Walter Sorel
for The Holocaust
“Never Forget” is the slogan of remembrance that was coined following the September 11th terrorist attacks. “Never Again” is the slogan of remembrance uttered following the Holocaust. History repeating itself has been a constant in society since the beginning of time. These slogans are designed to prevent just that. The gravity of teaching history can be perfectly summed up in George Santayana’s famous quote: “Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.” Primo Levi expressed a similar sentiment about the Holocaust: “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it” (Levi). We, as a society, have an obligation to share our ancestors’ stories, to learn from their accomplishments and their failures. This can also be applied to our personal histories. I am fortunate to be surrounded by a family that is well acquainted with its history, and I am even more thankful to have a 70-page testimony of a relative who survived the Holocaust. Knowing the history of my ethnic background has been crucial to discovering my identity and relationship with the world. It is only through learning from the wrongs of the people that came before us that we can prevent tragedy and carnage from happening again. Halina Den’s story of resilience has not only informed my knowledge of the Holocaust, but it has made me prouder of my identity as a Jewish man.
Halina, my grandfather’s cousin and my first cousin twice removed, was born in Radom, Poland in 1922 to Mordkhai and Ita Den. At age 19, all the Jews of Radom were forced to move into a ghetto. To avoid deportation to an extermination camp in 1942, Halina took employment in the Kromolowski factory sewing saddles and mattresses for the German Army. She was separated from her family, many of whom were already killed by the Nazis, and forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day. By 1943, of the original 30,000 Jews in the Radom Ghetto, only 1,500 were still alive. Halina was ordered to dig peat for fuel, always guarded by the Schutzstaffel (SS). Later that year she was sent to AZ Pionki, a munitions factory, and then to Hindenburg, a sub-camp of Auschwitz. This is when her testimony begins.
At the beginning of August 1944, 350 women, most of them Polish Jews, arrived at the Auschwitz sub-camp located in Zabrze, Poland. Most of the women were around the same age as Halina: early twenties. Halina writes that she felt a piece of her life was taken away from her, the part where she could just be a girl in her twenties. When a secret pen-pal relationship began between the women and French prisoners who also worked in the factory, Halina writes that it was a tiny thing that reminded her of her youth: “…we were thankful for these rare moments when we could act like girls of our age would, under normal circumstances” (Den). This covert relationship was not only an act of resilience, but also served as a productive way to cope with the cruel and inhumane reality.
Throughout the testimony, Halina shares stories about the director of the camp, Lagerfuhrer Muller, and his mysterious and barbaric acts. One of the memories that remained etched in her memory was how he would put the prisoners in certain groups and push the women toward each other, shouting demeaning and offensive remarks. “He stood in front of us and began to bark out, and as soon as one of us responded to a called number, he would place his open palm behind her head and push her, literally flush, toward one of the four groups formed…It filled me with the kind of rage which can lead one to a most irrational behavior, including murder. God! How I would have liked to punch the brute on his shapely Arian nose” (Den). The strength to suppress her powerful emotions by biting her tongue shows her practicality, knowing that any challenge to Muller would lead to her death: “…the self-preservation instinct prevailed again, and, humiliated and swallowing tears of frustration, I let myself be pushed without the slightest sign of defiance” (Den).
The dehumanization Halina faced throughout her time in Hindenburg is similar to what author Primo Levi felt in Auschwitz: “to destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side, you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment” (Levi). Here, Levi is almost giving up, conceding that the Nazis have accomplished their goal to make Jews feel like an inferior race.
