Index | Preface | First Chapter
Foreword -
Peter Kleinmann
There is a place in southern Ukraine where 23,000 Jews are buried. They are not buried in the type of cemetery that one would expect to find as the final resting place for several generations of residents and neighbouring villagers. This graveyard did not exist when I arrived with my father 56 years ago in the nearby town of Tluste. There is no peace or tranquillity here characteristic of graveyards as we know them. There is no moss or gravestones; no manicured grounds or markers indicating whose people lie there; no caretakers or visitors who come to pay their respects. Few of the relatives of those buried here know of this place.
I was destined for Tluste when the Hungarian gendarmes stormed into my home, in the middle of the night, and forced my father and me to board a train. The prevailing mood and behaviour of the hundreds of people aboard the train and those who joined us along the way was characterized by constraint. Over the previous three years we had learned to remain quiet and guarded in the presence of the gendarmerie. In Munk?cs, we had become accustomed to living with the everpresent expectation of the unknown that had replaced the predictability of our modest and basic lifestyles. Questions were seldom asked because answers were not given. On the train we speculated among ourselves as to our destiny. Along the way two of my father’s sisters and their families boarded. In the following days, while I could, I was to find comfort in their company.
We remained, my father and I, in this place for about two weeks. I was alone and lonely most of the time. After a few days, I no longer encountered my aunts and their families as I wandered the village streets. During the days, my father was questioned; that is how he referred to these inquisitions. By 1941,1 knew that no matter how frequently I asked him, he would not describe to me what he had endured during these interrogations. I had to infer what had happened based on what I judged to be missing in him.
During the time I was in Tluste, I wandered the streets alone searching for a familiar face. Daily I waited in line for my ration of food. In 1941, three years after the Hungarians had occupied my native Carpathian region of Czechoslovakia, there was no longer any rationale behind the circumstances of life or the places my life was to take me. The knowledge that my father had always provided for us, even if it was only a slice of subsistence living, would prevent me from succumbing to fear. This security was my first defence in the place I was fated to by right of my birth.
As abruptly as we had been brought to Tluste, we were sent back to Munk?cs on near-empty trains. Only 56 years later did I come to know what this time in Tluste meant. I was one of the Jews deported by the Hungarian government from the Carpatho-Ruthenian region they had annexed in 1938. In 1941, there was a mass expulsion of the residents from these regions who were not able to prove they were Hungarians. Many Jews in the Carpatho-Ruthenian region were affected because the anti-Jewish law of 1939 prohibited Hungarian naturalization of those Jews who could not prove their families had resided in the Austro-Hungarian empire since 1867. Unable to cope with the large number of deportees, the Germans demanded the return of Jews who had been deported to this area. At a conference in Vinnitsa, on 25 August 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln assured the attendees, including officers of the German army and representatives of the newly formed East Ministry that he would complete the liquidation of those Jews by 1 September 1941. They intended to have the German mobile killing-units who were operating in the Soviet Union shoot the 14,000 ìstatelessî Hungarian Jews.
Today I realize that everything that happened to me during the Shoah, no matter how senseless and incomprehensible to me at the time, was part of the Nazis’ design for the murder of European Jews. My father always carried with him personal and family documents. I can only conclude that we were released because he was able to prove that he was a naturalized Hungarian. I know this because today I am able to place the events of these two weeks on the schematic of history.
The Einsatzgruppen shot some 23,000 Jews between 25 August and 1 September 1941. These roving killing-units were eventually replaced by the more efficient means of murder in the gas chambers. The process of disassociating the victims from their murderers proved more effective than direct contact. Mass graves, such as the one near Tluste where the victims of the Kamenez-Podolsk massacre probably dug their own graves, were no longer necessary as they were replaced by the more expedient crematoria.
The mass destruction of communities by the killing machinery of the Shoah was possible in large part due to the technological achievements of the Industrial Revolution. Modernity brought with it the means to allow us to separate victim from murderer. Distancing between consequence and action, made possible with the bureaucracy of the twentieth century, resulted in the often-heard disclaimer: "I was only following orders" The invisibility of victims allowed the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes in history to act openly and without moral accountability.
Rationality replaced the previous criteria of morality as justification for action. The Nazis’ goals were advanced in the name of science; science is the work of man and must be judged as such. In retrospect, it seems as if the Shoah is a foreshadowing of just where our advancements in the fields of genetic engineering and biochemistry may lead should we be unwary.
It is the ordinariness and the logic underlying so much of the Shoah that be understood and revealed. I have recounted these few weeks I was in Tluste because I have lived for 56 years not knowing the meaning of this memory. In presenting my memory to the authors of this book, I now understand why this incident took place in the life of a 15-year-old Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. I hope to shed light on the debate characterized by the statement that history is more reliable than survivor testimony Clearly the distinction is moot. My memory would have no personal meaning without the input of the historians, and the historians would be remiss in their documentation without my memory.
One is struck by the irony in debating the relative merits of various ways of knowing. A subject as complex as the Shoah cannot be known or understood in any one way. The combination of personal testimony and historical analysis presented in this volume will show the reader that the two are irrevocably linked. It is the interpretation of the many realities or experiences of the survivors of the Shoah, in conjunction with all the documentation of historical analysis, that allows us a glimpse at the process of the Shoah. This will provide us with the insight to identify the red flags that are indicative of genocide. (1)
Deportation Routes of "Stateless" Jews From Carpathia to Kamenez-Podolsk (Summer 1941)
