We Are Here Read online

  I felt lousy, didn’t like it for a minute. They saw the place. I saw in front of me the place where the Jewish town was, bit by bit. Every place: he was killed here, that Gestapo man was there, and so on. It was like a punishment.

  The houses were there, but the people weren’t there. You didn’t know anyone. I felt sick about the bad-doers, but not about all the people, because many were neutral, many were good. People in general are good. I think the war made me softer; give a person a chance if you can, or be nice to him to make him more comfortable.

  I was happiest after the state of Israel was created in 1948 and I got a good job there, and then I would say the last twenty, thirty years in Australia. We used to go every year overseas, many times to Hawaii, take a beautiful apartment for two months. The saying was in Bolechów, ‘like God lives in France’. And that’s how I felt. We lived like God in France.

  I treasure most my life and my relation with the family. I achieved a certain financial security that allowed me to do it. Australia provided me the means for it. We enjoyed it to the fullest. And that was worthwhile, everything. My friends who perished in Bolechów, they died in misery and that was all. We achieved a lot in this respect.

  My life out of ten? I would say between seven and eight. Human nature is good — you forget the bad times; you remember the good times.

  Kuba Enoch

  BORN: Jakob Enoch

  3 May 1926

  Kraków, Poland

  History reshaped Kuba Enoch’s formative years in a way he could never have imagined, robbing him of one family and bestowing upon him two more.

  Growing up as an observant Jew in Poland, he was the elder of two brothers, a city boy who loved scouts and who had not yet contemplated a possible profession when war intervened and he had no control over the remainder of his childhood, let alone his future.

  He turned thirteen in mid-1939, and marked his Jewish entry to manhood with a bar mitzvah surrounded by his extended family. Within months, the celebration had become more than just a figurative end to his boyhood. In September, Germany invaded Poland, and almost immediately his teen years became a series of degradations, progressively more dire and unimaginable. As a Jew, he was banned from school. He was forced into a ghetto. One by one, his relatives were deported to concentration camps, their names added to lists of the condemned whose screams haunted the ghetto on too many nights. By the time he was eighteen, he was alone.

  His war story is marked by solitude and by enduring friendships, and spans multiple camps. When the Kraków ghetto was liquidated, and his younger brother, Ziggy, was killed, he was enslaved for a year at the nearby Płaszów concentration camp, with its crazed commandant Amon Göth, depicted in the movie Schindler’s List, and its constant executions.

  He was eighteen when the unforgettable stench of cremated bodies marked his arrival at Birkenau. There, he was stripped, deloused, and crudely tattooed with a number on his forearm that, for a long time, would replace his name. By then, his mother was dead of typhoid and starvation, and he had no idea what had become of his father.

  He was sent next to Buna (Auschwitz III), and toiled each day at an enormous industrial estate that supplied Germany with rubber and fuel. On Sundays, before receiving a daily ration of bread, he and other inmates had to run naked before SS officers, and those deemed unfit were sent to Birkenau to be gassed.

  By the bitter opening of 1945, Russians troops were nearing the area, and he was forced to march for three days and nights towards Germany, before being loaded onto a cattle train to Buchenwald. By the time he arrived, two-thirds of the men who had set out from Buna with him were dead.

  After forcibly clearing rubble from bombings and mass burying bodies, his enslavement finally ended on 11 April 1945, when US troops liberated Buchenwald, and thousands of emaciated souls staggered back towards life.

  A month later, he joined a trainload of young men, among them the future Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, who had been granted a temporary home in Switzerland. (Wiesel and others were subsequently sent to France.) During his three years in Switzerland, he learned that his father had survived.

  In 1948, he and forty-four of those young men, who would become known as the Buchenwald Boys, sailed into Melbourne. He was one of only five to continue to Sydney, where he would eventually create his own family, spanning four generations.

  Apart from a few images rescued from Polish archives, he has no photographs of his pre-war relatives.

  On the train to Switzerland, I felt safe because we had the Americans escorting us with guns. We were protected suddenly. We thought we were top of the world.

  We stopped once. It was the beginning of May, cherry time, and the boys hadn’t seen cherries for such a long time. They jumped off the train and ran for some. Instead of picking them, they broke whole branches.

  So a bloody farmer came running with sticks to hit us. The American soldiers tried to protect us, but then a rabbi who was with us, he said, ‘You know, boys, you did the wrong thing, even according to Jewish law, because you destroyed things. You could take as many cherries as you wanted, but you shouldn’t break the trees.’ That’s how they tried to bring us back into civilisation.

  We were a rough lot. In camp, if you saw something lying there, it was yours. If I wanted to take it, it was there, I’ll take it. If somebody died, he didn’t need his shoes or clothes, you just took it.

  I wanted to stick with the boys. That’s the only people I knew. But we were completely green. We wanted to know how we were going to make a living. How would we exist, connect to society? How to learn, what to learn? In Switzerland, they tried to bring us back to a normal life. They tried to educate us — how to use a fork and knife, how to eat at a table, don’t grab things. If you were invited to people’s homes, they told you, do this and this. You had to understand you had different laws you had to obey.

