Europa, Europa

PREFACE

My Holocaust experiences reported here are true. These events actually happened to me. This story recounts the feelings and thoughts that have refused to leave me since my youth, spent in fear and persecution in the middle of beleaguered and tragic Europe under the terror of German occupation.

Just as one single faithfully recounted testimony of the horror of the Holocaust is the most convincing way to make people remember the past, so too is it a warning for the future. Therefore, I am especially pleased with the initiative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and John Wiley and Sons in bringing out this particular edition, making available in the English language this unique examination of a life lived in the Nazi state. At the same time my thanks and acknowledgements go to the sponsoring editor, Ms. Hana Lane, and to the translator, Margot Dembo. I offer, too, my especial appreciation to my literary agent, Edwin D. Rosenberger; to Benton Arnovitz, Director of Academic Publications at the Museum; and to Henry Wimpfheimer, Esq.

With this English-language edition goes my wish that readers will find it interesting, that it will reach the depths of the souls of young people, and that it will register as a call for tolerance and human dignity.

Solomon Perel

Givatayim, Israel

PROLOGUE

I have often been asked why I never published my story. Unfortunately, until now I have found it impossible to provide a clear and satisfying answer. Probably I didn’t want to be reminded of the past and the tragic events connected with it. In fact, for many years I tried hard to suppress and forget what happened. My daily routine forced me to put the subject aside and only rarely was there opportunity to seriously reflect. The time was just not ripe.

Sometimes I felt the urge to describe my adventures, but always there were questions that virtually paralyzed me: Did I really have the right to compare myself with survivors of the Holocaust? To consider myself part of their story? To place my memories on the same level as theirs? Did I have the right to compare myself with the resistance fighters, the inmates of concentration camps and ghettos, and with those who hid in forests, bunkers, and monasteries? They were heroes and heroines. Their suffering had brought them to the edge of human endurance. And yet with their last ounce of strength they had succeeded in retaining their Jewish identity, their humanity.

I, on the other hand, had gone about among the Nazis at this same time, unmolested, had worn their uniform that included a swastika on my cap, and had yelled "Heil Hitler!" as though I really identified with their criminal ideology and their barbaric goals.

What message did I have to pass on? Would people even believe my story? Would they try to understand it? And if I did put it all down on paper, would I be prepared to endure the loneliness and the isolation that accompany the writing of such a long account, as well as all the nightmares, pangs of conscience, and self-doubts that would emerge to torment me?

I thought about these questions for more than forty years—until I came to the conclusion that I had no other choice. Because as time went by I realized that I could no longer suppress the trauma, could no longer live with this spiritual incubus. To free myself of it I had to write it all down—to get it off my chest.

I promised myself, and I promise you, the reader, to stick to the truth from beginning to end. The barriers are down . . . and I’m ready to awaken painful memories, the memories of my Shoah.

You may well recall the famous director Elia Kazan’s renowned 1960s book and film entitled America, America. In them he recounts Voltaire’s classic story of Candide, a sailor who finds himself cast ashore among cannibals in South America. After many dangerous adventures he survives healthy and intact.

In my book you will see that I also perceived myself as having been cast among cannibals for whom I would have been an easy victim. Agnieska Holland, the director of the film based upon my experiences, viewed me as the Candide of the twentieth century. But my adventures had been in Europe, not America; hence the title Europa, Europa.

1

FLIGHT TO THE EAST

I was born on April 21, 1925, in Peine, a town near Brunswick in Germany.

My parents had moved to Germany in 1918 shortly after the October Revolution broke out in Russia. In those days the Weimar Republic was quite willing to admit Jews. There were four children in our family. My oldest brother, Isaac, was sixteen years old when I was born, David was twelve, and my sister, Bertha, nine.

To support the family, my parents opened a shoe store on the main street, Breite Strasse, shortly after their arrival in Peine. Our German neighbors at that time were not hostile to us, but the old established Jews, who had been in Germany for generations, gave us a cool reception.

They looked down on us East European Jews. Occasionally someone in my family would complain about this at home, but it didn’t bother me much. How was I, who never could understand the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew, supposed to grasp the difference between one Jew and another Jew?

Peine was not a modern city, but gradually technological progress was felt there too. I remember how delighted we children were to see the first automobiles. They looked like carriages without horses, and each had a huge horn next to the steering wheel. We would run after them, eager to squeeze the black pear to make it honk and honk. . . .

Not a cloud marred the happiness of my childhood. We had no forebodings of the fateful events to come. And yet, in the dark years ahead, fifty million people of many lands were to lose their lives, and the Shoah, the systematically planned murder of the European Jews, would profoundly convulse our history.

On January 30, 1933, the National Socialist party under its leader Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.

This marked the beginning of a black-brown dance of death: black and brown like the Nazi party uniforms, blood-red like that associated with various emblems and regalia of the SS, SA, and Hitler Youth.

