ihre Schicksale nahegebracht werden. Wer den Bericht der damals fünfjährigen Leonid Grips liest, dem schnürt sich der Hals zu. "Wir traten an die Gräben heran und warteten darauf, dass wir an die Reihe kamen und zur Stelle der Erschießung geführt wurden. Meine Mutter nahm mich auf den Rücken. (...) Als rings um uns her erschossene Menschen umzufallen begannen, sprang meine Mutter in den Graben und begrub mich unter sich. (...) Die Leiber der Erschossenen fielen auf uns."

Besonders auffallend ist der Umstand, dass Pogrome, Gettoisierung, Peinigungen und Erschießungen in fast allen Dörfern und Städten nach dem selben Muster erfolgten. Die Anordnungen für die "Endlösung" waren von ganz oben angeordnet und planmäßig vorbereitet. Es macht Angst zu wissen, wozu Menschen fähig sein können. Hoffnung macht das Buch daher kaum. Allenfalls liefert es Wissen darum, wozu gepeinigte Menschen in der Lage sind, wenn sie noch Hoffnung haben, zu überleben - sonst gäbe es das Buch nicht.

Schindler was an angel, says survivor

A Polish Jew looks back as plans are set up to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz

David Smith in Krakow, Poland
Sunday October 24, 2004
The Observer

Jan Lieban traces an 80-year-old finger down a list of names and stops at his own, inked in the uneven letters of a manual typewriter. He is studying a copy of Schindler's list and recalling the 'angel' who saved his life.

Lieban was one of more than 1,000 Jews rescued from the Holocaust when Oskar Schindler persuaded the Nazis that they were needed to work in his factory. Many have since died from old age or moved abroad. But Lieban is the sole survivor of the list still in Krakow, where the pre-war population of 78,000 practising religious Jews has fallen to just 150 today.

Lieban gave a rare interview last week as 235 teachers and schoolchildren flew into Krakow for a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum nearby. The bi-annual trip, organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust, came as plans were put in place to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp by the Soviet army. Between 1.1 and 1.5 million people lost their lives at Auschwitz, the vast majority of them Jewish. In Britain the anniversary on 27 January next year will be marked on Holocaust Memorial Day, when the Queen will host a reception for survivors at St James's Palace. In Berlin a Holocaust Memorial, made up of hundreds of huge stone slabs which have been designed to disorientate the visitor, is nearing completion.

Auschwitz is already seeing the number of visitors increasing. More than half a million pass each year under the gate headed Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Liberates) on guided tours of the camp, including gas chambers and crematoria. Last year the number of British visitors was 23,194, up by more than 4,000 on the previous year.

Poland's accession to the European Union, and a direct route to Krakow launched by the EasyJet airline nine days ago, is set to fuel a further dramatic increase. Krakow, an attractive city was used by Steven Spielberg for the filming of Schindler's List , in which Lieban had a cameo role. He is a living link to the city's past: his father, five brothers and a sister all died at Auschwitz.

'My five brothers were transported to Auschwitz and I was alone,' said Lieban, speaking in Polish via an interpreter in the city's Kazimierz Jewish quarter. In 1940, aged 16, he was interned at Plaszow, a forced labour camp run by the sadistic SS commandant Amon Leopold Goeth.

Lieban added: 'I didn't know whether I would stay alive or be killed. I just had one piece of clothing and I lived day to day. The conditions were terrible. We had to work hard and we didn't get much food: only pieces of bread and a few potatoes. The soup was shit.

'There was a brothel in Plaszow for Germans and the prostitutes felt sorry for us and gave up their food so we could eat. I stole five kilos of potatoes and was caught. There were a couple of Jewish policemen who wanted to hang me, but I was rescued by a German.'

Lieban said: 'At the end of 1944 I was moved to a concentration camp in Germany. Schindler came and took me out of the camp. Schindler is sometimes accused of taking money from the people he saved, but we didn't have any money. We were naked. Schindler should not be criticised because he was a good man. He was an angel.'

'It's important people should remember what happened. But I don't want to remember all the horror. When I tell my stories to people they cry.'

The Righteous Rogue

Reviewed by Deborah E. Lipstadt

Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page BW04

OSKAR SCHINDLER

The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and The True Story Behind the List

By David M. Crowe

Westview. 766 pp. $30

David Crowe devoted seven years, conducted scores of interviews and did research on four continents in order to write the definitive biography of Oskar Schindler. That's the good news. The bad news is that this definitive account is buried in a massive text. Crowe would have been served by a good editor, one with a relentless red pencil.

Schindler, a man with many flaws, risked his life and his fortune to save more Jews during the Holocaust than anyone else did. While the young Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved a larger number of Jews, he had the assistance of an entire team of people and the financial support of American Jews. In contrast, Schindler had only the assistance of his wife, Emilie. Moreover, Schindler performed his heroic deeds only a short distance from Auschwitz.

Schindler's road to becoming the man who rescued almost 1,100 people was hardly predictable. Born in the Sudetenland, the area of Czechoslovakia that was home to a large German population and on which Hitler had designs, Schindler spied for the Abwehr, the German army's espionage unit. He helped pave the way for Germany's 1939 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

Shortly after Germany invaded Poland, Schindler showed up in Krakow with one intention: to make money. He bought a Jewish-owned factory for a small fraction of its original worth and then contracted with the SS for Jewish workers. A lackluster businessman, Schindler let knowledgeable Jews run the factory while he wined, dined and bribed German officials.

How did a man of questionable morals whose fortune was essentially made by stealing from Jews become one of the Holocaust's most-heralded rescuers? The path to Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem, is lined on both sides by trees planted for "Righteous Gentiles," non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. One can easily spot Schindler's tree because hundreds of thousands of people have worn down the ground around it as they have come to pay homage to this man.

As the Germans moved from ghettoization to murder, Schindler -- revolted by this development -- was transformed from self-interested shady, entrepreneur to fierce defender of his workers. Crowe, a professor at Elon University and the author of a history of the Gypsies, meticulously documents this transformation. Schindler, the former German spy, became a courier for Jewish aid organizations. He helped these organizations supply Jews with money, food and medicine, and transmitted important information about the gassings in Auschwitz.

In contrast to the impression given by Steven Spielberg in "Schindler's List," Crowe discovered that the famous list was not compiled by Schindler but by one of his Jewish administrators, Marcel Goldberg. There is, Crowe reveals, a seamy side to this story. Aware that inclusion on the list could mean the difference between life and death, Jews bribed Goldberg to get themselves on it. In certain cases, entire families were listed, while people of lesser means were dispatched to Auschwitz and other camps.

Schindler did not create the list, but, motivated by a deep sense of compassion for these people and revulsion at the Germans' actions, he did feel responsible for keeping these people alive, particularly during the harrowing final months of the war. When his female workers were transported to Auschwitz, he fought to have them released. As the situation in Krakow deteriorated, he moved his factory to Czechoslovakia. By so doing, he saved the lives of his 1,100 workers. Using his own funds, he kept them relatively well fed and even managed to find medication for them. Emilie played a crucial role during these harrowing winter months. She personally nursed the Jews and, working with her husband, managed to procure desperately needed medical supplies. Many "Schindler Jews" (as Jews rescued by Schindler began to call themselves after the war) credit her with ensuring their survival.

Schindler's saga did not end with Germany's defeat. After the Holocaust, Yad Vashem initially refused to honor him as a Righteous Gentile. How, it wondered, could it balance his membership in the Nazi Party with his efforts to save Jews? Those Jews whose factory he had expropriated protested to Yad Vashem that he acquired the considerable sums he spent to save his workers through the Aryanization of Jewish property and the use of slave labor. They tried to take legal action against him. Other Schindler Jews objected vehemently, arguing that, but for his actions, they would not have survived.

