GAIL DRAKE: Lessons from the survivors

“We hanged our harps upon the willows … for there they that carried us away captive required of us a song.” Psalm 137:2-3

In recognition of Holocaust Day, meet survivor Billy Harvey, in his own words:

“My city was called Berehove (in Czechoslovakia), population was approximately 26,000. … The whole city was like Napa Valley. I graduated at age 18 from a gymnasium (advanced high school). Unfortunately, my graduation present was Birkenau Auschwitz.

“We were in [the ghetto] for six weeks under terrible sanitation conditions. We were freezing; we had very little food to eat. One day, the train arrived … they pushed into one cattle car as many people they possibly can … we were crushed like sardines. When the sliding door slammed closed, the only light came through the wooden cracks.

“When we first glanced out, [we saw] … big chimneys going to the sky, the smoke was going all over. We didn’t know where the smoke was coming from, but we learned soon enough — from the crematorium. They were burning, burning between 12,000 and 13,000 people a day. Who they wanted to stay alive, go to the right. Who they condemned to die, go to the left. Most of the children were bitterly crying … so the young mothers went to the left, to the gas chamber.

“They made us strip completely naked, shaved our hair.” [We were tattooed with a number, and from then on, we were a number, not a name.]

“Once a day we got a bowl of soup. It wasn’t fit for an animal. Five to six people have to share it. When I wanted to give up, I [remembered] what a great lady my mother was, who stood by all the hardships, raising six children. … That’s what gave me the strength to want to survive.”

As the Allies approached, the Nazis transported Harvey and others to another camp.

“When we arrived [at] Buchenwald, they came to collect all the dead people from the cattle car. I was frozen. I was put among the dead people. The prisoner who worked at the crematorium discovered I was still alive. He saved my life. … When I woke up, no one was hollering at me. Nobody was beating me. I was 21 [and weighed 72 pounds]. I could not stand up [but] was happy to be alive.

“I came to [the U.S.] with one pair of shoes and shirt and pants and I was determined to make a success out of my life, and that’s what I did. I also discovered the best revenge is success. You can’t hate your enemies because when you hate, you’re not living.”

In the 1930s, Germany constructed 42,000 camps; concentration, labor and POW camps, and extermination camps designed to carry out “The Final Solution”: the mass killing of Jews and other perceived enemies. Auschwitz in Poland was the largest camp where 1.1 million people were killed, mostly Jews.

How did the nation that produced Luther, Mozart and Einstein, descend into building death camps? What were the steps to that downward spiral of hatred, racism and violence? German publications from that era tell the story.

Following the humiliating defeat of World War I, some Germans believed the war was lost not on the battlefield but from betrayal by communists and Jews. Suffering under extreme economic hardship and an unstable government, Germans longed for the glories of their nation‘s former days. Many were attracted to Charles Darwin’s eugenics study and developed theories of racial superiority and gradually targeted Jews as inferior. Under these conditions, the Nazi Party offered hope, power and prosperity.

Hitler was appointed chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, with 37% support. A month later, the German Parliament building burned down, and the Nazi party used the panic to accuse political opponents and arrest them. Hitler obtained emergency powers and in so doing removed basic personal freedoms and due process.

The “Enabling Law” that passed a month later granted Hitler power to rule by decree rather than Parliament passing laws. By then, the first concentration camp, Dachau, was open. He then purged his political enemies and took control of the judicial system, the media, then other parts of German government and schools. Twelve years later, millions had been brutally killed, including 6 million Jews.

“I don’t believe the world learned the lessons from the Holocaust. That troubles me deeply,” Billy Harvey said.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” philosopher George Santayana said. Let us take heed to avoid the slippery slope toward hatred and destruction.