Life after Diaries

Life after Diaries is a docufiction based on ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank, ‘Holocaust Memories of a Bergen Belsen Survivor’ by Nanette Blitz Konig and Liberating Belsen Concentration Camp – A personal account by (former) Lt-Colonel Leonard Berney R.A. T.D.

The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on World War II and its impact on human beings. Anne Frank’s account of the changes wrought upon eight people hiding out from Nazis for two years during the occupation of Holland, living in constant fear and isolation, imprisoned not only by the terrible outward circumstances of war but inwardly by themselves, made us intimately and shockingly aware of war’s greatest evil – the degradation of human spirit.   

Despite the horror and the humiliation of their daily lives, these people never gave up. Anne herself matured very rapidly in these two years, the crucial years from thirteen to fifteen in which changes is so swift and so difficult for every young girl. Anne’s Diary is the record of a young teenage girl with all longings, expectations, and attitudes that adolescences bring with it. Her longing for a close personal friend was not fulfilled as she had to go into hiding. But, she assigns this role to her diary, which was gifted to Anne on her thirteenth birthday celebrated on 12^th June in the secret annex, in which she pours out her heart and soul.

No one in the Frank’s living room could have ever imagined that those bound sheets of paper would one day contain words capable of moving readers in the world. Anne actually dreamed of becoming a writer!

I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be great support and comfort to me.

Anne has started entries in the Diary with this opening note on Sunday, 14 June 1942. In the initial journal, she addresses the entries to various friends, but eventually all her entries are addressed to a girl named Kitty. Kitty the name made her first appearance in Anne’s diary on 22 September 1942. By then, Anne had been in hiding in the Secret Annex at Amsterdam for two months. There are seventy three entries in the diary and these are considered as a record of a young girl’s experience during one of the worst periods in the human history.

….so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if… there weren’t any other people living in the world.   

By these lines, Anne Frank had to stop scribbling to Kitty.     

Anne and her family were captured on 4 August 1944, taken through deserted streets to a train station. A train station can lead to many destinations: Holidays, Business trips, visits to distant relatives. That train station, however, would take them to a terrible fate against their will. How come no one tried to help them? How come no one did anything? As a mater fact, everyone was tariffed of doing anything at all. Helping captives was a death sentence back then. Nobody came to their aid, and that is why they were there. Their destination was Westerbrok, a transactional camp in the north east Holland.

The ‘Humane’ Concentration Camp

The Westerbrok camp had been built by the Dutch government in 1939 to welcome Jewish people who had run away from Germany and, illegally entered the Netherlands, were in constant fear of what the Nazi Party meant for their safety. The trip was so short, only a few hours long. There were some guards in the train. They wanted to make sure the ‘travelers’ would not escape and indeed reach their destination, as if they were the worst criminals in the world. Every one arrived at Westerbork Camp with their belongings those were grabbed when they arrested.  

Anne and Family were, taken to a registration desk, supposed to state their names and where they were coming from. This process was repeated in all concentration camps managed by the Nazis for everyone who was not selected to go to the gas chambers upon their arrival. When they were going through the registration process, Anne and Family could hardly speak. Normal prisoners were allowed to keep their own clothes, unlike those who had been in hiding prior to deportation, as it was the case with Anne Frank and her family. Fugitives were considered ‘condemned’ and had to wear blue overall wooden clogs. Anne and Family had to remain in a punishment block, were forced to work under the worst of conditions, and their food rations were smaller. Anne’s family had to work disassembling batteries. What was the purpose of the work? Nobody did not know the purpose of many jobs assigned to prisoners who had been sent to concentration camps.     

