My Handwriting Saved Me: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor
by Albert Halm,
Peter Halm (Editor), Bonita Halm (Editor).
This account begins with a young couple who were the author's great-great-grandparents, arriving in a small place Tchorna Tisa in the Carpathian mountains, and prospering in the beautiful and then still wild place. The author, in midst of introduction chapter mentioning his genealogy from the said couple through others, says:-
"As for myself, religious beliefs are not the fulcrum of my life. I have learned to have reservations about man’s written laws, and prefer to judge people on their honesty and integrity above all else."
Worth attention, that.
"Essentially, the reason for writing this screed is to perpetuate the life and memory of my family. I know of the work that others are doing in this regard and believe that the joint efforts will more readily piece together the mosaic of our extensive family. The Nazi Holocaust was not an accident of history, but a deliberate desire to exterminate a people."
This memoir isn't just about the holocaust era, it's a chronicle of the family and clan the author comes from, and it's a female line lineage all the way reaching back to the couple that pioneered living in the Carpathian village. His great-great-great-grandfather Halm donated land to the church, without any quid pro quo of any sort, having noticed the cemetery getting crowded, which earned him a respect from the village and neighbourhood.
"Great-grandma Bruche was still lionised for her father’s deed, but when it came to the fourth-generation descendant of Avrom-Dovid, myself, there was no benefit left. Come to think of it, nobody even believed me that my benevolent ancestor had donated land to the church. Who in his right mind would want to have a Jew as a perpetual benefactor in a Ukrainian Church?
"Each of Avrom-Dovid’s children inherited a sizeable land holding from their father, but according to my mother the two brothers felt cheated; they wanted the lion’s share of the inheritance.
"Although the family house was primitive, it was in continuous family use for many years, and provided shelter for at least three generations of Halm descendants. My Boobe Bruche, being the eldest daughter, inherited the responsibility of caring for her ageing dad, and after he died she inherited the homestead, carried on farming the land, and continued living there for the rest of her long life.
"The fact that my great-grandmother cared for her ageing father did not stop the bitterness spreading; in fact, it continued even as far as my mother’s generation. It hardly mattered that the original feud between the brothers and sisters was a hundred years old; as long as there was a good reason to hate, they hated.
"According to my mother’s recollections, the rift between the brothers and sisters was so intense that neither Yosel nor Moishe attended their sisters’ funerals, and worse still, the annoyance and the hate were perpetuated long beyond their graves. There was jealousy, envy, resentment and hate, all generated by a feeling of deprivation or dispossession. This epic feud contained all the ingredients of drama and human frailties that one finds in many sizeable families.
"Had the brothers, Yosel and Moishe, survived a few years longer, they would have witnessed a tragedy that turned their family into pitiful paupers. The Holocaust dispossessed us all.
"Fifty or more years have passed, and very few of the original contenders have survived; I venture to say that although we respect our ancestors, none of us has any desire to pursue their frailties. We have lost more than two-thirds of our family and have been dispossessed of all inheritance, so what is the feuding all about? I feel we now have to look ahead and let the unencumbered generations thrive. As far as I am concerned, I have no inkling of what the family feud was about, and am quite willing to forgive and forget past misdemeanours. Who can afford to perpetuate age-old grievances after the tragedy of the Holocaust?"
If only other survivors, of other holocaust, had similar thinking! Next, the story of how Bruche rescued her then only daughter who was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and taken to Poland to serve his second wife, and how she was healed from a serious problem incurred due to the rescue in frosty night, quite a story. But after the cure, it still left her with a headache only cured by standing on a dish. Not explicable through electrical phenomena, since floor was wooden.
"But in Tchorna Tisa there was yet another type of headache, one that might also be classified as kopveitig: it came on when one encountered evil eyes. In Tchorna Tisa we had some people with continuous eyebrows, like bicycle handle-bars. These people had to be shunned or, at least, the kein nehore had to be recited, rather unobtrusively, to counteract the evil eyes. There were women in Tchorna Tisa who had to go straight to bed after they encountered those eyes.
"However, I am convinced that human beings are biased, no matter how much they deny it. And this prejudicial outlook often leads to virulent anti-Semitism. In Tchorna Tisa, for instance, most Ruthenians believed that handlebars were a Jewish trait, and suspected that any child with this affliction must have Jewish parentage. On the other hand, I was told that anti-Semitism was acquired with the mother’s milk.
"Be that as it may, the Ruthenians no longer required the presence of handlebars in order to have a reason to accuse Jews of all sorts of crimes. I remember that when we returned to Jasina in 1992 there were no Jews about, but found the hatred had prevailed for 50 years or more. I wonder why this was so? Doesn’t that speak volumes? Though perhaps one reason for this attitude was that a great many Ukrainians and Russians had acquired Jewish properties, and would not have relished the return of the Jews."
This author never stops surprising, and this within first few pages. He relates his own mother's being almost violated by her own father, her moving out and everyone including her hating him ever since, in very short span of few sentences. Delightful humour, astounding story telling, and mindboggling frankness without frills. And thus he arrives at his own birth, his mother having been duped into love and marriage and childbirth by a man already married with family in another town. Which, taking the whole chain, explains the name Halm passed through female line to him, the various males along the line having duped or worse the wives and children in question. He tells about his mother being employed as expert chef in Bratislava by restaurants, having acquired the skills by herself.
"However, she had not counted on an unwanted pregnancy. Even the rich city households of Humenne never took kindly to such appendages. So when I graduated to the bottle, my mother asked her grandmother to look after me in Tchorna Tisa. But this wasn’t as easy as it sounds. You see, my mother had vowed not to return to her father Avrom-Wolf’s house while he was still alive. So the handover took place at Jasina’s railway station in early 1926, without my explicit approval. I was simply bundled off to the Halm family homestead in Tchorna Tisa, and don’t remember any of it. It must have been done in the dead of night, when I was fast asleep.
"Well, the excitement of my arrival soon died down, and the household returned to some sort of normality, but there was now another mouth to feed. Grandpa was bedridden, and the family lived on the income from the milk and butter from our cow, which wasn’t much. So my mother undertook to pay for my keep, and any medical services had to look after themselves."
His grandfather, a widower with five children who had abandoned them to marry the grandmother, wasn't loved by the deprived half siblings of his mother, and they stole the grandmother's timber that the grandfather planned to sell to rebuild the ancestral Halm home.
"According to my mother, her eldest half-brother viewed his father’s paternal betrayal with utter disgust, and felt fully justified in selling the timber. This wasn’t altogether a double-cross, because Avrom-Wolf had deserted his family, and Yance was taking revenge.
"It was around this time that the whole world was in a deep slump, the Great Depression, but in Tchorna Tisa it was barely felt. There our people were cushioned by a type of poverty that seldom changed."
About education of the people:-
"The Czechoslovak Republic had 20 years, 1918 to 1938, to educate the Ruthenian population, and made a valiant effort at this, but to no avail. ... Realistically speaking, the parents would have been far happier if their children had stayed at home. To them it was of infinitely more value to have the youngsters working in the fields than have them attending that silly school."
But his mother valued education, and sent him to town school, with dairy delivery responsibility.
"Just before dawn on a school day, I would be woken to prepare for school, and begin battling the mighty snow-drifts, carrying our butter, cheese and two cans of milk to sell. The only way I managed to keep on the straight-and-narrow was by following the telephone lines; they always hugged the road, except when they didn’t.
