'My Family Were Burned in Auschwitz – Now It’s Time for Kaddish'

More than half of the Knesset will visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust death camp this week in a historic delegation. The Knesset will hold a session at the site where an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Among those visiting will be MK Eliezer Moses (UTJ), who until now has avoided visiting Auschwitz, the place where dozens of members of his family were murdered.

MK Moses explained why he plans to visit now, after so many years, in a conversation with Johnny Daniels of the Mimaamakim organization, which coordinated the visit.

“Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek – that’s where 70 people from my family were killed, were burned and murdered because, and only because, they were Jews. No other reason,” Moses began.

MK Eliezer Moses to make first visit to Holocaust death camp where 70 of his relatives died.

“My grandfather and grandmother, siblings-in-law, aunts and uncles were burned in Auschwitz, and the whole other side, my mother’s family, were murdered in Treblinka. My mother’s sister had five children and they were all murdered in Treblinka,” he continued.

“I wanted to get to know the young man who’s taking the whole Knesset to Auschwitz,” he told Daniels. “I had many opportunities to go, but I just couldn’t.”

“Just yesterday I said that I cannot handle going to Auschwitz,” he added. “But then I decided to go, because a year and a half ago I represented the state of Israel at Majdanek as the Deputy Education Minister, and I saw how important it was to be in that place and to say Kaddish [a prayer for the dead – ed.] the way we say it in my family.”

Daniels told Moses that he is happy he will be taking part in the delegation. Daniels noted that his wife, too, lost many relatives in Auschwitz.

“I signed a contract with the management at Auschwitz on the table in the conference room where the heads of the Nazi movement once sat, and I signed a contract to bring the Israeli Knesset – that’s our power,” he concluded.

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Private Letters Shed New Light on the Man Behind the Holocaust

By Maayana Miskin

Private Letters Shed New Light on the Man Behind the Holocaust

 Private correspondence of architect of Final Solution shows how top Nazi was willing to shoot his own mother if Hitler asked, but despite mass murder surrounding him family life was indispensable

Himmler, the mastermind behind the Holocaust, was the person behind the Nazi propaganda machine between 1926 and 1930. In 1929, he was appointed as head of the SS; he expanded its ranks from 300 men to over 50,000 by 1933. Himmler was later responsible for implementing the "Final solution to the Jewish problem" - the systemic genocide of over 6 million Jews. 

The official met his wife, Margarete Boden, in 1927. The two married in July 1928; and their only child, daughter Gunrud, was born in August 1929. The relationship was allegedly strained, with Himmler utterly absorbed in his work. 

After lying around in a Tel Aviv apartment collecting dust for dozens of years, hundreds of personal letters, pictures and secret journals belonging to Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, have been revealed.

The revealing documents, stored in Israeli painter Chaim Rosenthal's apartment, show how on one hand the top Nazi official used an iron fist to send Jews to their death, and on the other hand had a soft touch when dealing with his family, even in the shadow of the mass murder happening around him.

Sealed with a kiss: 'Love, Your Heini' (Photo: Realworks)

Himmler, the high-ranking Reichsführer of Adolf Hitler's SS, wrote many open letters to his wife Margarete (Marga) during the Second World War, and he never hid from her the exploits of the Nazi extermination machine.

"From Saturday until Tuesday I'll be in a killing field to test new and interesting methods of shooting," he wrote.

After returning from a visit on the eastern front in July 1941, after the German invasion of the USSR, he apologized for having forgotten their anniversary. But in the same letter he admitted how when he saw his soldiers executing Jews by firing he couldn't stop throwing up.

His wife didn't remain apathetic to the surrounding events either. One time before leaving for the front she told him that "there's a can of caviar in the refrigerator. Take it."

Even when he was on his way to the death camps he didn’t stop thinking about his cherished wife. A short time before the implementation of the Final Solution, Himmler sent her a short note.

"I'm going to Auschwitz. Kisses, your Heini."

In another letter from July 1942, just before going on a tour of the death camps, he wished his wife an enjoyable vacation.

"In the coming days I'll be in Lublin, Auschwitz and Lvov. All the best, have a good trip, and have a good time with our little daughter. Lots of warm wishes and kisses."