Schindler's postwar business efforts were complete disasters. Without the support he received from a well-respected Jewish aid organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, he and Emilie would have been destitute. Many of his supporters were infuriated when he gambled away substantial sums. Others, willing to ignore his personal shortcomings, shrugged it off with "that's Oskar."

This book, despite containing fascinating information, is marred by its completely undisciplined nature. It contains scads of ancillary -- and sometimes hardly even that -- details on an array of other topics. Do we need to know all about films that were not made about Schindler? Does Crowe have to tell us that his interviews with Schindler Jews "touched [him] deeply"? Why does he feel compelled to include not just the life story of a young American GI who helped some Schindler Jews immediately after the war but also what was said about him at the time of his death? Moreover, Crowe repeatedly fails to follow a chronological thread. Early in the book, when he is discussing Schindler's expropriation of the Krakow factory, Crowe goes into a discourse on a lawsuit that was not filed until the 1960s. While this is certainly part of the story, he would have served his readers well by waiting until his discussion of postwar developments to tell it. What initially is distracting becomes, by the end of this massive tome, maddening.

Nothing in Schindler's behavior before or after the war would have led one to identify him as a hero of such tremendous proportions. At a crucial moment, he more than rose to the occasion. He surpassed it and, as a result, saved more than a thousand people. His actions are testimony to the fact that, contrary to what many Germans claimed, there was something that people could have done. Oskar Schindler did it. •

Deborah E. Lipstadt is professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University. Her book "History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving" will be published this year.

The Holocaust
Attempting to understand the destruction of Europe's Jews.

By Steven T. Katz

Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page BW13

The Nazis' attempted "final solution to the Jewish question" was not one abstract crime but many millions of individual ones. Each act in the machinery of genocide entailed its own distinctive tale, a singular conjunction of terrifying circumstances and fateful decisions. And, in different ways, this dialectic of chance and choice is at the heart of three new books on the Holocaust. Even within the pre-ordained context of world war and systematic slaughter, individual decisions mattered, both in terms of morality and in deciding who would live and who would die.

An Astonishing Rescue

Rescued From the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Yale Univ., $26) comes from Bryan Mark Rigg, the author of a widely discussed 2002 study, Hitler's Jewish Soldiers, about men of Jewish descent who served in the Wehrmacht. Rigg now offers, in a straightforward yet engaging manner, a detailed description of a little-known event: the rescue in 1939-40 of the leader of the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Jews, Joseph Schneersohn (often simply known as the rebbe), by Adm. Wilhelm Canaris's office -- that is, by the German military intelligence service -- at the request of the often callously indifferent U.S. State Department.

After the German invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, millions of Polish Jews began their horrific journey to Nazi-created ghettos and then to the death camps -- a process that U.S. officials from President Roosevelt on down did little to interfere with. But thanks to the actions of a small number of Jews and some non-Jewish friends, the Lubavitcher rebbe and some of his family survived. Their rescue was undertaken at the urging of the Lubavitcher community in America and through the intercession of attorney and legal adviser Benjamin Cohen, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and two members of Congress from New York, Rep. Sol Bloom and Sen. Robert Wagner. Acting together, they were able to gain Secretary of State Cordell Hull's support for this extraordinary mission. Hull, who was not known for any interest in the Jews of occupied Europe (indeed, he sought to hide the fact that his wife was Jewish), asked Canaris to arrange the rescue. Canaris sent Maj. Ernest Bloch, a half-Jew who had been deemed Aryan with Hitler's personal approval, to Warsaw with a group of soldiers to find and save the rebbe.

It worked, though the rebbe was distraught over having to leave behind his 40,000-volume library. He was transported -- initially in a first-class carriage -- to Berlin, then to Latvia and Stockholm. He soon boarded a ship for America. (The ship carrying him was stopped and searched by Nazi submarines and British warships en route.) Nor were his troubles over yet; obstacles created by the State Department from 1933 on had left Jewish refugees to take their chances in Europe. But after some bureaucratic obfuscation, the department granted the rebbe and his entourage visas when they finally arrived in New York on March 18, 1940.

The rebbe felt that Bloch was "a guardian angel" sent by the Almighty. Bloch, who had confided to the rebbe that he had a Jewish father, thought the rebbe a person "totally divorced from reality," while the Hasidim traveling with Schneersohn saw their leader (in the words of Sgt. Klaus Schenk, another half-Jew in the Nazi rescue party) as "the person who held mankind's destiny in his hands."

The Lubavitcher rebbe went on to create a worldwide network of religious activists that has proven one of the most dynamic and significant groups in world Jewry since 1945. Using the language of Jewish tradition, the rebbe later reflected that the Holocaust marked "the birthpangs of the messiah" -- the agonies thought to herald the beginning of the messianic era. It is not without a certain symmetry that his successor, his son-in-law Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, who died in 1994, is believed by many Lubavitcher Hasidim to have himself been the messiah.

Theology aside, this extraordinary tale evokes big questions about motives. Why, for example, did Hull break his normal rule of indifference -- especially shortly after the cruel hoax that was the July 1938 League of Nations Evian Conference on Refugees, when Hull and the State Department ignominiously did nothing to facilitate Jewish immigration to the United States or elsewhere? Why did Canaris, a senior Nazi official, defy Nazi racial theory and racial laws to effect Schneersohn's rescue? (Rigg writes that Canaris saw the "favorable consequences of granting the request of highly placed officials in Washington" and was demoralized by Hitler's conduct of the war. But this explains very little, especially since Hitler seemed invincible after the series of military victories in 1939 and since the rescue ran so contrary to Hitler's genocidal worldview that it could have ended Canaris's career.) Why did Bloch and his men take the risk of protecting the Hasidim when they ran into SS and other Nazi officials during the rescue? Rigg provides a brief review of these questions, but the simple explanations he offers, while not wrong, are unconvincing. As with so much else about the details of the Holocaust, an understanding of the rebbe's rescue remains elusive.

Parables of Annihilation

Tom Lampert's One Life (Harcourt, $24) raises some similar questions in some very different contexts. This is a thoughtful study of the lives of eight Germans -- some Jewish, some gentile -- during World War II. Consider the tale of Miriam P., a 15-year-old German Jewish girl who spent her troubled teenage years in Berlin and then, with her mother and stepfather, emigrated to British-ruled Palestine in 1935. In Tel Aviv, she again got into trouble and committed a series of petty crimes. Two medical specialists separately diagnosed Miriam as "a psychopath with severe ethical defects." With no suitable treatment facility in Palestine, the experts recommended that she be returned to Germany for treatment. There she lived with her grandmother, and her life became a series of sexual encounters with non-Jews, minor crimes and arrests. She eventually ended up in a state mental institution and became a victim of the so-called Euthanasia Program begun in October 1939 on Hitler's orders.

Or consider a fascinating story, told as a parable. In Treblinka, a huge dog owned by a sadistic SS officer, Kurt Franz, became a killer. After the war, this same dog became the docile pet of a German doctor. In 1965, authorities in Düsseldorf asked Konrad Lorenz, an internationally famous behavioral researcher, to explain the animal's behavior. Lorenz reported that the story was credible: "A dog is the reflection of his master's subconscious. Under an aggressive master, a dog may bite a human and then exhibit nothing of this character trait when the master himself changes." Indeed, Lorenz's own behavior paralleled the dog's: During the war, he was a loyal Nazi; afterward, he "found new masters" and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1973 for his research on animal and human behavior.