Westerbork Camp seemed like a paradoxical place, since it hosted thousands of refugees from different places, and was seen as “humane” by Nazi standards. Jewish inmates with families were housed in 200 interconnected cottages that contained two rooms, a toilet, a hot plate for cooking, and a small yard. Single inmates were placed in quadrilateral barracks which contained a bathroom for each sex. As it was a transactional camp, it received sporadic visitors and, at the same time, it housed people who had created community and found a home there. There were schools, theater and hospitals. Westerbork was a relatively quiet place. Unlike concentration camps, there were very few Nazis around and they were only responsible for guarding perimeter, while the Dutch police was in charge of keeping the order inside. Nazis were there only to make sure deported individuals would indeed leave for their destination. Dutch Jews who were to be deported did not remain there for more than a few days, maybe weeks. They would soon board a train to the worst of their nightmares.

Every Monday names were read out loud to inform those who had to present themselves for deportation. It was sometimes horrible! Those on the list were terribly desperate upon hearing their names, while those who were not called always signed in relief. Anne Frank went through same routine: She heard her name, along with the names of entire family members and four other people with whom they has shared, being read from a list and assigned to a train that left September 3^rd, 1944.

The Resident Angle of Death

They were forced on to the cattle cars of a train, like animals being sent to slaughter. More than hundred people were crowded in so tightly that no one had room to sit, much less lie down. They were hung on to one another, desperately afraid of being separated. They were travelled three days with hardly any food or water. People groaned, whimpered, wept; hardly any one spoke in the train. They felt as if they had become participants in a tragic drama for which there was no exit. Despite of their hopeless circumstances they smiled each other, and in that moment felt nothing but the utmost pride and affection for each other. But they were terrified about what was going to happen to them. When the train came to a stop, all of them off boarded and in few seconds everyone realized that they had arrived at Auchwitz-Birkenau, a death camp in Poland.

There was shouting, screaming and chaos, with thousands of people teeming on a small platform. Some families had been in separate compartments and people were running around, trying to find each other. Everyone was nervous, anxious and sick from journey. Nazi guards with batons and vicious dogs were shouting, ‘Leave all your belongings on the platform. Women to this side, men over there. Stand in rows of five.’ Anne and Family members hugged one another as if they would never let go. Then they were forced to walk way… to different directions…!

The immense complex of Auchwitz – Birkenau, built around the small Polish town of Oswiecim, encompassed nearly-five square miles. The area designated for the men was called Auchwitz; the area for the women, Birkenau. Row up on row of long barracks covered the barren land. Miles of electrified barbed wire outlined the perimeter. Nazis with guns paraded, while others stood back sneering. One particular stood out. He wore white gloves and had small baton in his hand. His name was Dr. Mengele. He was known as’ the angle of death’. In a single glance he decided if a person would live or die, judging simply by how they looked or how he felt.

‘You go to right, you to the left,’ he indicated with his little baton’.

That’s all it took for someone to be condemned to death. All the older people and children and most of the girls at Anne’s age were told to stand on the left. Eventually this entire group was marched unsuspectingly to gas chambers that they thought were shower rooms. They were handed bars of soap, a final brutal trick to mislead them. Within a few minutes everyone was dead.

Miraculously, Anne and her family were spared…    

The SS – German Guards ordered them to undress. Mortified and embarrassed, they dared not to think about how they felt or they wouldn’t have been able to move. Their actions became mechanical. Their beautiful hairs were all cut off. They almost didn’t recognize each other. They were shoved into a shower room, terrified that the pipes would release poisonous gas. Instead the water trickled over their trembling bodies, washing away the happiness of their past lives. As they excited that they were each thrown a thin, drab garment and two unmatched shoes that didn’t fit their feet. Those would be their only possessions. Then everyone had to have their arm tattooed with a long number. The Guards in charge of them told where they would sleep, crowded in rows of bunks like sardines. By that time they were too hungry and distraught to care. They lost all sense of time, had no awareness of the month or day of the week. Holidays and birthdays simply didn’t exist for them.

Like every prisoner, they were required to do harsh work like carrying big boulders of rock from one place to another or emotionally excruciating jobs like sorting the belongings of all the prisoners or face death.

