What The Holocaust Can Teach Us In 2023
Kitty (Felix) Hart and Tova (Grossman) Freidman have astounding first-person Holocaust testimonials that all people should take the time to hear (see links below). They are not pleasant stories unfortunately, yet these determined voices from the recent past have a lot to tell us about what happens when evil starts to gain momentum and then flourish unopposed. These two women are part of a well-documented, yet often ignored story of what happened (on a day-to-day basis) during the Jewish Holocaust. They were survivors in an environment in which mere survival was a moment-by-moment DAILY challenge. Sportscaster Al Michaels famous quip, “Do you believe in miracles” declaration during the 1980 Winter Olympics (as the US hockey team defeated the thought to be invincible Russian hockey team) echoes the reaction one has in response to hearing how these two young women survived seemingly certain death on numerous occasions. Silly apples to oranges comparison, but this is how I felt listening to their stories. In both cases their survival was nothing short of miraculous. We have probably all heard the numbers. Six million deaths is a very large number and the names of places like Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka have become household names for many of us with a little (or a lot) of gray in our hair, though I would be willing to bet, with the passage of time, and the changes in our schools, it will not be too long before they (the deaths and the places) are forgotten or at least diminished in terms of a collective remembrance of what evil has the power to perpetrate. These were not simply bad, misguided people, these were evil people. I am convinced of that, and moreover, I am convinced that evil merely lies dormant for a time, it is always with us, just waiting for an opportunity to emerge when the conditions are right.
I cannot tell you precisely why I felt compelled to watch / listen to their stories / interviews (more than once because I immediately knew this was something I wanted to share). Something just struck me powerfully that these stories are for today. I do recall having an assembly in high school during which a Holocaust survivor spoke. Her story was one that seemed impossible to replicate in the friendly confines of late 70’s / early 80’s America. It was interesting, incomprehensible, and tied to an era in our history which seemed SO long ago and so utterly surreal at the time. I had always had an interest in History so I probably knew a little more than the average late-teen kid, yet the thought that evil of this level could rear its ugly head again in my lifetime seemed implausible. Nevertheless, having an interest in History also meant that I had a fairly decent understanding of human beings’ ability to be amazingly cruel to one another. This realization has always compelled me to fall on the “man is inherently evil” versus the “man is inherently good” side of the age-old argument. In fact, I find the latter argument laughable. I know there are probably many who would make this argument; if you study history at all, I do not see how one could support it. From a historical perspective, there are no good races and bad races, no good civilizations and bad civilizations, no good times in history and bad times in history. There is simply a panorama or broad sweep of time in which people (often) behave quite badly. It is a human thing. Color, gender, nationality, and religious affiliation have little to do with it.
Early in her interview with Brandon Uhlig, Tova Friedman makes it very clear that the German people who orchestrated the Holocaust were “very smart.” In fact, Germany was one of the most highly educated countries in the world at the time of her incarceration at Auschwitz. She goes on to utter the comment which has stuck with me and inspired me to write and title this piece. “Education without morality is completely worthless.” That was referencing mid to late 1930’s / early 1940’s Germany and yet these are truly words that pertain to 2023 in so many ways. The interviewer prefaces his interview with a description of the times as a “time when the world went mad.” Once again this seems to describe 2023 as well. More on this later. If the world isn’t mad right now, I shutter to think what it will look like when / if that day arrives. Remember, these things start slowly. The Nazis knew that they had to demonize before they could subjugate; and they had to subjugate and instill fear (among both the Jewish and German population) before they could exterminate. It was all remarkably well thought out. Dissent was a brave, yet dangerous choice. Sound a bit familiar?