Voices of the Murderers

Leon Goldensohn's The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With the Defendants and Witnesses (edited by Robert Gellately; Knopf, $35) offers a fascinating but unnerving look at the famous postwar trials of high-ranking Nazis. Goldensohn, a Jewish psychiatrist from New York, arrived in Nuremberg six weeks after the beginning of the trials to interview the defendants. Though he did not speak German, he seems to have developed a reasonable working relationship with such major figures as Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of Poland during the war years; Hermann Goering, president of the Reichstag and officially the number-two man in the Third Reich until very late in the war; Albert Speer, minister of armaments and war production; and Julius Streicher, editor of Der Stürmer, whom Goldensohn accurately describes as "generally ignorant" and "obsessed with maniacal anti-Semitism, which serves as an outlet for his sexual conflicts, as evidenced by his preoccupation with pornography."

Though the officials interviewed were very guarded in what they told Goldensohn, these interviews do add, in a limited way, to our understanding of the Nazi high command's attitudes toward many issues arising from the war. About the murder of European Jewry, all the interviewees were evasive; many claimed they had no knowledge of the event until the end of the war -- almost certainly a lie in every case.

The most significant interview was with Goering, who did not deny knowledge of the extermination of the Jews. "I revere women and I think it unsportsmanlike to kill children," he told Goldensohn. "That is the main thing that bothers me about the extermination of the Jews." One can but wonder how deep the corruption of mind (and soul) must be for a person to make such statements: Murdering one million Jewish children was unacceptable because it was "unsportsmanlike"? These appalling interviews only deepen the perplexity one feels in trying to analyze the death camps, and in seeking to explain those who created and operated them -- especially when we realize how "ordinary," to use the historian Christopher Browning's term, most of these mass murderers otherwise were.

Taken together, these very different volumes add to our ever-growing knowledge of the Nazi state. Each in its own way shows that as much as we know -- and we now know a lot -- the Holocaust still presents itself to us as a monumental puzzle that, as yet, we cannot fully decipher. Decades after the death camps, it is still hard to imagine how anyone could have been so systematic, and so cruel. •

Steven T. Katz is director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and professor of religion at Boston University.

I must emphasise that I never hated the Jews'
(Filed: 23/01/2005)

Sixty years after Auschwitz was liberated, Professor David Cesarani introduces the extraordinary memoirs of Rudolf Hoss, the death camp's commandant

Before the war, the concentration camps had served the purpose of self-protection, but during the war, according to the will of the Reichsführer SS they became a means to an end. They were now primarily to serve the war effort, the munitions production. As many prisoners as possible were to become armaments workers. Every commandant had to run his camp ruthlessly with this end in view.

The intention of the Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler, was that Auschwitz should become one immense prison-cum-munitions centre. What he said during his visit in March of 1941 made this perfectly plain. The camp for 100,000 prisoners of war, the enlargement of the old camp to hold 30,000 prisoners, the ear-marking of 10,000 prisoners for the synthetic rubber factory, all this emphasised his point. But the numbers envisaged were at this time something entirely new in the history of concentration camps. It was with these prisoners, many of whom could hardly stand, that I was now supposed to build the prisoner-of-war camp at Birkenau.

By command of the Reichsführer SS the doctors were to dispose of the sick, and especially the children, as inconspicuously as possible. And it was precisely they who had such trust in the doctors. Nothing surely is harder than to go through with such a thing, coldly, pitilessly and without sympathy.

From the beginning there were Jews in the concentration camps. I knew them well since Dachau days. As a fanatical National-Socialist I was firmly convinced that our ideals would gradually be accepted and would prevail throughout the world, after having been suitably modified in conformity with the national characteristics of the other peoples concerned. Jewish supremacy would thus be abolished. There was nothing new in anti-Semitism. It had always existed all over the world, but only came into the limelight when the Jews pushed themselves forward too much in their quest for power, and when their evil machinations became too obvious for the general public to stomach.

I must emphasise that I have never hated the Jews. It is true that I looked upon them as the enemies of our people. But I saw no difference between them and the other prisoners, and I treated them all in the same way. The emotion of hatred is foreign to my nature. But I know what hate is, and what it looks like. I have seen it and I have suffered it myself.

By the will of the Reichsführer SS, Auschwitz became the greatest human extermination centre of all time. When, in the summer of 1941, he himself gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz-Birkenau where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless, the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time; I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view.

I have a clear recollection of the gassing of 900 Russians which took place shortly afterwards in the old crematorium. While the transport was detraining, holes were pierced in the earth and concrete ceiling of the mortuary. The Russians were ordered to undress in an anteroom: they then quietly entered the mortuary, for they had been told they were to be deloused. The whole transport exactly filled the mortuary to capacity. The doors were then sealed and the gas shaken down through the holes in the roof. I do not know how long this killing took. For a little while a humming sound could be heard. When the powder was thrown in there were cries of "Gas!", then a great bellowing, and the trapped prisoners hurled themselves against both doors. But the doors held. They were opened several hours later. It was then that I saw, for the first time, gassed bodies in the mass.

In the spring of 1942 the first transport of Jews, all ear-marked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia. They were taken from the detraining platform to the "Cottage" – to Bunker 1 – across the meadows where later Building Sector III was located. It was most important that the whole business of arriving and undressing should take place in an atmosphere of the greatest possible calm. People reluctant to take off their clothes had to be helped by those of their companions who had already undressed, or by men of the Special Detachment.

The refractory ones were calmed down and encouraged to undress. The prisoners of the Special Detachment saw to it that the undressing was carried out quickly, so that the victims would have little time to wonder what was happening. The eager help given by the Special Detachment in encouraging them to undress and in conducting them into the gas chambers was most remarkable. I have never known, nor heard, of any of its members giving these people the slightest hint of what lay ahead. On the contrary, they did everything in their power to deceive and particularly to pacify the suspicious ones. Though they might refuse to believe the SS men, they had complete faith in these members of their own race, and to reassure them and keep them calm the Special Detachments always consisted of Jews who came from the same districts as did the people on whom a particular action was to be carried out. They would talk about life in the camp, and most asked for news of friends or relations who had arrived in earlier transports. It was interesting to hear the lies that the Special Detachment told with such conviction, and to see the emphatic gestures with which they underlined them.

Many of the women hid their babies among the piles of clothing. The men of the Special Detachment were on the lookout for this, and would speak words of encouragement to the woman until they had persuaded her to take the child with her. The women believed that the disinfectant might be bad for their smaller children, hence their efforts to conceal them.

The smaller children usually cried because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion, but when their mothers or members of the Special Detachment comforted them, they entered the gas chambers playing or joking with one another and carrying their toys. I noticed that women who either guessed or knew what awaited them, nevertheless found the courage to joke with their children to encourage them, despite the mortal terror visible in their own eyes.

One woman approached me, pointing to her four children who were helping the smallest one over the rough ground, and whispered: "How can you bring yourself to kill such beautiful, darling children? Have you no heart at all?" One old man, as he went past, hissed: "Germany will pay a heavy penance for this mass murder of the Jews."

On one occasion two small children were so absorbed in some game that they quite refused to let their mother tear them away from it. Even the Jews of the Special Detachment were reluctant to pick the children up. The imploring look in the eyes of the mother, who knew what was happening, is something I shall never forget. The people were already in the gas chamber and becoming restive, and I had to act. Everyone was looking at me. I nodded to the junior non-commissioned officer on duty and he picked up the screaming, struggling children and carried them into the gas chamber, accompanied by their mother who was weeping in the most heart-rending fashion. My pity was so great that I longed to vanish from the scene: yet I might not show the slightest trace of emotion.

