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5.3.3 Dora Sorell, part 3

In this module Profs. Baumgarten and Kenez discuss the invasion of the Soviet Union, Thomas Kenneally’s Schindler’s List, and questions of witnessing. Guest speaker Dora Sorell shares her own experience of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry is an adaptation of an on-campus course that has been co-taught by Murray Baumgarten, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature (Literature Department), and Peter Kenez, Professor Emeritus (History Department), for over 20 years at UC Santa Cruz. In this course, you will explore the Holocaust from the overlapping perspectives of literature and history—through memoirs, historical documents, poetry, documentary footage, filmic representations, and novels. You will expand your knowledge of the literature of the Holocaust, Eastern and Western European Jewish communities, the origins and development of antisemitism, the establishment of labor and extermination camps, resistance movements, and the Holocaust as a problem for world history. There is more than one way to take this course: You can complete all of the activities (and earn a Verified Certificate) or only the activities that are most interesting to you. Whatever you choose to do, we encourage you to find a havruta (a study partner) in your community or in the Coursera community so that you can experience the course in a more interactive and meaningful way.

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教學方

Murray Baumgarten
Distinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Peter Kenez
Professor Emeritus

腳本

I want you to know there were two types of camps, that everybody knows that.

There were working camps or concentration camps, where they worked for

a factory, like 200, 300 people, right,

of the Jews were sent there and they then forced labor, we say right?

Then they were not killed there.

They were working camps.

Every factory in Germany and the occupied countries had the right for these workers.

But we are going to kill people and- >> extermination.

>> Extermination camps.

And they started to build extermination camps specialized to kill people.

And there are only six of them, and if you look at the map of Poland, all are there.

You see on there?

The biggest is Auschwitz, where I had been.

But they are.

What's that there on the right?

Treblinka.

Six extermination camps.

And these camps were fitted with a gas chamber.

And for the gas chamber, they had to experiment in gasses.

And I remember when I was with the students in Poland and

we went in one of these camps, it was written in this camp

we experimented which is the best gas to kill fastest.

If they used carbon monoxide, as they used at the beginning,

it might take thirty or forty minutes to die.

If they used Ziclan, it takes five to ten minutes to die.

So Ziclan was the first time they used that in the gas chambers.

And if you know it really well,

in 1942 they started to build Auschwitz which was the biggest extermination camp.

And these people were prepared to go for a shower, right?

And they lead them into the big chamber.

They would say make sure you know where you put your belongings,

keep in mind the number and so on because you have to find it.

And they went in.

And they pushed in sometimes up to 1,000 in one of those big buildings.

And there was an opening up and

one of the SS officers that had a tank of gas and poured it in.

And in ten minutes, everybody was dead in this gas chamber.

After which they opened the doors and bring in helpers,

Jewish helpers they call the special commando,

helpers came together those Cadavers, right,

that people put them on push carts, move them to the next building,

because next to a gas chamber was always a chimney, a crematorium.

And they put them and they burn them.

If you saw pictures of a crematorium, you would see five, six, ovens.

And they always pushed in three, four, people at a time, and

they burned and burned them.

And all one could see from far away were those chimneys, right?

And you see how later on the chimney's became and

obsession when I was in Auschwitz.

Chimney's with spewing flames and smoke all the time.

So this was the final solution, this is what the plight started in 1942.

Well, we stayed awhile under the Hungarian occupation which was not that bad, right?

It was a lot of discrimination a lot of hardship, but they didn't kill us.

But after they really had already taken care of all Europe.

And they didn't want, the Hungarians were Allies, right?

And the Hungarians wanted very much they to have everything that

the Jews would left.

It was 1942 when finally the Nazis said okay,

now it is time for the Hungarian Jews.

When I told you that the Hungarians had gotten part of Romania, they also got,

you see, part of Czechoslovakia, and part of Yugoslavia, by which,

they get lots of more Jews, and at that time, Hungary had about 800,000 Jews.

And now they expected, and that by 1944 they were

told, the Hungarians accepted to let their Jews to be deported.

It's very interesting today, there is a big discussion, Hungary,

apparently they say, we didn't do anything to the Jews, the Nazis did it.

But the Hungarians were their number one helpers and we also,

only had Hungarians around us.

So they decided they are going to deport the Jews of Hungary.

And this is when the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944.

The Nazis occupied Hungary.

And when they came, they could do what they wanted in just a few weeks.

In one month, all the Jews were already in ghettos.

In another month, all the Jews were in trains taking them right to the death

camps and in two months or three months 80% of them were already killed.

So this is when the Holocaust started for

us really, when the Nazis occupied to Hungary.

And indeed, they came to our house and they said, when they arrived,

the Nazi's, the Germans, they started toward you to build the ghettos.

It means that they separated

some small streets at the edge of the town with private houses.

They put them in the center of the of the town.

And they put barbed wire, they emptied it in this small,

let's say ten blocks of small houses, they put around barbed wire,

they made a gate and that would be the ghetto for 12,000 Jews.

After a week or two, the ghetto was ready.

They came to our house and

they said tomorrow morning you are going to be taken to the ghetto.

Leave everything in the house,

all you can take with you is a suitcase of belonging per person.

You can take food for two weeks, you can take mattresses and

everything has to fit on a push cart.

So indeed we left everything at home.

I don't know if you know what it meant to leave everything at home.

You left all the documents even right at home.

You know that they are going to take everything

which is left in the following morning.

3,000 were already decided to, i'm sorry,

we are talking here, I am confused with.

So after I told you about two weeks.

We were all in the ghetto.

The ghetto was, it was so, how should I say, it was so compact.

When we arrived to the ghetto, they took us to little house.

And they opened the door of the room and said you stay here.

There was already a family there.

In one week, that room had three families.

The house which altogether had two rooms and

a kitchen and an outside, outhouse.

Out?

[LAUGH] >> Out.

Outhouse.

>> So, I have to rest a little.

I have to have a little coffee, give me strength.

>> [LAUGH]

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