Archive | January 2022

The New York Times ‘Gets’ It Wrong Again

The New York Times ‘Gets’ It Wrong Again

Ira Stoll


The headquarters of The New York Times. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A week after publishing a correction acknowledging error in describing the Jewish divorce document known as a get, the New York Times has again made what appears to be an error in writing about the issue.

The January 16 correction had said: “An article last Sunday about the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman referred imprecisely to a get. It is a written document obtained from a Jewish rabbinical court that grants permission to divorce; it is not a religious tradition by which men leave their wives without leaving the faith.”

The January 24 New York Times obituary of Sheldon Silver, a former speaker of the New York State Assembly, includes this sentence: “Early political victories reflected his legislative savvy and his religious faith: An Orthodox Jew, he sponsored a 1983 law that abolished religious barriers to remarriage for Jewish women — who required a “get,” or Jewish divorce decree, from their husbands — in opposition to traditional Jewish law.”

It’s a typically convoluted, difficult-to-parse Times sentence. Increasingly, as I mentioned the other day in identifying another case of a misplaced modifying phrase, the Times has gotten to the point where it’s sometimes hard to tell whether the problems stem from bias or just incompetence. What does the phrase “in opposition to traditional Jewish law” modify? The get requirement? The 1983 law? Silver’s sponsorship of it? The women?

It’s possible I am misreading it, but the Times sentence seems inaccurate on two counts. First, it’s not true that the 1983 law “abolished religious barriers to remarriage for Jewish women.” Such religious barriers aren’t within the power of the New York legislature to eliminate. It doesn’t make sense; it’d be like the governor of New York enacting a law abolishing Jewish religious barriers to pork-eating.

Second, far from being “in opposition to traditional Jewish law,” the Silver-sponsored law was drafted by an Orthodox Jew, Nathan Lewin, and supported by a fervently Orthodox Jewish religious organization, Agudath Israel of America, according to a contemporaneous account by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. That account does a better job that the Times obituary did of explaining the substantive provisions.

As Egon Mayer wrote in a 1983 letter to the Times, “The bill does not mandate any kind of religious divorce. It simply calls on people who are seeking a civil divorce to attest that no prior contractual agreements exist that would prevent either partner from remarrying.”

When Governor Mario Cuomo signed the bill into law, the Times account began, “Jewish husbands who refuse to grant their wives divorces under Jewish religious law will be barred from obtaining civil divorces under a measure signed today by Governor Cuomo.” That accurately made it clear that what was affected directly by the New York law were civil divorces in New York, not the religious barriers. The same Times account reported: “Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of Agudath Israel of America, a major orthodox group, said: ‘This is a happy day for many sad people. We expect it to be challenged; we expect to be ready to fight the challenge.’”

This may seem like a subtle point. By changing the law about civil divorce, the New York government’s action had the practical effect of decreasing the frequency of cases in which Jewish women were “chained” to husbands who refused to grant them religious divorces. For Constitutional and other reasons, however, this distinction between the civil divorces and the religious ones is important to maintain, not to blur or to confuse.

Perhaps the Times will get it right by publishing a second get-related correction in a single month. Something to the effect of: “Correction: An obituary of Sheldon Silver imprecisely characterized a 1983 law he sponsored. The law directly affected civil divorces, not religious marriages. The legislation was consistent with traditional Jewish law, not in opposition to it.”


Ira Stoll was managing editor of the Forward and North American editor of the Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.


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Bennett’s approach to Abbas is a refreshing recognition of reality – editorial

Bennett’s approach to Abbas is a refreshing recognition of reality – editorial

JPOST EDITORIAL


After nearly seven months in power, Bennett has internalized that he can’t show a full straight in a card game if only dealt a pair of aces – and that he must play the cards that he has.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks as he attends a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Israel / (photo credit: REUTERS)

Just three days after meeting Defense Minister Benny Gantz in his Rosh Ha’ayin home last Tuesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dashed any hope that this rare meeting was a harbinger of a thaw in the frigid ties between Israel and the authority.