I had to see everything. I had to watch hour after hour, by day and by night, the removal and burning of the bodies, the extraction of the teeth, the cutting of the hair, the whole grisly, interminable business. I had to stand for hours on end in the ghastly stench, while the mass graves were being opened and the bodies dragged out and burned. I had to look through the peep-hole of the gas chambers and watch the process of death itself. I had to do all this because I was the one to whom everyone looked, because I had to show them all that I did not merely issue the orders and make the regulations, but was also prepared myself to be present at whatever task I had assigned to my subordinates.

The Reichsführer SS sent various high-ranking Party leaders and SS officers to Auschwitz, so they might see for themselves the process of extermination. They were all impressed. Some who had previously spoken most loudly about the necessity for this extermination fell silent once they had seen the "final solution of the Jewish problem". I was repeatedly asked how I and my men could go on watching these operations.

My invariable answer was that the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler's orders could only be obtained by a stifling of all human emotions. Each of these gentlemen declared that he was glad the job had not been given him.

This is an edited extract from KL Auschwitz: Seen by the SS, published by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

David Cesarani is a research professor in history at Royal Holloway, University of London. His new book Eichmann: His Life and Crimes is published by Heinemann

Auschwitz Survivor Nathan Kalman

By Joe Holley Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 26, 2005; Page B05

Nathan Kalman, 94, a Rockville resident, died of pneumonia at Suburban Hospital on Jan. 15, nearly 60 years after walking out of a forced-labor camp as an emaciated, lice-ridden survivor of Nazi horrors in the Lodz (Poland) ghetto, in the Auschwitz concentration camp and at the Gorlitz forced-labor camp.

Mr. Kalman, who arrived in the United States in 1950, told his daughter over the years about his experiences. Last year, she began to record them for posterity.

He recalled, for example, the summer of 1942, when he was lined up against a brick wall just outside the Lodz ghetto while two German guards prepared to execute him. He had slipped through a fence while scavenging for desperately needed firewood; the guards presumed he was trying to escape.

As he begged to be allowed to see his year-old son once more, one of the guards took out a sword and began beating him about the head and body. The guard ordered him to run, all the while beating him with the sword. His family, believing he was dead, gave thanks upon his return.

One night at Auschwitz a couple of years later, lying in a wooden bunk wedged in among many others, Mr. Kalman found it impossible to sleep. A man above him rolled over in his sleep, and a crust of moldy, lice-infested bread dropped from his breast pocket into Mr. Kalman's hand. Starving, he held this "manna from heaven" to his nose to savor the smell and agonized over what to do. At last, he decided he could not take the other man's sustenance.

Meanwhile, the man above him woke up, discovered his loss and began screaming. Mr. Kalman tried to quiet him, reminding him that both would be hanged or shot by their guards, who made no distinction between Jewish victims and Jewish thieves. Mr. Kalman folded the crust of bread back into his hands, and the guards remained unaware.

Nathan Kalman was born Nussan Nutta Kalmanowicz in Lodz, a city in central Poland with the second-largest Jewish community in Europe before the Nazi invasion. As a youngster, he attended a private school -- half-day Hebrew, half-day Polish -- but had to drop out as a teenager to help support his family. In his early twenties, he got involved with the Zionist organization in Lodz and resolved to go to Israel.

He also met and fell in love with Hannah Finer; they made plans to immigrate to what was then Palestine. Mr. Kalman was impressed with the young woman's plan to set aside money so that both sets of parents could accompany them.

In 1934, he moved to Krakow to learn Hebrew and to prepare for the move. Alas, his betrothed married someone else while he was away. Heartbroken, he returned to Lodz, where he found solace when a matchmaker linked him to Basha Kramerz, a woman he hardly knew who lived in his apartment building. They married in 1939.

The couple was forced into the Lodz ghetto in May 1940, where Mr. Kalman, perpetually hungry and near death from exhaustion, cleaned streets, unloaded coal trucks and demolished Jewish homes. He also worked in a toy factory, despairing that his own infant son had nothing, certainly not toys.

Mr. Kalman and his wife were transported to Auschwitz in railroad cattle cars in August 1944; their 2-year-old son had been transported earlier and no doubt died en route. Entering the camp, Mr. Kalman was separated from his wife, who was slain shortly thereafter. He was selected for work rather than for the gas chamber.

After six or seven weeks in Auschwitz, he was sent on a forced march to Gorlitz, with about 70 Jewish prisoners dying of exhaustion and hunger along the way. Russian soldiers liberated the camp on May 15, 1945. Near starvation, Mr. Kalman was given a potato.

Making his way back to Lodz, he discovered that Hannah Finer Rosenthal, his first love, also had survived Auschwitz -- indeed had escaped, by sheer luck, being incinerated in Josef Mengele's crematorium. They married on Jan. 1, 1947, picking the date in memory of Mr. Kalman's first marriage to Basha Kramerz.

When they arrived in the United States in 1950, they intended to join a relative in Roxbury, Mass., but, unable to speak English, they mistakenly took the train to a similar-sounding city, Wilkes Barre, Pa. They both got factory jobs, sewing, at Scranton Garments, where they worked until 1964.

They moved to Tucson when Mr. Kalman discovered he had a dormant strain of tuberculosis, which he had acquired in the concentration camp. (Had it appeared while he was in the camp, he would have been killed instantly.) For six years, he and his wife worked as garment workers for Debbie Manufacturing in Tucson.

In 1970, the couple retired and realized their decades-old dream of immigrating to Israel. For 20 years -- "the happiest 20 years of their lives," their daughter said -- they lived in Arad.

They moved back to the United States, to the Revitz House in Rockville, in 1990, for health reasons. They were active in Revitz House religious activities, collected donations for Israel and Holocaust survivor causes and provided hours of tapes about their experiences to Steven Spielberg's Shoah project and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Hannah Finer Rosenthal Kalman died in 2000, and Mr. Kalman moved into Hebrew Home in Rockville.

Survivors include two children from Mr. Kalman's second marriage, Max Kalmanowicz of New York and Malka Pattison of Reston; and four grandsons.

THE

==== JERUSALEM POST

The liberation of hell

JTA, THE JERUSALEM POST

Jan. 21, 2005

When they were young, they fought the Nazis, and then bore witness to the extreme depravity of which human beings are capable.

Now in or nearing their 80s and 90s, the Allied soldiers who liberated the concentration camps of Europe are recounting their memories of the horrors. Approaching the January 27 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, many of those still living feel an urgency to testify about what they encountered.

Anatoly Shapiro, 92, has never forgotten what he saw at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. That was the day Shapiro, who says he was the first Russian officer to enter the infamous concentration camp, led his battalion to liberate it.

In an interview Saturday in his apartment in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, he sits alongside his wife, Vita, his tall, thin form upright and his eyes are clear as he describes, through a translator, the things he still sees in nightmares 60 years later.

"We saw German soldiers, and when we opened the gate, we saw one barrack, then the next, on and on for a hundred barracks," he recalls.

"When I saw the people, it was skin and bones. They had no shoes, and it was freezing. They couldn't even turn their heads, they stood like dead people.

"I told them, 'The Russian army liberates you!' They couldn't understand. A few who could touched our arms and said, 'Is it true? Is it real?'"

As a commanding officer, his task was to direct his men. Half his battalion, originally 900 men, had died in battle. But nothing they had endured had prepared them for what they found inside Auschwitz.

His men pleaded with him to let them leave.

"The general told me, 'Have the soldiers go from barrack to barrack. Let them see what happened to the people,'" he says.

He ordered them to accompany him, and they went from barrack to barrack. He remembers, "In German, it said, 'damas,' – women. When I opened the barracks, I saw blood, dead people, and in between them, women still alive and naked.

"It stank; you couldn't stay a second. No one took the dead to a grave. It was unbelievable. The soldiers from my battalion asked me, 'Let us go. We can't stay. This is unbelievable.'