As early as 1921, in order to protect the National Socialist party, which he was in the process of expanding, Hitler had created the SA, the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers. Those who joined the SA were mainly former soldiers, men who could no longer fit into society. Germany’s defeat in the First World War had embittered them. The SA was supposed to create unrest, break up meetings of opposition parties, and at the same time make sure that Nazi party meetings went off smoothly. They spread fear and terror and thus helped give the appearance that the Weimar Republic, which they were trying to undermine, was powerless. With Hitler and his friends firmly in the saddle, the dirty work was left to the SA: the persecution and liquidation of the Jews and all opponents of the regime.

The SS, Schutzstaffel, Protective Squad or Guard Detachment, was created in 1923. In disarray after the failed Munich putsch, it was reestablished in 1925. Although subordinate to the SA, the SS, acting as bodyguards for Hitler, considered themselves independent. In 1934 they were given that status officially, and reported directly to the Führer. Heinrich Himmler was chief of the SS. His fiefdom also included the Gestapo, the Secret State Police; the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Security Service that was in charge of the concentration camps; and the Einsatzkommandos, battalion-sized mobile units that operated in the occupied territories and killed men, women, and children there.

The Hitlerjugend (HJ), or Hitler Youth, was founded in 1926. This organization participated actively in street fights, demonstrations, and all events and functions intended to demonstrate the superiority of the Nazi terror. Its elite members were selected for SS service on the basis of their height, Nordic appearance, and pure Aryan bloodline.

Meanwhile, life in Peine went on even as the situation was growing rapidly more dismal. But it hardly affected us children. Nothing could keep us from racing wildly through the town playing our games. No doubt I wasn’t mature enough to recognize the dangers that lay ahead, especially since my father, like so many others, thought that the crazy guy couldn’t last very long and wouldn’t stay in power more than eighty days. Like cries in the wilderness, the few warnings that were raised went unheeded.

Two years later, in 1935, I had my first personal encounter with persecution: in accordance with the Nuremberg racial laws, I was expelled from school. Everyday life became more and more difficult and dangerous. Several times my father was picked up and forced to scrub the streets or collect garbage. The SA boycotted Jewish businesses, smashed their shop windows, and committed other illegal acts.

Like a vise, the terror that threatened our existence was tightening its grip daily. At this point my family decided to leave Germany without further delay.

In great haste, we were forced to sell most of our property for pitifully little money. Practically penniless, we emigrated to Poland and settled in Lodz. At first we stayed with my mother’s younger sister, Aunt Clara Wachsmann.

It wasn’t easy to get used to life in a new country. The language as well as the mind-set in Poland were very different from what we had known before. Homesick for Germany, where I had been so happy as a child, I was profoundly shaken by this sudden and cruel uprooting. I simply couldn’t come to terms with all these changes.

I had become a refugee child. And to make matters worse, I found out there was no sympathy here for refugees. The loud scornful snickering of the local Jewish kids who mocked the Yeke Putz mit a Top Kawe [the German Jewish loser with a pot of coffee]* hurt me and increased my bewilderment. I was less and less able to cope with the trials that were part of settling down.

Nevertheless, life continued, and gradually the terrible tensions I had been experiencing lessened and disappeared. I decided I just had to pull myself together, and it helped to be attending public school again. I learned to speak Polish with amazing speed.

Gradually a new way of life emerged. Studying Polish history—learning about the great men of Poland and their constant fight for national independence and against partition and foreign domination—gave me a greater liking for Poland. Little by little I had a vague feeling that it could be my second homeland.

Three years passed. The 1939 school year was drawing to a close. I had successfully completed elementary school, and my basic public school education was now finished. After the summer vacation I was to transfer to the Jewish high school in Lodz.

With my elementary school seventh-grade dass, Lodz, 1939. I’m in the second row, second from the left.

I still remember the words of the valedictory song we sang with tears in our eyes, before we all went our separate ways:

Life slips by so quickly,

Time flows past like a stream.

In a year, a day, a moment

We’ll no longer be together,

And deep in our hearts

Only sadness, regret, and yearning shall remain.

We had no inkling that not only would we no longer be together, but many of us soon would no longer even be.

September 1, 1939. Hitler’s armies invaded Poland, dragging much of humanity into World War II.

We listened that day to Hitler’s menacing speech on the radio as well as the reply by the Polish army chief of staff, Marshal Ridz Szmígly, who declared that Poland would fight courageously and would not hand over an inch of its territory. A few days later Poland was to bend to the will of the Nazi invaders. Only Warsaw, the capital city, held out for a month longer. Once more, I was at the mercy of the Nazi terror. I had run away from it in Peine, and it had caught up with me in Lodz.

As the first Wehrmacht troops marched into Lodz, they were joyously greeted by thousands of ethnic Germans pelting them with flowers and shouting, "Sieg Heil!"

