MY SEARCH FOR ANSWERS IN PLACES WHERE HOLOCAUST TOURISTS WALK OVER THE DEAD
Although it was only the end of April it was very hot – 90 degrees – when we arrived that Saturday morning. Many of the visitors were in T-shirts and casual clothes. The informal dress gave the initial, incongruous impression of a holiday outing and made me ask myself about the people and about the atmosphere: was history’s most shameful monument becoming a kind of theme park? The buildings were clean, stark, well cared for. We saw the houses of the guards, the sheds for the inmates, the gas chambers, the ovens where the bodies were burnt. it took 40 minutes to kill someone and up to 48 nothing left. no evidence, no memory.
We saw the railway lines which brought millions here, many still believing the deception that they were going to a new settlement. We understood the atrocity and the elaborate logistics necessary for murder on such an unprecedented scale. We thought about the kind of mentality required to bring this about and the millions who needed to collude for it to happen. Auschwitz is not a theme park. it is a grim reminder of what human beings are capable of and what they must be prevented from being capable of ever again.
We left for lunch, a tour of the city and its old Jewish quarter and meetings with members of the local community. A thoughtful evening and a troubled night.
On Sunday we left Krakow airport for Kyiv, where we landed at noon. We were met by another warm, friendly and energetic representative of World Jewish relief for the second leg of our journey into the past.
We were taken to a clean, lively city. We took pictures of the busy streets, a KFC, a hip hop club named respect, a late model Rolls Royce Phantom, a medieval tower, a synagogue. in Chernigov, however, the region which my grandparents called home, half the population was Jewish at the beginning of the 20th century; by the end of it there were almost none. There was no trace of my family. A man in his 90s with the same name had died recently but apparently the name was a common one. We visited the Jewish community centre supported by World Jewish relief. it was full of warmth and friendly faces. The children had a band. Someone had heard i am a drummer so i was put on bongos.
At another centre we met an older generation, people who had been through a lot, historically and personally. There was a 92-year-old man who cut hair. naturally we needed a trim. Smiles all round. My cousin began to explain what style he needed but the old man had other ideas: “I am the barber, I decide the haircut.”
A meal and then a 3.45pm departure for the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial site. Babi Yar is a ravine in Kyiv where a series of massacres were carried out by the nazis. The most notorious took place over the period September 29-30, 1941, when 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation ordered by the military governor, Major- general Kurt Eberhard, with the sole aim of killing all Jews in the city. Ukrainians were for each Jew delivered to the authorities.
The killings constitute the largest massacre in the history of the Holocaust. Other operations there included the killings of thousands of Soviet POWs, communists, gypsies, ukrainian nationalists and civilian hostages. it is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 more died at Babi Yar.
I looked into the ravine and felt the horror of what had happened; the thousands marched there, knowing they were going to be shot, able to do nothing. Today people walk over the dead, oblivious of it all. Prayers were said. Once more, the hope it would never happen again. Later we visited a synagogue and a cemetery. Vandals had painted Swastikas there and daubed: “Ivan the Terrible was right.” Ivan the Terrible was the nickname of the Ukrainian concentration guard later identified as John Demjanjuk, who died on March 17 this year before his trial could be concluded.
Ivan’s favourite amusement was to cut the ears off workers as they walked by and then compel them to continue working as they bled from their wounds. Shortly after, he would shoot them. He also tortured victims with pipes, swords and whips before they were killed in the gas chambers.
Later, we visited the homes of clients of World Jewish relief. We saw crowded living conditions and deprivation but people still manage to grow tulips in their gardens. The lesson: an international charity is doing what it can. Old prejudices have not entirely died, though, and life in the ukraine can be tough even now. That point was driven home by further visits the following day.
WE LEFT Kyiv’s Borispol Airport at 4pm on Monday. Sadder, perhaps, and wiser. The world can be a cruel place. Back at home, there were still TV news headlines about ultra right-wing factions in the French election. i prepared for the following day back at the helm of a modern media group and found myself asking: “is this the real world, or was that?”
Speaking about my experiences to friends, i tried to make sense of them. i thought about my grandparents Louis and Golda, who died young in the Thirties, and how courageous they were to leave their home in Ukraine and come to Britain in the 1900s. They had very little and they could speak only Yiddish. Without their sacrifice, i would not be here to make something of myself by building a media business, my son would not have gone to Cambridge and neither of us would be able to return and pay our respects for the sacrifice they made.
Next Sunday Robert and i will go to their graves in Streatham and thank them for the lesson they have taught us: that you must use what you have and give meaning to their sacrifices, to their struggles, that allow us and millions of people to live this completely different life we lead today, by trying to make the world a better place.
● World Jewish Relief: Oscar Joseph House, 54 Crewys Road, London NW2 2AD Charity Number: 290767 / Tel: +44 (0)20 8736 1250 / info@wjr.org.uk