"We went to the barracks for men; it was the same as the barracks for the women. People... were naked, or [had] just thin clothes, no shoes, in the freezing cold; it was January. Only a few people could talk; they didn't have energy. But a few people were able to talk, so slowly. [They told us] once a day they got a little water, no bread, no anything. If someone died, they took the clothes, to get a little warmth, anywhere. They died from hunger and cold.

"I was shocked, devastated."

Shapiro remembers two barracks for children.

"Outside it said, 'kinder.' Inside one, there were only two children alive; all the others had been killed in gas chambers, or were in the 'hospital' where the Nazis performed medical experiments on them. When we went in, the children were screaming, 'We are not Jews!' It turned out that they really were Jewish children and were afraid they were about to be taken to the gas chambers."

He remembers the Russian Red Cross trying to feed the people.

"Immediately they started cooking chicken soup, vegetable soup, but the people couldn't eat because their stomachs were like" – instead of using words, he shows his clenched fist.

After the Red Cross had removed survivors, Shapiro continues, he directed his soldiers to begin cleaning the barracks to prevent disease from spreading.

Because of the repression of Judaism in the former Soviet Union, Shapiro says he did not know how many Jews the Nazis had killed until he learned that the figure was six million when he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1992.

Shapiro has been asked to speak after the president of Poland at the January 27 ceremony in Krakow commemorating the liberation. As it turns out, he cannot be at the ceremony, but he feels it is crucial to speak about what he saw so that future generations will remember. He is particularly gratified to be able to talk because he was not able to do so in the former Soviet Union.

"If I had spoken of what I saw, I would have been sent to jail," he says. "Today, I never forget what happened in Auschwitz and in the war to our six million, and to all [those who died at the hands of the Nazis]." Auschwitz was one of the first camps that the Allies reached, so the anniversary of its liberation prompts reflection by the liberators of other camps as well.

Marvin Josephs, 81, of Phoenix, helped liberate Ohrdruf and Buchenwald in Germany. As a master sergeant with Ace Corps headquarters, 3rd Army, Josephs's unit entered Buchenwald on April 12, 1945, with a military chaplain, Rabbi Herschel Schachter.

"Rabbi Schachter announced with a bullhorn, 'You're free,' and the survivors came and tried to kiss his boots," Josephs says. "They were emaciated, starving."

One man in particular, who said he had been a professor at the University of Prague, showed the camp to Josephs, the rabbi, and several other American soldiers. The tour included the crematoria and the home of the commandant and his wife, Ilse Koch, whose brutality earned her the nickname "Beast of Buchenwald."

"It was so terrible; it was hard for the mind to absorb it."

Shortly after Josephs's unit arrived, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered the entire US 4th Armored Division to tour Buchenwald so they could see the Nazis' brutality.

"He didn't want people to ever deny what happened," Josephs says.

Eugene Cohen, 89, of Pittsburgh served under Gen. George Patton as chief investigating officer of Mauthausen, a conglomeration of concentration camps including Gusen, in Austria.

He supervised an investigating team of 13 men, including six interpreters and several photographers whose documentation was later used to convict Nazi war criminals, including Franz Ziereis, at the Nuremberg Trials.

He was among the first officers to enter Mauthausen in May 1945.

Cohen recalls that he and his men posted signs that read, "Maj. Eugene Cohen is here to investigate crimes against humanity."

"When the Jewish people saw the name Cohen, they came rushing to me," he recalls, tears in his voice.

Day after day, he and his men took depositions. His many indelible memories include the time, several days after he had begun his work, when his chief interpreter, Jack Nowitz, summoned him to hear a man's deposition.

"I saw a man sitting there and Jackie said, 'This man sitting before you was to die two weeks after we came to liberate the camp.' The Germans kept these things called tote books, in which it was marked down, who was to die on such and such a day. Here was a man who was to die, and he was living because we were there. This man came crying to me, and I cried with him."

Cohen says he felt a kinship with the survivors as fellow Jews, and a unique sense of purpose as a Jewish soldier documenting the atrocities.

"Of course, being of the Jewish faith, we did the best we could to get as much evidence as we could," he says.

At the Nuremberg trials, there were more war criminals charged from Mauthausen – based at least in part on the depositions he and his men gathered – than there were from some of the larger concentration camps. As recently as 2001, the FBI gained access to Cohen's personal records to gather evidence to support the deportation of a Nazi war criminal.

"We looked him up, and sure enough, he was there in my report," Cohen says.

"We're dying off now; there are only a few who witnessed what took place," he says. "The most important thing is never to forget."

53/2004

Kein Krieg um der Juden willen

Von Bernd Greiner

Eva Schweitzer: Amerika und der Holocaust

Die verschwiegene Geschichte; Knaur Verlag, 2004; 400 S., 12,90 €

Man dürfe nicht den Eindruck erwecken, als würden die GIs der Juden wegen in Europa ihr Leben aufs Spiel setzen. Mit dieser Begründung lehnten amerikanische Spitzenpolitiker und Militärs es wiederholt ab, den Opfern der nazistischen Mordmaschinerie zu Hilfe zu kommen. Hinter derlei Kaltschnäuzigkeit stecken die dunklen Seiten alliierter Politik während des Zweiten Weltkrieges: eine mit verstecktem oder offenem Antisemitismus durchwirkte moralische Indifferenz, die auch durch das frühzeitige Wissen um die Vernichtungslager nicht erschüttert wurde, und nicht zuletzt das Eingeständnis, dass es Mittel und Möglichkeiten zur Rettung der europäischen Juden gab. Warum die Chancen ungenutzt verstrichen, wird unter Historikern in letzter Zeit erneut kontrovers diskutiert, seit die Regierung Clinton eine Freigabe bis dato versiegelter Akten des US-Kriegsministeriums und diverser Geheimdienste verfügte.

Eva Schweitzer fasst in ihrem Buch die Ergebnisse der neueren Forschung penibel zusammen. Vom Antisemitismus im amerikanischen Alltag der 1930er und 1940er Jahre über die dubiosen Geschäftspraktiken multinationaler Konzerne mit ihren Partnern in Deutschland bis hin zur Art und Weise, wie Medien und Unterhaltungsindustrie auf das massenhafte Töten reagierten, fehlt kaum eine der insbesondere von amerikanischen Wissenschaftlern in zahlreichen Einzelstudien vorgelegten Informationen. Und zu Recht lenkt die Autorin die Aufmerksamkeit darauf, dass es bereits Ende 1941 keinen begründeten Zweifel an der Zuverlässigkeit der aus dem »Schlachthaus Europa« eingehenden Nachrichten mehr geben konnte.

Ein populäres und – wie es im Vorwort heißt – kommerzielles Buch jenseits der engen Grenzen der Fachpublizistik zu schreiben ist der Autorin auf eindrucksvolle Weise gelungen. Fragwürdig ist freilich ihre Neigung zu überzogenen und sachlich nicht nachvollziehbaren Wertungen, darunter die These, Hitlers Aufstieg wäre ohne die Wall Street und die von US-Banken vermittelten Kredite unmöglich gewesen. Ebenso abwegig ist der Vorwurf, 1939 habe es noch keine den Holocaust thematisierenden Filme gegeben. Und schließlich fragt man sich, warum der Familie des gegenwärtigen US-Präsidenten und deren Teilhabe an Rüstungsgeschäften mit den Nazis so viel Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet wird. Damals standen die Bushs nicht in der ersten Reihe. Der Verdacht drängt sich auf, dass die Grenzen zwischen populärem Schreiben und suggestivem Populismus um des Verkaufserfolges willen bisweilen überschritten werden.