  I had to learn table manners. In camp, you didn’t call it ‘stealing’, you called it ‘organising’. You organised to get yourself more food. Now you didn’t have to hide food anymore. You had to realise that there was enough. Switzerland gave me a bit of order and discipline. I was very happy there. That was the first time we met girls.

  I think coming to Australia was my best move. It was all excitement. It was adventure; Europe to us was a cemetery. The first time we saw fruit when we stopped in Fremantle, we couldn’t believe our eyes — fruit I had never seen in Poland, beautiful mangoes, custard apples. God created something unbelievable.

  There was one girl on the ship with all the boys, and she was also from Auschwitz. She was my future wife’s cousin. I met Kitty about a month later. We married in April 1951. Our first child was born two years after.

  That was my dream, to establish a family, to have somebody to belong to. After 1943, I was always on my own. When you survive, you survive on your own, not anybody else. I tried to be a very good parent. I tried never to hit my children. I tried to talk to them. I think my children are very good. I am very proud of them.

  My father loved the children very much. But he started to dominate me. I just couldn’t take it. He thought I was still a little boy, a child like I used to be before the war. But I had been independent for such a long time, looking after myself.

  The first time I talked about the Holocaust with my children was when they had to do school projects, so I had to talk to them. But I didn’t want them to grow up with complexes. I spoke to my wife, of course. But nobody can understand. I used to have dreams, and she used to push me in bed, ‘Wake up, you’ve got a nightmare, always running, running, chasing.’ I didn’t realise. She woke me up because I was screaming.

  I spoke to two psychologists; I was trying to get reparations from Germany and I had to. It didn’t help. The first one said, ‘Why do you want money from Germany? How will that help you?’ I said, ‘How is that your business?’ So I left him. I went to the other one. He said: �
�As a matter of fact, I just came from a conference about the Holocaust in Spain, and I can warn you that when you get older it will get worse.’ I said, ‘Thank you, doctor.’ I left him, too.

  If I had a problem, I used to go to the boys from Buchenwald. They were part of my family. I had nobody else. If they had problems, they used to come to me. We would stick together.

  They announced in Buchenwald that 11 April will be our rebirth, and the boys adopted it. Not only us — Frenchman, Dutchmen, all prisoners, Norwegian. You were reborn on that day. You’re a new person.

  Every year on 11 April, they have a Buchenwald Ball in Melbourne. I am not a drinker, but some of the boys are. My son was astounded how they could drink. They drank and danced. More than anything, they brought their wives, their children and grandchildren, all the family.

  A survivor, not from Buchenwald, said to me, ‘What have you got to dance about? Celebrate but don’t dance. Why have a big ball?’ It’s not a question of dancing. It’s a birthday.

  If we didn’t go to Melbourne celebrating, then my wife used to make a Buchenwald celebration here in Sydney on 11 April. We had a nice dinner at home and discussed how life goes on.

  I am looking back on all my other friends and how they buggered their lives up because of the Holocaust. I have got a lot of friends who became very negative. One had six locks on his front door. He was such a nervous wreck; I don’t know how he brought up his children. Some married out because they wanted to cut off from Jewishness completely. Some didn’t have children, because they didn’t want them to have the same tzures (trouble) they had.

  My poor friends — not the boys — they have no continuity; they never created anything. Even if you lost everyone, your name could have continued. I think I’m winning the war because I created a beautiful family and I am continuing Jewish life.

  I wear a kippah (skullcap) because you are supposed to, I don’t know. I am trying to succeed to be an example to my children and grandchildren. You’ve got to live by example.

  I believe because I have got to believe. I am part of the club — the Jewish club. You can’t join a club and make your own rules. If you take away the religion, what have you got left? What do you believe in? Jewish food?

  I would say eighty per cent of Holocaust survivors do not believe in God, because they claim no God could accept Auschwitz, or he must have been asleep. I have no answer to tell them otherwise. Even rabbis can’t explain the Holocaust going with God.

  But I read a book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and there you’ve got an answer to God that somehow I managed to accept. If God gave you a brain then you conduct yourself with your brains. You can’t blame God for everything that happens. He created the world. A lot of things that happen in the world are because bad people created bad things.

  There is good people and bad people. When I was working near Buchenwald, this German woman with a baby used to come through and she used to leave bread rolls under the stones on the side of the road for me — until the SS man saw her one day and he told her off. We went back to that town after liberation to get food. We hadn’t seen milk for donkey’s years. There was a place with a big queue, and local people were lining up. We just walked into the shop and got the bottle of milk, and as I came out I saw that woman standing there with her children, so I went back in and got milk for her. She must have remembered me because she thanked me so much. I returned the good deed.

  People under normal circumstances can be very good and some are bad. But don’t start asking me about people in camp. In camp, people exist for themselves. It was a question of survival. Some behaved very badly.

  For me, Buchenwald was one of the better camps. It was a controlled environment where there was no actual destruction. People were dying of hunger and disease, but they were not dying by execution. I think you become used to everything eventually.

