One Survivor Remembers; The Powerful Story of Gerta Weissman

1. The documentary we watched today enveloped the grievances and nightmares faced by a young girl during the Holocaust. No doubt, anytime one hears of the Holocaust a shiver is sent down their spine. One particular scene from the documentary was exceptionally powerful to me. The excruciating three month journey through freezing, starved, and dehydrated conditions known as the death march was the last part Gerta and her friends would have to bear before liberation. The part that got to me most through the death march scenes, was when Gerta's dear friend, Ilze, was approaching her last breaths. She said these words to Gerta just before she died, "I'm angry at no one, and I hope no one is angry at me." How, when someone has just been exposed to so much hatred, and has been faced with so many wrong-doings, can they say they are not mad at anyone? Not even the Nazis, the ones who killed her and her family, had implanted their hatred into her soul.
     Another scene that struck me as powerful, although more disturbing, was when Gerta described the frozen conditions during the death march by saying that woman who didn't have the proper foot wear ". . .broke their toes off like twigs." As I said in my other blogs, a person can read and learn about the Holocaust as much as they like, but no man or woman can fully understand the experiences hundreds of thousands of people went through.

2. Though the video didn't say much of how the Nazis dehumanized the Jews, it gave us a few examples. One way they dehumanized them was by forcing them to live in ghettos, separated from the town, Gerta was lucky though, her home stayed her home, though she was confined to living only in the basement. Also, they were dehumanized by being forced to do labor, by having their heads shaved, and by being separated from their families. Gerta Weissman overcame dehumanization partly by imagination, and partly by an SS woman who cared for her and the other girls while they were forced to labor at a factory. In the story Gerta says something along the lines of, "If you were blessed with imagination you could survive." She told a story saying that throughout her time during the Holocaust she would imagine different things, different memories, and let them take her to a world where she could ignore the cold wind on her bones or ignore the ferocious growl coming from her stomach. There was a person though too, she was an SS officer who was in charge at the labor factory. Gerta recalls her as her first hope in the world, for she saw that not all Germans were cruel and evil. Gerta says that she most likely would not have made it through the war, if this SS officer had not entered her life.

3.  I believe that if I were in Gerta Weissman's place, I would dream of myself dancing. I would think about the movement, the freedom and each breath that I take when I dance. I would also sing. In a time when I can't move where I want, and I can't speak unless spoken to, I would imagine myself doing just those things and expressing myself through song and dance. I would also imagine my friend and I, doing the many crazy things that we do. I think this memory would trigger fantasies of laughter. These things are the types of things that keep me happy, that keep my mood elevated, so that is why I would think of them.
     From watching the documentary, I realized how many things I take for granted. How a simple thing, that I have become accustomed to, a thing that I have thought myself entitled to, can be become something so scarce that I have to work for it and fight for it is thought-provoking. For instance, food is something that I get every day, that I eat in plentiful amounts and push away when it is not satisfying to me. If I were put into Gerta's shoes, I would not get food everyday, I would eat tiny portions, so as to have enough for the next day, and I would have to eat whatever it was, whether it was cold, revolting, or stale. Another thing I no doubt take for granted, is my family. Hearing the stories of Gerta and her family, of her having to live with being the last of anyone she knew breaks my heart. It's like starting life over again, only the past haunts you all the time. When compared to the victims of the Holocaust, my whole life is taken for granted.

4.  In today's world, genocide still occurs. For the most recent examples, I see the genocide in Darfur and works of the Taliban. In these specific genocides, the Janjaweed target the Darfurians, and the Taliban, similar to the Nazis, target anyone who is not an Islamic Extremist (anyone who isn't like them). There are certain ways that we can prevent different genocides. We can advocate in our community and send letters to political leaders to express the need to put the cause as a higher priority. The problem with Darfur is that since it has been going on for so long it has been pushed to the side. If enough people bring the cause up, they would have no choice but to bring it back up into discussion.

