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Visualizing Memory - A Last Detail
I recently returned from a trip to the commemorative events of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Flossenburg concentration camp where, 50 years ago, I was freed from Nazi oppression. Prior to the com-memoration I returned to Auschwitz.The journey prompted thoughts about the meaning that this experience has for the world we live in today.
As we approach another epoch in the annals of the Shoah, how we view the past and record this event is foremost in the minds of survivors.
That which one cannot speak of is doomed to silence.
The village of Flossenburg, in 1995. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Sign above "Cafe Alexandra" indicates the direction to the Memorial Site of Flossenburg.
A Bavarian resident, 1995.
The Red Cross was prepared to cope with "unforeseen disasters" at the commemorative events. (Photos: Naomi Kramer)
It is incumbent on survivors to recount their experiences. We are not only obliged to speak for our fellow Jews who perished, but also to bear witness, ensuring that the past is recorded according to our testimony and not interpreted only through the model of Nazi bureaucracy and the per-spectives of the perpetrators and collaborators.
The suffering of Jews and the thousands of Jews who perished in this camp was largely unrecognized at the commemorative "celebration" orga-nized by the Bavarian Government, which took place on 23 April 1995, in Flossenburg, Germany.
The loss of the silent witness found in physical remains compels sur-vivors to come forward with our testimony. As I walked through the grounds on which 50 years ago I had been selected to die because I was a Muselmann, a walking skeleton, I found recently constructed homes where the barracks had once stood. Families now live in former residences of the SS and conduct their lives unaware of the previous inhabitants. AII traces of the Messerschmidt factory where I was used as slave-labour have vanished. In this factory thousands of inmates died of starvation and as a result of intolerable working conditions. Labour was a replaceable resource and an indispensable element of the Nazi war economy. The brief three-month life expectancy of a slave was considered a bonus to those who orchestrated the industry of death.
The quarry, in which thousands perished as easily replaceable waste products of brutal working conditions, is now owned and operated by the Bavarian government. Much of the same equipment and machinery used by the inmates half a century earlier is still maintained. Here the atrocities of the past are known only to those who bring their memories or knowledge with them.
The watchtower used by the SS guards to oversee inmates as they marched from the barracks through the centre of the village to the quarry is today a news kiosk where one can purchase souvenir postcards of Flossenburg on which unidentified pictures of the former SS guard tower are juxtaposed incongruously with photographs of the town chapel. Flossenburgers are sold. The inadequacy of language is painfully obvious in the use of the word "Flossenbuerger." To the survivor, this usage is a desecretion of the anguish and hardship suffered there.
A survivor at the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Flossenburg concentration camp. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
"Holocaust Fahion." Designer Rei Kawakubo said in her response to World Jewish Congress's demand that the concentration-camp-style-garb be removed from the label's spring menswear collection that she was "shocked and saddened" the clothes elicited anything other than the aura of "sleep" she intended. (Newsweek, 20 February 1995)
A picture postcard sold in Flossenburg in 1995. There is no explanation of the photographs on the postcard – the guard tower in the camp is situated below the church, which is next to the memorial chapel and abo e the view of the town – suggesting that there is a equivalence in the meaning of the images. The postcard could be purchased in the news kiosk. (KFF Archives)
The former Appelplatz where the daily roll call the was taken, is now a combination parking lot and children's playground. The laundry and latrines, today a textile factory, were located on the perimeter of this space where men became numbers, faceless presences forced to stand for hours on end,yet refused to surrender their humanity to brutal torturers.
The passing of time presents a dilemma to survivors and indeed the world. If we are not left with any of the physical remnants, and such is the case in most of the killing centres, then how do we accurately convey the history? Are we more vulnerable to Holocaust denial? If we restore and preserve the killing centres are we at risk of being accused of fabricating a past? These are questions that occurred to me as I watched a labourer toil with a pneumatic drill under the Arbeit Macht Frei sign in Auschwitz. The administration of the State Museum of Auschwitz is installing a plumbing system to accommodate the needs of its 250 employees; the 400,000 internees in this former Auschwitz I/Birkenau/Buna-Monowitz concentra-tion, killing, and forced-labour complex did not have such conveniences.
The events of the Shoah are interpreted within the context of different political, religious, and cultural viewpoints. Today the relatively small number of Jews in Germany is indicative of the decisive part Germans played as per-petrators of the Shoah. In Israel it is central to the foundation and development of the state and to its national history of assertion and resistance. In America the history of the Shoah often focuses on Americans as liberators.