March of Death  

In the camp they had no awareness of what was happening with the war. For the prisoners struggling to survive in a concentration camp, the world seemed to be growing smaller and smaller, like the flame of candle about to go out. In the summer of 1944, in fact, United States, United Kingdom and Canadian troops had launched a major offensive on the cost of France, defeating the Germans in Western Europe. The Soviets were defeating them in the East.

By late November – maybe they were already anticipating their defeat – Hitler has issued an order to destroy crematoriums in some concentration camps. As the Germans did not want to release their prisoners, some of them were sent to Bergen – Belsen in Germany. That was when the March of Death started. For transfers to be carried out, prisoners had to walk for miles and miles, all along having their lives threatened by Nazis. Captives were only allowed to rest when the guards told them so; otherwise, those who were unable to walk any further would be killed by the SS. Some people would be on board of those extremely crowded cattle wagon again.

Bergen Belsen

Anne Frank and her sister Margo also boarded the train to go to Bergen Belsen. They were already very week due to the conditions they experienced in Auschwitz, and that trip would not help the two sisters improve their health. They had left their mother, Edith, back in Auschwitz and no longer had any news about their father, Otto. When the train arrived, the SS men approached with their dogs, yelling at them in German to walk in line, since they would have a long way to go until Bergen – Belsen. They quietly stood in a line and waited for SS to lead them in the right direction. They were walked through beautiful landscape. The scenery was certainly beautiful – so beautiful, bad things should not be allowed to take place there. They had walked for over half an hour and reached the camp.

The Bergen – Belsen seemed like a bad place. The landscape was not very nice to look at -or to live in for that matter. It was a large property, what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle, with several barracks surrounded by barbed wire. Originally it was established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an “exchange camp”, where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp was later expanded to accommodate Jews from other concentration camps. After 1945 the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. The Bergen – Belsen camp has horrible view.

Reunion

When Anne arrived at Bergen – Belsen, her Jewish School classmate Nannate already been there deported from Westerbork. In January 1945, things started to become really desperate in Bergen – Belsen it had been hard to live there, so far. It soon became impossible…..  

Nannate was all alone in the camp, so being reunited with someone she knew was something that her unforgettably emotional, because love and friendship were their only means of hope amid of chaos.

One day, as Nannate was waking outside the barrack area, she got closer to the barbed –wire fence that prevented her from having access to other parts of the camp. On the other side of the fence, she saw a face that looked familiar. It was Anne Frank…! Anne looked as frail as Nannate. Nannate still had her hair. But Anne’s had been shaved. Nannate only caught a glimpse of Anne, since they were different camps and Nannate could not get any closer. However that was enough to motivate Nannate, to want to see Anne and talk to her. They would certainly have a lot to share.

In Auschwitz, before the Soviets arrived, they did what they could to disappear with the detailed records they had kept of kept of everything that happened there. In Bergen-Belsen, Germans would also try to get rid of records containing information on prisoners and reports on all types of cruelty that has taken place there.

Amid of this scenario Nannate, was in anxious about reuniting with Anne, suddenly realized there were no longer fences around the places she was at. Somehow, fate would arrange their reunion. She crossed the area that had been in accessible to her until then and kept going. It was a limited sense of freedom…! Yes, she was in a concentration camp, debilitated, but meeting Anne was a great joy! She could not believe she had found her, and that Anne was still alive!. She could not contain my anxiety and happiness, and Nannate yelled, “Anne”. She turned and looked at Nannate with those familiar eyes and smile. She had a blanket wrapped around her, because she could not longer stand all the lice in her cloths, and she was shaking because of clod. They ran to each other and hugged, tears rolling down their cheeks. Those tears brought mixed feelings: they were tears of joy and relief for having found each other at that lifeless environment, but they were also tears of sadness for the depressing state they were in, because at that moment neither of they had their parents or any protection at all.