So verdienstvoll eine Übersicht über das vorhandene Wissen zweifellos ist, so begrenzt erscheint der Wert einer abermaligen Nacherzählung des Skandals. In anderen Worten: Mit Enthüllungen allein ist es nicht getan. Erst wenn die begründete moralische Empörung Anlass zu weiterführenden Fragen gibt, öffnet sich der Raum für historisches Verständnis. Und für eine Diskussion, die das Vergangene mit dem Gegenwärtigen zusammenführt. In welchem Spannungsverhältnis stehen Außenpolitik, Demokratie und humanitäre Intervention? Ist das Amerika des Zweiten Weltkrieges tatsächlich ein Sonderfall, und zu welchen Ergebnissen kommt ein den Blick auf andere Demokratien im Krieg erweiternder Vergleich? Eva Schweitzer liefert zahlreiche Fakten, die beim Versuch einer Antwort zu berücksichtigen sind. Alles weitere bleibt den Lesern überlassen.

DIE ZEIT 20.01.2005 Nr.4

Biografie

Auschwitz Nr. 172364

Ein Versuch, das Leben, den Tod und das Werk von Jean Améry neu zu bedenken

Von Ludger Lütkehaus

Irene Heidelberger-Leonard: Jean Améry

Revolte in der Resignation; Biografie; Klett- Cotta Verlag, 2004; 408 S., 24 €

Jean Améry: Werke

Bd. 6: Aufsätze zur Philosophie; hrsg. von Gerhard Scheit; Klett-Cotta-Verlag, 2004; 650 S., 34 €

Im Anfang war der Name, und der Name war Hans Maier, oder Mayer, oder Hanns Mayr oder Johann Mayer oder Johannes Maier.« Mit dieser Parodie auf den Anfang des Johannesevangeliums, der die Schöpfung durch das »Wort« als Ouvertüre eines Lichtfestes feiert, beginnt Irene Heidelberger-Leonard ihre akribische Biografie Jean Amérys. Es geht um einen der dunkleren Lebensläufe des unseligen 20. Jahrhunderts, den eines Exilierten, Gefolterten, KZ-Häftlings und Suizidanten, der sich am Ende seines Lebens seinen eigenen Reim auf die Lichtfeste des Daseins in verdüsterter Zeit macht.

Bei aller Empathie scheut sich die Biografin indessen nicht, auch die Psychologie des Trägers dieses »superlativisch-banalen« Namens mitzuliefern: »Schon der Knabe hadert mit seinem Namen, er war ihm zu ›gewöhnlich‹.« 1955 wählt der 43-jährige »Hans Mayer« – so heißt auch noch der seinerzeit um einiges bekanntere Leipziger Literaturwissenschaftler – das Pseudonym »Jean Améry«. Es klingt ungewöhnlicher und passt so zu den voraufgegangenen Versuchen, sich einen akademischen Abschluss mit Doktortitel inklusive entsprechend bedrucktem Briefpapier zuzulegen.

Eine gewisse Hochstapelei liegt nicht fern. Vor allem aber entspricht das Pseudonym der Wahlverwandtschaft, die Jean Améry mit der französischen Kultur verbindet und als deren Vermittler er von Belgien aus wirkt. Besonders bewegt ihn das Denken Jean-Paul Sartres mit seiner Philosophie der Freiheit, deren »Verdammnis« – der paradoxen Verurteilung zur Freiheit – niemand entgeht, die aber auch die Wahl eröffnet, einen anderen aus dem zu machen, den man aus einem gemacht hat. »Wer keine Wahl hat, hat die Qual!« Einen anderen, nicht eigentlich mehr pseudonymen, sondern »veronymen« Namen wählen heißt: sich selber neu entwerfen. Freilich, der neue Name ist aus den Buchstaben des alten gebildet, ein Anagramm. Ein neues, unverwechselbares Selbst sein wollen, aber bleiben, der man ist.

Zwischen »Hans Mayer« und »Jean Améry« liegt die Emigration zunächst von Wien nach Antwerpen. Bei der Beantragung des für die Ausreise nötigen »Heimatscheins« muss das »so kostbar errungene ›y‹« wieder dem trivialen »i« von »Hans Maier« preisgegeben werden, damit die Identitätspapiere übereinstimmen. Dann das Lager Gurs, aus dem die Flucht gelingt, die Gestapofolter 1943 in der belgischen Festung Breendonk, das KZ, Auschwitz, Dora-Mittelbau, Bergen-Belsen. In Auschwitz wird aus »Hans Maier« Häftling 172364, aus dem Namen die Nummer. Doch noch der befreite Häftling wird, auch als er sich längst »Jean Améry« nennt, auf seiner Nummer als der wahren Form seines Namens beharren. Das ist die paradoxeste aller Identitätsbildungen: der sein wollen, den die Folterer und Mörder aus einem gemacht haben. Nicht vergessen.

Täter sind Täter und müssen Täter bleiben. Und Opfer sind Opfer

Und das Ende? Als Jean Améry am 17. Oktober 1978 »Hand an sich legt«, da unterschreibt wieder »Hans MAIER (genannt: Jean AMÉRY)« seinen Brief an die Behörden. Er ist zur trivialsten Form seines Namens zurückgekehrt – in dem Moment, in dem er die radikalste Form seiner Freiheit wählt. Nicht bleiben, überhaupt nichts von dem bleiben, der man ist. »Der Mensch, der sich auslöscht, nimmt sozusagen die Schöpfung zurück.« Der Grabstein auf dem Wiener Zentralfriedhof allerdings, »Ehrengrab Gruppe 40, Tor 2«, vereint das Pseudonym mit der Nummer: »Jean Améry, 1912–1978, Auschwitz Nr. 172364«.

Die Biografie der Namen, der Pseudo- und Veronyme, der Nummer zeigt, wie widersprüchlich, zugleich wie schlüssig dieses Leben ist. Es ist nicht das geringste Verdienst der Améry-Biografie von Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, dass sie die Dissonanzen, auch die Prätentionen dieses Lebens nicht verleugnet und ihm gleichwohl seine existenzielle und philosophische Logik gibt. Exemplarisch verbindet sie Identifikation und Distanz.

Für die Öffentlichkeit war Jean Améry seit dem großen Erfolg seines Buches Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne 1966 das, was er in bitterster Selbstironie das »Parade-Opfer«, den »Leidensjuden des Judensleidens« nennt. Anders als Primo Levi, dessen Bemühungen zu verstehen und zu verzeihen Améry heftig kritisierte, mit dem er aber den Weg in den Suizid teilte, weigerte er sich, der Destruktionserfahrung der Tortur und der KZs irgendeinen versöhnenden Sinn abzugewinnen. Jede Theodizee des Lagers war ihm zutiefst verhasst. Im Gegensatz zu den Ressentiments gegen das Ressentiment, deren neuere Genealogie von Nietzsche her zu datieren war, bekannte sich Améry zu seinem Ressentiment, ja, er pflegte es.

In seinen Aufsätzen zur Philosophie, die jetzt als sechster Band der von Irene Heidelberger-Leonard betreuten Gesamtausgabe in der Edition von Gerhard Scheit vorgelegt werden, wird deutlich, dass sich von hierher Amérys Allergie gegen einen »Jargon der Dialektik« nährt, der noch im Täter das Opfer zu sehen lehrt: Täter sind Täter und müssen Täter bleiben. Und Opfer sind Opfer. So einfach, so »banal« ist das. »Wer gefoltert wurde, bleibt gefoltert… Ich baumele noch immer, zweiundzwanzig Jahre danach, an ausgerenkten Armen über dem Boden… Der Schmerz war der, der er war.« Keine noch so ausgeklügelte dialektische Vermittlung führt über den Graben des Leidens und der Schuld.

