US History The Holocaust 8.4 (turn in) Use the Holocaust Survivors testimonies to answer the following: Questions Survivor 1 Helen Survivor 2 Primo Where did he/she go? How did he/she get there? What did he/she go through? Provide 2 3 events or experiences that stand out. Reflection: 1. What made this different from other genocides? 2. How did the Holocaust affect people s families? Use the Voyage of St. Louis to answer the following: 3. Why did the U.S. refuse the refugees? 4. What economic factors may have been at play? 5. If you had to make the call, would you have allowed them in? Why or why not?
Holocaust Survivor: Helen L. I: So when were you first aware of things starting to go wrong? L: That s interesting, the first time I think that I was aware, but I was really young. We weren t rich people, I would say we were very comfortable. Certainly with everything that you could want, food clothing, a nice big home, things like that. But we always had also help in the house and my awareness of it was when Jews were not allowed domestic help anymore. Or when I think it must have been somewhere in 39 or 40 that the Hungarians occupied our area. And that s when Jewish businesses were taken over by Hungarian people that were brought in. They were collaborators with the Germans. And instead of German Nazis we had Hungarian Nazis. It was the same idea. And they took over Jewish businesses. I: But how did your parents explain to you the help disappearing, or how did you become aware of it? L: I don t really recall an explanation of it. I just recall that Jewish kids were not allowed in school anymore and Jewish businesses were being closed. And Jewish people weren t allowed help and what I heard my Dad talk about, that there is a war going on and there is alot of discrimination. And I m pretty sure that they had no idea the extent of how bad it was. I: So tell me what happened, to your father L: First, actually, to begin with my first and clear awareness of it was in 41 when the Hungarians, there was some of the people, some of the men I should say like my sister s husband, my oldest sister Goldie, she s not alive. Her husband went to what was called a Shovel Army. The Hungarians took those young able bodied men to work, to dig foxholes, to work for the Hungarian Army, for the German Army, to do labor. So in 41 they took all the Jews except the families of those men, which included my sister and her children. And being that my sister was alone with the kids for so long, I was with her alot. I stayed there, helping her with the kids, I always loved children and so that was one of the reasons. And when they came, really without warning, without anyone knowing about it, when they came to my family, to take away my Mom and Dad and the kids, all of them, this boy that I went to school with, our next door neighbor his name was Solly, is thank God. He came running to my sister s house and he says, Haichu, come quick, come home, they re taking your parents away. So I ran and they were already out of the house, in the middle of the street, going towards the headquarters, the police headquarters I guess you would call it., and I hung myself on my Dad s neck. And I (pause) I told you he was my ideal. I said no, I want to go with my Dad and this policeman, his name was T., who spent alot of time in our house.
I: Can you stand to tell me the process when they brought you in and went through that. L: Yes. When we got off the train, and we were taken to, you know marched, to a place nearby, which was close to where the chimneys, the crematoriums were. We were asked to strip, that s why it was so ludicrous that we put on two, three dresses, to have them. We were asked to strip, totally in the nude, and stand at, and we stood, waited, lined up, many of us, many of us. You have to understand that now, and now you don t like standing in the nude while bad people are parading back and forth. But we were so much more sheltered, so much more modest, that even in front of your own Dad I don t think you would ever go with less than a full slip or anything like that. And there we are standing totally in the nude and all the people that shaved our heads, and as I said everywhere else, were men. They were inmates, most of them Polish Jews that were there already in Auschwitz for several years. And so, as I said, when we got there we were asked to strip and throw everything in one pile. We stood in, naked for hours and hours, and after that we went through a place which was like a shower, but it wasn t water it was like a disinfectant. And then we were given those striped dresses, with no underwear. The shoes you were wearing you had left. So whatever you wore it better last you for the duration. And then we went to the barracks in Auschwitz. And the barracks were
Holocaust Survivor: Primo Levi I And these tracks, and these freight trains we see as we pass by, what kind of effect do they have on you? PL There, I would say that they are precisely the trains to have an explosive reflex. This is what impresses me the most because still now, to see a car in a freight train has a violent, evoking effect on me, much more I'd say than to see again the villages and the places, Auschwitz itself. Having traveled for 5 days in a sealed box car is an experience one doesn't forget I Did you know where you were going, what your destination was? PL We didn't know anything. We had seen on the cars at the Fossoli station the writing "Auschwitz" but in those times, I don't think even the most informed people knew where Auschwitz was, what.. I 40 years ago, what was your first impact with Auschwitz? PL Different; It was night time, after a disastrous journey during which some of