The first question Nannate asked to Anne was, “Anne, did not you try to flee to Switzerland?” Anne soon replied, “No, we did not go to Switzerland; we were hiding.” Anne started to tell about the secret hiding place, how life had been difficult there, too, that they could not make any indication that they were hiding to avoid deportation. Anne talked about her daily life in hiding: how they could not even flush during the day; that they had to rely on the kindness of her father’s employees and friends who had helped them hide, so they could have something to eat; that they could not talk too loud too much within that hiding space when–ever employees were working. In spite of it all, Anne was able to keep studying while in hiding and completed some distance learning courses.

Anne also told about the diary in which she wrote everything that had happened in the annex. Anne listened to radio, which they kept in hiding, so they could listen BBC and learn about events related to war. They has listened to an official address by Dutch Cabinet Minister Bolkestein, who was in exile and asked everyone to put away their personal records. According to him, diaries would be published after the war, so future generation could learn what happened in Holland during that time. His address had Anne excited, since she already dreamed of publishing her diary and becoming a writer, as she had always wanted.

Nannate and Anne stood there, dreaming about Anne’s book being published, about a reality in which she would become a famous writer, known for surviving the war, about a life away from that place for both of them. That was a magical moment. Margot was there too. They were both very worried about their mother because she was still alive when they left Auschwitz. They were apprehensive about their father as well, since they had not heard from him since Auschwitz and did not know whether he was dead or alive.

Division Bell

Naanate met Anne and Margot a few more times. They always talked about what they were going through. One day, Nannate could not find Anne. She herd from some of the women who were in the camp that she had not made it. Margot and Anne passed away in March, both from typhus. Margot fell from her bed and died on the ground – she no longer had any strength to stand up – and Anne died a few days later, also taken by the disease.

On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz – Birkenau camp was taken over by the Soviet Red Army, despite the resistance of German soldiers. After the millions had been deported to that hellish place and exterminated in gas chambers, the Soviets were met by about eight thousand prisoners who were living in deplorable conditions. That was true of all Nazi camps.

Edith frank had died early that January, after her daughters were taken away from her and sent to Bergen-Belsen. Anne and Margot did not know of her death and still had hope they would find their mother alive. Otto, however, survived and was freed from Auschwits. Had Anne and Margot remained in Auschwits and witnessed the soviet takeover, would they have survived? We cannot say for sure; these are the facts. One more day at war does not bring you any hope; it is one more day to die.

Holocaust Memorial Day

From 1941 to 1945, almost 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there. Overcrowding, lack of food and poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid, fever and and dysentery, leading to the deaths of more than 35,000 people in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation. The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division. The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied. 

Around six million Jews were killed in a systematic organized manner through lynching, mass shooting, use of poisonous gas and hard labour in concentration camps like Auschwitz – Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka and Sachsenhausen among others. Apart from Jews, the Nazi state of Germany also killed political dissenters, homosexuals, prisoners of war, the gypsies, people of African descent and those who were physically and mentally challenged. When the war ended, the allies (France, Poland and the United Kingdom, as well as their dependent states, such as British India) began series of trails, knows as the Nuremberg Trails, to bring those who had participated in these killings to justices. German business and companies that had used forced labour were asked to pay reparations.

January 27 is known as Holocaust Memorial Day; the day Auschwitz – Birkenau was liberated.

Must have Memories …!          

Throughout retro, humanity had gone through different kinds of suffering. We need to remember all those scoff at it forever. It must be reminded to the people of new era and if not so, it can be repeated in a different style and appearance.

The sufferings we are experiencing, as a result of governance mismanagement and strategic impairment in policy making, do not take much time to become a repetition of the past. A state elected through the democratic process, do not take much time to take the road to dictatorship. We need to be part of a people who are responsible, who are alert of every activity and watchful of every movement to shout out the pros and cons.

The history is not just about the winner, but it belongs to the loser too. In this Holocaust Memorial Day, the brutalities are to be remembered again. Must have Memories …!