From the correspondence, the two were not only partners in their loving relationship but also in their strong anti-Semitic sentiments. In November 1938, the day before Kristallnacht, Marga wrote how she wished the Jewish problem would go away.

"This issue with the Jews – when will these scum leave us so we can live a happy life."

'Your evil darling'

The letters also revealed that Himmler's wife knew very well with whom she was marrying.

"I'm so lucky that I have an evil husband who loves his evil wife," she wrote. Himmler responded: "There's nothing other than 'revenge.' Forever." Marga wrote back: "Remember: 'Revenge.' My black soul is thinking about the most impossible things."

Even more algid is the testimony of his daughter, Gudrun, when the little girl described her feelings after visiting an extermination camp.

"Today, Mama, Aunt Lydia, Aunt Frieda and I visited an SS camp in Dachau," she wrote. "We had a big meal there. It was a great day. What a grand project the concentration camps are."

In Himmler and his wife's correspondence in the last '20s, he already had his murderous traits well established.

"My love, I found out how great it is that a person so evil like me merited such a good woman like you. I hope you are happy with your evil darling."

And after being appointed head of the SS, he made it clear to whom he was loyal: "If Hitler would tell me to shoot my mother – I would do it."

Himmler with family (Photo: Realworks)

The leading theory is that Chaim Rosenthal – an Israeli artist and historical memorabilia collector interested in the Second World War – purchased the letters, probably in a Brussels' flea market.

According to another possible version of the events, the documents were found in the home of Karl Wolf, Himmler's personal assistant who fled to Italy at the end of the war and hoped to use the letters as a bargaining chip.

At some later point, Wolf took the letters with him to either central or South America. According to this narrative, Rosenthal purchased the letters in Mexico from Wolf's wheelchair-stricken personal assistant together with a group of investors for $40,000.

It is unclear which of the two versions are correct, but what is known is that Rosenthal brought the letters to Israel in the '70s and hid the collection under his bed.

Seven years ago Israeli director Vanessa Lapa's father purchased the letters, and she went on to make a documentary film on the subject, which is set to be broadcast on the Israeli Yes network in the near future.

In the 1980s, Yedioth Aharonoth reported that the letters were in the country but the public didn't have access to them. Despite the mysterious acquisitions of the letters, the top expert in the German Federal Archive has said they're real.

"We have no doubt as to their authenticity," President Michael Holman said.

Himmler, who was loyal to Hitler until his death, committed suicide in May 1945, a short time after falling captive to the British forces.

'A wretched man'

Opposition and Labor Cairman Knesset Member Isaac Herzog described Himmler's last moments, as told to him by his father, former president Chaim Herzog, who served in the British army during the war.

"As he was being examined by a military doctor he shifted his head to the side, cracked open a cyanide bottle with his teeth and died on the spot. We'll never know why he specifically chose to kill himself at that moment," MK Herzog said. "Daddy told us more than once the story of Himmler's capture, and he always told us how he looked like a wretched man, a gray clerk and uninspiring

see also:

Private Letters Shed New Light on the Man Behind the Holocaust

Yehuda Shohat and Elad Zeret

Israel News

Auschwitz survivor and British war veteran recounts harrowingexperiences in new book

A British NEWPORT war veteran and Auschwitz survivor has relived his past for a new book and BBC feature, released later this month.

The Auschwitz Goalkeeper is the true story of prisoner of war Ron Jones of Bassaleg, Newport, who has chosen to speak out after 70 years.

A keen football player and goal keeper, after being enlisted in the British army, Mr Jones was captured by German troops in North Africa, before being taken to what is now Poland. 

He was at Auschwitz from October 1943 to January 1945. There, he was forced to work at the IG Farben chemical factory in a synthetic petrol plant.

The experiences of the notorious death camp were horrific and he first hand witnessed the inhumanity and mass murder of Jews. 

As the war neared its end he and other British prisoners, together with thousands of Jews, endured the forced march across Europe, from Poland to the Austrian border, where they were beaten and kicked by SS Guards as the SS retreated before the advancing Russians.

 Mr Jones is one of only three men still alive from the march. The rest died of exhaustion and murder at the hands of the SS.

Mr Jones is currently in Poland revisiting Auschwitz for a piece for the BBC's The One Show, which is due to be aired at the end of October to the beginning of November.