the people in the car had died, and arriving in a place where we didn't understand the language, the purpose... there were some senseless writings, showers, the 'clean side', the 'dirty side'; Nobody explained anything, and they spoke to us in Yiddish or Polish, and we didn't understand. It was really an alienating experience. It seemed we had abandoned the ability to reason, we didn't reason. I And how was the journey, those 5 days? What do you remember? PL I remember very well. I remember a lot. There were 45 of us in a small, very small car. We could barely sit, but there wasn't enough room to lay down. And there was a young mother breast feeding a baby. They had told us to bring food. Foolishly we hadn't brought water. No one had told us, and we suffered from a terrifying thirst even though it was winter. This was our first, tormenting pain, for 5 days. The temperature was below zero and our breath would freeze on the bolts and we would compete, scraping off the frost, full of mist as it was, to have a few drops with which to wet our lips. And the baby cried from morning to night because his mother had no milk left. I What happened to the children and their mothers when... PL Ah well, they were killed right away: out of the 650 of us on the train, 400 500 died the same evening we arrived or the next. They were immediately sorted out into the gas chambers, in these grim night scenes, with people screaming and yelling. They were yelling like I never heard before. They were yelling orders we didn't understand. They had us lined up; There was an officer (later on I learned he was a doctor, but we didn't know that at the time) who would ask each one of us, "Can you walk or not?" I consulted with the man next to me, a friend, from Padua. He was older than me and also in poor health. I told him I'll say I can work, and he answered, "You do as you please. For me, everything is the same". He had already abandoned any hope. In fact he said he couldn't work and didn't come into the camp. I never saw him again.
I We are about to return to our hotel in Cracovia. In your opinion, what did the holocaust represent for the Jewish people? PL Not something new. There had been others. Incidentally, I never liked this term 'holocaust'. It seems to me to be inappropriate, rhetorical, wrong, most of all. PL It represented a turning point: as a measure, as a way, it was perhaps the first time in which anti Semitism had been planned by the state, not only condoned or allowed as in the Russia of the Czars. And there was no escape: all of Europe had become a huge trap. It entailed a turning point, not only for European Jews, but also for American Jews, for the Jews of the entire world.
The Voyage of the St. Louis 900 Refugees refused by the United States Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department and the White House had decided not to take extraordinary measures to permit the refugees to enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States." US diplomats in Havana intervened once more with the Cuban government to admit the passengers on a "humanitarian" basis, but without success. Quotas established in the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. US officials could only have granted visas to the St. Louis passengers by denying them to the thousands of German Jews placed further up on the waiting list. Public opinion in the United States, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler's policies, continued to favor immigration restrictions. The Great Depression had left millions of people in the United States unemployed and fearful of competition for the scarce few jobs available. It also fueled antisemitism, xenophobia, nativism, and isolationism. A Fortune Magazine poll at the time indicated that 83 percent of Americans opposed relaxing restrictions on immigration. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit the St. Louis refugees, but this general hostility to immigrants, the gains of isolationist Republicans in the Congressional elections of 1938, and Roosevelt's consideration of running for an unprecedented third term as president were among the political considerations that militated against taking this extraordinary step in an unpopular cause. Roosevelt was not alone in his reluctance to challenge the mood of the nation on the immigration issue. Three months before the St. Louis sailed,
Congressional leaders in both US houses allowed to die in committee a bill sponsored by Senator Robert Wagner (D N.Y.) and Representative Edith Rogers (R Mass.). This bill would have admitted 20,000 Jewish children from Germany above the existing quota. Two smaller ships carrying Jewish refugees sailed to Cuba in May 1939. The French ship, the Flandre, carried 104 passengers; theorduña, a British vessel, held 72 passengers. Like the St. Louis, these ships were not permitted to dock in Cuba. The Flandre turned back to its point of departure in France, while the Orduña proceeded to a series of Latin American ports. Its passengers finally disembarked in the US controlled Canal Zone in Panama. The United States eventually admitted most of them. Following the US government's refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany, however. Jewish organizations (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the passengers: Great Britain took 288 passengers; the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers, Belgium took in 214 passengers; and 224 passengers found at least temporary refuge in France. Of the 288 passengers admitted by Great Britain, all survived World War II save one, who was killed during an air raid in 1940. Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France.