Murray is a native of Lodz in Poland, which before the war was one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. When the Germans invaded Poland they confined the Jews to their ghettos in many cities and then began shipping them off to concentration camps. Murray was picked up off the street at the age of nine and never saw his family again. Because he was young and able to work (and lied about his age), he was able to escape the gas chambers but underwent extreme hardship as a slave laborer. During the war he was an inmate of seven camps and was liberated in 1945 from Buchenwald.
Historical note:
For centuries Poland was a major European power,
but in the late eighteenth century it was partitioned among Russia, Austria
and Prussia (later Germany). The Polish people were strongly nationalist
and fought for their freedom, but they did not achieve it until 1919.
The Versailles treaty created an independent Poland, but also gave it a
section of Germany’s coastline so it would have an outlet to the Baltic
Sea. This was called the “Polish Corridor,” and as it was inhabited
mostly by Germans, it was a source of anger in Germany between the world
wars. Hitler made it his first military objective to recapture the
lost territory. In August 1939 he made a non-aggression pact with
the Soviets, agreeing that they could take the Baltic states (Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania) if they allowed Germany to take much of Poland.
As a result the Soviets looked the other way when the Nazis overran Poland
and began sending its large Jewish minority to concentration camps.
In the meantime, the British had promised Poland support if it were attacked;
when the invasion came on September 1, 1939, Britain responded, thus beginning
World War II. Within a month most of Poland was under German occupation.
A vast number of Poles, many of them not Jewish,
went to Nazi concentration camps. Perhaps six million Poles (Jewish
and non-Jewish) died, and millions more fled or were forcibly removed to
create Lebensraum (“living space”) for the Germans. About 2.5 million
Poles were transported to Germany or other Nazi-occupied areas to be used
as slave labor. Poland today has still not recovered from Nazi occupation,
and the Polish government (both the former Communists and the current pro-Western
regimes) have purposely kept the memory of the Holocaust alive. In
1939 and 1940 most Jews were rounded up and forced into ghettos, particularly
in Warsaw, Lodz and Vilnius. By 1943 most of these had gone to the
death camps as the ghettos were “liquidated” one by one. Throughout
the war a Polish government-in-exile functioned in London and an active
resistance movement greatly aided the Allied cause within occupied Poland.
More than a hundred thousand Poles fought in Allied armies. After
the German attack on the U.S.S.R. in June 1941, the Soviets occupied parts
of Poland and rescued many Jews and other victims of the Nazis. Hundreds
of thousands were transported deep into Russia for safety, but many of
these were also conscripted into Russian labor battalions. At the
end of the war the Russians liberated Poland and installed a Communist
government there.
For discussion:
1. What was it like to be a Jew in Poland before
World War II?
(Several million Jews lived in Poland; they had
the most active and vital Jewish community in the world, and were an important
factor in the country’s life and economy. In general they were tolerated
but in the Nazi era an ugly native anti-Semitism appeared ? not only Germans,
but Catholic Poles also victimized Jews. During this period hatred
of the Jews was actively taught in many churches and schools. Many
Polish Jews were small businesspeople; some were farmers; not many were
urban professionals. Many thousands of them were quite poor.
They were generally more religious and conservative than their German kin
and not quite so well assimilated.)
2. What was it like to live in the Warsaw Ghetto
before and during the war?
(This was a large Jewish neighborhood, dating back
to medieval times, consisting of hundreds of apartments and small houses
mixed in with shops and schools in a maze of winding streets. Prejudice
had long forced Jews to congregate in certain neighborhoods, but they were
free to come and go and usually worked elsewhere in the city. Before
the war about 160,000 people lived here. When the Nazis occupied
Warsaw, they built a wall around the ghetto and forced an additional 340,000
Jews - most but not all from Poland - into the small area. Food and
fuel were extremely scarce and a barter economy quickly developed.
Since Jews could not leave and non-Jews could not enter, almost all shops
and businesses closed. A few of the residents were put to work in
armaments factories outside the walls, but most were virtual prisoners.
In July 1942 three-fourths of the population was shipped off to concentration
camps, mainly to Treblinka.)
3. Discuss the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
( In January 1943, when only about 60,000 starving
Jews remained in the walled ghetto, Himmler ordered all the remaining residents
shipped out to death camps. The Jews resisted fiercely with homemade
weapons. In April a full-scale attack by the German army captured
the ghetto. Nearly everyone inside was shot, including women and
children.)
4. How did the Nazis decide whom to arrest and send
to camps, whom to kill outright, and whom to leave free?
(Those who could contribute to the economy were
left free, and some were used as slave labor, at least until prisoners
of war from other conquered nations could be brought in to replace them.
The very old and very young, the sick or weak, and political prisoners
would go to concentration camps, and probably not survive long. They
were put to work until they died, or were killed when no longer useful.
Murray was able to stay alive because he claimed to be older than he was
and that he had skills the Nazis needed; he worked hard and was healthy
enough to survive the lack of food and brutal conditions.)
5. Upon arriving at a camp, how were the prisoners
deliberately degraded and dehumanized?
(Discuss the psychological reasons for doing this:
it is easier to hate and kill an enemy if you first convince yourself that
he is evil and/or less than human.
Clothes, jewelry, all personal possessions and
even false teeth are confiscated; gold fillings are removed from the mouth;
heads are shaved and drab uniform clothing is issued, your name is ‘replaced’
by a number, often tattooed on the body, etc.; you are treated like livestock
or inventory.
Discuss another psychological issue: if you have
a highly organized and efficient system for “processing” large numbers
of people, those taking part in the process can reassure themselves: “I’m
not
persecuting these Jews; the system is.” Or, “I’m just following orders.”)
6. Why did Murray lie about his age and claim to
be a carpenter?
(Those too young to work, or without skills, were
quickly executed.)
7. What were living conditions like at the camps?
(Piles of straw and/or multi-tiered wooden bunks
for sleeping; SS men with dogs searching tents or barracks at unpredictable
intervals; constant harassment and bullying; never enough food or water;
ill-fitting clothing; no heat in cold weather; sometimes no toilets and
never any privacy; families separated by sex; most of all, the psychological
effect of never knowing what to expect next.)
8. Murray says that his most difficult time was
in 1942 at Auschwitz. There he was a slave laborer for the I. G.
Farbenindustrie plant set up at the camp. What psychological abuse
took place there?
(Destroying the will to live or resist by taking
away all self-esteem. Here you might also discuss the fate of such
multinational corporations as I. G. Farben and Bayer, who produced chemicals
and weapons for the Nazis and today are thriving multibillion-dollar players
in the world economy and a major source of Germany’s current economic strength.
Should these companies have been allowed to survive and profit after the
war? Should they now be financially liable for what they did to Jewish
and non-Jewish slave laborers?)
9. What kind of personal characteristics do you think a person needs to survive an ordeal like Murray’s?
10. Why did so few Germans resist Nazi tyranny? What would you have done if you had lived in Germany then and did not agree with Nazi ideology or tactics?
11. Why is it important to hear the story of the Holocaust from an actual survivor like Murray?
On the DHRC website: dhrc.tripod.com/faces/reparations.htm
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