Jean Améry gilt zu Recht als der eindrucksvoll beredte Großessayist, der mit der Folter, dem Alter, dem Freitod seine Themen gefunden hatte, über die er mit radikalem Freimut nachzudenken wagte. Was andere – manchmal, vielleicht – dachten: Améry sagte es. Dieses Bild wird durch die Biografie und die Aufsätze nicht korrigiert. Aber es wird wesentlich vertieft. Philosophisch wird die überragende Bedeutung Sartres für Améry bekräftigt, aber in ihrer ganzen Ambivalenz. Sartres Pathos der Freiheit, der Wahl des Selbstentwurfs, prägt Améry entscheidend, zugleich seine gegenläufige Philosophie des An-sich, der Verdinglichung, des bösen Blicks. Wo Sartre die Freiheit nicht einmal durch die Folter berührt sieht, notiert Améry »an den Grenzen des Geistes« die vollständige »Verfleischlichung des Menschen« durch die Tortur, die Depotenzierung des Für-sich zum An-sich. Alter und Tod werden zu »Urkontradiktionen« zwischen Resignation und Revolte.

Indessen gibt es auch andere, »banalere«, eindeutigere Mentoren. Die frühe Bindung an den Wiener Kreis der Neopositivisten, die der Begegnung mit Sartre lange vorausgeht, aus der sich auch die Allergie gegen Heidegger nährt, an die Wiener Synthese von Logik und sozialistischem, auch bildungssozialistischem Engagement wird plastisch. Wenn Améry in den Aufsätzen obsessiv und nicht immer mit der nötigen Differenzierung gegen alle Formen des antiaufklärerischen Diskurses, vom Strukturalismus über den Neostrukturalismus bis zu den »Neuen Philosophen«, gegen die ganze, innig gehasste Schule von Paris, aber auch, mit einer allzu kühnen Volte, gegen die dialektische Aufklärungskritik der Frankfurter Schule polemisiert, so ist das nicht zuletzt Wiener Erbschaft. Améry sah sich in der Tradition der europäischen Aufklärung als der wahren philosophia perennis von Hume über Voltaire und Lessing, Marx, Feuerbach und Schopenhauer bis zu Russell, Carnap, Schlick und Popper. Nur an existenzieller Philosophie fehlte es den Wienern. Dafür war Sartre gut.

Ein unstillbarer Zug hinab, eine Wahlverwandtschaft mit dem Tod

Als Korrektiv zum Philosophen Améry wird von Irene Heidelberger-Leonard indes die immense Bedeutung der Literatur für ihn betont. Er wollte nicht nur Schriftsteller, er wollte Dichter sein. Und hier ist er nach der Einschätzung der Biografin am schmerzlichsten gescheitert. Eindrucksvoll beschreibt sie, wie Améry nach einem Verriss seines Romans Lefeu oder Der Abbruch sein Exemplar eigenhändig zerfetzt. Durch das Scheitern des Dichters sieht sie denn auch den Freitod Amérys letztlich motiviert, nicht durch den zwanghaften Wunsch des überlebenden KZ-Häftlings, den Ermordeten nachzusterben. Diese gängige Theorie hieße: ihn noch einmal zum Opfer zu machen.

Zu dieser Deutung der Biografin passt, welch enorme Bedeutung Améry der dichterischen Kreativität zuschrieb. Nur wenn er hier etwas war, dann würde sein »Leben einen Sinn gehabt haben«, er kein »Nichts« sein. Dazu passt auch, dass er im Diskurs über den Freitod, dem Höhepunkt seines Gegen-sich-selbst-Denkens, die Selbstabschaffung als die Zurücknahme aller Lebenslügen versteht.

Ob das allerdings ausreicht, die Selbsttötung zu motivieren, steht dahin. Die Lebenszeugnisse zeigen einen unstillbaren Zug hinab, eine innere Wahlverwandtschaft mit dem Tod. »Mortido«, Gegenbegriff zu der von Améry bis zum Ende genossenen Libido, wird nach dem Begriff Paul Federns der übermächtige Todestrieb genannt. Die Fremdheit des »ungelernten Heimatlosen« in der Welt, die »seelische Fremdenverfassung«, hat Améry schon sehr früh, wie es scheint unwiderruflich geprägt, bis zur Selbsttötung in der Fremde eines Salzburger Nobelhotels. Der Abschiedsbrief an seine Frau Maria bezeugt eine letzte menschliche Wärme. »Wer der Folter erlag«, konnte schon gar nicht mehr »heimisch werden in der Welt«.

Als ihn ein Student fragt, warum er denn nur ein Buch über die Selbsttötung geschrieben habe, antwortet Améry: »Nur Geduld.« Eisig weht es noch heute den Leser aus diesen Worten an. Die Selbsttötung, die Améry als Akt der Wahrheit und einer letzten Freiheit, der finalen Wahl verstand, war dieser geduldig geplante und ausgeführte Akt. Zwar ist der Tod das Ende aller Möglichkeiten, und auch der »Freitod« ist nicht »das Freie«, aber er ist der »Weg ins Freie«. Endlich ging die Existenz nicht nur, wie bei Sartre, der Essenz voraus, die sie in der Wahl der Namen und Rollen selbst entwarf, sondern sie kam auch weiterer Existenz zuvor. Die Selbsttötung war, so das einfühlsame Nachwort der Aufsätze, »Ausgang des einzelnen aus der selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit, darüber zu bestimmen, ob er leben soll oder nicht«. Befreiung zumal von allen Namen und Nummern.

Text: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26.01.2005, Nr. 21 / Seite 7

Immer neue Fallen

Tragen die Alliierten eine Mitschuld an der Verfolgung und Vernichtung der europäischen Juden?

KARINA URBACH

26. Januar 2005 Eva Schweitzer: Amerika und der Holocaust. Die verschwiegene Geschichte. Knaur Taschenbuch, München 2004. 400 Seiten, 12,90 [Euro].

Schlomo Aronson: Hitler, the Allies and the Jews. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004. 382 Seiten, 48,- Pfund.

"Frühlingserwachen in Hitler-Deutschland, Wintereinbruch in Polen und Frankreich. Achtung, Europa, die Nazis gehen auf Tour!" Jeden Abend stimmen schmucke SS-Männer den Titelsong "Frühlingserwachen" in Mel Brooks' Musical "The Producers" auf Bühnen in New York und London an. Anders als in Roberto Benignis Film "Das Leben ist schön" gibt es in dieser Satire keine sadistischen Lagerleiter und Gewehrsalven aus dem Off - der Holocaust findet in Mel Brooks' Welt nicht statt. Ein Grund hierfür ist, daß die ursprüngliche Fassung der "Producers" 1968 entstand, zu einer Zeit, als der Holocaust in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft noch ein Tabuthema war. Peter Novick hat in seinem Buch "Nach dem Holocaust. Der Umgang mit dem Massenmord" gezeigt, wie und warum der Holocaust erst Ende der sechziger Jahre langsam in das öffentliche Bewußtsein Amerikas rückte und in jeder Dekade immer neu und anders an ihn erinnert wird - je nachdem, wie es die "politischen und moralischen Gegenwartsbedürfnisse" zulassen.

