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course, you will explore the Holocaust from the overlapping perspectives of literature and history—through memoirs, historical documents, poetry, documentary footage, filmic representations, and novels.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.
5.3.5 Dora Sorell, part 5
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來自 University of California, Santa Cruz 的課程
大屠杀：欧洲犹太人的灭顶之灾
131 個評分
從本節課中
Witness to trauma
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.
與講師見面
Murray BaumgartenDistinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Literature
Peter KenezProfessor Emeritus
History
So when they push us in.
The five of us tried holding hands not to get lost, and children are crying,
and people are stumbling, and hitting and hitting.
And suddenly, we hear on the loudspeaker, men should leave the women and make
a separate column and you can see here the two columns, men and women, right?
And when my mother heard this she just collapsed.
She fainted and I held her and you're screaming, mother, mother, please.
And she cried, and we kissed and we hugged.
And finally, the men had to go to the men's part and the men, my father and
the older and the younger brother went to the left, I never saw them again.
And then I stayed with mother and
mother was crying at being separated from the rest of the family.
And we are pushed and pushed and beaten.
And as I look ahead of the column,
you see the column of women, as I look at the head of the column I realize that
there are a few SS officers and then people in line there.
They chose some to go to the right, and some to the left.
And I realize that almost all the young girls are going to the right.
When only the women's column.
And I say mother they're separating us.
And my mother starts screaming, don't leave me, don't leave me!
No Mother, I won't leave you.
So I held Mother and I said, right, I didn't know what to do,
but I said if I would be as old as my mother, maybe I would go with her.
My mother was 46 years old.
So I held my mother very tight.
I tried to look like an older person.
I put my kerchief over my head.
I tried to walk, stumble and so on.
So looking like an old person like my mother.
And finally we arrive at the first row and obviously, I couldn't fool them.
They send me to the right and to the left and I say just to say goodbye and
I hold my mother.
And the officers send the helper with a bat and he hit my arms so
hard that I had to let go of Mother.
And my mother started screaming and crying, and I looked back, and
this is for the last time I saw my mother.
And this is the image that follows me right, just a woman calling me,
and calling yet in despair I never seen her again.
And again I looked back and I couldn't see her.
I saw other girls and they were all coming and crying.
So or not all the girls but many,
many girls ended up on the right side in there and I never saw my mother again.
And now I am with this many, many young girls, right?
And when the whole, this is called selection, and we didn't know yet
what it meant.
And when it all ended, they took us all to the shower, right?
Undress completely.
First, we had to go to the corners of the big room.
There were stools and barbers and they shaved us all over, shaved all over.
So, now I hardly recognized my friends, I was shaven head.
And finally we have a shower, a couple of minutes, right?
And then we are pushed to the next room, which is a dressing room.
And there was a whole pile of gray uniforms,
everybody would take a gray uniform, and two pieces underwear.
And now we are inside the camp.
And they count us.
I wanted to remember what number I would say,
because I understood German and I heard him counting, 411.
Which meant later, I understood, the 411 girls or women entered the camp.
The questions was, how many men entered the camp?
And obviously we wouldn't know until the end of the war when men,
some men came home, and we said how many men entered that morning, the count?
And they told us later on about they were 200, 200 and 400 is 600.
Six hundred people went alive the following day.
And this will show you exactly 600 out of 3,000 is 20%.
In my family, one out of five is 20%.
And this was indeed the worst selection that they did when the Hungarians came.
Usually 10, 20% ended and the rest were straight to the crematorium and
they wouldn't know.
You see all these women and children?
They said, okay, just wait we are going to give you food.
We take you to children's camp, and so on and so forth.
And they had to wait to get all to the crematorium.
I mean to the death camp.
Sorry, I am a little So
if I would, you would the whole
final solution, right?
What they did right.
Moving us in a ghetto, taking all we had.
Transporting us to a camp and killing 80% of us.
So, with this is the final solution.
So, let me tell you what happened then.
So now, we come out of the shower look how we look.
There is here a picture of girls in gray uniforms.
Where is it?
>> To the other side.
>> Okay.
Okay fine.
This is how we got into the camp, okay?
And we entered the camp and in front of us was something huge,
hundreds and hundreds of barracks.
At that time, we didn't understand what it is.
But every 10, 20 barracks was another camp,
there were 20 special camps in Auschwitz, each one were numbered or name A and
B and C or the Czeck barrack,
or the infirmary barrack so its hundreds of barracks.
If you go today so you see Auschwitz in overview.
If you go today to Auschwitz those barracks don't exist anymore.
Because after the war before they decided to be a museum the peasants
around took all the lumber that they could get and destroyed all the barracks.
So they are only the sort of part of basement.
So this is what you can see today.
But this is an overview when it was entire.
So here they take us through some camps with wooden barracks,
and finally there were two camps with brick barracks.
And here arrived to our camp called, this is it.
Our camp is small brick, okay?
Okay.
A camp, and we entered this room.
A brick barrack.
And you see this is the inside of the room.
Later on you can come and see the videos of it, you see?
So here you enter a building.
And what you see is only built in bunk beds.
All around, in the middle.
So they take us, to the first bunk beds.
And it had two levels and the cement.
And they put eight girls in the middle, eight girls on the upper,
and they said, put your shoes on the cement.
A few hours later another train arrives, more girls are coming.
Following day, another train arrives.
Everyday 30 trains arrived from Hungary.
It took only a few weeks for the Hungarians all to empty, the thousands and
thousands who comes from Hungary, half a million,
actually 445,000 Jews have arrived to Auschwitz from Hungary.
So, [COUGH] let me go back a ways.
Will you remind me?
It's good-- got my mind.