"Tchorna Tisa has always been a good hour’s walk from Jasina and if your feet were tiny the journey took a good ninety minutes. In the summer months I made the journey in an hour, but in the winter the journey really tested my endurance. The air was often filled with the sound of howling wolves and I was scared out of my wits. Sometimes I would bury myself in the snow thinking that if they couldn’t see me they wouldn’t find me. Of course they could smell me.
"The road to school was either slippery as hell, or covered in heavy snow; either way, I had to drag one foot out while the other buried itself deeper in the snow. The most dangerous times were when it was dark, and the slippery parts were covered with fresh snow. Now, I could have walked on the undisturbed snow, but I couldn’t lift the two heavy cans high enough. So, snow storms or not, I had to walk in the slippery grooves and risk the falls."
Of particular interest is the dependence on cattle for not just dairy:-
"The wooden shingles on the roofs, manually fabricated from selected pieces of pine, often curled with the summer heat. The whole house needed attention each year before the winter set in.
"We applied cow manure to the spaces between the wooden logs in our walls, to keep the warmth in and the cold out. During the summer months, the sun would dry out the manure, leaving large gaps between the timbers that had to be filled before the winter set in."
And
"We pampered our livestock in Tchorna Tisa, far more than they do in Australia, and certainly never abandoned them in the fields.
"Throughout the winter months Olga remained indoors, chained to the wall and fed twice a day. In mid-winter we often tied blankets to keep her warm, and the stable door was also padded to keep out the hideously cold winter nights. The last job of the day was to fill all the empty containers with water so that she could have a hot breakfast in the morning made of chopped oat stems mixed with a variety of vegetables.
"Our early springs and late autumns didn’t suit our Olga. She was resentful when kept indoors; in winter she remained fairly tolerant, but whenever we opened the stable door, even in the middle of winter, she would strain the chain that kept her from venturing outside. Her disappointment at not being able to do so was always palpable.
"As soon as spring was in the air, however, Olga would rebel. She would show her displeasure in no uncertain manner. First she would refuse her food, but then we would pamper her to persuade her to eat; she was always regarded as an intimate member of the family."
A chapter of leisurely, beautiful description of the life of the community, around the rivers, timber work and forest, ends with
"Grazing in the forbidden pastures was a punishable offence, and when I spotted Olga in the river, I would have to rush home to pick up a rope and walk all the way to the bridge to retrieve her.
"Our district forester seldom bothered to go searching for me in the bush to check whether Olga was there; he just visited the Zarinok, and if Olga wasn’t there, the fine-ticket would be written. He never bothered to convince himself that Olga was in the bush. He had a thing going with my mother’s friend, Marika; they used to frolic in the bush, but fines were never written for this. Now, I tried the same thing with Marika’s daughter, who was also named Marika, but her mother wasn’t pleased. In fact, she reported the incident to my mother, and I got the hiding of my life. Not fair, really.
"Then the Hungarian forces occupied Carpathia, and our protests about the private ownership of the grazing lands lost their ferocity. The Jews now had far more important things to worry about; they had suddenly become an alien minority in a sea of outraged hatred."
Halm describes gypsies arriving and their lives in his village every year, with the same lyrical beauty that he does the forest and river and everything else. He mentions they arrived circa 1500 in Europe from India, and the time seems interesting. He talks of timber channels in autumn, and it would seem that's it's a natural step from that to downhill skiing.
The author and his Carpathian homeland never ceases to surprise, neglected as it has been by most dominant powers.
"Our neighbours in Tchorna Tisa were largely Hutsuls. The Hutsuls were a proud and resourceful people, often in the vanguard of their country’s national aspirations. It is not widely known that in January 1919 the Hutsuls actually proclaimed the sprawling village of Jasina and Rakhiv, downstream an Independent Hutsul Republic 12 . There is actually evidence to show that a provisional parliament of 48 deputies was elected, and it even included some “misguided” Jews."
That lasted until 11th June 1919 when their army was defeated by Romanians, and this repeated in 1939 for a day when Hungary squashed them this time.
"Most of the people ... spoke a Ruthenian dialect, heavily influenced by their Slavic surroundings. They were dedicated churchgoers, but Sunday afternoons were set aside for drinking."
That pattern for Sunday is strictly observed through most of central Europe, led by German speaking countries.
Chapter fourteen ought to have left out the puerile descriptions of women's bodily functions, which the author as a six year old boy finding funny never grew up out of but his descendents who edited the book ought to have known better. Then again, this might be what one expects from Australia?
While describing the peaceful life in Tchorna Tisa they lived with others, he describes a peaceful togetherness very familiar to Hindus of Kashmir:-
"We Jews scattered in the hills of Tchorna Tisa were conditioned, and passive in response, to anti-Semitic Jew-baiting. On Sundays, we avoided working our fields, and kept mostly indoors on that day. We never knew how much provocation the priest would have instilled in the flock during the church service. When the services were over there would be drunken brawls in the pub, and we often lowered our window shutters and barricaded the doors to avoid anti-Semitic consequences."
Specific to church verses Jews,
"The Easter festivities were observed with devoted reverence, and the blessing of the men of the cloth was the reward. The churches always used ingenious methods to inflame the passions of their parishioners. It was at Easter that the religious indoctrination was at its most ferocious. Our devout Hutsuls heard from their priests the message, imparted in their holy church: “The wretched Jews killed Christ; they nailed Jesus to the Cross, and for that they must endure eternal damnation”. The robed cleric cried from the pulpit, “The Jews killed our Saviour: avenge Jesus Christ!”"
And something common to church flock around the globe, but most so in central Europe:-
"The devoted churchgoers were not receptive to reasoning. Arguments only inflamed their senses. And when the devout were intoxicated, it was a matter of a mixture of religious hatred and invigorating schnapps. When they emerged from the church into the strong sunlight, they all promptly retired to Blimka’s pub. In the pub the alcohol took over, so Jews could not win either way."
And the church false preaching that had gone on since third century a.d. needed no fresh lectures either to remind them of this hatred based on falsehood:
"There were those who pursued the pub and never made-it-to-the-church-on-time, consuming alcoholic beverages early in the day, on empty stomachs. Then there was a second bunch of drinkers, who preferred to do an honest day’s work first, and go to the pub in the evenings. However, both groups blamed the Jews for killing Christ, two thousand years earlier.
"Christmas was another matter. It was a time when the mood changed; it was the time of the birth of the Saviour, a benevolent time. Now Jesus materialised as a Jew, and his birthday was celebrated in style. The Hutsuls were suddenly good neighbours, and even shared their abundance with the Jews; even the virulent anti-Semites were now anxious to be hospitable. They gave and received presents, but since this was also the killing season of the pigs, the Jews had to be vigilant. My grandma Bince was often given a sumptuous part of the pig’s anatomy, and she accepted it graciously, for to do otherwise would have been an unpardonable insult. Now, if you are wondering what happened to that gift, let me assure you that there were plenty of needy Hutsuls who made good use of it."
An interesting tidbit about last names:-
"In those days, the parents of Jewish marriages retained their single names, and the children were split up between them. This was common in those days, when the marriages were performed by the local Rabbi and the husband and wife still retained their former surnames Even if the marriage was a bad one, the offspring still retained the last name of the parent originally allocated. ... It was a biblical phenomenon, still quite common even during my childhood in Tchorna Tisa. I gather there was no compulsion to acquire a husband’s surname after the marriage. Well, in Chassidic households, this was an established biblical practice, and no one dared to question it."