But for the three hundred thousand Jews living in the city, darkness covered the earth. Classes at the Jewish high school ceased. Our days turned into a nightmare, and you could no longer feel you were in charge of your own life. We were overwhelmed by a dreadful premonition. Everywhere antisemitism came out of hiding and erupted into the open.

One day, as I was passing the Jewish high school, I saw soldiers dragging some Jews into the entryway of a building. They kicked them, screaming vile abuse; they beat them and cut off their beards and side curls. Shocked at what I had seen, I ran home. I felt as though I were suffocating, I couldn’t breathe, all my muscles tensed. On the way, I had to hide several times to escape similar attacks by other soldiers. These brutal people had robbed us of our human rights; we became fair game for every psychopath in uniform.

A few months later we heard the first rumors that the Nazis intended to round up all the Jews and send them to a closed-off zone, a ghetto.

My family had an intense discussion about what we should do, and it was decided that my older brother Isaac, who was twenty-nine, and I, fourteen, would not go into the ghetto. Instead, we were going to try to make our way several hundred miles farther east. The idea was to cross the Bug River at the new Soviet-Polish border and join up with the Russians. We thought we would be out of danger there.

My other brother, David, who was in the Polish army, had been taken prisoner by the Germans. My sister, Bertha, was going to stay with our parents for the time being.

Isaac and I hesitated. We didn’t want to leave our parents; we wanted to help them and stand by them in these difficult times. But their decision, once made, was irrevocable, and they insisted that we get going. They were already old, they emphasized, and would share the fate of the other Jews in the city. We, on the other hand, were young and duty-bound to use every opportunity to save ourselves.

Didn’t we bring you into this world to live? my mother asked. Papa placed his hands on our heads and blessed us with the holiest Jewish blessing, that of the Kohanim, or priests: . . . may the Lord keep you . . . and grant you peace. And Mama added, "You must stay alive!"

We left the house carrying backpacks we had stuffed with food for the journey, including an incredible amount of home-baked Kommissbrot, a type of bread my mother had prepared from special dough with cinnamon added to keep it fresh for months. My father looked disapprovingly at the load we were carrying; he thought it would only weigh us down unnecessarily. I was wearing the new suit I had worn at my Bar Mitzvah. We also wore, under some extra jackets and coats, several folding umbrellas buckled around us like belts. These umbrellas were then a brand-new invention and therefore quite valuable. We expected they would come in handy because we could exchange them for food or use them to pay Polish peasants for taking us along in their horse-drawn carts. My brother, who had worked for a firm in Lodz called Gentleman, had been able to salvage a few of these umbrellas at the last moment, just before the firm was looted.

In spite of the many dangers all around us, we managed to get to Warsaw by train. There, we were taken in by Mr. Silberstrom, the director of the Polish head office of Gentleman, which manufactured and sold raincoats, rubber boots, and those collapsible umbrellas. Because of his business dealings with the firm, my brother knew the Silberstroms well. He had often stayed with them while he was on his business trips. We spent four days with them, gathering as much information as possible so that we could better assess the situation.

Dozens of different opinions and contradictory rumors were circulating, making us uneasy and hesitant about what to do next. We had to decide which way to go and could only pray that it would be the right course. . . . Was it still possible to get on a train? Were they still running? Were the Russians keeping people from crossing at certain border points? And what about the muggers and thieves who terrorized travelers everywhere?

In the end we took a train going in the direction of the Bug River. It was jammed. Since I was rather skinny and short, I had relatively little trouble getting a seat, but my much bigger brother almost didn’t make it onto the train. The compartment was oppressively cramped, and the air was stifling. The train moved awfully slowly, a seemingly endless trip. But at last we stopped in a small town about sixty miles from the river. About twenty of us got off the train there, all the others much older than I. We would have to walk the rest of the way. It was bitterly cold and windy; the snow was piled in drifts as high as the straw roofs of the nearby houses.

In exchange for a few coins, some Polish peasants agreed to take our baggage on their horse-drawn cart. Enveloped in the steamy clouds formed by the horse’s breath, we trotted along behind the cart that was carrying our things, like a mourners’ cortege following a hearse. Our tedious plodding through the crunching snow made me think of the expulsion of the Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, and I imagined that I was hearing the melody of Ravel’s Bolero, endlessly repeated, during this long trek.

Now and then the peasants stopped to point out a nearby German army post. Then we would resume our silent march. Whenever I sensed Isaac’s worried sidelong glance, gauging the regularity of my steps and checking to see how I was holding up, I would walk very erect and smile back at him reassuringly.

We reached the shore of the river the third week of December 1939, exhausted but alive. Red Army soldiers wearing green caps were clearly visible on the opposite bank.

Many other groups of refugees had also arrived at this spot, and all were looking eastward. A single small boat that belonged to a Polish peasant served as a ferry. The refugees began to mob the