Writing in Witness , livre ebook

PRAISE FOR Writing in Witness
“Written in every European language, in every conceivable manner, and from every point on the Holocaust compass—prisons, ghettos, transports, concentration and labor camps, killing fields, bunkers, makeshift shelters, camps for displaced persons—these diary entries, letters, testimonies, eyewitness accounts, poems, stories, sermons, and inscriptions demand that they be heard. Written by Jewish men, women, and children; by Christian bystanders; and yes, even by two German perpetrators, they depict the living nightmare as it unfolds. Six nightmare years and their aftermath are rendered in a language that defies the limits of language; an inescapable present that eclipses the past and cries out to an unattainable future. In the beginning was the Holocaust, and this is its story as told by its original responders.”
— David G. Roskies, author of Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide
“ Writing in Witness is a devastatingly and deeply honest work of testimony by those whose worlds were shattered by the catastrophic rupture of the Holocaust. It is also, and primarily, a testament to the strength and courage of those who experienced the atrocities of Nazism and who felt compelled to write about those events in clear, unsparing language. Eric Sundquist, editor of this important collection, provides a sensitive selection of primary texts by men and women who witnessed the machinery and implementation of genocide. In his thoughtful and knowledgeable introduction, Sundquist establishes the framework for the ethical engagement of reader and eyewitness in the calculation of enormous loss. The various genres of witnessing included in this collection—diaries, poems, memoirs, letters, records—evoke in their clarity ancient forms of lamentation and Midrash, giving voice to memory. With judiciously interpretive preliminary material introducing each section, Sundquist lets the witnesses speak for themselves. No course on Holocaust literature or history should be without this anthology.”
— Victoria Aarons, editor of Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction
W RITING IN W ITNESS
SUNY SERIES IN C ONTEMPORARY J EWISH L ITERATURE AND C ULTURE Ezra Cappell, editor
Dan Shiffman, College Bound: The Pursuit of Education in Jewish American Literature, 1896–1944
Eric J. Sundquist, editor, Writing in Witness: A Holocaust Reader
W RITING IN W ITNESS
A Holocaust Reader
EDITED BY E RIC J. S UNDQUIST
On the top of the cover is a page from Emanuel Ringelblum’s diary (March 18, 1941), sign. ARG I 446 (Ring.I/504). Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sundquist, Eric J., editor.
Title: Writing in witness : a Holocaust reader / editor, Eric J. Sundquist.
Description: New York : State University of New York Press, [2018] | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Jewish literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034889| ISBN 9781438470313 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438470337 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Personal narratives. | Holocaust survivors—Diaries. | Holocaust survivors—Anecdotes.
Classification: LCC D804.3 .W76 2018 | DDC 940.53/180922—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034889
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Note on Sources and the Text
P RISONERS : A P ROLOGUE
Victor Klemperer , The Yellow Star
Jean Améry , Torture
Anonymous Warsaw Man , A Warsaw Jew Writes to His Gentile Friend
Yehoshua Moshe Aaronson , The Scroll of the House of Bondage
Hilda Dajč , Letters from a Concentration Camp in Serbia
Odd Nansen , A Decent Man
Yitzhak Katzenelson , Vittel Prison Diary
Ella Lingens-Reiner , Prisoners of Fear
Abraham Levite , For an Auschwitz Anthology
I N THE G HETTO
Yankev Glatshteyn (Jacob Glatstein) , Good Night, World
Samuel Golfard , “One must write with blood”
Avraham Tory , Kovno Diary—Roundup and Murders at the Ninth Fort
Herman Kruk , Vilna Diary—Eyewitness to Murder at Ponary
Abraham Sutzkever , Three Poems from the Vilna Ghetto
Oskar Rosenfeld , Starvation in the Ghetto
Simkhe Bunem Shayevitsh , Lekh-Lekho
Anonymous Łódź Boy , “To ease my bitter heart”
Emanuel Ringelblum , “Why is the world silent?”
