History Lesson

In my first few weeks here I had an amazing experience. I went to listen to a talk by a Holocaust survivor. He was from Slovakia and survived eight months in Bergen-Belsen when he was nine years old.

Bergen-Belsen was a detention camp, which means there were no gas chambers there. Tens of thousands did die there though from starvation and disease. Miraculously, the speaker, his brother and mother all survived and were reunited with the speaker’s father after the war (who had escaped from a train on the way to a camp and became a freedom fighter in Germany). It was so awful hearing about this nine-year-old boy riding in a cattle car for six days on his way to the camp, with a barrel in the middle for a toilet and how he and his brother played around the piles of dead bodies in the camp.

Besides the speaker’s actual story, Slovakia’s involvement in the war was the thing that I found most interesting (as told by the speaker – sorry for any misinformation). Slovakia’s prime minister at the time was a priest, who actually signed a deal with the Nazi government to keep Hitler from invading his country. The deal: young, healthy, Jewish slave labour in exchange for the equivalent of about $500 each. The buying and selling of people – horrifying. But, the other side of that coin is the person that had helped the family on their failed escape was the local priest from their village, who had been a friend of the mother (yes, their mother was Jewish, but somehow she was good friends with the priest – go figure).

The other fascinating part of the story was the liberation of the camp. Basically one day, the guards were gone and the gates to the camp were open. But no one left - they didn't know where they were, f it was some kind of trap or what. They were left in this limbo for four days. Starving even while the guards were there, they of course had no food after the guards disappeared. Finally the British soldiers arrived. I remember seeing movie footage of this camp, and in fact the speaker had a still from that movie showing himself and his brother - aboslute skeletons. Many more peole died after liberation because there was just so much malnutrition and disesase throughout the camp.

The speaker's dad's story was pretty incredible. As I mentioned, he escaped from a train. He had been captured by Nazi soldiers and was put on a train to goodness knows which camp. He happened to be sharing a car with a Romanian thief, who had smuggled in his tools that he used to break into places (the tools were in the handle of his one suitcase). So the thief busted open the train car then asked who wanted to go with him. The car was of course full, but only the speaker's father joined in the escape. They jumped from the train, survived miraculously, and the father went on to join Jewish freedom fighters who were active throughout the war.

The speaker has lived in Ireland since 1960, but he didn't talk about why he moved here. Ireland was officially neutral in WWII, although many Irish citizens fought in the British armed services.

It is so hard to comprehend that this horrifying chain of events took place in living memory. That one group of people can decide that another group is inferior and not worthy of existing for whatever reason. I appreciate that I got to hear this man's story first hand. The audience was full of school children, who I hope carry on the message that this must never happen again.

Now for the lighter side: update on the feeder in our front yard - it has been discovered! So far three types of finch: goldfinch, green finch (much prettier than all pictures that I could find) and chaffinch and a blue tit. This morning the yard is full of rooks and jackdaws - they are cleaning up after me, as I had a little issue refilling the feeder last night. Ah well, even they have babies to feed.