The book is 54% over before the author gets to chapter 24 where he gives a succint summary of history of the region leading up to the 1938 nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia helped by allies, and the next chapter has the travails entailed thereby for local population.
"The Ukrainian nationalists adopted the slogan of blaming the Jews for Christ’s death, and during the time of World War II they pursued the Jews through the streets. It became fashionable to kill the Jews, and the Nazis heartily approved. In other words, this was religious fervour used for criminal ends. I still remember how the Jews barricaded themselves in their houses while the street violence raged. It was all hypocrisy: the Ukrainians attacked the Jews in the streets, but then they conveniently retired to the Jewish pub, to gloat about their exploits. Hardly an appropriate way to celebrate their punishment of the Jews."
Under antisemitic rules of occupation he had to drop school at 14 and work under an assumed name in timber. Then Hungary took the region over, since it had belonged to the empire until WWI.
"When the Hungarian forces first arrived, the Jews danced in the streets. To the Jews, the fact that the Hungarians beat the Nazi forces by a few hours meant survival."
That's said with the usual irony, and a horrifying short account of Hungarians' treatment of Jews follows in chapter 27. Chapter 28 begins with nazis marching in at Easter, 1944, which was precisely when they were losing and aware of it.
"Since Germany was losing World War II, the second task had become urgent: to burn as many Jews as humanly possible."
In April 1944 they were all carted away to Auschwitz.
"The Nazis incarceration of the Jews in Auschwitz would not have been so bad had the Nazis not been hellbent on exterminating all the Jews. They had six years to do it in, but I suppose fighting a war against the world and exterminating the Jews at the same time was not such an easy matter."
Chapter 31 begins at Auschwitz with horror described in the author's style, including benevolence of SS who smilingly allowed crying mother's to accompany their children instead of separating them - to gas chambers.
"Our German-Jewish compatriots found difficulties with interpreting what was happening. Ah, they would accuse everyone other than the guilty parties. I often wondered whether this was an assimilationist attitude, or a blinding inability to see the stark realities. The crematoria burned the Jewish people, day and night, but still many German Jews maintained that the Nazis were not “cold-blooded killers.”
"I was of the Orthodox persuasion, so I believed that modern Zionism had brought this tragedy upon us. We bitterly denounced the Zionists for having brought this debacle upon the Jews; we never condemned the Nazis for their deeds; we saw this as a judgement from Heaven. We as a people were so used to enduring the pogroms, that we hardly uttered a word against the Holocaust.
"For the Jews brought to the camps, the day of reckoning came and went: the Nazis dispatched their Holocaust accusers to the gas chambers. The tenure of office in Auschwitz was hardly ever longer than six months, and this was how millions of innocent Jews were put to death."
Thence they were taken to Mauthausen and then Ebensee along by retreating Germans as allied forces were closing in.
"Very few inmates survived the camps unscathed. Apart from the mental anguish, there was the starvation; the beatings and the dog bites; the epidemics of internal diseases; widespread suppurating, infections and the ever-present acute frostbites. Diarrhoea and dysentery were the most persistent killer diseases and skin breaks in those swollen extremities also proved fatal. In fact, the oedema always immobilised its victims to such an extent that they lost all will to live. These poor people had to make superhuman efforts to get to the food queues and the Appel Platz on time. The seconds always counted - human life never did. At the musters we were often reminded that missing a count was the most criminal offence and the point was usually reinforced, by a beating or a hanging of an offender. Desperately ill inmates would make a last effort to crawl under the building foundations to find a niche in which to expire. On these occasions, the entire camp populations was detained on the Appel Platz for as long as it took to find the wretched victim; his punishment was public, swift and merciless.
"Our German masters were compulsive record keepers and maintained the cold statistics even though the war was coming to an end. However, with the enormous influx of inmates it is doubtful that they managed to adhere to their efficiency routine, while losing the war. Consequently, it is estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 inmates perished in Ebensee; most of them in the last weeks of the war. Even though Germany lost that war, they nevertheless derived infinite satisfaction from their successful genocidal exploits. However, when history eventually judges their deeds it must not assign all the evil credit for the Holocaust to the German people. Let us always remember that the Nazis had faithful helpers and collaborators from the occupied countries of Europe. They enthusiastically assisted the Third Reich in the Jewish Final Solution and in the violent suppression of their own people.
"As I recall the horrors and exterminations of Ebensee I also remember the beautiful people of Austria frolicking in the nearby woods. While the electrified fences precluded us from joining them in the fun, we did share with them the stifling smoke from the crematorium and the burning pits. One could imagine their observations: “How well the humane Germans fed those wretched inmates. Why, they give them roasted meat dinners, everyday.”"
He had chicken pox and later worked in the hospital.
"In the fourteen months I was there I talked with many patients including five rabbis who volunteered valuable information about unconscious or deceased relations and friends, maybe the name of a wife or children, where they were from, and their cause of death. I took a great risk to gather all of this information, which I bundled up and covered in dirt under the floor boards. Anyone could have betrayed me for a bowl of soup or a slice of bread. They were desperate times and even decent people turned desperate. I even had accusations levelled against me, that I was getting information about the dead and their families to enrich myself after the war.
"My self-imposed task of keeping records was a daunting one, because the cause of death often bore no relationship to the patient’s diagnosis. Many of my fellow inmates were beaten to death, or died of malnutrition, but the stock in trade response was a denial of starvation or suffering. No one ever dared to draw attention to such things as the policy of Vernichtung (extermination) ; the term never even existed in the Ebensee camp. So the Nazis killed and plundered with impunity and the word Vernichtung never came into the equation. Even hangings, deliberate or accidental, were never listed as such. Our inmates were not ‘murdered’ by the thousands; they simply ‘expired’ or ‘gave up on life’ voluntarily."
As the end closed in for nazis,
"We were all ordered to gather in the Appel Platz. The Nazi Commandant of the Ebensee camp announced, with breaking voice that “as you have survived in the camp this long, I’m going to make sure you continue to survive. We will take you down into the quarries with food and water. You will be safest there during the final battle which is approaching.”
"I had some contact with the underground— two men who were working in the hospital casualty section—and they told me to spread the word that no one must go to the quarries because the plan was to blow us all up. The whispers turned to shout of defiance as twelve to fifteen thousand men learned the truth.
"Faced with this overwhelming determination not to move from the Appel Platz, the Commandant uncharacteristically backed down and we were dismissed.
"The next morning we noticed that most of the camp perimeter guards were old men with World War I vintage guns. Evidently what had happened was that the SS had gone into the local village and called for volunteers “defend their town” and guard the camp to keep “the vicious criminals inside.
"Talk soon started that we could easily overpower these guards with their weapons that hadn’t been fired in twenty-five years. People started throwing blankets over the electric fences to insulate the current. Then someone had the good idea to turn off the electricity, and the breaking down of the fences began in earnest.
"At 2.30pm on 6 May 1945 a lone black American soldier strayed into the camp, almost accidentally, and that was how Ebensee was liberated. Not having seen black skin before we all thought that he went through burning hell to get to us and, we were ecstatic. The rapport was instantaneous, but the exchanges left a lot to be desired as he spoke American English and we had no European equivalent for it. However, the emotions spoke louder than any words and they expressed it all. A short time later the rest of the G.I.’ s joined the him."
He chose to go to Prague rather than back to Tchorna Tisa.
"When we arrived in Prague in 1945 we were liberated Holocaust survivors, and the Czech people made us very welcome. Our reception in Prague was something else. We arrived on trucks from Ebensee and were unloaded on Vaclavske Namesti, which was filled to capacity. People standing 20 deep welcomed our return.