For just a split second, there was a flicker of hope that maybe this meeting – and the goodwill gestures Israel announced afterward – presaged creating a better atmosphere between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

But then on Friday, Abbas gave an address to mark the anniversary of the first Fatah terrorist attack in Israel – the attempted bombing of the National Water Carrier on January 1, 1965 – and that hope faded. Abbas, as is his wont, blasted Israel, accusing it of “organized terrorism” and “ethnic cleansing,” among other evils. The meeting with Gantz, at least judging from Abbas’s strident tone, changed nothing.

So was it a mistake?

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz (credit: SPUTNIK/EVGENY BIYATOV/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS, YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

We think not, and in so doing, agree with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Bennett, at a press conference Sunday night to discuss the Omicron wave, was asked about the Gantz-Abbas meeting, a meeting he had hitherto not publicly addressed.

First, he said, the meeting was held with both his foreknowledge and approval. Secondly, Gantz has overall responsibility for security and creating stability in the West Bank. Such a meeting, therefore, “is a legitimate part” of Gantz’s “toolbox.”

In other words, if this type of meeting helps ensure security and create stability in Judea and Samaria, then it should be held.

Bennett did not comment on Abbas’s later remarks, but it is possible to extrapolate from his “toolbox” answer that he does not think those comments necessarily cancel out the potential benefits of the meeting, especially since the prime minister stressed that the meeting dealt only with security and economic issues, not diplomatic ones.

This is very much in line with the practical approach Bennett has taken to governing: keep an eye on the ultimate goal, and don’t be deflected or detracted from background noise stemming from ideological orthodoxy.

For instance, if the overall goal is to provide security and try to create stability in the West Bank, and if Abbas is useful in achieving that goal, then meetings with him should take place – even though, as the Palestinian leader’s later words made clear, he did not turn into a Lover of Zion.

Bennett added that he personally has no plans to meet with Abbas. Even so, the prime minister clearly realizes the utility of others doing so, and as such green-lighted the meeting by his defense minister. The message: reality is complex and messy.

That complex reality emerged at another point in the press conference when a Channel 14 reporter pointedly quoted remarks Bennett make in the past that the best deterrence to terror is to build settlements after an attack, and noted that not only has he not built any settlements after recent attacks, but has actually evicted settlers.

Bennett’s answer was a study in calm. He said that after it became clear that former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to drag the country to a fifth election, “I made a difficult decision to establish a different government, one in which there is the Right and the Left, and in which there is, inside the coalition, [Ra’am Party head] Mansour Abbas,” whom he described as an Arab leader who has shown great courage.

Once such a government was set up, Bennett said, it was clear that there would be limitations. “Clearly a government with this constellation is limited, but I did not see any government in the last decade establish new settlements,” he added in a reference to Netanyahu.

That answer was a clear recognition of reality.

Bennett did not deny that if he was head of a different government he might have acted differently, but he recognized that in the government he decided to form he was instead dealt a certain hand, and that his maneuverability is limited by the cards he was dealt.

After nearly seven months in power, Bennett has internalized that he can’t show a full straight in a card game if only dealt a pair of aces – and that he must play the cards that he has.

This approach is practical – and also one we find refreshing.


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Wymówka społecznej psychozy i “choroby umysłowej”

Wymówka społecznej psychozy i “choroby umysłowej”

Ruthie Blum
Tłumaczenie: Małgorzata Koraszewska


Opancerzony pojazd sił porządku publicznego na terenie, gdzie mężczyzna wziął zakładników w synagodze podczas nabożeństwa, które transmitowano na żywo w Colleyville w Teksasie, USA, 15 stycznia 2022. / (zdjęcie: REUTERS/Shelby Tauber)

Niespełna dwie godziny przed tym, jak urodzony w Pakistanie brytyjski muzułmanin wziął 15 stycznia czterech żydowskich zakładników w synagodze Beth Israel w Colleyville w Teksasie, afro-Amerykanin Martial Simon pchnął młodą kobietę pod nadjeżdżający pociąg metra na stacji Times Square w Nowym Jorku.