A sign in the kiosk. (Photos: Naomi Kramer)
News kiosk, which was a former SS guard post on the main road in the village.
While in Auschwitz, I met a young historian who found it impossible to consider my testimony credible because it was incompatible with the Nazi records on which he based his interpretation of history. The number 83150, which I had been given upon arrival in Auschwitz, was recorded in the archives as having been assigned to another inmate who was registered as SB, Sonderbehandlung, the German code for death by gassing. Because it was not customary for the meticulous record-keeping Nazis to give the same number to two people, or to assign numbers in Auschwitz to those who were being deported to other forced-labour camps, I found myself in the bizarre situation of having to defend the fact that the Nazis had brand-ed me 83150 in Auschwitz. This defence was necessary despite the sub-stantiating documentation I had with me from the American military.
Only after much discussion of alternative hypotheses did this young man concede that in Auschwitz, traditional investigative models used in historical research are inadequate because there was no order as we know it, and the unfathomable was possible. He then suggested that because the Nazis realized they were not likely to be victors on the front lines, and con-currently escalated deportations of Hungarian Jews to allow for as many as 10,000 people a day to be killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, the pro-cedure for assigning numbers may have changed. This led him to recon-sider my testimony and concede that it was possible that I was given a num-ber in Auschwitz and not, as he originally insisted, in Gross-Rosen, the forced-labour camp to which I was subsequently deported.
The imaginative leap, taking him outside the usual Nazi methods of number assignment, permitted him to suggest that perhaps this occurred because of their haste to murder Jews and forward much-needed civilian clothing to labourers in the Buna-Monowitz complex. The Nazis may not have taken the time to remove numbers from the uniforms of their victims before redistributing them to the new arrivals. At this time, in May and June of 1944, transports included up to 14,000 people a day. During this mayhem, when the crematoria operated 24 hours a day. a Polish Jew, assigned the number 83150, was gassed and it was possible that Dezider Wolfe Kleinmann received his uniform bearing the number 83150.
"Museum" hours in the Memorial site of dachau, which was the former Dachau concentration camp. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
This analysis could have a significant impact on the writing of the history of Auschwitz. It will never be known how many Jews were not includ-ed in the statistics, for as in my case, they could not have been counted because those counting assumed the same number could not have been used for two people. Interpretation and reality are intricately woven and one's biases shape the knowledge that is acquired.
Later during the same trip, I visited the archives in the former Dachau concentration camp. I discovered the documentation detailing the jour-ney my father took to his death. I last saw my father in Auschwitz. From there he was deported to a labour camp in Warsaw and I, to Gross-Rosen. Despite this fact, our numbers were 87232 and 83150, which in all likeli-hood could only have occurred if they were assigned in the same camp. Ironically it was the fastidious records of the Nazis that were to sanction my memory.
The paradox for survivors of the Shoah is that while life is lived in the present, our memories are omnipresent. Even more than this, our memories define us. We cannot and must not forget the past. We are the aftermath of circumstances that have redefined man and his potential for evil, and as such are shaped by the indescribable, perpetually fated to have meaning only amongst ourselves. Those who have not experienced the absolute core of humiliation and degradation cannot fathom us and will never understand.
The array of commemorative events in Flossenburg had very little rele-vance for Jewish survivors. Christian clergy marched through the camp with the German flag, adjourning for a service in the Christian chapel. They conducted what was referred to as the celebration of liberation. Later in the afternoon, a Christian youth choir gave a concert in the Valley of Death, so named because the ashes from the crematoria were scattered over this area.
Peter reading the document describing his father's journey to his death on the very ground in which Peger discovered the documentation in the Memorial Site of Dachau, 1995. Dachau was te Nazis's first concentration camp opened in 1933 and was closed only weeks after Sandor Kleinmann's death in April 1945. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
While this took place, behind concrete posts that were once wrapped with electrified barbed wire caging the camp, German military police stood on guard, evoking memories of the SS in the towers and patrolling the camp some 50 years ago.Was this image appropriate for the commem-oration?
Outside the chapel, in front of a small stone monument, a handful of Jews gathered to say Kaddish while the world watched the commemoration/"celebration" via satellite broadcast. Was this an appropriate ritual marking the liberation of former Jewish inmates in the war against Jews?