Wie sehr die Schuld der Amerikaner hierbei in Vergessenheit gerät, glaubt Eva Schweitzer entdeckt zu haben. In "Amerika und der Holocaust" zeigt sie die Kollaboration der amerikanischen Wirtschaft mit dem nationalsozialistischen Regime auf. General Motors, IBM und die Banken der Wall Street machten gute Geschäfte mit den Nationalsozialisten. Die Vermittlerrolle des Bankiers Prescott Bush, des Großvaters des jetzigen Präsidenten, ist einer an Michael Moore geschulten Generation bereits bekannt. Frau Schweitzer überhebt sich jedoch bei ihrem Rundumschlag, wenn sie zu dem Schluß kommt, ohne amerikanische Finanzierung hätte es keinen Hitler gegeben. Auch der amerikanische Antisemitismus mit dem unvermeidlichen Henry Ford an der Spitze war sicher nicht Hauptideengeber der Rassenpolitik des "Dritten Reiches".

Ein wichtiges Kapitel in Schweitzers Buch ist der rigiden amerikanischen Einwanderungspolitik gewidmet, die es Juden erschwerte, in die Vereinigten Staaten zu emigrieren. Die Autorin stellt Präsident Roosevelt als den Verantwortlichen hin und unterschätzt die Willkür des State Department und der amerikanischen Konsulate. Die deutsche Einwanderungsquote wurde während der Zeit des "Dritten Reiches" nie ausgeschöpft, und amerikanische Beamte legten auch besonders strenge Maßstäbe an, wenn sie der Meinung waren, daß es sich um jüdische Auswanderer handelte.

Für Eva Schweitzer haben die Amerikaner durch unterlassene Hilfeleistung eindeutig eine Mitschuld an der Vernichtung der Juden. Wie komplex die Schuldverkettungen tatsächlich waren, zeigt hingegen Schlomo Aronsons "Hitler, the Allies and the Jews". Das Buch basiert auf neuem Geheimdienstmaterial und vergleicht die Lage der europäischen Juden mit einer "Catch 22"-Situation. "Catch 22" - ein durch Joseph Hellers gleichnamigen Roman berühmt gewordener Ausdruck - stammt aus dem Jargon der Militärs. Demnach gibt es für jede Regel eine mysteriöse, bis dahin völlig unbekannte Ausnahmeregel, die es den Autoritäten am Ende erlaubt, ihre Macht zu erhalten. Mit anderen Worten: Wie auch immer der einzelne sich verhält, er sitzt in einer Falle, das System wird gegen ihn gewinnen.

Aronson zeigt jene Fallen, die für die europäischen Juden immer wieder an unerwarteten Stellen auftauchten und zuschnappten, detailliert auf. Sein Ziel ist es, den Holocaust in den Kontext der internationalen Politik zu stellen, zu verstehen, welche innenpolitischen und geheimdienstlichen Interessenlagen die Alliierten in ihren Entscheidungsprozessen leiteten. Wie auf einem Schachbrett zeichnet er die Züge der Achsenmächte und die Gegenzüge der Westmächte nach, deren Reaktionen - ungewollt - die Lage der Juden verschlimmerten. Aronson sieht die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik als eine Mischung aus "kumulativer Radikalisierung" und einer Art Zickzackkurs, der auf die verändernde Kriegssituation immer neu reagierte. Seiner Meinung nach waren auch Rettungsaktionen ziemlich ineffektiv, weil sie neue Fallen für die jüdische Bevölkerung schufen. Rettungs-"Geschäfte" mit den Nationalsozialisten schadeten zum Beispiel dem Ansehen der Zionisten bei den Alliierten und wurden am Ende zur selbstgestellten Falle.

George L. Mosse hat vor langer Zeit einmal Holocaust-Forscher als überflüssige Leichenzähler abgetan. Erst die Arbeiten der letzten Jahre haben gezeigt, auf welch dünnen empirischen Grundlagen tatsächlich über Jahrzehnte argumentiert wurde.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28.01.2005, Nr. 23 / Seite 39

Auschwitz
Literatur über den Holocaust

27. Januar 2005 Für die deutsche Nachkriegszeit lag Auschwitz weit weg. Es war das Signalwort für unsagbares Grauen im Zwielicht eines Rassenkrieges.

Erst die polizeiliche und juristische Verfolgung des Lagerpersonals und seiner Führung hat das Ausmaß des Verbrechens, seine Planung und Systematik enthüllt. Zugleich hat die juristische Aufarbeitung das Nebulöse der Sache vertrieben und die Konturen des Terrors und dessen Gesichter hervortreten lassen.

Die Vernehmungsprotokolle insbesondere des Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß sind beeindruckende Zeugnisse. Gerade die Nüchternheit des Gerichtsverfahrens leuchtet die Aussagen der Angeklagten im besonderen Maß aus: Wer vom „Zivilisationsbruch" redet, der kann anhand der edierten Quellen lesen und kann mit Hilfe der Tonbandmitschnitte hören, was man sich im täglichen Vollzug darunter vorzustellen hat.

Das primäre Verbrechen

Das ersetzt nicht die Lektüre anderer Literatur, aber das gesprochene, eingestandene Verbrechen ist in einer Weise primär, daß es von keiner Erinnerungspolitik, keiner Ritualisierung und keiner politischen Instrumentalisierung eingeholt und nivelliert werden kann. Daran zu erinnern ist im großen Jahrestag-Gedenken geboten. Wer also mehr wissen will, dem sei der ausgezeichnete, von Irmtrud Wojak im Auftrag des Fritz Bauer Instituts herausgegebene Begleitband zur Ausstellung des Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozesses von 1963 empfohlen, der unter dem Titel „Auschwitz-Prozeß 4Ks 2/63" im Snoeck Verlag, Köln 2004, erschienen ist (871 S., br., 46,98 [Euro]).

Wer nicht nur lesen, sondern auch hören möchte, dem sei die ausgezeichnete DVD empfohlen: „Der Auschwitz-Prozeß. Tonbandmitschnitte, Protokolle, Dokumente". Herausgegeben vom Fritz Bauer Institut Frankfurt am Main und dem Staatlichen Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Directmedia Publishing GmbH, Berlin 2004, 34,95 [Euro]).

Aus der zahlreichen Literatur über die Konzentrationslager möchten wir noch einige Bücher erinnernd empfehlen. Aus bester Quellenkenntnis und knapp und konzise über Auschwitz unterrichtet: Sybille Steinbach: „Auschwitz. Geschichte und Nachgeschichte". C. H. Beck Verlag, München 2004, 871 S., br., 7,90 [Euro], mit weiterführenden Literaturhinweisen. Sehr empfehlenswert ist die sozioethnologische Analyse des Vernichtungslagers von Hermann Langbein: „Menschen in Auschwitz", Europa Verlag 1995 (leider nicht mehr lieferbar) sowie „Auschwitz", herausgegeben von Hans G. Adler, Hermann Langbein, Ella Lingens-Reiner, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1984, 315 S., br., 14,50 [Euro].

Beobachtung und gedankliche Durchdringung

Als Klassiker der Prozeßbeobachtung und der Synthese von Beobachtung und gedanklicher Durchdringung gilt Hannah Ahrendt: „Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen". Piper Verlag, München 1986. 434 S., br., 11,90 [Euro]. Das Standardwerk zum Holocaust ist Raul Hilberg: „Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden". Drei Bände im Schuber, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, 14,95 [Euro]. Und auch Götz Aly: „Endlösung. Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden", Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, 12,90 [Euro].

Im letzten Jahr erschien Paul Martin Neurath: „Die Gesellschaft des Terrors. Innenansichten der Konzentrationslager Dachau und Buchenwald". Aus dem Englischen von Hella Beister. Herausgegeben von Christian Fleck und Nico Stehr. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004. 460 S., geb., 29,90 [Euro]. Eugen Kogon, der selbst von 1939 bis 1945 im Konzentrationslager Buchenwald eingesperrt gewesen war, veröffentlichte 1946 die erste umfassende und eingehende Darstellung über das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager: „Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager". Heyne Verlag, München 1998, br., 9,95 [Euro].

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