W pierwszym wypadku zginął tylko sprawca. W drugim, ofiara straciła życie.

Te dwa niezwiązane wydarzenia mają więcej wspólnego niż się wydaje na pierwszy rzut oka. Oba dotyczą napastników, którzy byli dobrze znani siłom porządku publicznego. O obu członkowie ich rodzin powiedzieli, że cierpieli na “chorobę psychiczną”.

Zacznijmy od Malika Faisala Akrama. Po wejściu do synagogi podczas porannego nabożeństwa w szabat i oznajmieniu związku z pakistańską terrorystką, Aafią Siddiqui, uzbrojony cudzoziemiec przez 11 godzin trzymał rabina i trzech uczestników nabożeństwa jako zakładników. (Reszta już zmniejszającej się liczby wiernych z powodu wzrostu zakażeń COVID-19 uczestniczyła przez Zoom.)

Przez większość dnia agenci zespołu FBI SWAT prowadzili negocjacje z Akramem, którego nazywanie Siddiqui “siostrą” okazało się wyrazem ideologicznego, nie zaś dosłownego pokrewieństwa. Jednak jego emocjonalne więzy z “Lady Al-Kaidy” były wystarczająco silne, by wybrać się za ocean i żądać jej zwolnienia z więzienia, gdzie Siddiqui odsiaduje 86-letni wyrok za próbę zamordowania żołnierzy USA w Afganistanie i udział w spisku wiodącym do przeprowadzenia zamachu mającego spowodować masowe ofiary.

W zamian za jej zwolnienie Akram miał powstrzymać się od zabicia niewinnych Żydów, których sterroryzował.

Tylko dzięki łasce Boga, zaradności rabina Charlie Cytron-Walkera i profesjonalizmowi agentów FBI tego dnia w synagodze rozlała się tylko krew Akrama. Na szczęście ofiary – choć niewątpliwie w szoku – wyszły z tego fizycznie nienaruszone.

Analiza ruchów Akrama prowadzących do tego ohydnego czynu pokazuje, że przyleciał on 29 grudnia do Nowego Jorku na międzynarodowe lotnisko Johna F. Kennedy’go i podał hotel w Queens jako miejsce, gdzie się zatrzyma podczas wizyty. Dwa dni później był w samolocie do Teksasu.

Chociaż prezydent USA, Joe Biden, powiedział, że Akram “podobno” spędził pierwszą noc w mieście w “schronisku dla bezdomnych” i musiał kupić broń “na ulicy”, policja powiedziała, że prawdopodobnie wystarał się o nią w Dallas. Tak czy inaczej, Akram starannie zaplanował swoje posunięcia zanim wsiadł do samolotu w Wielkiej Brytanii.

To nie przeszkodziło jego bratu, Gulbarowi – rzeczywistemu krewnemu, nie tak jak jego duchowa siostra Siddiqui – przed wskazaniem „problemów zdrowia psychicznego”, które „pogorszyły się”, kiedy inny brat zmarł kilka miesięcy wcześniej na COVID-19, jako winnych tej sytuacji.

Oskarżył także władze USA o niedbałość przy sprawdzaniu wjeżdżających. Ot, taka ironia.

“On był znany policji; był karany – powiedział Gulbar Akram o Maliku w licznych wywiadach dla mediów. – Jak mógł wjechać do Ameryki? Dlaczego dostał wizę? Jak wylądował na lotnisku JFK i nikt go nie zatrzymał ani na sekundę? Jak mógł zdobyć broń?”