"The people of Prague had taken up every vantage point. The balconies were full, and the trees and rooftops sagged under their weight. The cheering never stopped. The tears flowed freely on both sides, and the people were so friendly and excited that it made me cry once again. Here at last were the bedraggled victims of the Nazi Holocaust, and the City of Prague was celebrating our return."
He recovered and even found his mother, miraculously, but chose to remain in Prague, working, and later decided to migrate to Australia to get away from Germany.
"In the aftermath of World War II, the ardent Nazi warriors were shedding their distinctive uniforms and making every conceivable effort to get to the American, English or French zones of Germany. They knew that the Nazi past was not going to awaken a great deal of interest there. Although many Nazis claimed vague anti-Nazi affiliations, it seemed that there were no Nazis in postwar Germany. They all managed to fabricate new, outlandish identities, and even Hitler himself was disowned in his own land."
"The Americans were convinced that, the more dedicated the Germans had been to the Nazi cause, the greater their devotion would be to the forthcoming battles. But although the cold war was in full swing, the nations who had fought Hitler were so depleted and so impoverished that another war seemed to be out of the question. President Truman and his ilk put in place the Marshall Plan to resurrect West Germany. So the conquered nation was enjoying a revival while the rest of Europe starved. I still remember how the Czech people struggled to survive while the Germans, across the border, wallowed in luxuries even as they lived amongst war-torn buildings. As a Jewish Holocaust Survivor, this sudden change of heart did not sit well with me at all. My enemies were, first and foremost, the Nazis who had brought Hitler to power and declared war on the Jewish people. These feelings left no room for any crafty manipulations; I simply could not accept my sworn enemies as allies in this new war of expediency."
"Before long the time of departure arrived and, owing to the prevailing political instability, I was instructed to leave everything behind and dramatically disappear, without any explanations or goodbyes (except to my mother.)
"Though I heard stories of untamed Aborigines roaming the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, I reasoned that they couldn’t possibly be worse than the civilised Germans of Europe. So I quickly informed my mother of my plans and since the Czech government intended to seal its borders, she made urgent arrangements herself to go to Israel. In this way, she hoped we might even see each other occasionally. Well, it all worked in our favour, and I visited Israel quite regularly and sent her food parcels to sustain her."
His travel to Australia was via Israel, right in the thick of war.
"Food was scarce, we had no luggage and intermittent shooting went on day and night. During the two months we were stranded there some of us managed to find work through the courtesy of local taxi drivers who would pick up labourers along the streets and deliver us to various employers. The drivers were also responsible for collecting our pay packets, but somehow those weighty envelopes got lost in transit; we never saw them. Nice people those Palestinian taxi drivers, just do not trust them with any pay packets!"
He went back to revisit his country, or rather land, of origin, the region having changed ownership politically several times by then - Ruthenia, Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, and finally Ukraine. While his testimony remains positive about Czech people, Hungary is another story.
"I still remember the deeds of Hungarian criminals in the forests of Tchorna Tisa, where they hunted and killed the poor escaping Jews from Poland. I can neither forgive nor forget these criminal activities."
Other memoirs from Jewish holocaust survivors of Hungary have given a different picture, with an antisemitism tempered by a civilisation and a code of conduct Hungary was very proud of, although there was a brutal semiofficial militia that committed crimes, but even then Eichmann had to personally concentrate to see to holocaust in Hungary and it was much less successful than some of the other occupied lands. Raul Wallenberg, for example, did succeed spectacularly and couldnt have done so had the country and its rules, people etc had been as responsible for the crimes as Halm felt -
"Hungary was certainly a willing partner in the extermination of the Jewish people."
But perhaps it's his alienation from his mother whose citizenship, unlike his own, were Hungarian, due to change of political spectrum meanwhile and not a change of their own residence, that such a complete denunciation of the whole country rather than only the criminals comes from him. He remains loyal to Czechoslovakia and in particular to Czech people, while she did to her Hungarian education and language.
His experience in Hungary is not very different from that of some in Germany.
"Now, I know that we didn’t speak the language and didn’t ask the right questions, but their answers were grossly disjointed. So we quickly came to the conclusion that bloody foreigners were not welcome in Hungary."
He finally got to the town near his village. This was half a century after he had left Europe.
"The proud Hutsuls had lost their uniqueness; there was nothing much to admire now. They used to be rugged individuals, but that had all vanished. Though they now had independence, there was no work, and the poverty was palpable. There was no hotel accommodation. We found that the new Ukrainians didn’t even talk of the old days; they belonged to a new generation which was more anti-Semitic than the old, and they knew little of the old times. This generation recalled the Russian might with mixed feelings and didn’t even remember the Czechs. In the Soviet Union, they had at least had security of employment, price control and goods they enjoyed. Now they had Ukrainian independence, and very little else. The good times had vanished, and when the new Ukrainians talked about them, you were left pondering."
"Many of the residents were Russian, and know nothing of the Jewish tragedy, or they were Ukrainians, who know everything about it and eagerly celebrated our demise. When I asked some Ukrainians if any Jews lived there, they looked at me in utter disbelief. Most of the Ukrainians don’t even know what a Jew is, but that has not diminished their hatred. One doesn’t have to know a person to revile him. The Ukrainian regime was instilled with a Nazi anti-Semitism to last the Ukrainians an eternity. and I could just imagine the reception any Jew would receive if he tried to reclaim his properties, which are owned by Ukrainians."
And after visiting Tcorna Tisa, on the return journey they decided to visit Bratislava, his own birthplace. On the train, they saw gypsies.
"There were a number of Gipsies sitting on the floor on the train, and another one joined them, saying: “My place is also on the floor.” I couldn’t understand this. They had train tickets like all other commuters, but still saw themselves as outcasts? The Gipsies were always treated as second class citizens — bowing and scraping to all and sundry, living in squalor. This was very much in evidence on our train, where the Gipsies were freely abused even as they were huddled on the floor. I sat there wondering: was this inherent or inculcated prejudice? And why did the Gipsies tolerate it? Was this prejudice a characteristic of Eastern Europe?
"Before the war, the Jews were treated like that, but the State of Israel changed everything. Israel has rehabilitated the Jews, and given them credibility and pride of place in society. Even the Diaspora Jews have acquired an unprecedented status — but the poor Gipsies remain a race apart. On that train, did none of the travellers feel diminished because of the way they treated the poor Gipsies? One fat Hungarian even said: “The Gipsy’s place is at our feet.” In fact, the Hungarians call the Gipsies Cigany which encompasses all the unsavoury adjectives of the Teutonic language. As a Holocaust Survivor, I cannot tolerate it. These attitudes must be combated, otherwise history will repeat itself."
Strangely enough, the two separate pieces of Czechoslovakia had never been really together, apparently -
"Arriving in Bratislava for a quick look around, it appeared to be just another provincial town, hardly the capital of an independent state. In fact, the whole of Slovakia was experiencing an economic downturn, and the shops certainly reflected this state of affairs. Anyway, Ruth and I were pleased to leave these stagnant economies and head for greener pastures.
"Prague presented a refreshing change of scenery, and we entered a totally civilised world. All the stores were well stocked and there was no shortage of anything; even the people in the streets were unspoiled by Communism. We found them very friendly and outgoing — a striking difference between Slovakia and Zakarpatska Ukraina. In 1992 I recalled the warmth, the friendship and the hospitality we had received from the people of Prague on our return from the camps some 50 years earlier."
by Albert Halm,
Peter Halm (Editor), Bonita Halm (Editor).