Born in 1938, Torva Friedman was a young girl during her time at Auschwitz. “Mad” was all that she knew. She was Polish and Germany invaded Poland in 1939. As a matter of interest, the family was out celebrating her first birthday when her home was destroyed by a bomb that destroyed their home and killed an uncle who was left behind. Whether or not her youth was an advantage or disadvantage is open to debate. She ended up in Auschwitz with her mother and her father ended up being in Dachau (he miraculously survived as well). Her mother chose the tactic of being incredibly honest with young Torva and basically coached her through the entire experience as best she could and kept her alive on many occasions. They were separated from time to time, but they always managed to reunite when Torva needed her most. She experienced being essentially hidden and alone for long periods of time when the camp commanders called for all the children to be rounded up. The Germans knew that the very young and the very old were essentially useless for work and in the case of the very young they were potentially dangerous if in fact they survived and sought revenge later. These were the very first to be exterminated in the crematoriums. Interesting and inexplicably, she was ultimately discovered, and the random German officer chose to let it pass. Had it been a different officer or perhaps a different day, summary execution for not following orders was the norm. It happened daily. A little later, Torva Friedman was in fact part of a group of children headed for the gas chambers when the Germans realized that her group had arrived out of order, and she was able to survive another day. She had filed by her disconsolate mother, headed to this certain death, only to retrace her steps. Can you even imagine the range of emotions her mother must have endured. She had been in captive groups just prior to Auschwitz when the Germans simply opened fire indiscriminately killing men, women, and children. The job of the living was always to dispose of the dead. As a young child she saw things that no one should see and yet for her, it was nothing particularly unusual. Her only goal, as guided by her mother was to survive. Another time her mother had gotten some bread to her for her birthday (at great risk and cost as she was discovered and beaten). Young Torva tied it to a string around her neck, waiting for that time when death was near, only to be attacked at night by rats who ate the bread but left her completely unscathed. Amazingly, she slept through the whole thing. Rats, the size of the ones they had in camp, could, and often did become, a dangerous encounter when young children were involved. Another time she was publicly beaten by a brutal female guard until her flailing arms tired and young Torva had the intestinal fortitude at five to not cry out; she didn’t want to give her assailant the satisfaction. Astonishing, to say the least. Contrast that with the way our children are being taught to deal with the slightest of affronts. Fragile children become fragile adults. Fragility was an invitation to perish at Auschwitz. Fragility now is seen as a form of empowerment.
Near the end of the war, when the Russians and Americans were closing in, the Germans started to panic and kill people indiscriminately in order to hide what they had done. Unfortunately for them, they knew their time was up and the urge to run was stronger than the urge to purge. Unbelievably, Torva Friedman’s mother had the foresight to take her young daughter into a camp hospital and wrap her young daughter within the arms of a recently dead hospital patient (still warm) with strict life and death instructions to stay put until she came back for her. Torva Friedman relates later that she knew exactly what to do and why they were doing it. Her mother used the same tactic. The Germans came in, shouted out orders for all to get up, and promptly shot all who did so. Once the shooting stopped and the soldiers had left, young Torva and her mother emerged from their macabre hiding places and discovered that a handful of camp prisoners had employed the same tactic. The instinct for survival is an amazing thing. Once again, with death all around them, they cheated it themselves through guile and a little luck.
Ironically, liberation meant death for many of the survivors. Offered food by their liberators, many gorged themselves despite the fact that their bodies were in a dire state that needed to reintroduce food slowly. Remarkably, Torva’s mother guided her through this as well and she managed to navigate that which took the lives of so many who had survived a frightful existence. The irony is both sad and incomprehensible. Others, simply overcome by the anguish and stress of the situation, had nervous breakdowns once the day-to-day quest for survival ended and they simply let go of life or were never the same (broken mentally).
Kitty (Felix) Hart was a young teenager when her ordeal began. She was born in 1926 and was a young teenager when the German Army invaded Poland in 1939. He earliest memories of the conquering Nazi’s included a childlike fascination with them initially. She was, as only a young child can be in a time of incredible calamity, drawn to their elaborate, impressive uniforms and black boots as they marched through her hometown early in her introduction to what the Germans had in mind for Polish Jews. Her first realization of this came rather suddenly as she was walking home from school one day with a boy about the same age. There was an unspoken rule that any German soldiers walking on the streets had the unconditional right of way. The Polish townspeople were expected to vacate the sidewalk and let them pass, immediately. When her young friend failed to do this on their walk home, a Nazi officer pulled out his side-pistol and shot the boy in the head killing him instantly. Kitty Hart now knew it was a life / death proposition. Her childlike fascination with the Germans ended that day. As did her childhood.
Her parents did all they could to hide the fact that they were Jews. They were essentially on the run. Her older brother made it to Russia and was ultimately killed in action fighting for the Russian Army. Her grandmother was taken away and never seen again. Her father suffered a similar fate. Kitty Hart and her mother Lola ended up with a group of Polish laborers trying to hide their Jewish ancestry once it became clear the Germans were looking to seek them out as part of their Final Solution. It soon became clear that the group of laborers included a number of Jews, which included Kitty Hart and her mother. Kitty Hart remembers a German officer telling the now discovered Jews that there would be a “dancing lesson” the following day. They could all tell from his tone, and the fact that he derisively encouraged them to say their goodbyes, the Germans intended to execute them. The following morning at dawn, they marched them out to a wall and leveled machine guns at them, only to fire the guns above their heads. Kitty, whose head was turned to the wall, initially thought they had missed her. The laughter of the German soldiers and the screams of the traumatized prisoners told her that it had all been a ruse to intimidate and terrorize them. How does one forget something like this? Little did she know, the worst was yet to come. I am once again reminded of how fragile we have become in recent years. These people had much to endure, and many survived to carry on with their lives. Full lives. Hard to imagine the people of 2023 showing the same kind of resilience. As previously mentioned, fragile children become fragile adults, and let me add, fragile adults are easily manipulated.