Wszystko to są zasadne pytania. Jednak każdy, kto śledzi polityczny i kulturowy klimat w Ameryce Bidena nawet nie trudziłby się zadawaniem ich. Sama myśl o sprawdzaniu muzułmanina powoduje, że Demokraci w Kongresie trzęsą się ze strachu przed gniewem “Squadu

Tymczasem Wielka Brytania mogłaby głęboko przemyśleć sprawę Akrama. Według informacji z poniedziałku w “Telegraph”, otrzymał on zakaz wstępu do sądu w Blackburn już w 2001 roku. Ten rzadki “Nakaz wykluczenia”, który zakazywał mu wstępu na teren budynku, został wydany bezpośrednio po atakach 9/11, kiedy wyklinał woźnego sądowego, życząc mu, by został zabity w ataku jednego z samolotów, które obaliły World Trade Center.

Innymi słowy, jak pozornie umysłowo niestabilny był biedy Akram przez całe życie, jego islamistyczne skłonności były stabilne przez cały czas. Nic dziwnego, że wybrał Żydów w swojej wyprawie do Colleyville. Antysemityzm jest przecież integralną częścią, jeśli nie kluczowym elementem dżihadyzmu.

Zapytajcie Siddiqui, która, nawiasem mówiąc, odsiaduje karę w Carswell Federal Medical Center w Fort Worth, gdzie siedzą skazane kobiety o różnych „poziomach niebezpieczeństwa” i „potrzebie opieki psychiatrycznej”.

Jak napisała Phyllis Chesler dla IPT (Investigative Project on Terrorism) News: “Siddiqui pokazała się jako zażarta żydożerczyni. Jej proces rozpoczął się od żądania, by jej ławników zbadać genetycznie i zapewnić, że nie ma wśród nich Żydów. Po wysłuchaniu wyroku skazującego wykrzyczała, że ‘wyrok jest z Izraela, a nie z Ameryki. Tam trzeba skierować gniew’”.

Ponadto, jak podaje Chesler, Siddiqui “podobno napisała do [byłego] prezydenta [Baracka] Obamy, mówiąc mu, że ‘okrutni, niewdzięczni, wbijający noże w plecy Żydzi… spowodowali, że byli bezlitośnie wyrzucani zewsząd, gdzie zdobyli siłę. To dlatego >holokausty< wielokrotnie im się przydarzają!’”

I tyle w sprawie jakichkolwiek wątpliwości, jakie mogą istnieć w sprawie wyboru miejsca przez Akrama.

Także Simon nie wybrał przypadkowo miejsca dla swojej koszmarnej zbrodni. Spychanie ludzi na tory metra stały się modne wśród nowojorskich “bezdomnych” i “chorych psychicznie”.

Michelle Go, ofiara Simona, nie miała tyle szczęścia, co modlący się w Beth Israel. Ta mieszkanka Upper West Side dosłownie nie wiedziała, co ją uderzyło w tę zwyczajną skądinąd sobotę.

Kobieta, która zobaczyła Simon pędzącego przez platformę z rękami ustawionymi do popełnienia mordu, nie miała czasu na nic, poza usunięciem się z jego drogi. W tym ułamku sekundy ostrzeżenie innych o jego napaści nawet nie było opcją.

Ani też nikt nie był w stanie skoczyć na ratunek w sposób, w jaki niedawno zrobiło to kilkoro bohaterskich Nowojorczyków wobec podobnej napaści, ponieważ tym razem pociąg już nadjeżdżał. Wszystko, co pozostało tym, którzy byli świadkami tego koszmaru, to krzyk przerażenia.

Simon, który opuścił stację równie szybko, jak wszedł, sam oddał się w ręce policji. Na szczęście, ponieważ policja nowojorska była zajęta w pobliżu starając się opanować demonstrację przeciwko przymusowym szczepieniom. Gdyby zniknął w tym tłumie, z łatwością mógłby uniknąć aresztowania.