  I went back to Buchenwald for the fiftieth anniversary of liberation. Everybody who came got a medal. The Germans gave me a medal — there you are. They put up beautiful tents with chandeliers hanging and food and music, unbelievable. My wife thought it was fantastic, so why shouldn’t I appreciate it?

  Rabbi Herschel Schacter, who went with us to Switzerland, was there. He organised a prayer service, and we prayed at Buchenwald. I thought it was the most stunning moment, the rejuvenation of the Jewish people. Hitler would have plutzed (exploded) if he knew Jews were praying there.

  When I retired, I went with my wife on a bus tour through Eastern Europe. I noticed we were going to Auschwitz. I said, ‘Darling, I’ve already been there; I’m not interested.’ But she really wanted to go, so we went. It was astounding; it was a museum. It wasn’t the same place. I was very upset. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was completely lost.

  After I went with my wife, I went back with my two daughters. It was much better this time. I was the master of my own destiny. I hired a taxi driver; he spoke perfect English. We were coming back from Auschwitz, and my daughters were crying. And I said to them, ‘All right, have a cry and forget about it. Don’t get too sad for me, please.’ And one said to the other, ‘How could this happen in Poland?’ And this bastard taxi driver started shouting, ‘How dare you? I will get you out of the taxi straightaway. It’s nothing to do with Polish people.’ I was a bit astounded at his outcry.

  I never wanted revenge. I found revenge is self-destructive; it won’t achieve anything for me. Number one, I was a little boy; I had no koyach (strength). Who could I take revenge against? I was no hero. I was shitting myself.

  A lot of people don’t buy German cars. I don’t care. I can buy German goods. But I don’t like to be associated with Germans, because I don’t know what crimes they committed.

  I avoid association. My poor wife, she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t go to barbecues for years. Here, we were invited a lot of times. I just couldn’t stand it. It was the smell of the crematorium when I came to Birkenau. It came back to me, this burning meat. Everybody hung around the barbecue. I stayed inside.

  We used to be invited to parties. They would have a buffet and I would wait till everybody had eaten. I would never push myself first. My wife would say, ‘Kuba, why don’t you go and eat?’ Because I had been in camp waiting for food. I don’t have to do that anymore. I am in a country with enough food. Why should I fight for it?

  I only cry when I have a memorial for my mother or for my brother. Tears come to my eyes. My biggest regret is the loss of them. And not having a picture of my brother. I would give anything for a picture of my brother. I remember him very faintly. All I remember is he was more clever than me.

  Marianne Van Der Poorten

  BORN: Marianne Stokvis

  2 April 1914

  Amsterdam, Netherlands

  So much about survival is unexpected. Luck is prominent in many stories, and comes with endless variables. But through all of life’s permutations, few could have imagined that Marianne Van Der Poorten, Holocaust survivor, would be sipping cocktails at 102.

  A vibrant centenarian with a passion for celebrating, she marked a century of life with a brunch for 120 people. At 101, she was still living independently. At 102, after enduring an operation for a broken hip, she was back attending evening social events within weeks.

  Her enjoyment of the present, however, follows a traumatic past. The daughter of a Dutch diamond merchant, her passage to early adulthood was mostly comfortable, with no hint of the terror that would spread so rapidly soon after her married life began.

  She had grown up in Amsterdam, a keen basketballer and tennis player, and had met her future husband at a rowing club in the late 1930s. David Van Der Poorten was a doctor, eight years her senior. Their wedding photo from April 1939 shows a joyous couple on the steps of an Amsterdam synagogue, oblivious to the devastating world events that would chase their union. Within months of their marriage, Hitler had invaded Poland. Sixteen da
ys after their daughter Malieke was born in April 1940, the Netherlands was attacked by Germany.

  The progress of war made no allowances for a new family as restrictions began to curtail the lives of all Jews, even those who felt more attached to their Dutch nationality than to their religion. Forced to live under curfew, they were issued with identity cards bearing a large J, and were prohibited from buying food until after three p.m., by which time there was little if anything available.

  As the war restricted their world and their future, it arrived, literally, at the young family’s front door one day in the form of two Jewish friends fleeing the Gestapo. With nowhere else to go, they spent several weeks hiding in the Van Der Poorten home, which was also to become a site of Resistance work. Its park-side frontage removed the possibility of nosy neighbours, and, at night, Resistance members would arrive to falsify identity cards.

  As deportations increased, David’s vital position as a doctor gave his family some protection initially. He continued to treat patients, but now only Jews, thanks to ever-tightening rules. Sometimes, he ascribed them fake illnesses, and, with Marianne, concocted mixtures that made them seem ill, to delay their removal to work camps.

  In this perilous time, and the rush to save countless souls, some things were impervious to war, however; in 1942, the couple’s second child, Alfred, was born.

  But there was little time to appreciate the joys of childhood. With Jewish lives increasingly endangered, by May 1943 the couple faced an enormous decision: how best to save their two small children. Their conclusion was to hide them — and in the process to let someone else parent them. So, relying completely on the goodness of others, with the help of a trusted neighbour they handed over their infant son and their three-year-old daughter to separate foster carers, and spent the remainder of the war pretending to be childless.