Ann Kazimirski:
A Profile
By Ann Kazimirski's
Essay
Montreal, Quebec
Participated on the
March in 1997.
From
1939 to 1945, the German machine of destruction
systematically killed six million Jews, including
one million children. Poland, my native country,
had a large Jewish population of approximately
3,011,000 before the Second World War. By
1945, 3,000,000 of these Jews had been murdered.
Fifty years later, I still cannot forget the
scenes of incredible brutality, torture and
killing that my eyes witnessed. The same questions
repeat themselves over and over again after
all these years: Why? Why were so many people
killed and why did the world choose to remain
silent?
In
1993, I published the first edition of my
book, Witness to Horror, fulfilling a promise
I had made to my mother before German soldiers
killed her. She had predicted that I would
survive and had begged me to "tell the
world what the beasts have done to us."
It had taken me all this time to bring myself
to face the task of remembering and telling
my story.
I
was born and raised in the town of Vladimir
Volynski, in Poland, where Jews had settled
as early as the twelfth century. My father,
Joshua, originally had been a teacher of Russian
and my mother, Matilda, had been one of his
students. Later my father could no longer
earn his living teaching so my parents became
merchants, selling coal and wood. My parents
were able to provide an education for my brother
Benny and me, an education that included Hebrew
school, private high school and music lessons.
I
was seventeen years old when the Germans invaded
Poland. My father and my eighteen-year-old
brother Benny were among the first group of
Jews to be rounded up and then executed in
the town prison. I saw my best friend Sarah
being raped by German soldiers. As a result
of this brutality she died.
The
Germans killed my Zeide Aaron, my grandfather,
who was a very pious, orthodox Jew. He was
a role model to his children and grandchildren
and taught us the blessings of nature, work,
rest and the Sabbath. But my grandfather's
Jewish world, in which he believed that "God
wanted a beautiful land where people could
live and be happy," was almost completely
destroyed by the Holocaust. His world became
a world of concentration camps, ghettos, and
systematic mass murder.
Soon
after the arrival of the German soldiers,
the Jews of Vladimir Volynski were forced
into a ghetto surrounded by barbed wire. Then
the systematic killing began with the first
of three Aktion, or killing operations. During
the first Aktion, my husband Henry and my
mother and I were hidden in the attic of a
military dental clinic. A German dental technician,
who was a friend of my husband, had agreed
to let us hide there. This man, whose name
was Hahn, risked his own life to save us.
The
clinic was right across from the ghetto. Early
one morning we heard terrible screams, and
from a small window in the attic we saw the
pogrom unfold. There were big trucks scattered
around, and men wearing prayer shawls were
being beaten with clubs and shoved into the
trucks. With arms raised to the sky they were
screaming, "Lama Hazavtonu?" (Why
have You forsaken us?)
Mothers
were screaming out loud, some clutching their
babies and trying to hide them under their
dresses. But the little children were grabbed
by the Nazis and thrown into the trucks. Blood
stained the ground and the children's clothing.
I covered my ears; I could not listen to the
screaming any longer. Even today I still hear
it in my dreams.
During
the second Aktion, we were hidden in a stable
and then in an attic by a Polish woman, Maria
Wierzbovska. We stayed there for weeks until
her husband discovered us. He was a bailiff
and an anti-Semite, and when he discovered
our presence he threatened to report us to
the Gestapo. We were finally forced to go
to the ghetto.
We
were in the ghetto when the third and final
pogrom broke out on 13 December 1943. This
third Aktion was to accomplish the goal of
making our town, Vladimir Volynski, Judenrein
- cleansed of Jews. German soldiers overran
the ghetto and shot Jews at random. Many were
killed while trying to escape by climbing
the barbed wire fence.
Miraculously, Henry and I found a cramped
hiding place in the attic of a house, but
we were separated from my mother. During the
next few days we watched from our hiding place
as German and Ukrainian soldiers searched
the ghetto for any remaining Jews. To my horror
one morning, I recognized my mother in a group
of five people being dragged from a hiding
place in a nearby house. The five were lined
up against a wall and shot. I will never forget
the image of the red blood staining the white
snow. I saw my beloved mother die and there
was nothing I could do. To even cry out would
have endangered the lives of everyone in our
hiding place in the attic.
In
all, nineteen thousand Jews, including one
thousand children, were killed in Vladimir
Volynski. It was truly a miracle that Henry
and I survived this third killing operation.
But although we had managed to survive we
still faced an enormously difficult road ahead.
In March 1944, after escaping from the destroyed
ghetto, we joined a group of Polish partisans.
When it became obvious that the group did
not want Jews, we ran away and headed on foot
for the Russian front. Finally liberated by
the Russian army, we were hungry, filthy,
covered with lice and sores, and homeless.
But our immediate reaction was one of joy.
It was an incredible feeling to be able to
go outside without being afraid for our lives,
after years of hiding in attics, cellars and
barns.
During
the following three months we began to recover
our health, and our first son, Mark, was born
in Lwow. Our intention at this time was to
get to Berlin. We made a stop in Krakow on
our way, and to our great dismay we found
ourselves in the middle of another pogrom.
Polish neo-Nazis who were determined to kill
the remaining Jews were conducting it. We
managed to reach Berlin, but it was only to
discover that we were stepping into an inferno.
The Russian bombardment had put the city on
fire and epidemics of dysentery and cholera
were raging. Our son Mark took sick and we
almost lost him.
From
Berlin we went to Munich, where we applied
for help from the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and
then settled in Garmish, where our second
son, Seymour was born. But even now, we were
not free of the violent hatred of anti-Semites.
A young girl we hired to help us in the house
made an attempt to poison our son Mark. We
found out later that she had been active in
the Hitler Youth movement.
When we received our visa to come to Canada
in the spring of 1948, we could not wait to
leave behind us the war-torn and bloody soil
of Europe. I will never forget the day we
arrived in this country. We were greeted by
a large sign saying WELCOME TO CANADA. Overwhelmed,
we cried tears of joy.
We
settled in Ste. Agathe, north of Montreal,
and it was here that our daughter Heidi was
born. Like many other survivors, we did not
discuss the Holocaust with our children until
they were older, and even then, not in any
detail. It was still too painful. The wounds
were too deep. They had not yet begun to heal.
In
1971, and again in 1982, I was invited by
the German government to be a witness at Nazi
war crimes trials. At one of these trials,
Gebietskommisar Westerheide, the German regional
commander who was in charge of the massacre
of eighteen thousand Jews in my hometown,
was tried and found not guilty. As far as
I am concerned, this was the final injustice.
Like many others, Westerheide maintained that
he had not been in charge and that he had
only followed orders.
Since
publishing the first edition of my book, Witness
to Horror, in 1993, I have told the story
of my experiences during the Holocaust many
times: at elementary and high schools; at
colleges and universities; and at synagogues,
libraries and various associations both in
Canada and the United States. The book has
made me a public speaker and launched me on
my mission to preserve the memory of the Holocaust
for succeeding generations.
In 1996, fifty years after leaving Poland
during the aftermath of the Holocaust, I returned
with my daughter to visit my native country.
We visited the sites of the concentration
camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Maidanek,
and Plaszow, where the movie Schindler's List
was filmed. This trip was a bittersweet experience
for me; a painful but necessary pilgrimage
to the past.
The following year I was invited to accompany
a group of teenage students to Poland and
Israel on their March of the Living. It was
a memorable event for me, first to share their
grief and anger and then secondly to realize
that in the end it was a dynamic and empowering
experience for them. And it has been very
gratifying to me to see my three children
and my grandchildren take an active interest
in my mission to preserve the memory of the
Holocaust.
The attentive students of the March of the
Living and the various audiences that I speak
with all want to know my opinions and thoughts
of such esoteric concepts of whether GOOD
will ever triumph over EVIL; why do I think
I was spared while six million others were
slaughtered; why didn't the world community
try to stop the Nazis' Final Solution, etc.
After living in and seeing hell with my own
eyes, the major life-lesson that I have learned
is that humanity will endure. Despite the
unbridled evil that the Nazis imposed on Europe,
some people still retained their GOODNESS,
their sense of HONOR, their RIGHTEOUSNESS
and their HUMANITY. Individuals like Oskar
Schindler, Count Raoul Wallenberg, Abbe Joseph
André, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Carl
Lutz and many others, including my own righteous-gentiles,
Maria Wierzbovska and Hahn, the German dental
technician, held onto their humanity in the
face of immense danger and risk of losing
their own lives (and a lot of righteous-gentiles
did lose their lives for their acts of bravery
and kindness). The Hope, Ha'Tikvah, that good
will triumph over evil is NOT esoteric in
nature, but rather is real. I am living proof
that for those who retain their humanity in
the face of incredible danger and rampant
evil, good will always prevail.
In
1997, I published a second edition of Witness
to Horror, where I speak of how the book has
influenced my life. Witness to Horror is my
legacy to the world, to my children, to my
grandchildren, and to future generations.
In the Torah we are taught that we are responsible
for three generations of our own, that of
our children, and that of our grandchildren.
The concept is I'dor v' dor - generation to
generation. I want to pass on the legacy from
my Zeide Aaron and my mother to my children
and their children.
In recent years there has been an outpouring
of Holocaust memories. There is a rush to
get everything down in writing before the
generation of survivors dies away. There is
also a search for knowledge and understanding
by the descendants of survivors, a search
that is leading the young to rediscover their
Jewish heritage. Jews are proudly calling
themselves Jews once more.
In
August of 2001, I was honored with an invitation
by the United States Armed Services to speak
to 1,000 soldiers and sailors at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii. I successfully conveyed to the most
powerful military in the world and the former
liberators of Europe the need for them to
understand the plight of refugees due to genocide.
These proud young men and women have come
to realize that their oath to protect their
homeland also extends to protect those who
cannot protect themselves from persecution
and evil. If only this simple and human concept
was recognized in 1939.
The
young people of today and those who participate
in the March of the Living are the leaders
of the next generation. When we say, "Never
Forget," young people should interpret
this maxim two-fold: 1) They and people of
all nations have an obligation to protect
the memory of the Holocaust; and 2) To make
sure that the world and humans never lose
its/their humanity.
Ann Kazimirski
Montreal, Quebec
June 19, 2002
