Witness: Witness - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684865262 ISBN 13: 9780684865263

Verlag: Free Press, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Fifty-five years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust continues to cast a dark shadow. For the past two decades, the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University has sought to preserve the human side of this inhuman era by videotaping testimonies from those who lived through the Nazi regime, a project that has led to an acclaimed documentary film and this extraordinary book.

Fifty-five years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust continues to cast a dark shadow. For the past two decades, the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University has sought to preserve the human side of this inhuman era by videotaping testimonies from those who lived through the Nazi regime, a project that has led to an acclaimed documentary film and this extraordinary book.

The Wall Street Journal called the documentary “eloquent and unsparing,” and Daily Variety said it was “a staggeringly powerful record.” The Washington Times said that Witness “gives new meaning to the term documentary. [It is] as pure a document as I have ever seen on television.”

In Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar weave a single and compelling narrative from the first-person accounts of twenty-seven witnesses, including camp survivors, American military personnel, a member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, and resistance fighters. The vivid and detailed memories of these witnesses testify to the continuing impact of this human catastrophe, and their impassioned words lend immediacy to events that resonate to this day.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joshua M. Greene produces books and films of personal narrative. His award-winning films have aired on PBS, HBO, the Disney Channel, and stations in twenty countries. He lives in Old Westbury, New York.

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Chapter 8: "Lost, Without Words"

Liberation

As the German defeat became evident, so did awareness of the enormity of the catastrophe unleashed by Nazi Germany. Allied soldiers, stunned by huge mounds of corpses and living skeletons, were among the first to confront the atrocities in the camps they liberated. Germans from all walks of life, former citizens of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich, were compelled by Allied forces to view the unprecedented mass murder that had been carried out in their name in nearby camps. Those still alive among the victimized had to redefine the meaning of freedom in a world where their families, their homes, and their towns, villages, and religious communities had been destroyed forever.

For most of those who survived the camps and death marches, "liberation" offered little solace. Most were alone. They were ill, weak, and malnourished, facing a bleak and uncertain future. Those of us who today celebrate the "triumph of survival" overlook the burden of survivors' painful memories and their sense at liberation that "I'm not alive, I'm dead" and "I'm alive, but so what?"

Some camp survivors recall responding to the entrance of American or British soldiers with elation, scarcely believing that their ordeal had come to an end. The elation soon gave way to recurring nightmares and painful memories.

Those who returned to their homes in Poland, hoping to find family, reclaim property, and resume their lives often encountered hostility, indifference, and violence. Many therefore chose to leave their former homes and traveled to displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy, where they spent months -- sometimes years -- before being allowed to settle in other countries.

Colonel Edmund M.

Born Baltimore, Maryland, circa 1919

First Lieutenant, Sixty-fifth U.S. Infantry

I was in my, I guess, mid-twenties [and] I was an infantry officer in General Patton's Third Army. We had fought our way through most of Germany, and a few days before the liberation of this camp we had fought our way into Austria. My particular unit was one of the first units to gain entrance into Nazi-occupied Austria at that time. So at that time, we were waiting -- by "we" I am referring to my specific unit -- we were told to stop and wait for the advance of the Soviet army that was coming from the east, from Vienna, that they had recently captured, and approaching us. The Soviet army was approximately a hundred, a hundred and ten miles away farther to the east.

This was the spring of 1945. It was beautiful. The country was picturesque. We were admiring the flowers. Things were now more relaxed. Two or three tanks then stumbled upon Mauthausen concentration camp. There was no prior knowledge, as far as we knew, to the existence of this major concentration camp. The effect, I think, was pure chance that our American tanks found these. So quickly, then, the airwaves were filled with the radio messages going in all directions about this particular camp having been found. I jumped out of the jeep to head in towards the main gate. Even though it was a beautiful day, [a] very, very beautiful day, I felt a brief chill. I don't know what caused the chill. Perhaps a premonition of what we were about to see.

