Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Theresienstadt & The Bialystok Children Summary: Followup-To: alt.revisionism Keywords: bialystok,theresienstadt Archive/File: holocaust/czechoslovakia/theresienstadt theresien.09 Last-Modified: 1994/09/26 Bondy describes a particularly cruel and callous example of Nazi "morality," as the fate of 1,500 Bialystok children is outlined in chilling fashion: "At the end of August, instructions were issued to close off the area that bordered the new railroad line, an unusual security measure which aroused a good deal of curiosity among the cognizant. A train arrived at Terezin's temporary station, but the doors remained locked and no sound was heard from inside. On Burger's orders, food was brought for 1,500 people, and the doors opened only after those who delivered the provisions had left the station. Mad-hungry children, scarcely more than skeletons, fell on the food before being returned to the train cars. That night, a convoy of children with young bodies and old faces, barefoot or in wooden shoes, wearing rags and tatters of adult clothing, was led through the deserted ghetto streets to the disinfection center. At the sight of the signs POISON and CAUTION, the children cried out in terror. They huddled together and tried to flee, and the older children pushed the younger ones under the showers first. 'No, no! Gas! Gas!' some called. The disinfection of the lice-ridden children was carried out in the presence of the camp commandant and the SS in order to prevent conversation between the children and the staff of the disinfection center. The latter tried to reassure the youngsters by standing under the showers themselves to show them there was nothing to fear; they did not understand the children's panic. One of the staff workers managed to draw one of the older children aside in a dark corner, and the boy told him in Yiddish that they all came from the Bialystok ghetto, which had been destroyed, that some of their families had been shot before their eyes, and some had been taken to a place that bore the sign SHOWERS, where they had been gassed to death. Those who spoke to the children were in no hurry to publicize what they had learned for fear of incurring German wrath when the latter discovered that they had defied regulations. The few who did learn the story interpreted death by gas to mean that the families had apparently been taken to showers and from there to some unknown destination, which was why the children associated death with disinfection. The children were allotted clean clothing and taken to new barracks in Kreta, a suburb of Terezin outside the walls erected by laborers who were totally ignorant of its purpose. Nobody was allowed to approach the barracks behind the barbed wire, not even the Edler of the Jews or his assistant. Two doctors, fifty-two nurses, and instructors from the ghetto - including Otla, Franz Kafka's beloved sister - were permitted to join the children, having volunterred for the task, but they were forbidden all contact with their families in the ghetto. Dr. Blumenthal, a noted pediatrician from Berlin, was in charge of the staff and took cheerful leave of the nurses in the ghetto before being transferred to the children's barracks; he told some of them that the children were to be sent to Switzerland. Another rumor said that the children were to be exchanged for German citizens and their destination was Palestine. The best of the youth-movement instructors went to the Bialystok children, inspired by the challenge of returning these frightened souls to humanity, ethics, and values. Later, after the barracks were evacuated, they found the minutes of an open trial, led by Aharon Menczer, the former principal of the Youth-Aliyah school in Vienna and one of the leaders of Austria's Hehalutz. Under his guidance, the children had pondered the meaning of theft. The Germans told the children with contagious diseases that they were being quarantined for treatment, and the next day the SS carried out several undersized coffins from the Little Fortress, still dripping blood. They brought them to the crematorium and burned them themselves. But the rest of the Bialystok children gradually gained wieght, the fea disappeared from their eyes, their behavior improved, and after six weeks in the ghetto, on October 6, dressed in new clothes without the yellow badge, they left for the free world in the company of the nurses and instructors. Before leaving, the latter had to sign a document stating that they would not tell the world anything about the ghetto. Among the instructors walking toward freedom was Lazer Moldavan, the contact man between Prague, Budapest and Istanbul. The Zionist and Hehalutz leaders gave him a confidential and detailed letter for friends in Budapest and Palestine, signed by many people, including Edelstein, Kahn, Zucker, O"sterreicher, and Dittle Ornstein. Sometime after the Bialystok children left, O"sterreicher was summoned to German headquarters and questioned about the smuggled letter, and in this way the leadership discovered that their greetings had never reached their destination. Nothing was ever heard from those who accompanied the Bialystok children, led by Aharon Menczer (who had at one time passed up a certificate to Palestine because he was not prepared to leave the young people). It was as if the earth had swallowed them up. Only after the war did it become known that the Bialystok children and their escorts had been taken straight to the gas chambers at Birkenau. The entire affair had been an offshoot of negotiations between the German Foreign Office and various elements in the West over the question of allowing Jewish children to leave the conquered territories for Palestine. In March 1943, Eichmann quashed an attempt to take one thousand Jewish children out of Rumania through Istanbul. To the repeated requests from the Foreign Office about this, he replied on behalf of Himmler in May 1943 that the emigration of Jewish children must be rejected on principle. There was some willingness to consider Britain's proposal that 5,000 "non-Aryans," 85 percent children and the remainder escorts, be allowed to leave the occupied countries in the East in exchange for 20,000 young fighting me incarcerated in Allied countries. In response to this proposal, which was transmitted to the German Foreign Office through the Swiss consul in Berlin, Eichmann pointed out that the Reich government 'could not help such a brave and nobel people as the Arabs to be disposses of their homeland by the Jews,' and that negotiations were possible only if the British government was prepared to shelter the Jews in Britain rather than Palestine. Should this proposal be rejected, Himmler felt, it would have a positive effect on Arab nationalists; should be be accepted, it was safe to assume that an additional 5,000 Jews in Britain would exacerbate anti-Semitism there. Either way, Germany would profit. One of the letters to the German Foreign Office about this from Eichmann's department emphasized that the negotiations must move quickly, for it would soon be 'technically' impossible to accomplish the departure of 5,000 children, 'as a result of the implementation of our activities against the Jews.' The plan failed because the British could not accept the German conditions. The Bialystok children, who had been kept alive in reserve, were no longer necessary." (Bondy, 386-89) Work Cited Bondy, Ruth. Elder of the Jews. New York: Grove Press, 1989. (Translated from "Edelshtain neged had-zeman". Zmora, Bitan, Modan, publishers, 1981
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