Anne Frank’s Classmates Remember Holocaust and Days of Hiding
“What we had was a ‘killing machine’--not just part of a normal war,but a killing machine. We shouldn't forget this past, and we mustremain informed about what's happening today. What went on thenshould never happen again.” Nanette Blitz Konig, best friend of AnneFrank (p. 127) “By the end of the war, I looked like a skeleton. My hip bones werepoking through my skin. They weighed me when I'd already been inthe sanatorium for a while, and I was thirty-two kilos, barely seventypounds. So I must have weighed a lot less before.” Nanette BlitzKonig, who spent three years recovering in the sanatorium after herrelease in 1945 from Westerbork, a Nazi prison in The Netherlands (p.132-3) “The dates tell you that the children who arrived in Auschwitz andSobibor [Nazi extermination camps] were gassed immediately.” Nanette Blitz Konig, viewing the plaque with the names and deathdates of Jewish children (including that of Anne Frank) of theMontessori School (now named Anne Frank School) where she andAnne and many of their classmates went to school before they wentinto hiding or were murdered by the Nazis (p. 160) “My freedom.” Nanette Blitz Konig, when asked by a twelve-year-oldboy at the Anne Frank School, in 2008, what was the most cherishedthing that had been taken from her as a Jew during the Second WorldWar. (p. 163) “The informers were paid [by the Nazis]; and sometimes it was amatter of carelessness on the part of those in hiding, or of those whowere hiding them as well. In any event, many people were betrayed.One third seems to be the official figure, but I believe that half theJews who went underground were betrayed.” Lenie Duyzend, anotherfemale classmate of Anne Frank (p. 180-1)(All quotes from
, by Theo Coster--also an Anne Frank classmate--Englishtranslation published by Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)Those few excerpts from the book may help to fix in your mind theconditions under which millions of Jews in Nazi-dominated Europemanaged to avoid death during the Holocaust. I say “avoid death”
because even the word “survive” fails to give sufficient impact. Deathby disease or starvation was common, even while the Jews were “free,” in hiding from the Nazi troops. Many did not manage to avoiddeath. Eighty percent of the Jews in The Netherlands before the wardid not survive.Of the ones who hid and were discovered, they were sent in railwayfreight cars to concentration camps. The cars were so crowded thatindividuals had no room to sit down. Some literally died en route, of disease or starvation. Those who were not fit to help the Nazis in someway, while in the camps, were told they were to take showers to cleanup the lice and filth that most had accumulated. The showers emittednot water, but lethal gas.Why, I wondered when I was younger, did so many go peacefullyrather than fighting to the death after they were captured? They werestarving, they believed that if they were sent to “work camps” they atleast would be fed. They didn’t mind working if they would be fed.Most didn’t work. They didn’t live long enough to need to be fed.They believed the “showers” would not only cleanse their skin, butthey were told that a mild chemical would rid them of lice andparasites. The “showers” were to be a privilege.They believed. They died. Six million of them.Seventy years later, many of us have lost the message. Today wehave more Jew haters than in past decades. Why? Because those whohated the Jews before and during the Holocaust continued to hatethem after the war was over. And, like the Nazis who invented modernday propaganda methods, they continued to spread their word,relentlessly.I recently defriended a man on Facebook. While he was a marvelousresource for anti-establishment “facts” and video materials, he wasalso rabidly anti-Jewish. Anything done in Palestine he could justify insome way, whereas anything done by Israel he could “prove” was evil.He posted between one and five anti-Israel or anti-Jew Facebook itemsevery day. He had 4000 Facebook “friends.” Read: followers of hispropaganda.Today we have the endless conflict between Israel and Palestine thattires many of us so much that we want to ignore it. What many don’trealize is that Palestinians, who wanted independence from their
former masters Jordan and Egypt for at least a century, not only lostthe war (they supported Germany), they also lost what they hadhoped for so long would be a free Palestine.When the state of Israel was created after the war, from land takenfrom countries that supported the losing side (Germany, home of theHolocaust), Palestinians refused to give up their fight. Wherepreviously Palestinians and Jews had lived peacefully, side by side, inPalestine, when the Jews succeeded in getting international support forthe creation of Israel while the Arab Palestinians failed to get their ownofficial homeland, the Palestinians vowed to never forget or give uptheir fight.Palestinians, in general, may not be as well educated as the averageIsraeli. But they learned their lessons about propaganda from theirGerman allies. They learned how to manipulate the media. Theylearned how to lie, repeatedly and consistently, until eventuallyenough people believe the lies. That’s what propaganda does, asdemonstrated so well in the 1930s by Hitler’s buddy Goebbels, themaster propagandist.Israel learned too, but from the Roman empire, not from modern daymilitaries. Israel learned that when an enemy hurts you, you shouldhurt your enemy back ten times as hard as it hurt you. That’s howIsrael has responded to attacks from Gaza and the West Bank.Such principles of fighting back do not fit with modern morals andethics. Hitting back with far more force than you were hit with makesyou a bully today. Palestine tries to make Israel come off in the medialike a powerful bully. It’s working. Blogs and social media give anti-Israeli propagandists free reign. White supremacists of the past havebecome anti-Israeli heroes of present day, in the eyes of some people.The most important key to successful propaganda is to say yourmessage with confidence. Truth is not important (in fact, lies are thepreferred content of propaganda), so long as the message is deliveredwith confidence and determination. In propaganda, you never admityour own mistakes or weaknesses, you always blame your opponentfor what you did wrong and you usually accuse your opponent of usingthe same dirty tactics as you use yourself. The whole US experience inIraq is an excellent example.Please, when you think about Israel today, remember that Jews havesurvived many extermination attempts over the past three millennia in
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Anne Frank’s Classmates Remember Holocaust and Days of Hiding
Most of the Jews who survived the Holocaust are dead, a few still live. While memories of the genocide committed by a modern European country fade, the potential for more genocide rises. This article explains what millions of people went through. Find author Bill Allin at http://billallin.com
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