Jego siostra, Josette Simon, łkała nad  jego losem podczas wywiadu w poniedziałek, opowiadając “New York Post”, jak kiedyś błagała szpital, by go nie wypuszczać. Powiedziała, że u tego obecnie 61-letni człowieka stwierdzono schizofrenię, kiedy był po trzydziestce i że choroba „pogorszyła się” po śmierci ich matki 23 lata temu.

“Ona się nim opiekowała – powiedziała Josette. – Parę razy musiała wzywać policję, ale potem było coraz gorzej. Przez ostatnie 20 lat był wielokrotnie w szpitalach psychiatrycznych i wypuszczali go”.

Dodała, że w pewnym momencie “jedna z moich sióstr wzięła go. Był [w Georgii] a potem powiedział: ‘Muszę wrócić do Nowego Jorku’”.

Nowojorska policja powiedziała, że Simon, opisywany przez większość mediów jako “bezdomny”, ma długą historię przestępczej działalności, pobytów w więzieniu i na zwolnieniu warunkowym. Porównanie tego, co mówiła siostra, z relacją policji, pokazuje bardziej niż niejasną oś czasu.

Pewne jest jednak, że zostanie oskarżony o zamordowanie Michelle Go, tak jak powinien być. To nie znaczy jednak, że nie zostanie uznany za niepoczytalnego i zwolniony od winy – bo jest „chory psychicznie”. Gdyby został zabity, jak Akram, taka kwestia nie pojawiłaby się.

To nie znaczy, że Akram był zdrowy psychicznie, ani że Simon nie jest chory. To muszą ustalić psychiatrzy, którzy podobno już to zrobili. W takim razie nie zauważyli autentycznego zagrożenia, jakie stanowili ci mężczyźni.

Tak czy inaczej obaj powinni byli być zamknięci na dobre dawno temu, albo w więzieniu, albo w instytucji dla chorych psychicznie przestępców. Akram jest wreszcie tam, gdzie przynależy. Miejmy nadzieję, że to samo będziemy mogli powiedzieć o Simonie. Każdy, kto uważa inaczej, powinien udać się do psychiatry.


Ruthie Blum

Amerykańsko-izraelska dziennikarka, publicystka Jerusalem Post.


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The Death Marches: The Final Spasm of the Nazi Genocide

The Death Marches: The Final Spasm of the Nazi Genocide

MEL LAYTNER


Walter Spitzer, ‘Death March from the Auschwitz camp to the Buchenwald camp,’ 1945COURTESY GHETTO FIGHTERS’ HOUSE MUSEUM, ISRAEL

Stories from the survivors of the Nazis’ evacuation of prisoners from Auschwitz

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On Jan. 18, 1945—just 10 days before the Red Army liberated Auschwitz—the SS sent 56,000 prisoners on a series of death marches. The evacuations became part of a cascading mudslide of mayhem and murder that killed as many as 250,000 concentration camp inmates and POWS in the last four months of the war. Unlike the Nazi extermination program itself, this outcome was not planned or premeditated. Rather, it was largely the result of murderous inertia, bureaucratic bungling, and confusion. The Auschwitz prisoners followed a number of routes, all of them through one of Europe’s severest winters ever recorded. This is the story of one march by one camp: Blechhammer, the largest exclusively Jewish slave labor camp in the Auschwitz system, and the second largest subcamp overall. All quotes are from published testimonials, memoirs, news reports, and personal interviews.

This much the nearly 4,000 Haflinge, “detainees,” of Blechhammer knew: The Red Army’s winter offensive was crushing the German defenders along the entire 558-mile front.

Now rumors ricocheted like shrapnel throughout the camp … that the Germans were panicked and packing and would abandon the camp and its prisoners to the Russians … or, yes, the Germans were indeed packing, but the SS had wired the barracks with dynamite, intending to blow everyone up before they quit … or, no, trains were being readied to evacuate everyone to labor camps deeper into Germany.

A withdrawal on foot was largely discounted because it was winter, snowing heavily with temperatures sinking to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. To walk any distance in this weather would be insane. “After all,” this thinking went, “they still need us.”