Werner R.

Age 18, Mauthausen

The trouble was that the American troops advanced from one side and the Russian troops advanced from the other side, and they had an agreement that "This area is yours and this area is ours," and everything was fine and dandy. Unfortunately, nobody counted that the Russian forces would be held up in Vienna. So the whole thing got delayed. And in the meantime, while the squeeze was going on, there was no food in the camp. I mean, it was sort of a -- a concentration camp at its worst. The camp was overcrowded. There were maybe in one of these bunks four or six people sitting, crouched together. They were giving us a spoonful, tablespoon-full of moldy bread per day. Sometimes twice a day.

I'll never forget. There was a huge pile of corpses -- huge pile of corpses, which were moving. They were still alive and breathing, but they were just piled up there. And this pile was actually moving, this whole pile. You know, the moment somebody sort of fainted or passed out, you simply used to drag them and put them on there. There were cases of cannibalism in the camp at that time. There was a little bit of grass, or some stuff like that growing out -- it was all eaten up. There was nothing there. People were getting diseases. You name it, a disease, within about two or three days, gone. Things were totally hopeless. If somebody died next to you, you were lucky. What you could do is ask the food for this person who is dead, and then you took it. But there was just so long that you could keep a corpse next to you. It was a bad time.

Arnold C.

Age 12, Mauthausen

I remember I used to pick grass to nourish myself. The portions of bread that they used to give us -- if you just blew on it, it just disintegrated. It was all mold. There were big tents where we were kept. I wanted to leave my tent and go to a different one because most of my friends were there. It was about six or seven o'clock in the evening. I walked out, and as I was walking toward that tent a[n] SS officer saw me. He says, "Where are you going?" I knew I was not supposed to be outside of my tent. I just turned around and started running. He pulled out his pistol and he emptied his pistol after me. And he missed me. I made it back into my tent, and I said, "The SS is after me!" So I dropped down on the ground and some kids threw a blanket over me. And he came looking for me. There were many people in that particular tent. Thousands probably. He couldn't find me. That night, I remained in that tent. That same night there was an air raid. The planes dropped bombs all over the place -- and one of the bombs landed in the tent where I [had] wanted to be. Many of the children were killed. In the morning, there were arms and legs hanging all over the place. I must admit, it was the first and only place where I saw cannibalism. I saw two people take a piece of meat from a body and try to make a fire and cook it. The German officer who walked by, who saw it, shot them immediately.

From there, again a forced march, another camp. We were taken to Gunskirchen in Austria. I slept on the outside. There were too many dead bodies inside the barracks infested with lice. I had decided to run away. I made arrangements to escape from that camp. On the night that I was supposed to escape, the Germans disappeared and saved me the escape. The following morning I saw the first American troops. They drove in with the jeeps. We marched out of the camp -- and we just walked!

Christa M.

We were preparing, you know. Then we heard always the artillery coming in, and we expected all kinds of horrendous things. There's a jeep, and two Chinese Americans in it. We didn't know what an American was. So on my own I got up and go across. "Oh, you're Chinese?" They were furious. That was my first lesson because they said, "No, we are Americans." Only two? That's it? We were expecting -- the propaganda was dreadful! "The Americans are coming in! All the women are going to be raped! And we're going to get shot!" Two lovely guys are offering you a stick of chewing gum.

Edith P.

Salzwedel

That morning, it was the fourteenth of April 1945, early in the morning. Evidently the Americans broke through and broke the water lines and we had no water. And he [the Nazi boss] wanted to shave or needed water. He said to me, "Come here, Edith. You are going to go with this [woman] officer and with two pails and one mile, you are going to bring some water from the well. We need water." So I did. And when I came back, the water was very heavy, so I just put it down. So she...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Free Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0684865262
• ISBN 13: 9780684865263
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 303
• Herausgeber: Greene Joshua M.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande