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anne frank
January 2009 
And Then They Came for Me
Posted on Oct 13th, 2006
by 
little bear
little bear
So, on Saturday, October 7 at 8pm I went to a play "And Then They Came for Me" here in Flagstaff, Arizona at the local theater group: Theatrikos. The subject was the world of Anne Frank, during WW II, but Anne was only one of many characters, and not the main character at all. It was modern theater, with a video installation where two holocaust survivors were giving their accounts of personal experiences and memories. One of the survivors dated Anne Frank during the time in Holland just before Anne went into hiding in the "Secret Annex."
In any case, the play was brilliant, and I cried a lot. And then it was over.
But in the program for the play, there was an invitation to come back on Oct. 11, for a talk by holocaust survivor Doris Martin, as she wanted to share her story and invite questions. I went with my sister, Sarah, as we are both Jew-ish, based on the fact that our mother is a Jew because her mother was a Jew from Berlin (Meyer), and since a long time the Jewish lineage is passed matriarchially. It used to passed Patriarchially, but then Jews started to marry outside the faith, and you can "always tell who your mother is..."
So, Oct. 11 at 7pm Ms. Martin told her story... here are notes that I made while listening to her, and I share them with you as I find it incomprehensible that anyone can disregard her experience, and those of millions more, as never having happened. Of course this happened, and if we are not vigilant it will happen again:
Ms. Martin was from "Benjin" Poland, about 15 miles from Auschwitz, a town of about fifty thousand people.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, Jews under 13 years old did not have to wear the yellow star of David, indentifying them as Jews, because anyone under 13 was too young to work for the Nazis, and they were killed immediately.
Doris was 13 years old when the Nazis came, and she was allowed to live. She said that on the first day the Nazis came, they rounded up 300 children, mothers with infants, and sick or old men, and locked them into a synagogue. Then they burned the synagogue to kill them, all the people inside burned alive.
She said, "The Nazis lied to the Polish people..." Doris explained a complicated story about how they deliberately set up the Polish Jews in a stadium under a false pretense of letting them live only if they get certified with certain Nazi paperwork. Instead they killed most of them right there. Some were allowed to run away, based on a Nazi officer picking families that can live, and those who will die.
She said her father decided to attend church to avoid being recognized as a Jew.
It was not clear to me in the narative, but it seems at some point a Nazi official gave her family some type of paperwork which allowed them to live longer, thus helping her family, eventhough he knew they were Jews. She said they did not know the man, and did not know why he chose to help her family.
She said Jews 13 and older had to wear a star of David on the front and on the back of their clothing.
She said the Nazis eventually came to her home, and she hid inside her oven (stove) to avoid being taken. Her mother was also at home, so they beat her mother, and took her away. Then they came back another day, and she hid again in the oven, and her father was home, and the Nazis told her father, "either your daughter comes or we will take your wife to Auschwitz." That day, Doris, age 13 packed her bag, and turned herself in, and they released her mother. They took Doris Martin to Auschwitz where she stayed a few days, and then moved her to a work camp called "Ludwigstov," near Chekoslovakia.
She said, "One grey uniform is what I had to wear... I don't know how I washed it, I don't know how it dried. I just know that I'm alive."
She said, "I had hope... Someday its going to be the end of the war, and I'm going to be a human being too."
She said she knew a woman prisioner of the camp who "gave up" hope, and went to the electric fence surrounding the work camp and threw herself onto the fence and electrocuted herself to death.
She said there were both men and women Nazi officers at her camp, which was all women. She was beaten by a Nazi woman at her camp until she was bleeding, and then her friends came and helped her up, and helped her to work the next day. Slowly she recovered. She worked in an amunitions factory.
She said they worked in a toxic environment making amunition for the Nazis. They toxins made her skin, hair, and spit turn "green." And her eyes burned and teared while she worked.
She was 14 when she entered that work camp, and 17 or 18 when the war ended, and the Russians came and freed her. She said the people who survived were too sick to digest the food given to them by the Rusians. Some tried to eat alot and died from eating.
She said out of 600,000 (six hundred thousand) people taken to one Nazi death camp, only one survived. She said at Auschwitz they threw live baby Jews into the ovens to kill them. She said when the trains pulled into the Auschwitz death camp, the Jews that got off were tremendously thirsty for water. They asked for water, and the Nazis told the Jews, take a shower first and then we will give you water. They told them to neatly place their clothes outside the shower room, and gave each a bar of soap, and then when the Jews all were in the shower rooms, instead of water coming down from the showerheads it was gas, and they were all killed. She said they made the Jews remove the dead bodies from the gas chambers. She said this killing went on twenty four hours a day, for seven days a week, for many years.
She said, "Millions of people died from the holocaust."
She said out of seven people in her family six of them survived. She said, "It was like a miracle from God" that she and her family survived (all but one). She knows that entire families were totally wiped out. She said when she explained this survival story in Israel, that six of seven in her family survived, they had never heard of such a thing.
She repeated that it was God that helped her family survive.
She said her father was a religious person.
She said, "I hope you're going to have a little pleasure in your life. Enjoy yourself. Life is too short. I wish everyone should have peace in the world... Enjoy it, your life."
She is now working on a book. I recommend that you buy it, and read it. She is for real.
In Onenees and all my love to my spiritual sisters and brothers,
Laurent
In any case, the play was brilliant, and I cried a lot. And then it was over.
But in the program for the play, there was an invitation to come back on Oct. 11, for a talk by holocaust survivor Doris Martin, as she wanted to share her story and invite questions. I went with my sister, Sarah, as we are both Jew-ish, based on the fact that our mother is a Jew because her mother was a Jew from Berlin (Meyer), and since a long time the Jewish lineage is passed matriarchially. It used to passed Patriarchially, but then Jews started to marry outside the faith, and you can "always tell who your mother is..."
So, Oct. 11 at 7pm Ms. Martin told her story... here are notes that I made while listening to her, and I share them with you as I find it incomprehensible that anyone can disregard her experience, and those of millions more, as never having happened. Of course this happened, and if we are not vigilant it will happen again:
Ms. Martin was from "Benjin" Poland, about 15 miles from Auschwitz, a town of about fifty thousand people.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, Jews under 13 years old did not have to wear the yellow star of David, indentifying them as Jews, because anyone under 13 was too young to work for the Nazis, and they were killed immediately.
Doris was 13 years old when the Nazis came, and she was allowed to live. She said that on the first day the Nazis came, they rounded up 300 children, mothers with infants, and sick or old men, and locked them into a synagogue. Then they burned the synagogue to kill them, all the people inside burned alive.
She said, "The Nazis lied to the Polish people..." Doris explained a complicated story about how they deliberately set up the Polish Jews in a stadium under a false pretense of letting them live only if they get certified with certain Nazi paperwork. Instead they killed most of them right there. Some were allowed to run away, based on a Nazi officer picking families that can live, and those who will die.
She said her father decided to attend church to avoid being recognized as a Jew.
It was not clear to me in the narative, but it seems at some point a Nazi official gave her family some type of paperwork which allowed them to live longer, thus helping her family, eventhough he knew they were Jews. She said they did not know the man, and did not know why he chose to help her family.
She said Jews 13 and older had to wear a star of David on the front and on the back of their clothing.
She said the Nazis eventually came to her home, and she hid inside her oven (stove) to avoid being taken. Her mother was also at home, so they beat her mother, and took her away. Then they came back another day, and she hid again in the oven, and her father was home, and the Nazis told her father, "either your daughter comes or we will take your wife to Auschwitz." That day, Doris, age 13 packed her bag, and turned herself in, and they released her mother. They took Doris Martin to Auschwitz where she stayed a few days, and then moved her to a work camp called "Ludwigstov," near Chekoslovakia.
She said, "One grey uniform is what I had to wear... I don't know how I washed it, I don't know how it dried. I just know that I'm alive."
She said, "I had hope... Someday its going to be the end of the war, and I'm going to be a human being too."
She said she knew a woman prisioner of the camp who "gave up" hope, and went to the electric fence surrounding the work camp and threw herself onto the fence and electrocuted herself to death.
She said there were both men and women Nazi officers at her camp, which was all women. She was beaten by a Nazi woman at her camp until she was bleeding, and then her friends came and helped her up, and helped her to work the next day. Slowly she recovered. She worked in an amunitions factory.
She said they worked in a toxic environment making amunition for the Nazis. They toxins made her skin, hair, and spit turn "green." And her eyes burned and teared while she worked.
She was 14 when she entered that work camp, and 17 or 18 when the war ended, and the Russians came and freed her. She said the people who survived were too sick to digest the food given to them by the Rusians. Some tried to eat alot and died from eating.
She said out of 600,000 (six hundred thousand) people taken to one Nazi death camp, only one survived. She said at Auschwitz they threw live baby Jews into the ovens to kill them. She said when the trains pulled into the Auschwitz death camp, the Jews that got off were tremendously thirsty for water. They asked for water, and the Nazis told the Jews, take a shower first and then we will give you water. They told them to neatly place their clothes outside the shower room, and gave each a bar of soap, and then when the Jews all were in the shower rooms, instead of water coming down from the showerheads it was gas, and they were all killed. She said they made the Jews remove the dead bodies from the gas chambers. She said this killing went on twenty four hours a day, for seven days a week, for many years.
She said, "Millions of people died from the holocaust."
She said out of seven people in her family six of them survived. She said, "It was like a miracle from God" that she and her family survived (all but one). She knows that entire families were totally wiped out. She said when she explained this survival story in Israel, that six of seven in her family survived, they had never heard of such a thing.
She repeated that it was God that helped her family survive.
She said her father was a religious person.
She said, "I hope you're going to have a little pleasure in your life. Enjoy yourself. Life is too short. I wish everyone should have peace in the world... Enjoy it, your life."
She is now working on a book. I recommend that you buy it, and read it. She is for real.
In Onenees and all my love to my spiritual sisters and brothers,
Laurent
Access: Public
oh dear laurent,
thank you so much for sharing this. it is so important that we help each other to remember, especially with the genocide that is occuring in Darfur right now. all of us that have in some way been touched by this horrible tragedy know that we cannot let history repeat itself. never again… never again…
blessings,
carly
A very nice article you have placed here. And Carly is right. We should not repeat history such as this.. Thank you for sharing.
Blessed be to you always and forever.
I just finished reading this, Laurent. Thank you for posting this important entry.
The sad truth is, genocide continues to happen to this minute. Have you read We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We WIll be Killed With Our Families? One of the stories there was the basis of the movie Hotel Rwanda. I recommend that and then reading Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibigiza, who is now being considered a modern saint (she was a Tutsi who survived the genocide). If you Google her, the quotes she says during interviews will reveal once more how infinite forgiveness and love are.
Theresa, you are right. In fact, I just did an interview of Jean-Paul Samputu, do you know who he is? This is going to be published in our OmPoint International Circular #2 this summer. There is boundless scope for forgiveness and love, no doubt.
Thanks for your thoughtful sharing here…
Your old friend,
Laurent
No, you're introducing me to him for the 1st time. Make sure to give me a haeds up when the OmPoint issue comes out!
Love,
Theresa