Kitty and her mother eventually end up in Auschwitz in the latter part of 1942. Just like with Torva Friedman, the mother / daughter bond is the force that drives them to survive. Interestingly, they experience similar yet slightly different experiences in the camp. During Kitty’s first night in Auschwitz, she sleeps next to an older gypsy women who looks at Kitty’s hands and tells her she will survive. Kitty uses this as a motivation to stay alive in a place where the will to live quickly wanes for many. Kitty feels incredibly cold during that first evening and realizes, after the command to get up for morning roll call that the gypsy woman has died during the night. Her cold, dead body is the very thing that made Kitty feel extra cold. Remarkably, on her first night in Auschwitz, Kitty has the amazing, uncanny cunning to realize that she and her mother needed to quickly strip this woman of her clothes, take her shoes, and scan her pockets for any morsels of bread. These were the currency of the camp, and one’s ability to understand this and act upon it was often the difference between life and death.
Kitty Hart relates how she simply tried to hide a great deal of the time. One of the things that really struck me was her description of her bowl which served as a receptacle for her meager ration, a way to capture a lifesaving drip of water here and there, and a means to wash her body (usually with her own urine or perhaps the green colored tea that was sometimes distributed). Lose your bowl and you were as good as dead. All of the prisoners tied it to their body as some fellow prisoners became another type of enemy within the camp. Kitty Hart resigned herself to never taking anything from the living (as many did); she did, however, learn rather quickly that the dead were all around her and it was the prisoner’s job to dispose of the seemingly never-ending supply of fresh dead bodies. She sought out these jobs and it most likely saved her life on numerous occasions. A scrap of bread here, a change of clothes there, and perhaps even a pair of shoes became a kind of currency that allowed one to get the things needed for survival (often from Kapos) *. Just imagine a life such as this, and far worse when you consider that many were simply sent to the gas chambers as this day-to-day nightmare unfolded. The dead in some respects were the lucky ones.
Like Torva Friedman, Kitty Hart experiences a number of brushes with certain death. At least twice she had encounters with the infamous Joseph Mengele (white gloves and all) **. On one occasion, he came into the “hospital” ward where her mother worked and where Kitty Hart happened to be convalescing from typhus. Moments before he came in and decided to “eliminate” the entire group of patients, Kitty’s mother managed to hide her under a mattress. This saved her life, and ironically she was placed in a situation whereby she helped to load these very same patients on a vehicle taking them to certain death. Kitty wanted to go with them as the guilt of what she was doing overcame her desire to live. Once again, her mother stepped in and physically stopped her from joining people who had become her friends. On another occasion, her mother supplied a weakened Kitty with the will to run rather than crawl in front of Mengele, as those who were incapacitated to this degree were taken for extermination in the gas chambers. There were other examples yet the underlying thought that Kitty Hart shared, everyone needed others around them to survive. A word of encouragement or a crumb of bread when one was at their lowest point was the difference between survival and simply giving up.
Interestingly, near the end of the war, the Germans decided to move some of the prisoners from Auschwitz to camps within Germany. This became the most difficult part of her whole ordeal (Torva Freidman and her mother escaped this “march” by hiding among the dead patients in the hospital). She saw many of her fellow “death marchers” clubbed to death and shot along the way. Food was scarce as well and many of even the most hardened Auschwitz prisoners died in route. Kitty Hart relates that her will to survive began to coalesce around a deep-seated desire for revenge. This insatiable desire for revenge most likely saved her life. As Nietzsche stated, “He who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how.” Kitty Hart had her “why.” Her mother managed to survive the journey as well though she never succumbed to the kind of enmity that was growing in young Kitty.
While in a camp in Germany (1945) the Jewish prisoners notice some unfamiliar soldiers milling around outside the gates (Americans). Obviously they can tell their liberation is close. Inexplicably, near the end, an SS officer comes in among the inmate population whereby they immediately fall upon him and start to beat him. Kitty Hart is on the periphery of this group, and she even manages to secure a dagger from his boot. The SS officer manages to escape, and Kitty Hart now has the instrument “to kill the next German she comes in contact with.” The revenge which kept her alive on the brutal march to Germany now has the means to manifest. Eventually the American soldiers get into the camp and manage to turn off the electrified fences. Kitty Hart raids the SS storehouses of food and manages to get some bread for her mother and herself as well as many others.