Haftling 179020 knew better. Sigmund Walder worked as an electrician alongside British POWs at the Blechhammer North refinery’s central control station. They had warned him their officers were preparing for just such a forced march, distributing extra winter clothing and food rations, courtesy of the Canadian Red Cross.

Sigmund told me he had “organized” several pairs of new combat boots from his POW contacts and had distributed some to friends. Haftling 178489, Walter Spitzer, told me he had been a recipient of Walder’s largesse.

I saw people look straight into the eyes of their executioner as they waited for death.

What neither Walder or Spitzer knew was that the previous June, Heinrich Himmler had issued orders that in the event of a general retreat, all POWs and concentration camp prisoners were to be evacuated deeper into Germany. Indeed, between June and January the population of Auschwitz had been reduced by about half—some 60,000 Haflinge.

Problem was, in the following months, little was done by way of the detailed logistical planning necessary to move hundreds of thousands of prisoners, from scores of camps, across hundreds of miles. When the Red Army’s offensive hit on January 12, senior SS officials were left scrambling, improvising as events unraveled with startling speed.

Himmler’s orders had also said no POW or prisoner was to fall alive into the hands of the Red Army. Senior concentration camp commanders received conflicting answers when they asked what this vague statement meant. Interpretation was essentially left to the SS guards who would accompany the prisoners. They weren’t called the Death’s Head Division for nothing.

As the Russians took Warsaw on January 17, Berlin ordered the gas chambers at Auschwitz blown up and all records of its activities destroyed. That morning, the last roll call was recorded for Auschwitz and its subcamps: 66,020. This included 3,959 Haflinge in Blechhammer, about 35 miles northwest of the main Auschwitz camp.

Four days later, some 2,500 inmates from the Gleiwitz subcamps arrived in Blechhammer overnight. Exhausted, hungry, and cold, they told of a three-day forced march through heavy snow and subfreezing temperatures. Anyone who couldn’t keep up was shot.

The camp’s loudspeakers made it official later that morning. Blechhammer was being evacuated to a safer area, with better working conditions, in the west. Prisoners would receive double food rations for the trip. They could bring their food tins, spoons, blankets, and personal possessions. Only those too ill to walk could remain behind.

No one believed this. It was a given the SS would shoot anyone left behind.

The pandemonium that erupted indicates how surprised many were to learn they were being sent on a forced march. Prisoners broke into the food lockers and clothing warehouse, grabbing whatever food and warm clothing they could before the kapos arrived with their clubs and whips to restore order. The Germans really were panic-packing and stayed outside the wire.

On the food lines, kapos distributed the promised double ration: about a pound of black camp bread, a double portion of artificial honey, a dab of margarine, and a slice of horsemeat sausage.

Once outside the 16-foot walls, the SS shunted the prisoners to side roads. The main ones were reserved for military traffic and hundreds of thousands of German civilians, many hauling carts laden with furniture and household possessions, all fleeing west, away from the approaching thunder of Russian artillery.

Wind cut like razor wire. For some protection any prisoners wore “camp undershirts,” fashioned from paper sacks used for cement under their striped uniforms. The sacks were constructed of several layers of brown industrial paper. The innermost layer, the one most impregnated with cement dust, was stripped out. Holes were cut for the arms and head.

Relatively few Haftlinge had scored proper footwear like Sigmund Walder and Walter Spitzer. Most wore standard concentration camp issue “Dutch” clogs—cloth uppers tacked to unyielding wood soles.

Snow stuck to the soles of these wooden shoes. To move forward, Haftlinge had to lift their legs high like quarter horses, stopping every few steps to knock off the accumulating snow. But on whom could you lean on for support? Fabric uppers would tear from the tacks holding them to the wood soles. Prisoners then walked with only rags around their feet. Caking snow weighed down blankets the prisoners had wrapped around their heads and shoulders. Many discarded them, too.