This account begins with a young couple who were the author's great-great-grandparents, arriving in a small place Tchorna Tisa in the Carpathian mountains, and prospering in the beautiful and then still wild place. The author, in midst of introduction chapter mentioning his genealogy from the said couple through others, says:-
"As for myself, religious beliefs are not the fulcrum of my life. I have learned to have reservations about man’s written laws, and prefer to judge people on their honesty and integrity above all else."
Worth attention, that.
"Essentially, the reason for writing this screed is to perpetuate the life and memory of my family. I know of the work that others are doing in this regard and believe that the joint efforts will more readily piece together the mosaic of our extensive family. The Nazi Holocaust was not an accident of history, but a deliberate desire to exterminate a people."
This memoir isn't just about the holocaust era, it's a chronicle of the family and clan the author comes from, and it's a female line lineage all the way reaching back to the couple that pioneered living in the Carpathian village. His great-great-great-grandfather Halm donated land to the church, without any quid pro quo of any sort, having noticed the cemetery getting crowded, which earned him a respect from the village and neighbourhood.
"Great-grandma Bruche was still lionised for her father’s deed, but when it came to the fourth-generation descendant of Avrom-Dovid, myself, there was no benefit left. Come to think of it, nobody even believed me that my benevolent ancestor had donated land to the church. Who in his right mind would want to have a Jew as a perpetual benefactor in a Ukrainian Church?
"Each of Avrom-Dovid’s children inherited a sizeable land holding from their father, but according to my mother the two brothers felt cheated; they wanted the lion’s share of the inheritance.
"Although the family house was primitive, it was in continuous family use for many years, and provided shelter for at least three generations of Halm descendants. My Boobe Bruche, being the eldest daughter, inherited the responsibility of caring for her ageing dad, and after he died she inherited the homestead, carried on farming the land, and continued living there for the rest of her long life.
"The fact that my great-grandmother cared for her ageing father did not stop the bitterness spreading; in fact, it continued even as far as my mother’s generation. It hardly mattered that the original feud between the brothers and sisters was a hundred years old; as long as there was a good reason to hate, they hated.
"According to my mother’s recollections, the rift between the brothers and sisters was so intense that neither Yosel nor Moishe attended their sisters’ funerals, and worse still, the annoyance and the hate were perpetuated long beyond their graves. There was jealousy, envy, resentment and hate, all generated by a feeling of deprivation or dispossession. This epic feud contained all the ingredients of drama and human frailties that one finds in many sizeable families.
"Had the brothers, Yosel and Moishe, survived a few years longer, they would have witnessed a tragedy that turned their family into pitiful paupers. The Holocaust dispossessed us all.
"Fifty or more years have passed, and very few of the original contenders have survived; I venture to say that although we respect our ancestors, none of us has any desire to pursue their frailties. We have lost more than two-thirds of our family and have been dispossessed of all inheritance, so what is the feuding all about? I feel we now have to look ahead and let the unencumbered generations thrive. As far as I am concerned, I have no inkling of what the family feud was about, and am quite willing to forgive and forget past misdemeanours. Who can afford to perpetuate age-old grievances after the tragedy of the Holocaust?"
If only other survivors, of other holocaust, had similar thinking! Next, the story of how Bruche rescued her then only daughter who was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and taken to Poland to serve his second wife, and how she was healed from a serious problem incurred due to the rescue in frosty night, quite a story. But after the cure, it still left her with a headache only cured by standing on a dish. Not explicable through electrical phenomena, since floor was wooden.
"But in Tchorna Tisa there was yet another type of headache, one that might also be classified as kopveitig: it came on when one encountered evil eyes. In Tchorna Tisa we had some people with continuous eyebrows, like bicycle handle-bars. These people had to be shunned or, at least, the kein nehore had to be recited, rather unobtrusively, to counteract the evil eyes. There were women in Tchorna Tisa who had to go straight to bed after they encountered those eyes.
"However, I am convinced that human beings are biased, no matter how much they deny it. And this prejudicial outlook often leads to virulent anti-Semitism. In Tchorna Tisa, for instance, most Ruthenians believed that handlebars were a Jewish trait, and suspected that any child with this affliction must have Jewish parentage. On the other hand, I was told that anti-Semitism was acquired with the mother’s milk.
"Be that as it may, the Ruthenians no longer required the presence of handlebars in order to have a reason to accuse Jews of all sorts of crimes. I remember that when we returned to Jasina in 1992 there were no Jews about, but found the hatred had prevailed for 50 years or more. I wonder why this was so? Doesn’t that speak volumes? Though perhaps one reason for this attitude was that a great many Ukrainians and Russians had acquired Jewish properties, and would not have relished the return of the Jews."
This author never stops surprising, and this within first few pages. He relates his own mother's being almost violated by her own father, her moving out and everyone including her hating him ever since, in very short span of few sentences. Delightful humour, astounding story telling, and mindboggling frankness without frills. And thus he arrives at his own birth, his mother having been duped into love and marriage and childbirth by a man already married with family in another town. Which, taking the whole chain, explains the name Halm passed through female line to him, the various males along the line having duped or worse the wives and children in question. He tells about his mother being employed as expert chef in Bratislava by restaurants, having acquired the skills by herself.
"However, she had not counted on an unwanted pregnancy. Even the rich city households of Humenne never took kindly to such appendages. So when I graduated to the bottle, my mother asked her grandmother to look after me in Tchorna Tisa. But this wasn’t as easy as it sounds. You see, my mother had vowed not to return to her father Avrom-Wolf’s house while he was still alive. So the handover took place at Jasina’s railway station in early 1926, without my explicit approval. I was simply bundled off to the Halm family homestead in Tchorna Tisa, and don’t remember any of it. It must have been done in the dead of night, when I was fast asleep.
"Well, the excitement of my arrival soon died down, and the household returned to some sort of normality, but there was now another mouth to feed. Grandpa was bedridden, and the family lived on the income from the milk and butter from our cow, which wasn’t much. So my mother undertook to pay for my keep, and any medical services had to look after themselves."
His grandfather, a widower with five children who had abandoned them to marry the grandmother, wasn't loved by the deprived half siblings of his mother, and they stole the grandmother's timber that the grandfather planned to sell to rebuild the ancestral Halm home.
"According to my mother, her eldest half-brother viewed his father’s paternal betrayal with utter disgust, and felt fully justified in selling the timber. This wasn’t altogether a double-cross, because Avrom-Wolf had deserted his family, and Yance was taking revenge.
"It was around this time that the whole world was in a deep slump, the Great Depression, but in Tchorna Tisa it was barely felt. There our people were cushioned by a type of poverty that seldom changed."
About education of the people:-
"The Czechoslovak Republic had 20 years, 1918 to 1938, to educate the Ruthenian population, and made a valiant effort at this, but to no avail. ... Realistically speaking, the parents would have been far happier if their children had stayed at home. To them it was of infinitely more value to have the youngsters working in the fields than have them attending that silly school."
But his mother valued education, and sent him to town school, with dairy delivery responsibility.
"Just before dawn on a school day, I would be woken to prepare for school, and begin battling the mighty snow-drifts, carrying our butter, cheese and two cans of milk to sell. The only way I managed to keep on the straight-and-narrow was by following the telephone lines; they always hugged the road, except when they didn’t.