Halina frequently describes Muller’s odd relationships with women and his disturbing behavior that made him even more frightening. At the beginning of her stay, Halina noticed a scandalous relationship between Muller and a new Jewish chambermaid, Pela. Halina discovered that Pela had fallen in love with Muller and Pela teased him with flirtatious, playful behavior. Halina describes their relationship as if it were any other young couple in love. “We could hear their carefree laughter, a sound not often heard in those troubled times. It was unmistakably love, a feeling strictly forbidden between an SS man and a Jewish girl” (Den). This relationship is another example of the Jewish women’s lost youth. Despite this infatuation, Muller’s love of women did not stop with Pela. When a new dispensary for sick people was built, Muller hired a beautiful female doctor, according to Halina, less for her medical expertise than her good looks. Halina refers to this as an enormous “weakness” (Den).
Muller also had a strange personal encounter with Halina that sent shivers down my spine. A few months into her stay at Hindenburg, Halina developed a painful cyst under her arm which needed to be opened in the hospital. She was put to sleep with an insufficient amount of anesthetic and felt incredible pain throughout the operation. She writes, “I woke up crying, and, to my great surprise, I noticed Muller standing next to the table looking at the whole procedure. I was later told that he was a frequent visitor in the hospital, particularly during surgery. Nobody could figure out whether he was interested in our young doctor or in the sight of blood” (Den). Throughout the testimony, Halina paints a sophisticated and complicated picture of Muller, and once questions whether he cared for the Jewish girls in some sort of paternal way.
Towards mid-December of 1944, Muller decided to throw a Christmas party for both wealthy German couples and the Jewish prisoners. The bizarre decision to provide entertainment to prisoners was puzzling and confusing to Halina: “To provide entertainment for a group of Jewish concentration camp prisoners was unheard of and I am quite positive that ours was the only experience of this kind. I often wonder about the motivation behind Muller’s unusual behavior…it seems to me, that Muller had finally realized that all of us, including himself, were young people caught in an impossible situation and deprived of their normal youth” (Den). This experience is just one stark contrast to the suffering and humiliation they endured.
In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi argues it is human nature to use any means necessary to survive. “Man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly” (Levi). Halina’s experience was no different. The women were forced to work 14 to 16 hour shifts either during the day or overnight. Halina writes that she would often sob from exhaustion but maintain her composure while working. With her short stature, it became increasingly difficult for Halina to carry the finished products, hand grenades. She would secretly ask someone to help her because were she caught not being able to sufficiently do her job, she would have been sent to the gas chambers. The stakes were life or death. The SS guards were always on high alert and had the power to kill a prisoner for whatever reason. Like Levi, Halina did whatever she could to stay alive.
After a hard day of labor, Halina was one of three women rewarded for their hard work. The gift was a can of smoked mussels, a food rarely seen in Poland. Halina describes forcing herself to swallow the “disgusting” mussels quickly for the protein (Den). Dying of exhaustion and starvation was common at concentration camps, and any bit of protein was seen as a blessing of sorts. Again, Halina proves that she would do whatever she could to survive and make it through her time at Hindenburg.
Throughout the testimony, Halina describes how the relationships she made with some of the other women helped her get through such harsh times. Halina noticed there was a girl not showering with the rest of the group and went over to find out why. She learned that this girl, Mukrowa, was three months pregnant and had been trying to keep it a secret since her arrival at Hindenburg. “I tried to console her as best as I could, but she was smart enough to realize what terrible danger she was in. Sooner or later…her pregnancy will be discovered, and she will be sent straight to the Auschwitz crematorium. I felt separately sorry for her and I spent a lot of time trying to think of some solution, but I couldn’t come up with any plausible idea” (Den). By even befriending someone who was breaking the rules, Halina put herself in danger. “I was very much afraid of being involved in her scheme because I was well aware of the fatal consequences of being discovered” (Den).
