THE POLITICS OF MEMORY: A 2005 INTEVIEW WITH DR. RUTH LINN

The links to the interviews in Hebrew are here.

Part A.  https://youtu.be/UDFzvbfreWA?t=34

Part  B.   https://youtu.be/UxY4gAwIfZM?t=8

Interview Excerpts, 2005

8:57-13:16
QUESTION ON BLACK BACKGROUND:
How did you start learning about Rudi Vrba?

RUTH LINN FOOTAGE: Growing up, it never occurred to me that, at Auschwitz, there was any possibility of getting out, beyond the fences. I was only ever told that Jews were throwing themselves onto electrified fences in order to commit suicide. I was not made aware of the possibility of any Jews escaping, either sneaking through the fences, let alone through the main gate.
I was filled with pride when learned of the escape story in 1987 from watching Claude Lanzmann’s documentary, Shoah. It lasted 9 hours and it consisted of reports by victims, perpetrators and bystanders – how each group experienced the Holocaust from its own angle.

The film is long and difficult to watch but as an Israeli-born who spent her childhood listening to the Eichmann’s trials via the radio, I noticed that most of the tales in this documentary were familiar to me – the stories of starvation, killing, gassing – but I was not familiar with Vrba’s story. It was totally different from all the others stories I grew up with in Israel.
It was this specific story that resulted in my decision to change my daily schedule from that day onward. My life was swept along by this unknown story. It became my story to clarify his. This resulted in the long overdue translation of Vrba’s book into Hebrew and his awarding of an honorary doctorate that I arranged for him at the University of Haifa.

His life story was of great interest for me as an educator. This is why so much energy was invested by me in letting other people know the truth of it. I also investigated the few other successful Jewish escapes.

Auschwitz includes the story of one of the Germans’ most successful organized deceptions – the so-called “family camp” that was built by the Nazis. About 4,000 Jews were brought from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz on Sept 1943. All were exempted from the camp ordeal of tattooing, hair cutting, shaving and spraying. They were allowed to remain as families with their own clothing. They were also allowed to maintain some sort of social activities. Of course, no one could fully understand what motivated the Germans to preserve these families as families.

Later, as we all know, this was just a misleading device of the Nazis – a conspiracy – so the Red Cross would not learn the true nature of Auschwitz. In January 1944, six months after their arrival, they were all gassed, and another transport of about 4,000 Czech inmates was brought to Auschwitz. This second family camp replaced the first one. In this second family camp, there was an admirable counselor named Fredy Hirsch. At the eve of the liquidation of this second family camp, it was Rudolf Vrba who came over to this camp, as a messenger of the underground in Auschwitz – Birkenau. Vrba then informs Fredy Hirsch that tomorrow the entire family camp is going to be gassed.

Vrba assured him that the information came from the zonder commando based on their estimation of the amount of coil needed for the liquidation that had just been received from the Germans. Vrba carried one message from the underground to Fredy: “go and revolt.” Hirsch turned to Vrba and asked him: “Whom should I revolt with? Children? Give me an hour to think about it.”
Vrba returns after an hour and finds Hirsch dead. He could not make the decision. Maybe there are other interpretations. As has been noticed by Mark Bloch, the Jewish historian who also died in the Holocaust, war story is not just the story of shooting, cannons, and dead bodies. It is also a psychological story of individuals who are forced to make decisions within such hard conditions.
And here comes the part that intrigued me: I could find Fredy Hirsch’s story in many Hebrew history books, but Vrba’s story was not. I also couldn’t find his book in Hebrew. In Lanzmann’s documentary, Vrba’s short testimony was stunning but what his personal story? We know that on the 7th of April, he escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau with his friend, Alfred Wetzler. But what else? The mystery fired up my curiosity.

In 1942, at the age of 17, Vrba was sent by his mom with five dollars in his pocket to try and reach London via Hungary. He was caught and brought to Novaky camp, in Slovakia, from which he succeeded to escape but was caught and was deported to Majdanek. From there, in June 1942, he was deported to Auschwitz where he was selected to work in ‘commando Canada’ where his first job was to empty the suitcases and to clean the wagons so they would be ready for shipping the new victims. Throughout his work on the ramp, Vrba came to realize that the prospective victims did not know where they were heading. He noticed that their suitcases contained clothing for all seasons, for the next year ahead.

His second role was that of a registrar. This was relatively convenient in terms of mobility. This enabled him to deliver the warning to Fredy Hirsch. Although dangerous, this mobility enabled him to get familiar with the camp. One day, probably on January 15, 1943, Vrba happened to talk with a drunken SS who joked about the forthcoming ‘Hungarian Salami. This was one of the common camp slangs. The Italians were known as sardines, the Greek as olives. It was at that moment, when Vrba learned the Hungarian Jews would be next, that he told himself that if he succeeded in escaping, he would inform the Hungarians about Auschwitz, and if possible – the entire world.

In April 1944, there was still a possibility to save the second ‘family camp.’ It was assumed that the Germans would proceed as they had done with the first ‘family camp’ in January, and all would be liquidated exactly six months after their arrival, meaning in June.

This interview is on April 6. Tomorrow – when it would be April 7 – that was the day Vrba would enter into a hideout in the camp with his friend Alfred Wetzler. It would be the eve of Passover. They would remain in hiding for three days. They had studied the camp closely during their 20 months in the camp. They knew what had gone wrong in the previous attempts to escape. They decided that they had to try and hide within the camp for three days, and when the Germans reached the conclusion that they had already escaped and removed the curfew, that would be the time to try and sneak out of the camp.

