This posting, on the eve of
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2015,
is dedicated
in loving memory of לזכר נשמת
Hersz Lieblich צבי בן יוסף
Born c 1890 in Kamien, near Rzeszow, Poland
Farmer and grain dealer - Husband of Chaya - Father of
Josef, Israel & Moniek
Chaja Lieblich (Bratshpis) חיה בת יצחק
Born 1896 in Stobierna, near Rzeszow, Poland
Wife of Hersz - Mother of Josef, Israel & Moniek
Moniek Lieblich מרדכי
בן צבי
Born c1925 in Kamien, near Rzeszow, Poland
Brother of Josef & Israel
who
were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices in World War 2
Seventy Years Since the End of WWII
by Prof. Dina Porat*
...On 9 May 1945, when the defeated Germans finally
capitulated to the Allied Forces, great joy spread throughout the world. The
most horrific of wars had come to an end – a war that had wreaked destruction
on a scale unprecedented in history: roughly 60 million dead; millions of
refugees of every nationality spread throughout Europe; economies and
infrastructures shattered. Soldiers from the US and the Soviet Union banded
together on the smoldering ruins of Berlin, and throughout the European
continent, barely freed from the clutches of the Nazi regime, military parades
and celebrations followed one another in close succession. Yet one nation did
not take part in the general euphoria – the Jews of Europe. For them, victory
had come too late.
The day of liberation, the one for which every
Jew had longed throughout the years of the Holocaust, was for most a day of
crisis and emptiness, a feeling of overwhelming loneliness as they grasped the
sheer scale of the destruction on both the personal and communal level. At the
war's end, in the early spring of 1945, it became apparent that some six
million Jews had been murdered – about one-third of world Jewry. Those who had
survived were scattered throughout Europe: tens of thousands of survivors of
the camps and death marches, liberated by the Allied armies on German soil and
in other countries, were in a severely deteriorated physical condition and in a
state of emotional shock. Others emerged for the first time from various places
of hiding and shed the false identities they had assumed, or surfaced from
partisan units with whom they had cast their lot and in whose ranks they had
fought for the liberation of Europe. In the wake of international agreements
signed at the end of the war, some 200,000 additional Jews began to make their
way back West from the Soviet Union, where they had fled and managed to survive
the war years.
With the advent of liberation, piercing questions
arose in the minds of the survivors: How would they be able to go back to
living a normal life, to build homes and families? And having survived, what obligation did they
bear towards those who had not – was it their duty to preserve and commemorate
their legacy? Were the survivors to avenge them, as they demanded before their
death? The overwhelming majority of survivors took no revenge on the Germans,
but set out on a path of rehabilitation, rebuilding and creativity, while
commemorating the world that was no more.
During the Holocaust, many Jews lived with the
feeling that they were the last Jews to survive. Nevertheless, after
liberation, survivors went far and wide in search of family members, friends
and loved ones who might also have stayed alive, against all odds. Many decided
to go back to their prewar homes, but they encountered utter destruction. In
some places, especially in Eastern Europe, Jews met with severe outbreaks of
antisemitism – some 1,000 Jews were murdered in the initial postwar years by
the locals. The most appalling episode was the Kielce pogrom, in Poland – a
violent attack on Jewish residents in July 1946 in which 42 Jews were murdered
– some of them the sole survivors of entire families – and many others were
injured.
The Kielce pogrom became a turning point in the
history of the She'erit Hapleita, the surviving remnant as Holocaust
survivors began to be known, in Poland. In the eyes of many, it was the final
proof that no hope remained for rebuilding Jewish life in those lands. During
the months following the pogrom, the flow of migrants from Eastern and Southern
Europe increased manifold: In any way they could, Jews tried to make their way
west and southward. Young surviving Jews, together with delegates and soldiers
from the Land of Israel, aided and directed this exodus, the mass migration
that came to be known as Habricha, "The Escape" – a
grand-scale attempt to transfer as many Jews as possible to territories
controlled by British and US troops in Germany, as a step before leaving
Europe. Upon arrival in these regions, refugees joined the tens of thousands of
Jewish survivors liberated in Central Europe, and together they amassed in the
DP camps across Germany, Austria and Italy.
Oftentimes, these camps were established at the sites of former Nazi
concentration camps, among them Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald.
The activities of the She'erit Hapleita in
the DP camps were a powerful expression of the survivors' efforts to return to
life after the war. As early as the first days and weeks after liberation,
survivors began to recover and organize themselves, despite the grief, physical
weakness and extensive hardships. They formed new families and an independent
leadership, set up educational and foster-care facilities for children and
youth, published dozens of newspapers and magazines, collected testimonies on
the fate of Jews during the Holocaust, and became a significant factor in the
Zionist movement's aspirations and in related international politics.
At the same time, many survivors sought to leave
Europe and move to places where they could safely rebuild their lives and their
homes. About two-thirds of the survivors who chose not to remain in Europe
after the war set their sights on Eretz Israel. Yet going to Israel was
a formidable struggle, in view of the policies imposed by the British Mandate
that barred them from entering into the Land. As part of the effort to break
through the borders and prohibitions, the illegal immigration movement – the Ha'apala
– was organized, whereby survivors boarded old vessels in various Mediterranean
ports and sailed for Eretz Israel. The remaining third immigrated to the
US, Latin America, South Africa, Canada and Australia.
The Ha'apala, as well as immigration to
other countries, was a pivotal stage in the survivors' postwar recovery
process. Holocaust survivors contributed, each in their own way, to building a
better world for themselves, for their children and for future generations that
would never know the horrors of the Holocaust. As survivor Riva Chirurg, who
lost dozens of family members in the Lodz ghetto and at Auschwitz, said:
"If more than 20 people, second and third generation, gather around my Pesach
Seder table, then I have done my share."
*The author is Chief
Historian of Yad Vashem.
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