When the Polish women exchanged letters with the French workers, the friendships that developed among the women demonstrates efforts at coping and resilience. Halina’s friendship with Mukrowa led to other forms of coping: “[Mukrowa] managed to talk one of the foreign workers in her group into supplying her with a local newspaper,” Halina writes (Den). She goes on to explain that with Mukrowa not knowing any German, Halina became a translator. She would surreptitiously hide in a bathroom stall and read the paper before flushing it down the toilet. This was incredibly dangerous and life-threatening, but Halina writes that this simple act of reading a newspaper gave her so much hope and happiness: “I will never forget the feeling of elation which I experienced after reading” (Den). She would get updates on the war but would only share them with Mukrowa to prevent herself from being caught. This changed Halina’s psyche and ability to deal with the atrocious treatment she and the others were facing. Learning that the American army was occupying Aachen made Halina optimistic that the Germans could lose the war. This optimism affected how she interacted with her fellow prisoners. Halina began to give pep talks during their usual evening chats, trying to motivate them to persist and keep fighting.
On January 14th, 1945, in the middle of Halina’s late night 14-hour shift, the SS made the abrupt decision to evacuate Hindenburg. On foot in the dead of winter, Halina and the other Polish women were forced to walk approximately eight miles from Zabrze, Poland to Gleiwitz, Poland. While passing a small village in between the two cities, Halina recounts a few children asking an SS guard: “Is it true that these are Jews?” To which the guard replies, “Of course, don’t you see that they have horns?” Halina attributes most of the women surviving this march to their fear. “It didn’t escape our attention that our guards, who were usually unarmed, had been issued rifles for this occasion and we were afraid that those of us unable to walk might be shot on the spot. As I found out after the war, this is precisely what happened to many prisoners who could not keep up the pace in similar circumstances” (Den).
Once the group arrived in Gleiwitz, they were taken west via train for several days. Halina describes these days as the worst of her entire experience. She found herself in mortal danger standing for days on end without water or food. She describes herself suffocating due to her petite body being pressed upon by those standing next to her. “For me, this journey was a breaking point physically as well as mentally. Since I was shorter than most other girls, my face was constantly pressed against their bodies and I had great difficulty breathing…Soon I reached a state of semi-consciousness, alternating between hallucinating and lucidly trying to think of a way out of this hell” (Den). They eventually arrived at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Nordhausen, Germany.
Halina describes the camp as having a reputation as “the hell of all concentration camps” (Den). However, Halina and the other women began their stay in the German residences, which were more comfortable than what she expected. Soon after their arrival at Dora, Mukrowa gave birth to a girl. To Halina’s surprise, the baby was welcomed by the Germans and well-taken care of. Upon meeting the baby for the first time, Halina describes her thoughts: “Little girl, you were so unwanted, your arrival was anticipated with such fear and apprehension and yet here you are, like a good omen, a bundle of joy. I do hope that you will survive to continue bringing joy and good luck to all around you” (Den). Mukrowa named her Halinka, a diminutive of Halina.
A few days later the women were brought to Bergen-Belsen, another concentration camp, via train. “As we were waiting at the railroad station to be taken by trucks to the camp, I looked around and noticed Mukrowa standing behind me without the baby. Without giving it another thought, I asked: ‘Where is the baby?’ She replied matter of factly: ‘Halinka died in transport.’ I felt a shiver passing down my spine. ‘Dear God,’ I said to myself, and without uttering a word, I turned around so as not to look at her” (Den).
Stories like Halina’s, accounts of perseverance through inexplicable horror, must be told. As a preface to Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi includes the poem “Shema,” which implores the reader not only to remember the Holocaust, but to be aware of their privilege. Levi demands that the reader acknowledge the struggles of those who came before us: “I commend these words to you. Engrave them on your hearts. When you are in your house, when you walk on your way, when you go to bed, when you rise. Repeat them to your children” (Levi). It is only through the retelling of these stories and learning from history that we have any hope of preventing such an atrocity from happening again. I carry the responsibility to tell Halina’s story. It is up to me, my generation, and the generations that follow, to teach the horrors of the Holocaust.
Works Cited
Hindenburg August 1944 to January 1945, 70 (testimony of Halina Den).
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz ; and, the Reawakening: Two Memoirs. Summit Books, 1986.