"Tchorna Tisa has always been a good hour’s walk from Jasina and if your feet were tiny the journey took a good ninety minutes. In the summer months I made the journey in an hour, but in the winter the journey really tested my endurance. The air was often filled with the sound of howling wolves and I was scared out of my wits. Sometimes I would bury myself in the snow thinking that if they couldn’t see me they wouldn’t find me. Of course they could smell me.
"The road to school was either slippery as hell, or covered in heavy snow; either way, I had to drag one foot out while the other buried itself deeper in the snow. The most dangerous times were when it was dark, and the slippery parts were covered with fresh snow. Now, I could have walked on the undisturbed snow, but I couldn’t lift the two heavy cans high enough. So, snow storms or not, I had to walk in the slippery grooves and risk the falls."
Of particular interest is the dependence on cattle for not just dairy:-
"The wooden shingles on the roofs, manually fabricated from selected pieces of pine, often curled with the summer heat. The whole house needed attention each year before the winter set in.
"We applied cow manure to the spaces between the wooden logs in our walls, to keep the warmth in and the cold out. During the summer months, the sun would dry out the manure, leaving large gaps between the timbers that had to be filled before the winter set in."
And
"We pampered our livestock in Tchorna Tisa, far more than they do in Australia, and certainly never abandoned them in the fields.
"Throughout the winter months Olga remained indoors, chained to the wall and fed twice a day. In mid-winter we often tied blankets to keep her warm, and the stable door was also padded to keep out the hideously cold winter nights. The last job of the day was to fill all the empty containers with water so that she could have a hot breakfast in the morning made of chopped oat stems mixed with a variety of vegetables.
"Our early springs and late autumns didn’t suit our Olga. She was resentful when kept indoors; in winter she remained fairly tolerant, but whenever we opened the stable door, even in the middle of winter, she would strain the chain that kept her from venturing outside. Her disappointment at not being able to do so was always palpable.
"As soon as spring was in the air, however, Olga would rebel. She would show her displeasure in no uncertain manner. First she would refuse her food, but then we would pamper her to persuade her to eat; she was always regarded as an intimate member of the family."
A chapter of leisurely, beautiful description of the life of the community, around the rivers, timber work and forest, ends with
"Grazing in the forbidden pastures was a punishable offence, and when I spotted Olga in the river, I would have to rush home to pick up a rope and walk all the way to the bridge to retrieve her.
"Our district forester seldom bothered to go searching for me in the bush to check whether Olga was there; he just visited the Zarinok, and if Olga wasn’t there, the fine-ticket would be written. He never bothered to convince himself that Olga was in the bush. He had a thing going with my mother’s friend, Marika; they used to frolic in the bush, but fines were never written for this. Now, I tried the same thing with Marika’s daughter, who was also named Marika, but her mother wasn’t pleased. In fact, she reported the incident to my mother, and I got the hiding of my life. Not fair, really.
"Then the Hungarian forces occupied Carpathia, and our protests about the private ownership of the grazing lands lost their ferocity. The Jews now had far more important things to worry about; they had suddenly become an alien minority in a sea of outraged hatred."
Halm describes gypsies arriving and their lives in his village every year, with the same lyrical beauty that he does the forest and river and everything else. He mentions they arrived circa 1500 in Europe from India, and the time seems interesting. He talks of timber channels in autumn, and it would seem that's it's a natural step from that to downhill skiing.
The author and his Carpathian homeland never ceases to surprise, neglected as it has been by most dominant powers.
"Our neighbours in Tchorna Tisa were largely Hutsuls. The Hutsuls were a proud and resourceful people, often in the vanguard of their country’s national aspirations. It is not widely known that in January 1919 the Hutsuls actually proclaimed the sprawling village of Jasina and Rakhiv, downstream an Independent Hutsul Republic 12 . There is actually evidence to show that a provisional parliament of 48 deputies was elected, and it even included some “misguided” Jews."
That lasted until 11th June 1919 when their army was defeated by Romanians, and this repeated in 1939 for a day when Hungary squashed them this time.
"Most of the people ... spoke a Ruthenian dialect, heavily influenced by their Slavic surroundings. They were dedicated churchgoers, but Sunday afternoons were set aside for drinking."
That pattern for Sunday is strictly observed through most of central Europe, led by German speaking countries.
Chapter fourteen ought to have left out the puerile descriptions of women's bodily functions, which the author as a six year old boy finding funny never grew up out of but his descendents who edited the book ought to have known better. Then again, this might be what one expects from Australia?
While describing the peaceful life in Tchorna Tisa they lived with others, he describes a peaceful togetherness very familiar to Hindus of Kashmir:-
"We Jews scattered in the hills of Tchorna Tisa were conditioned, and passive in response, to anti-Semitic Jew-baiting. On Sundays, we avoided working our fields, and kept mostly indoors on that day. We never knew how much provocation the priest would have instilled in the flock during the church service. When the services were over there would be drunken brawls in the pub, and we often lowered our window shutters and barricaded the doors to avoid anti-Semitic consequences."
Specific to church verses Jews,
"The Easter festivities were observed with devoted reverence, and the blessing of the men of the cloth was the reward. The churches always used ingenious methods to inflame the passions of their parishioners. It was at Easter that the religious indoctrination was at its most ferocious. Our devout Hutsuls heard from their priests the message, imparted in their holy church: “The wretched Jews killed Christ; they nailed Jesus to the Cross, and for that they must endure eternal damnation”. The robed cleric cried from the pulpit, “The Jews killed our Saviour: avenge Jesus Christ!”"
And something common to church flock around the globe, but most so in central Europe:-
"The devoted churchgoers were not receptive to reasoning. Arguments only inflamed their senses. And when the devout were intoxicated, it was a matter of a mixture of religious hatred and invigorating schnapps. When they emerged from the church into the strong sunlight, they all promptly retired to Blimka’s pub. In the pub the alcohol took over, so Jews could not win either way."
And the church false preaching that had gone on since third century a.d. needed no fresh lectures either to remind them of this hatred based on falsehood:
"There were those who pursued the pub and never made-it-to-the-church-on-time, consuming alcoholic beverages early in the day, on empty stomachs. Then there was a second bunch of drinkers, who preferred to do an honest day’s work first, and go to the pub in the evenings. However, both groups blamed the Jews for killing Christ, two thousand years earlier.
"Christmas was another matter. It was a time when the mood changed; it was the time of the birth of the Saviour, a benevolent time. Now Jesus materialised as a Jew, and his birthday was celebrated in style. The Hutsuls were suddenly good neighbours, and even shared their abundance with the Jews; even the virulent anti-Semites were now anxious to be hospitable. They gave and received presents, but since this was also the killing season of the pigs, the Jews had to be vigilant. My grandma Bince was often given a sumptuous part of the pig’s anatomy, and she accepted it graciously, for to do otherwise would have been an unpardonable insult. Now, if you are wondering what happened to that gift, let me assure you that there were plenty of needy Hutsuls who made good use of it."
An interesting tidbit about last names:-
"In those days, the parents of Jewish marriages retained their single names, and the children were split up between them. This was common in those days, when the marriages were performed by the local Rabbi and the husband and wife still retained their former surnames Even if the marriage was a bad one, the offspring still retained the last name of the parent originally allocated. ... It was a biblical phenomenon, still quite common even during my childhood in Tchorna Tisa. I gather there was no compulsion to acquire a husband’s surname after the marriage. Well, in Chassidic households, this was an established biblical practice, and no one dared to question it."