5.  In the film, Gerta dedicates her survival to a few people. The first is the SS officer mentioned earlier, the one who monitored the factory where Gerta was assigned. The second person is her father. Two things in particular that he told Gerta kept her from dying twice. When Gerta was having suicidal thoughts, she was brought back to the stern voice of her father telling her that it is cowardly for one to take their own life. The other time was when he demanded Gerta to wear her ski boots that summer day, the day he secretly knew they would be taken to the camps. This demand saved Gerta's life while on the death march, keeping her warm and keeping her feet from being exposed. Her other hero was Kurt Klein, who was first described as this, "He looked like God to me." He was the man who brought her officially to safety, and a year or so later, was the man who wed her. We can make the world a better place by taking a step back once in awhile and seeing what we can do to help the people around us. If we look into the souls of others and realize how lucky we are, we can simply say one thing or do one thing that can change a person's day, month, or lifetime. We don't need to be like Kurt Klein to be brave or to make a difference, we just have to find a second in our day to make the world a better place.

Death Marches Blog #5

     When looking through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I thought about what I had read in my book, that I wanted to know more about. In Annexed, by Sharon Dogar, Peter van Pels is forced on a death march from Auschwitz in 1944. Dogar only spent very little time talking about the death marches, but I'm realizing that they were actually a big part of the Holocaust. In 1944 and 1945 Nazi soldiers were instructed to evacuate camps and bring them to other sub-camps for three different reasons. One was because the enemy was coming, and they didn't want survivors to be able to tell their stories. The second was because they believed that it was necessary for them to have prisoners in order to maintain production of weapons. The third was because some leaders believed that they could use prisoners as hostages to bargain for peace in the West that would allow the Nazi regime to survive. Thousands and thousands of people died during the death marches, some lasted a day on the march, some lasted a week, while others lasted two whole months.
     Barbara Marton Farkas was in her mid-twenties when she was forced on a death march from Gross-Rosen camp in Germany. She describes the experience similar to Peter, describing how the camp was evacuated, how the men and women were shot if they didn't keep up, and the scarce resources that were provided. In an interview conducted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Barbara recounts the conditions like this, ". . .getting out from the train on the camp and eating green leaves, and no water. And then we start to have a lot, a lot of lice because we didn't have water to drink, not to wash ourself." Although Peter's story didn't go into such detail, the death marches were all fairly similar. Peter was forced to walk from Auschwitz to Mauthausen. Dogar writes, "We sleep where we fall. In the morning we leave the dead where they are. Frozen and curled in their blanket of frost." (315) Peter, Barbara, and thousands of other prisoners, were forced on these marches of no mercy. We read stories about the Holocaust, and realize that people actually went through the horrors. However, when we read personal encounters of those horrors, which are still so vivid after 50 or some years, we realize how scarring and awful the Holocaust truly was.

Emil & Karl Blog #4

     For this blog, I want to compare two very different characters, from two very different books, to see their similarities from living through the times of the Holocaust. I want to compare Karl, the protagonist from the book Emil & Karl, and Peter, the protagonist in the book Annexed. Karl and Peter are both children living sometime during the Holocaust. Karl however, is not a Jew. A big trait that the two boys have in common is their independence. Throughout the stories both boys face much tragedy in their lives and overcome them abnormally quickly. I think it was so quick due to the circumstances of fear and the instinct to keep ones self alive. Soon enough, the boys are on their own and fending for themselves. Karl is leading Emil around to save them from being captured, and Peter is bargaining and being sneaky in order to stay alive in Auschwitz. Their motivations in everything they do is to stay alive. It's a natural instinct in each of these boys and without it they would not have made it even as far as they had. I think another intention which is not ever exactly said, is to stay alive in honor of their families. Both of the boys are the last left in their families and don't really have any reason why they should stay alive. So my question was, why did they still fend for their lives? I think they wanted to be a reminder one day, to people all over the world, of what horrors occurred during the Holocaust, in and out of the Nazis' hands. During the story, a conflict faced by both boys is not having a safe place to live. From the beginning of the Holocaust no person could ever be truly safe. Peter has the annex, but when in it, they can't be fully secure. This is very similar in Emil and Karl. The two boys can hide in a cellar, but they won't ever be fully secure when danger is right above their heads. As these comparisons are showing, every body's Holocaust experiences were different, yet remarkably similar.