At 96-years-old, he still sells poppies for the Royal British Legion for war veterans for World War Two and more recent conflicts every year, gives talks in local schools about his experience and even works part-time with an estate agent.

Mr Jones has been a Newport County football fan almost all his life. Speaking to The Argus earlier this year, he said: "The first time I went down there, my father took me on his bike in 1924, I was seven years old."

Co-author of the book, Joe Lovejoy, was chief football writer for the Sunday Times for 15 years, and at The Independent for eight years before that. He has had four books published, including Glory, Goals and Greed [the history of the Premier League], Ryan Giggs' autobiography [ghosted] and Sven-Goran Eriksson's biography.

The book, published by Gomer Press, was to be launched at the Newport British Legion club on October 9; however, the launch has now been postponed.

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LIKE FATHER LIKE DAUGHTER - Daughter of Auschwitz commandant disgustingly downplays Holocaust murders

Auschwitz commander's daughter disgustingly revealed to be living in Washington DC suburb, after working for Jewish-owned beauty parlor. 'How can there be so many survivors if so many had been killed?' she wonders, proving she has learned nothing.

Brigitte Höss (Hoess) has spent the last 41 years living in a suburb of Washington DC, and was employed at a trendy beauty salon owned by Jews who fled Germany after Krystalnacht.

 

Höss, now 80 and cancer stricken, has a dark secret that even her grandchildren do not know: Her father, Rudolf Franz Hoess, was a senior Nazi war-criminal, who served as the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp from May 1940 to November 1943.

During the weekend, The Washington Post published an interview with her in which she commented on a new book called Hans and Rudolf, written by the journalist Thomas Harding, about her father and the Jewish man who brought to his arrest. Höss, who goes by her married name, conditioned the interview on the promise that her name or whereabouts would remain unpublished.

 

In the past, Höss's grandson attempted to sell private items which had belonged to his Nazi grandfather to Yad Vashem.  

 

Rudolf Höss, Brigitte's father, was the man behind the design and construction of the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland, whose crematoriums could consume 2,000 souls an hour. Many years after the Holocaust, Höss does not deny that Jews as well as other were sent to their deaths, but does maintain that the overall toll stands at less six million.

 

"How can there be so many survivors if so many had been killed?” she wonders.

 

She remembers her father as a 'good' man, and claims his confession at the end of the war was extracted from him under torture. “He was the nicest man in the world,” she says, explaining that “He had to do it. His family was threatened. We're threatened if he didn’t. And he was one of many in the SS. There were others as well who would do it if he didn’t.

 

"He was very good to us,” she adds.

 

Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi death camps, it was founded in 1940 near the Polish town of Oświęcim. The number of Jews killed in the camp was about 1.3 million, in addition to more than 100,000 Polish prisoners, 17,000 Soviet prisoners of war and an additional 23,000 Romani (Gypsies). All in all, almost a million and a half people found their death at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

 

During her childhood years, Brigitte Höss lived in a villa on the outskirts of the camp.

 

Hanns Alexander, the father of the book's author's uncle, was a Holocaust survivor turned Nazi-hunter who worked to secure Höss's arrest in 1946. Brigitte, who was 13 at the time, remembers the threats and blows her brother received from the British interrogators working to find their Nazi father whereabouts. According to her, it was in wake of the event that her mother broke down and revealed his location.

After his capture, Höss admitted to his crimes: "I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz."

According to him, he received the orders from Heinrich Himmler and later from Adolf Eichmann.

While working on the book, and after locating her, Harding contacted Brigitte in a bid to interview her. At the time, she also conditioned the interview on the secrecy of her name and address. There are crazy people out there, she told Harding, they are liable to burn down my house or shoot somebody, she said.

 

In the interview published by the Post, she expressed reserve about telling her granddaughters the truth, claiming she didn't want to “upset them,” adding she is concerned about what the girls might tell people, thus putting the family in harms way.

Once, at a work party in her Jewish-owned salon, Brigitte got drunk and revealed to a colleague that she was the daughter of Auschwitz's commander. He revealed the fact to her boss, we responded by claiming that she had committed no crime and could stay.

Nonetheless, she claims “I am still scared here in Washington… There are a lot Jewish people, and they still hate the Germans. It never ends."

 

Source

Ynet News.com