{"id":319,"date":"2016-01-27T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T12:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/?p=319"},"modified":"2024-12-03T12:26:46","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T12:26:46","slug":"holocaust-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/2016\/01\/27\/holocaust-memorial-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘We had a boy of 17 with us in the holidays, one of the dearest people I’ve ever known.\u00a0 He was asked to write the enclosed for someone in Canada, & did it in the hope that it might help people to understand that the persecution is not made up of isolated pogroms, but of a fear that is continual & unremitting.\u00a0 I am sending it because perhaps it will give some idea of the background from which Mr Feller will have come.’\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Letter to the Dean of the Society of the Sacred Mission from Marjorie Milne, 1939.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A full transcript of the following account is available below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The account of Otto T. is included among the papers of the Society of the Sacred Mission, an Anglican religious order whose archive is deposited here at the Borthwick.  In 1938-9 the Society worked with Miss Marjorie Milne of Scarborough, and others, to arrange safe haven to England for the Fellers, a Jewish family from Vienna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Transcript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By O.T. a Viennese boy of 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write this because I see how few people can know what happens in Germany now.\u00a0 I know very well what the unemployed have to suffer but I was in Germany and know that it is not to compare with the sufferings of the German Jews.\u00a0 What I tell here I have seen with my own eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German Jew has not the chance to get even a little occasional work, they have not the possibility to go elsewhere because all money is taken from them, and they are no minute sure they will not be imprisoned without the least reason just because they are Jews.\u00a0 The Jew without friends or relations in other countries is practically condemned to die.\u00a0 Have you realised this till now? Can you as Christ watch this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was living for a long time from the Jewish poor kitchen; sometimes the Nazis enjoyed to ruin all this kitchen; then all many thousand people had nothing to eat for a few days.\u00a0 You can say also an unemployed can have nothing to eat for a few days, but can this happen to him? At 11 o\u2019clock night, 10 S.S. men come into a Jew\u2019s flat, awaken him and force him to come with them. He is brought to a cellar with other Jews.\u00a0 Here S.S. men take out their revolver, the Jews have to face the wall.\u00a0 After a minute one shoots into the air, and then the Jews half-dead of his horror can go again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the day that Rath was killed 15,000 Jews, only in Vienna, were imprisoned. Anybody who was seen without a swastika was imprisoned on this day.\u00a0 After being beaten awfully they were imprisoned.\u00a0 First in schools and other official buildings.\u00a0 The prisons were all full.\u00a0 They were so many in one room that they could not move one step.\u00a0 (I say not more than absolutely happened).\u00a0 8 hours they stood like this, then about the half was sent to a concentration camp, the other were falling on the floor to sleep on the wood but they could not because<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the S.S. came and forced them to pray Jewish prayers,\u00a0 5 days they get nothing to eat and slept on the floor.\u00a0 A few died.\u00a0 One killed himself springing out of a window.\u00a0 The S.S. officer said \u201cIf anyone try to escape like this man, every tenth will be shot.\u201d\u00a0 On the 7th<\/sup> day came the Gestapo.\u00a0 In all cross- questionings the Jew had to face the wall not knowing what happened behind him. (All this has no sense and happens only to make the Jew nearly mad with nervous-ness).\u00a0 The half went also to concentration camps, the other were imprisoned 2-8 weeks.\u00a0 In concentration camps people are kept 3-18 months.\u00a0 One third never come back.\u00a0 There was no family of my many Jewish friends in which some person had not been arrested.\u00a0 Many got a letter \u201cIf you want the coffin of your son, send 700 marks to concentration camp. Dachan [sic].\u201d\u00a0 The coffin came sealed and no one could see of what he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine a 70 years old man jumping over a chair, 50 times, 100 times so long as laughing Nazis enjoy it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine a 70 years old man loading old iron (which Goering collected for guns) on a car while the jeering Nazis throw it down on the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine the mentality of the human being who can say after 50 strokes with a riding-whip \u2013 \u201cIt could have been worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What shall I tell more?\u00a0 I could tell for hours only what I have seen. Horror, horror, horror.\u00a0 I do not want to bring hate between the Germans and the English, the most Germans have no idea of all this.\u00a0 The only people who know it are the Jews and the S.S. men and the others of Hitler\u2019s troops who get the salary of an officer of the army only for beating Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However large the need for help is here in England, strong and soon the help is not less necessary there.\u00a0 The unemployed themselves realise this and collect money for refugees.\u00a0 I know people who spent two-thirds of their possession for refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(3)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This boy\u2019s uncle was let out of a concentration camp because someone had procured him a ticket for Shanghai where he is going with Otto\u2019s parents.\u00a0 They have no prospects whatever there; are allowed to take no money, and not even the knitting-machine with which latterly they had earned a little.\u00a0 They may not be allowed to land at Shanghai where there have been boat-loads of them landed already.\u00a0 God help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangely enough Otto has no bitterness about it all, and says Hitler\u2019s policy is understandable.\u00a0 He also says of the tormentors \u2013 \u201cThey are only boys.\u00a0 They do not realise how terrible are the things they do.\u201d I wish I could believe that. \u00a0 But it can\u2019t be only the young.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t find a guarantor for a man some months ago and he was sent back to a concentration camp and was at last let out to have his feet cut off as they\u2019d been so mutilated in the camp.\u00a0 And there are too many like this for it all to be done by the hard, unimaginative young.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘We had a boy of 17 with us in the holidays, one of the dearest people I’ve ever known.\u00a0 He was asked to write the enclosed for someone in Canada, & did it in the hope that it might help people to understand that the persecution is not made up of isolated pogroms, but of … Continue reading Holocaust Memorial Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,69,89,40],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-20th-century","tag-author-sally-anne-shearn","tag-holocaust","tag-ww2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"custom_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1733228806:242"],"_edit_last":["242"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}