Chaim A. Kaplan , Scroll of Agony
Gusta Davidson Draenger , Resistance in Kraków
T HE F INAL S OLUTION
Lidia Maximovna Slipchenko , Mass Murder in Odessa
Piotr Rawicz , Blood from the Sky
Hermann Friedrich Graebe , Massacre, Resistance, and Rescue
Philip Mechanicus , “Inside the belly of the venomous snake”: Transports from Westerbork
Alexander Donat , “Hell has no bottom”: Majdanek
Kurt Gerstein , Witness at Belżec
Seweryna Szmaglewska , Slave Labor and Death in Birkenau
Primo Levi , “The saved and the drowned”: The Prominents and the Muselmänner
Abraham Krzepicki , Transport to Treblinka
Rachel Auerbach , The Road to Heaven
Oskar Strawczynski , The Treblinka Orchestra
Paul Celan , Death Fugue
T HE G RAY Z ONE
Chaim Rumkowski , “Give me your children”
Josef Zelkowicz , “The heart of a slaughterer”: The Jewish Police at Work
Calel Perechodnik , Am I a Murderer?
Sara Nomberg-Przytyk , The Block of Death
Gisella Perl , Childbirth in Auschwitz-Birkenau
Szlama Winer , Inside the Chełmno Death Camp
Zalmen Gradowski , “In the deep sea of corpses”: The Czech Transport
H OLY D AYS
Shimon Huberband , Kiddush Hashem
David Kahane , “How shall we sing the Lord’s song?”
Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira , “Love God with all your heart”: The Lesson of Rabbi Akiva
Zelig Kalmanovitch , “What is a Jew and who is a Jew?”
Etty Hillesum , “The thinking heart of a whole concentration camp”
Anonymous Warsaw Poet , And I Will Impart My Revenge upon Edom
Abel J. Herzberg , Jewish Faith, Jewish Unity
S URVIVORS
Hanna Lévy-Hass , Last Days of Bergen-Belsen
Robert Antelme , Death March through Germany
Jorge Semprún , “But can the story be told?”
Charlotte Delbo , The Stream
Yekhiel Kirshnbaum , The City without Jews
Elie Wiesel , Why I Write
Ruth Klüger , Still Alive
Aharon Appelfeld , The Awakening
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOME OF THE EARLY RESEARCH FOR THIS VOLUME WAS UNDERTAKEN beginning in 2007 when I held a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that made possible a three-year program of teaching and research activities on the Holocaust at UCLA. I gratefully acknowledge that important support, as well as other research support at UCLA and at Johns Hopkins University.
Aspects of my Introduction, as well as my conception of the reader, benefited from the responses of audiences at Washington and Lee University (the Shannon-Clarke Lecture); the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Conference; the University of Texas, El Paso; Northwestern University (the Theodore Weiss Lecture); and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw (sponsored by the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas).
For their valuable advice about the manuscript and other assistance with the project (in some cases at quite early stages), I wish to thank Victoria Aarons, Ezra Cappell, the late David Cesarani, Peter Hayes, Holli Levitsky, Wendy Lower, Phyllis Lassner, Sharon Oster, Alan Rosen, John K. Roth, and David G. Roskies. The comments and suggestions of two anonymous readers for SUNY Press were invaluable in my revision and completion of the manuscript. For research assistance at various stages of the project, I am grateful to T. Austin Graham, Grant Shreve, and Anthony Wexler. Writing in Witness would not be in print without the permissions granted by numerous publishers and other rights holders, and I am grateful to the many individuals with whom I worked along the way. For their help in verifying rights holders and obtaining permissions I thank in particular Benton Arnovitz, Michael Berenbaum, and Saul Friedländer. I am grateful likewise to Agnieszka Reszka of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw for help with permission for the cover image.
At SUNY Press I have had the good fortune to work with Rafael Chaiken, Ryan Morris, Michael Campochiaro, Alan V. Hewat, Elise Brauckmann, and Aimee Harrison.
Although I do not feel that a personal dedication is appropriate in a book such as this—other than one that offers profound gratitude to those who wrote their stories in the face of the Holocaust—I acknowledge, with love, the support provided by my wife, Sharifa Oppenheimer, throughout much of the time I spent on this volume.
INTRODUCTION
He who knows no fear and is ready to risk his life will be able to preserve for the coming generation an exact account of what is happening to us at this time.
—Zelig Kalmanovitch, Vilna Ghetto diary, June 22, 1941
SPEAKING AT A 1975 CONFERENCE , THE POET AND FORMER PARTISAN Abba Kovner recalled opening the door to a room in the Vilna Ghetto and finding a man seated at an old sewing machine who was not sewing cloth but blank paper, without thread. What, Kovner asked in astonishment, was he doing? “I’m writing,” the man said. On a sewing machine? “I’m writing the history of the Ghetto.” Without thread? “I will thread it later. When we survive this, I shall pu