The book is 54% over before the author gets to chapter 24 where he gives a succint summary of history of the region leading up to the 1938 nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia helped by allies, and the next chapter has the travails entailed thereby for local population.
"The Ukrainian nationalists adopted the slogan of blaming the Jews for Christ’s death, and during the time of World War II they pursued the Jews through the streets. It became fashionable to kill the Jews, and the Nazis heartily approved. In other words, this was religious fervour used for criminal ends. I still remember how the Jews barricaded themselves in their houses while the street violence raged. It was all hypocrisy: the Ukrainians attacked the Jews in the streets, but then they conveniently retired to the Jewish pub, to gloat about their exploits. Hardly an appropriate way to celebrate their punishment of the Jews."
Under antisemitic rules of occupation he had to drop school at 14 and work under an assumed name in timber. Then Hungary took the region over, since it had belonged to the empire until WWI.
"When the Hungarian forces first arrived, the Jews danced in the streets. To the Jews, the fact that the Hungarians beat the Nazi forces by a few hours meant survival."
That's said with the usual irony, and a horrifying short account of Hungarians' treatment of Jews follows in chapter 27. Chapter 28 begins with nazis marching in at Easter, 1944, which was precisely when they were losing and aware of it.
"Since Germany was losing World War II, the second task had become urgent: to burn as many Jews as humanly possible."
In April 1944 they were all carted away to Auschwitz.
"The Nazis incarceration of the Jews in Auschwitz would not have been so bad had the Nazis not been hellbent on exterminating all the Jews. They had six years to do it in, but I suppose fighting a war against the world and exterminating the Jews at the same time was not such an easy matter."
Chapter 31 begins at Auschwitz with horror described in the author's style, including benevolence of SS who smilingly allowed crying mother's to accompany their children instead of separating them - to gas chambers.
"Our German-Jewish compatriots found difficulties with interpreting what was happening. Ah, they would accuse everyone other than the guilty parties. I often wondered whether this was an assimilationist attitude, or a blinding inability to see the stark realities. The crematoria burned the Jewish people, day and night, but still many German Jews maintained that the Nazis were not “cold-blooded killers.”
"I was of the Orthodox persuasion, so I believed that modern Zionism had brought this tragedy upon us. We bitterly denounced the Zionists for having brought this debacle upon the Jews; we never condemned the Nazis for their deeds; we saw this as a judgement from Heaven. We as a people were so used to enduring the pogroms, that we hardly uttered a word against the Holocaust.
"For the Jews brought to the camps, the day of reckoning came and went: the Nazis dispatched their Holocaust accusers to the gas chambers. The tenure of office in Auschwitz was hardly ever longer than six months, and this was how millions of innocent Jews were put to death."
Thence they were taken to Mauthausen and then Ebensee along by retreating Germans as allied forces were closing in.
"Very few inmates survived the camps unscathed. Apart from the mental anguish, there was the starvation; the beatings and the dog bites; the epidemics of internal diseases; widespread suppurating, infections and the ever-present acute frostbites. Diarrhoea and dysentery were the most persistent killer diseases and skin breaks in those swollen extremities also proved fatal. In fact, the oedema always immobilised its victims to such an extent that they lost all will to live. These poor people had to make superhuman efforts to get to the food queues and the Appel Platz on time. The seconds always counted - human life never did. At the musters we were often reminded that missing a count was the most criminal offence and the point was usually reinforced, by a beating or a hanging of an offender. Desperately ill inmates would make a last effort to crawl under the building foundations to find a niche in which to expire. On these occasions, the entire camp populations was detained on the Appel Platz for as long as it took to find the wretched victim; his punishment was public, swift and merciless.
"Our German masters were compulsive record keepers and maintained the cold statistics even though the war was coming to an end. However, with the enormous influx of inmates it is doubtful that they managed to adhere to their efficiency routine, while losing the war. Consequently, it is estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 inmates perished in Ebensee; most of them in the last weeks of the war. Even though Germany lost that war, they nevertheless derived infinite satisfaction from their successful genocidal exploits. However, when history eventually judges their deeds it must not assign all the evil credit for the Holocaust to the German people. Let us always remember that the Nazis had faithful helpers and collaborators from the occupied countries of Europe. They enthusiastically assisted the Third Reich in the Jewish Final Solution and in the violent suppression of their own people.
"As I recall the horrors and exterminations of Ebensee I also remember the beautiful people of Austria frolicking in the nearby woods. While the electrified fences precluded us from joining them in the fun, we did share with them the stifling smoke from the crematorium and the burning pits. One could imagine their observations: “How well the humane Germans fed those wretched inmates. Why, they give them roasted meat dinners, everyday.”"
He had chicken pox and later worked in the hospital.
"In the fourteen months I was there I talked with many patients including five rabbis who volunteered valuable information about unconscious or deceased relations and friends, maybe the name of a wife or children, where they were from, and their cause of death. I took a great risk to gather all of this information, which I bundled up and covered in dirt under the floor boards. Anyone could have betrayed me for a bowl of soup or a slice of bread. They were desperate times and even decent people turned desperate. I even had accusations levelled against me, that I was getting information about the dead and their families to enrich myself after the war.
"My self-imposed task of keeping records was a daunting one, because the cause of death often bore no relationship to the patient’s diagnosis. Many of my fellow inmates were beaten to death, or died of malnutrition, but the stock in trade response was a denial of starvation or suffering. No one ever dared to draw attention to such things as the policy of Vernichtung (extermination) ; the term never even existed in the Ebensee camp. So the Nazis killed and plundered with impunity and the word Vernichtung never came into the equation. Even hangings, deliberate or accidental, were never listed as such. Our inmates were not ‘murdered’ by the thousands; they simply ‘expired’ or ‘gave up on life’ voluntarily."
As the end closed in for nazis,
"We were all ordered to gather in the Appel Platz. The Nazi Commandant of the Ebensee camp announced, with breaking voice that “as you have survived in the camp this long, I’m going to make sure you continue to survive. We will take you down into the quarries with food and water. You will be safest there during the final battle which is approaching.”
"I had some contact with the underground— two men who were working in the hospital casualty section—and they told me to spread the word that no one must go to the quarries because the plan was to blow us all up. The whispers turned to shout of defiance as twelve to fifteen thousand men learned the truth.
"Faced with this overwhelming determination not to move from the Appel Platz, the Commandant uncharacteristically backed down and we were dismissed.
"The next morning we noticed that most of the camp perimeter guards were old men with World War I vintage guns. Evidently what had happened was that the SS had gone into the local village and called for volunteers “defend their town” and guard the camp to keep “the vicious criminals inside.
"Talk soon started that we could easily overpower these guards with their weapons that hadn’t been fired in twenty-five years. People started throwing blankets over the electric fences to insulate the current. Then someone had the good idea to turn off the electricity, and the breaking down of the fences began in earnest.
"At 2.30pm on 6 May 1945 a lone black American soldier strayed into the camp, almost accidentally, and that was how Ebensee was liberated. Not having seen black skin before we all thought that he went through burning hell to get to us and, we were ecstatic. The rapport was instantaneous, but the exchanges left a lot to be desired as he spoke American English and we had no European equivalent for it. However, the emotions spoke louder than any words and they expressed it all. A short time later the rest of the G.I.’ s joined the him."
He chose to go to Prague rather than back to Tchorna Tisa.
"When we arrived in Prague in 1945 we were liberated Holocaust survivors, and the Czech people made us very welcome. Our reception in Prague was something else. We arrived on trucks from Ebensee and were unloaded on Vaclavske Namesti, which was filled to capacity. People standing 20 deep welcomed our return.