They had sprayed their hideout with gasoline mixed with tobacco in order to prevent the 100-200 dogs from sniffing them in their hiding place. On April 10, three days after they had gone into hiding in the cavity of a woodpile, Vrba and Wetzler found their way out and made their way to their native country of Slovakia – a journey that took them 11 days.
On April 21st, as Vrba told me, “at some point the person we talked to answered us in Slovak, and that is when we understood that we had already crossed the border to Slovakia”.
*
Ruth Linn clip 2
Clip 2 029 -122

QUESTION ON BLACK BACKGROUND:
After Vrba and Wetzler reported on the genocide at Auschwitz, what happened to their report?

In brief, the report did reach the western allies, but without Vrba’s and Wetzler’s names on it. In mid-June, the Czech embassy learned that 4000 of its citizens in the “family camp” were scheduled to soon be gassed. It reached Churchill, the Swedish king and the Pope, as well as Washington, D.C. Up to this point, Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, had deported about half a million Jews to Auschwitz. It was International pressure, arising directly from the Vrba-Wetzler Report, that paved the way for the halt of the deportations of Jews from Hungary.
Clip 2 8:40 until 10:30.

QUESTION ON BLACK BACKGROUND:
What was the response in Israel when Vrba’s book finally appeared in Hebrew?

Israelis from all walks of life called my office. For instance, there was a supermarket owner near Tel Aviv who questioned how did it happen that the people in Israel were not introduced to this book much sooner. He decided to place numerous copies of the book in his supermarket and he encouraged every customer not to get out of the store without buying it.

The voices and support that I received from the wider public was immense and enthusiastic whereas the historical Holocaust establishment was silent. The book did not receive any publicity from Yad Vashem. All the energy of its professors seemed to be invested in writing letters protesting Vrba’s honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa. They did not welcome my book either. Rudi’s memoir only became available in Hebrew in 1998, exactly fifty years after the establishment of the state of Israel—and more than thirty years after it was first published in English in 1963. Israeli historians could have provided a Hebrew version many years before – but they did not.

The only “sin” of Vrba’s book, and please correct me if I am wrong, is the fact that the author of this book dared to voice criticism regarding the way his escape had been assessed and marginalized in Holocaust Studies. In response, many establishment Israeli historians chose to address Vrba’s escape story as problematic even on the eve of his award ceremony.

13:28 – 14:22
QUESTION ON BLACK BACKGROUND:
What is the story of how Vrba’s book finally appeared in Hebrew?

The book’s translator was Mr. Yehoshua Ben Ami, a Holocaust survivor of Slovak origin. Myself, I am not a second-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors. I have no investments in this story from any monetary angle. I see myself, prior to my being an academic researcher in moral psychology, as simply an Israeli citizen who was eager to understand Holocaust history – no matter how problematic it was. Following my reading of Vrba’s memoirs, I felt that I was not the only one who ought to read it. All the younger generation deserved to know this tale of heroism. In fact, the story of the Holocaust cannot fully be told without it.

The book’s translator, Mr. Ben Ami, felt the same. We did not know each other, and we belong to different generations. Yehoshua had lost all his family in the Holocaust – and I did not. But even though each of us looked at Rudi’s book independently, we both strongly felt it was a book that everyone should be obliged to read, particularly the younger generation. When Yad Vashem firmly rejected it, Yehoshua was even determined to publish it at his own expense—until we met.

14:42 – 1:45
QUESTION ON BLACK BACKGROUND:
And how did you meet Rudi Vrba?

I started to ask myself how did it all happen that a book so important, first published in 1963, read by most of the world’s foremost Holocaust historians in English, did not find its way into the Hebrew language for 30 years? There was a mystery. Like Agatha Christie.

It was like a family secret – people knew about it but avoided the subject. It was like the young girl in the family who got pregnant out of wedlock. People around the dinner table suddenly forget her name. Or they call her “that auntie”. They forget the details, not recalling whether it is a boy or a girl. The story was known by whispers.

I’ve noticed that in Yad Vashem’s museum, until 2005, Vrba and Wetzler were only cited as two, nameless Slovak Jews who escaped. Their escape and their report remained absent in leading Hebrew history textbooks for schools, or else they remained nameless. Even in 2004—six years after Vrba’s visit to Israel—when Yad Vashem presented the chronology of the destruction of the Hungarian Jewry in the radio, 60 years after it happened, each testifying survivor received his or her name and the town from where they came from – with the exception of those two escapees who remained nameless. I was intrigued that those historians of Slovak origin were actually those who did not bring the story of escapees to our attention up until I made it accessible to Hebrew readers. I was advised to publish my ideas in psychology journals and they advised Rudi to publish in pharmacology journals.

FINAL MESSAGE ON BLACK BACKGROUND:
Yad Vashem was established on August 19, 1953 by Israeli Law — The Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Act — as a memorial to those Jews who were victims of the Nazis. This same law also mandates that a “place and name” be given to non-Jews who acted to save their fellow human beings. In honour of these righteous persons, trees are planted along the Avenue of the Righteous.

Although Rudolf Vrba is credited by the foremost WW II historian Martin Gilbert for saving at least 100,000 Jews, his importance as a historical figure continues to be obscured and mostly avoided by Yad Vashem, mainly because Vrba was a lifelong, outspoken critic of the cowardice and abnegation of leadership perpetrated by some Jewish community leaders during World War II. In some cases, collusion with Nazis was tantamount to a self-serving avoidance of reality that led directly to the murder of millions of Jews.