The great terror was knowing that, despite your exhaustion, you had to stay on your feet and keep walking.

The flat, echoing crack of a gunshot ruptured the silence every few minutes.

“The great terror was knowing that, despite your exhaustion, you had to stay on your feet and keep walking,” Haftling A-5714, Robert Wiederman, recalled. “If you sat down to rest or were too weak to go on, you were shot. On the march, we heard constant rifle and pistol shots.” (After the war, Wiederman would change his name to Clary and become the actor best known for his role as LeBeau in the TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes.)

Any pretensions of order soon dissolved. Those at the head of the column had to forge a path through the fresh snow. Those in the back risked being shot by the rear guard for falling behind. Those with the presence of mind tried to stay in middle.

Occasionally, the Haftlinge crossed paths with POWs outfitted in layers of woolen winter khakis, heavy coats, hats, and leather boots. Before starting out, they had each received a four-day ration of tinned meat, bread, margarine, sugar, and cigarettes. Nevertheless, the POWs did not escape unscathed. Between 2,200 and 3,500 American and British POWs were shot or died from exposure, disease, or starvation in the months of the death marches.

Eddie Hyde-Clark, a POW from Suffolk, England, was just settling down to eat when he looked up and “coming towards us I see what can only be described as a shuffling collection of living skeletons. Never have I witnessed such utter despair on the faces of human beings with such hollow faces and protruding bones, all dressed in filthy uniforms that looked like gray-striped pajamas.”

At night, the guards crammed prisoners into abandoned barns or warehouses. Food was haphazardly distributed, the rations from Blechhammer long gone.

On the fourth day of the march, Haftling 178610, Abraham Schaufeld limped from the barn where he had spent the night jammed against hundreds of fellow prisoners.

A German guard spotted him. “Du kannst nicht aufen, you can’t walk?”

Ja natürlich, Mir geht es gut. Yes, of course, I’m fine.”

The guard ordered him to one of three horse-drawn carts, the last filled with SS men and machine guns. At dusk, the carts pulled up to a fresh ditch dug against a low brick wall of a village cemetery.

“They said, ‘remove your clothing,’” Schaufeld recalled. “People started shouting and screaming because they could see the ditch and people against the wall, people crying in all sorts of languages.”

Amid the pushing, shouting, and tumult, “I went over the wall, into the cemetery. I lay down near a gravestone, near the wall. By now it’s dark. I could hear the shooting. The screams and the shooting, the full massacre. And then it was quiet.”

Schaufeld lay as silent as the gravestones. “I gave it some time. This was winter. Sodden fields. I walked through these fields. In this mud, in this field, I lost my wood shoes. I walked barefoot. No overcoat. Nothing.”

Schaufeld made for the vague lights of a village, fell into the hay of open barn, and passed out.

Awakened suddenly by a barking dog and a lantern’s dancing light, Schaufeld saw a German farmer standing over him with a pitchfork, and the farmer’s wife shouting. The local village policeman soon arrived. “I told them my father was an officer in the Polish army. They gave me something to eat, some coffee.”

The policeman handcuffed Schaufeld and walked him back to the main column, “telling me that he was sorry, that the SS would probably shoot me.”

The SS guards, “immediately start smacking me around, kicking me. Luckily some women came around and said, ‘Why are you hitting that boy’ and they stopped. They said, ‘take him to the barn, we will deal with him later.’”

It’s a terrifying spectacle to see the dead carried by the half dead.

Schaufeld avoided the SS by mingling with the hundreds of prisoners leaving the barn and rejoined the column.

Days merged into a nightmare of hunger and exhaustion and gunshots. Unable to walk, more and more prisoners fell to the side of the road.

“Not being able to go on, they resigned themselves to certain death,” Walter Spitzer recalled. “I saw people look straight into the eyes of their executioner as they waited for death.”