"The people of Prague had taken up every vantage point. The balconies were full, and the trees and rooftops sagged under their weight. The cheering never stopped. The tears flowed freely on both sides, and the people were so friendly and excited that it made me cry once again. Here at last were the bedraggled victims of the Nazi Holocaust, and the City of Prague was celebrating our return."
He recovered and even found his mother, miraculously, but chose to remain in Prague, working, and later decided to migrate to Australia to get away from Germany.
"In the aftermath of World War II, the ardent Nazi warriors were shedding their distinctive uniforms and making every conceivable effort to get to the American, English or French zones of Germany. They knew that the Nazi past was not going to awaken a great deal of interest there. Although many Nazis claimed vague anti-Nazi affiliations, it seemed that there were no Nazis in postwar Germany. They all managed to fabricate new, outlandish identities, and even Hitler himself was disowned in his own land."
"The Americans were convinced that, the more dedicated the Germans had been to the Nazi cause, the greater their devotion would be to the forthcoming battles. But although the cold war was in full swing, the nations who had fought Hitler were so depleted and so impoverished that another war seemed to be out of the question. President Truman and his ilk put in place the Marshall Plan to resurrect West Germany. So the conquered nation was enjoying a revival while the rest of Europe starved. I still remember how the Czech people struggled to survive while the Germans, across the border, wallowed in luxuries even as they lived amongst war-torn buildings. As a Jewish Holocaust Survivor, this sudden change of heart did not sit well with me at all. My enemies were, first and foremost, the Nazis who had brought Hitler to power and declared war on the Jewish people. These feelings left no room for any crafty manipulations; I simply could not accept my sworn enemies as allies in this new war of expediency."
"Before long the time of departure arrived and, owing to the prevailing political instability, I was instructed to leave everything behind and dramatically disappear, without any explanations or goodbyes (except to my mother.)
"Though I heard stories of untamed Aborigines roaming the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, I reasoned that they couldn’t possibly be worse than the civilised Germans of Europe. So I quickly informed my mother of my plans and since the Czech government intended to seal its borders, she made urgent arrangements herself to go to Israel. In this way, she hoped we might even see each other occasionally. Well, it all worked in our favour, and I visited Israel quite regularly and sent her food parcels to sustain her."
His travel to Australia was via Israel, right in the thick of war.
"Food was scarce, we had no luggage and intermittent shooting went on day and night. During the two months we were stranded there some of us managed to find work through the courtesy of local taxi drivers who would pick up labourers along the streets and deliver us to various employers. The drivers were also responsible for collecting our pay packets, but somehow those weighty envelopes got lost in transit; we never saw them. Nice people those Palestinian taxi drivers, just do not trust them with any pay packets!"
He went back to revisit his country, or rather land, of origin, the region having changed ownership politically several times by then - Ruthenia, Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, and finally Ukraine. While his testimony remains positive about Czech people, Hungary is another story.
"I still remember the deeds of Hungarian criminals in the forests of Tchorna Tisa, where they hunted and killed the poor escaping Jews from Poland. I can neither forgive nor forget these criminal activities."
Other memoirs from Jewish holocaust survivors of Hungary have given a different picture, with an antisemitism tempered by a civilisation and a code of conduct Hungary was very proud of, although there was a brutal semiofficial militia that committed crimes, but even then Eichmann had to personally concentrate to see to holocaust in Hungary and it was much less successful than some of the other occupied lands. Raul Wallenberg, for example, did succeed spectacularly and couldnt have done so had the country and its rules, people etc had been as responsible for the crimes as Halm felt -
"Hungary was certainly a willing partner in the extermination of the Jewish people."
But perhaps it's his alienation from his mother whose citizenship, unlike his own, were Hungarian, due to change of political spectrum meanwhile and not a change of their own residence, that such a complete denunciation of the whole country rather than only the criminals comes from him. He remains loyal to Czechoslovakia and in particular to Czech people, while she did to her Hungarian education and language.
His experience in Hungary is not very different from that of some in Germany.
"Now, I know that we didn’t speak the language and didn’t ask the right questions, but their answers were grossly disjointed. So we quickly came to the conclusion that bloody foreigners were not welcome in Hungary."
He finally got to the town near his village. This was half a century after he had left Europe.
"The proud Hutsuls had lost their uniqueness; there was nothing much to admire now. They used to be rugged individuals, but that had all vanished. Though they now had independence, there was no work, and the poverty was palpable. There was no hotel accommodation. We found that the new Ukrainians didn’t even talk of the old days; they belonged to a new generation which was more anti-Semitic than the old, and they knew little of the old times. This generation recalled the Russian might with mixed feelings and didn’t even remember the Czechs. In the Soviet Union, they had at least had security of employment, price control and goods they enjoyed. Now they had Ukrainian independence, and very little else. The good times had vanished, and when the new Ukrainians talked about them, you were left pondering."
"Many of the residents were Russian, and know nothing of the Jewish tragedy, or they were Ukrainians, who know everything about it and eagerly celebrated our demise. When I asked some Ukrainians if any Jews lived there, they looked at me in utter disbelief. Most of the Ukrainians don’t even know what a Jew is, but that has not diminished their hatred. One doesn’t have to know a person to revile him. The Ukrainian regime was instilled with a Nazi anti-Semitism to last the Ukrainians an eternity. and I could just imagine the reception any Jew would receive if he tried to reclaim his properties, which are owned by Ukrainians."
And after visiting Tcorna Tisa, on the return journey they decided to visit Bratislava, his own birthplace. On the train, they saw gypsies.
"There were a number of Gipsies sitting on the floor on the train, and another one joined them, saying: “My place is also on the floor.” I couldn’t understand this. They had train tickets like all other commuters, but still saw themselves as outcasts? The Gipsies were always treated as second class citizens — bowing and scraping to all and sundry, living in squalor. This was very much in evidence on our train, where the Gipsies were freely abused even as they were huddled on the floor. I sat there wondering: was this inherent or inculcated prejudice? And why did the Gipsies tolerate it? Was this prejudice a characteristic of Eastern Europe?
"Before the war, the Jews were treated like that, but the State of Israel changed everything. Israel has rehabilitated the Jews, and given them credibility and pride of place in society. Even the Diaspora Jews have acquired an unprecedented status — but the poor Gipsies remain a race apart. On that train, did none of the travellers feel diminished because of the way they treated the poor Gipsies? One fat Hungarian even said: “The Gipsy’s place is at our feet.” In fact, the Hungarians call the Gipsies Cigany which encompasses all the unsavoury adjectives of the Teutonic language. As a Holocaust Survivor, I cannot tolerate it. These attitudes must be combated, otherwise history will repeat itself."
Strangely enough, the two separate pieces of Czechoslovakia had never been really together, apparently -
"Arriving in Bratislava for a quick look around, it appeared to be just another provincial town, hardly the capital of an independent state. In fact, the whole of Slovakia was experiencing an economic downturn, and the shops certainly reflected this state of affairs. Anyway, Ruth and I were pleased to leave these stagnant economies and head for greener pastures.
"Prague presented a refreshing change of scenery, and we entered a totally civilised world. All the stores were well stocked and there was no shortage of anything; even the people in the streets were unspoiled by Communism. We found them very friendly and outgoing — a striking difference between Slovakia and Zakarpatska Ukraina. In 1992 I recalled the warmth, the friendship and the hospitality we had received from the people of Prague on our return from the camps some 50 years earlier."