Refreshed and rejuvenated (as best people can be after what they had endured) by some bread from the SS stores and rations from the American soldiers, a group of prisoners (“a mob” in Kitty’s own words) which includes Kitty Hart and her recently procured dagger start to walk about the small town bent on destruction. Most of the townspeople had evacuated the town knowing that the Allies were close. Finally, they come upon a small house, and they hear voices and the crying of children coming from the cellar. As the group bursts into the cellar, Kitty Hart now has her chance to extract the revenge that seemed so vitally important to her mere moments ago. But, as she found herself with the actual opportunity to kill, all the while egged on by the former prisoners in the “mob”, she comes to the realization that to do so would make her just as bad as the Germans. These people who were huddled and frightened, she concludes, felt just as she had felt such a short time ago. She ended up throwing the knife in the opposite direction and fell to the ground, her desire for revenge dissipated instantaneously. She knew that the Nazis had not won the battle for her soul, and it was a tremendous relief for this young girl who had clearly used hatred as a means to carry on another day. It served its purpose but in the end the better angels of her being prevailed. Imagine what she could have become, and further imagine what kind and hatred and rage many others must have carried for the rest of their lives. And who could truly fault them.
As I think about all of this, I am reminded that both women felt an intense responsibility to tell their respective stories in stunning detail. Torva Friedman remained convinced, late in life, that something like this was sure to happen again. Kitty Hart, while being filmed at Auschwitz with her son David in the late 1970’s, feels as though she owes this painful re-living and retelling to the many who did not survive; she speaks for them. Also, she mentions the fact that some were now claiming that it never happened. Over 30 members of her family died at Auschwitz. Torva Freidman would speak to any group that would have her and she particularly relished the opportunity to speak with children. As of the time of this writing, both women are still with us. Soon, they will all be gone yet the stories should never die.
So where do we go from here? Sadly, there are many people who know very little about what happened to these two woman and millions of others during a time of World War and incredible brutality. Surely, it could never happen again. I tend to agree with that conclusion as a basically optimistic person. However, and this is a rather large however, history tends to repeat itself and people tend to make the same mistakes over wide sweeps of time. The country and the world for that matter have rarely been more polarized. Technology has enabled that polarization and has in fact stoked the fires of its intensity. Despite the fact that connectivity has never been easier, a growing sense of loneliness, depression, and despair has rarely been greater, especially among our youth. *** Crime is essentially going unpunished in many of our cities and the police are being portrayed as villains rather than admired, respected defenders of law and order. Without law and order you have chaos, and with chaos you ultimately experience a loss of civility and respect for other people. The Nazis knew that they had to portray and sell the concept that the Jews were bad and unworthy. Crimes against them really weren’t crimes. They had to start slowly, and they needed to teach this to the very young in the schools. The young children had to see this debasement of the Jews in all of its forms before they could conceptualize and accept the vilification. At some point in time, it became acceptable to round them up and systematically kill them. And it became dangerous for those brave few who stepped up and opposed the status quo. The status quo became a process rather than an immediate goal.
Just a quick look at some of the things happening today and perhaps you can connect a few scary dots; perhaps you cannot and that is fine. In trying to understand the Holocaust, I’m drawn to the corollary of trying to understand what is happening in our world today with an uncomfortable study of any possible and concerning connections. I see them and that is why I have taken the time to write this and urge readers to listen to the words of two women who speak of what happens when morals and common decency take a backseat to an “end justifies the means” mentality. Our problems are different in terms of the stage of progression and the general decay being felt. However, once society starts to forget God, favor equity over equality, excuse criminality, frame law enforcement as racist, tell our young (and not so young) that being a white person is bad and requires an apology, celebrate a genderless mindset, celebrate sexual perversion, view meritocracy as a vestige of patriarchal bias, encourage a narcissism which worships celebrity and fame, elect openly corrupt politicians, and open our borders in a way that diminishes our unique American culture (suggests no desire to assimilate), you are headed in a direction that is uncertain at best, potentially catastrophic at worst. This is only a partial list unfortunately yet the madness of it all is a little hard to miss. The world can go mad in many different ways. World War II and the Holocaust is one example of madness complete with unthinkable dislocation, tragedy, and loss. That chapter has been written. The good guys won. This new book is still awaiting the concluding chapters. Do we extricate ourselves from this mess, which has now unfortunately, become the new normal or do we have a moment of resurgence and a return to sanity. Sadly, only God knows the answer.
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
Harry Truman
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”
Mark Twain
“Man is the cruelest animal.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
https://youtu.be/w-Ji1e2NVQA Torva Friedman interview
https://youtu.be/Dntryh_9o8Y Kitty (Felix) Hart documentary
* A Kapo or prisoner functionary was a special type of prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps during The Holocaust. Kapos were chosen by the Schutzstaffel (SS) camp guards to help run the camps. Some Kapos were in charge of other prisoners, who had to do forced labor.
Thomas M. Cook
6/1/23
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