Peter Black, a POW from Scotland, said, “The Jewish columns were ahead of us. Most were in a pitiful state and if they didn’t keep up, they were shot and their bodies left by the road.”

POWs weren’t the only witnesses to the carnage.

Rudolf Hoss, promoted from Auschwitz Kommandant to a headquarters job, was dispatched to the Eastern Front for a firsthand look after communications were cut off by the Soviet advance.

“There was no food. In most cases, the [German officers] who were leading this parade of walking dead had no idea which direction they were supposed to go,” Hoss recalled from his prison cell awaiting execution for crimes against humanity. “It was easy to follow the route of this ordeal of suffering because every few hundred meters lay bodies of prisoners who had collapsed or been shot.”

By the time the columns reached the Gross-Rosen concentration camp 13 days and 180 miles later, about 800 of the roughly 6,000 Blechhammer and Gleiwitz Haftlinge who began the death march on January 21 had been shot or otherwise died and left lying in the snow and mud.

The ordeal was to become worse.

Three months before the Soviet offensive, the Kommandant of Gross-Rosen received instructions from Berlin advising that his camp would be the destination for thousands of prisoners should there be a general evacuation of camps from the east. Little, however, was done to prepare. When Soviets launched their attack, the camp was unprepared for the arrivals from Blechhammer and elsewhere. Gross-Rosen swelled to more than 97,000 prisoners.

Many guards and kapos were Ukrainian nationals working for the SS. “They were totally dehumanized, filled with hate and anger,” recalled Haftling 178488, Edward Gastfriend. The kapos “beat our heads with whips and sticks. There was no way to escape the gauntlet. We pushed forward and in our panic trampled over other unfortunates who did not have the strength to run.”

Walter Spitzer remembered the corpses, stacks of them. “This incredible sight that has haunted me for many years since: a constant line of prisoners, pulling corpses, or skeletons more precisely, holding them by the tendons and the skin … The white of the bodies stand out against the gray and dark brown of the muddy earth. In the total silence, the only thing we can hear is the dull sound of the skulls and the open mouths scraping on the ground …”

“It’s a terrifying spectacle to see the dead carried by the half dead.”

Robert Clary was also haunted by his memories. “Oh I have tasted hell on Earth and I know what it is,” Clary recalled. “They did not know what to do with us. They shoved us into unfinished barracks, no windows, no doors, no bunks, no straw on the floor, just cold cement and it’s freezing and muddy outside.”

Roll calls were held in a newly plowed field on plateau above the main camp, exposed to the winter winds. Prisoners stood in slush for hours. Many sank into the mud and died there.

After three days of this frozen hell, thousands of prisoners were loaded into open coal railcars and shipped 300 miles west to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar.

The words above the gate—Jeden das Seine, To Each His Own—were prophetic. The loose brotherhood of Blechhammer prisoners disintegrated as each man had to make his own way in this new camp.

Buchenwald was liberated on April 11, 1945, by Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army. By then, more than 5,000 prisoners had died, most of starvation, dysentery, though hundreds were also shot. For tens of thousands more in camps across the shrinking Reich, successive death marches continued for nearly a month more, until the Nazi regime itself was declared dead.


This article was adapted from the authors investigative memoir, What They Didn’t Burn, which tracks down a Nazi paper trail that uncovers his father’s Holocaust secrets.


Mel Laytner, a former foreign correspondent for NBC News and UPI, is the author of What They Didn’t Burn: How Hidden Nazi Documents Proved a Survivor’s Holocaust Stories.


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News From Israel- January 26, 2022

News From Israel- January 26, 2022

ILTV Israel News


Israel is set to exempt schoolchildren from isolation as wards in hospitals reach ‘all-time high’
US President Joe Biden says he’s considering personal sanctions on Vladimir Putin, if Russia invades Ukraine
And. Israel braces for one of the heaviest storms in years, as Elpis arrives in the country
For more stories go to www.Iltv.tv


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ani też webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyraźnie zaznaczone.
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