The recently constructed synagogue in the camp would have remained closed if the delegates from the group I was with had not insisted that it be unlocked as a symbolic gesture to those Jews whose cries could still be heard, if only we would listen. Was this a fitting and dignified response to honour the memory of those who perished?
The Jewish memorial and monument in the Memorial Site of Flossenburg. The Hebrew inscription on the wall, zachor, means "remember." (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
This separation of commemoration by Christians and Jews does not inspire hope for a future distinguished by dialogue and cooperation. No attempt was made to gather survivor testimony, or at the very least, to sys-tematically register the names and addresses of those who attended. Given that this may have been the last opportunity of such magnitude to detail and record the historical events of the Flossenburg concentration camp, one must question the motivation of the organizers for having neglected to do so. Was this event simply staged for the media and their audiences?
The 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps is a time for reflec-tion and a time for academics, artists, clergy, scholars, and survivors to engage in dialogue about the transmission of this legacy. One should not repeat the mistakes of a nation whose members were all too willing to accept the teachings and edicts of authority. From 1933 to 1945, the great majority of German citizens accepted Nazi racial ideology without ques-tion. Ordinary people went home at night to their families after spending their days murdering and acting on behalf of a killing machine imple-menting the atrocities of the Shoah.
The monument and legacy of the Shoah is to be found in our future, a future characterized by communication between young people from dif-ferent countries promoting global understanding in defiance of ethno-centrism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism. It is through the transmis-sion of the memory of survivors that a shared legacy will be provided, one that is characterized by a commitment to freedom and the protection of human rights.
If moral behaviour is taught and not an innate quality of human exis-tence, there is hope for change and for a future that ensures all people may live by their beliefs with pride rather than be forced to conceal them through fear of discrimination and death. Everyone has the capacity to give freedom to all humankind if they care enough and assume this moral responsibility, We must continue to break the conspiracy of silence that characterized the world's reaction to the Jewish plight 50 years ago. We must be vigilant in our teaching of and fight against current atrocities occurring in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka Zaire....
Memory without consequence is futile.
The following photographs were taken during the 50th year after the liberation of former killing centres and concentration camps.
The Photograph "Stop London's Africa Holocaust”: was taken in Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport while Peter was in transit to Germany. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Young people from Flossenburg listen as Peter bears witness to their past. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Several monuments made by school children in Bavaria. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Morial in Majdanek.
A barrack inside Majdanek. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Treblinka, a former death camp, a town, and a museum. (Phtos: Naomi Kramer)
Sign in Terezin. (Photos: Naomi Kramer)
Jewish and Russian monuments in Terezin. (Phtos: Naomi Kramer)
Dachau: a former concentration camp, a train stop, a museum. (Photos: Naomi Kramer)
The retaining wall was made of desecrated headstones from the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw. This cemetery is effectively one of the largest centres of Jewish documentation in Europe since some 250,000 jews were buried there before 1939. The grassy area in the photograph below is where Jes from the Warsaw ghetto were buried during the war. In 1995 there was no marker indicating this fact. In the same cemetery, a monument in memory of the more than 1 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis.
This monument stands in the fomer Umschlagplatzin Warsaw. This is the assembly point where Jews from the ghetto were deported in cattle cars to their deaths in Treblinka. In the last week of July 1942, close to 65,000 people had been assembled here and deported. by the middle of September the destruction of two thirds of Warsaw's ghetto Jews, some 350,000, was complete – an atrocity unparalleled by the Nazis. the shape and colour of the monument is reminiscent of a Jewish man's prayer shawl (tallis). (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
This Jewish couple lived in Mukachevo in 1995 and in Munkács 50 years earlier. Only a few hundred Jews live in the city that prior to the Shoah had a Jewish population of some 13,000. (Photos: Naomi Kramer, KFF Archives)
As a symbol of pride, the flag of the state of israel is held by Israeli youth at Auschitz/Birkenau. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Graffiti in Poland, 1995. (Phots: Naomi Kramer)
A rag that hauntingly resembled the Nazi prisoner's uniform was photographed in a gutter in Kustsanovice, Ukraine in 1995. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
A Roma child in a parking lot of a hotel in Uzhgorod, Ukraine, in 1995. This little boy was regularly chased away by police because he begged from the hotel guests. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
Peter in front of the majestic headquarters of the City of Vienna's school board. The school board hosted a conference sponsored by Peter, Building History: Holocaust in Education. The poster refers to a notice of the conference and a lecture by Peter. (Photo: Naomi Kramer)
