By Michael Karpin
Study of the history of the Holocaust is flourishing. In schools and universities worldwide, young people, Jews and non-Jews alike are engaged in profound examination of the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Extermination sites in Poland are extensively toured.
Recently, in a regular autumnal working day, the site of Auschwitz was crowded with dozens of groups of students, delegations in uniform, families and single visitors. The background noise was so loud that meditating on the victim's suffering was impossible. Since the Communist Empire collapsed, many thousands of young descendants of Holocaust survivors joined their grandparents for roots' tours to their ancestors' native towns and villages in East Europe. In every town and small village, the functioning manners of action throughout the Nazi occupation had been substantially examined.
Hence, could a researcher surprise you with an unknown Holocaust epos? My new book presents a narration of an unusual and sophisticated rescue operation that was initiated by a young agronomist from the city of Drohobych, Naftali Backenroth. During the Nazi occupation Backenroth built up mutual trust with the Gestapo and set up a vast project that occupied hundreds of Jews clustered at Drohobych and its vicinity, saving many of them from extermination. In all the territories occupied by the Nazis, I know of no organized effort to rescue Jews as sophisticated as that. To the best of my knowledge, the story of Backenroth's rescue enterprise is unfamiliar even to experienced holocaust historians.
The German Wehrmacht conquered the Polish territory of Galicia (today part of Ukraine) in June 1941. A few days later the Gestapo took control of the Jewish communities by appointing in each location a Judenrat, council of Jews tasked with running community affairs. These bodies, acting on Gestapo orders, supplied quotas of Jews for forced labor, set up Jewish police forces to maintain order and enforce the Gestapo's commands, handed over lawbreakers, and at a later stage, prepared the lists of those to be transported to their deaths.
From the first days of the Nazi occupation, Naftali Backenroth had grasped that there was a trap inherent in the very existence of the Judenrat, and he fought against that form of Jewish cooperation with the Nazis tooth and nail. There was nothing exceptional about that. Deep controversy broke out in most Jewish communities around the issue of the Judenrat. In every city and town there were rebels against the system, who used various methods to resist it, mostly without any real success. But Backenroth was unusual in one thing: no other Jew sidestepped the Judenrat, consistently building up a relationship of trust with the Gestapo heads by encouraging their dependence on his own people.
In order to maintain a satisfactory standard of living, the Germans required various types of service personnel. The Gestapo needed chambermaids, janitors, cleaners, constructors, gardeners and handymen.
The army needed technicians and engineers to operate and maintain the region's oil wells and refining facilities. Backenroth came to an important conclusion: He had to gather a serious group of skilled and diligent workers and professionals independent from the Judenrat, and to supply the Germans with whatever services they wanted, at the highest possible level, thereby making themselves indispensable and possibly saving themselves and their families. That perception brought about the Backenroth's labor force - hundreds of men and women that waited on the Nazis, pampered them, accustomed the Gestapo officers and the German officials to a high standard of living and of service, and succeeded in damping their eagerness to carry out explicit orders to send the workers to liquidation sites. Some of the German officers and officials did indeed become dependent on his team. Backenroth's workers collected information about the Nazi units and exploited it by using 'divide and rule' methods.
He himself made friends with some of the Nazis and encouraged dissension among others. He looked the Nazis in the eye and did not kowtow to them, and, most important, he cossetted them, improved their service conditions, and provided them with a great deal of comfort. Absurd as it may seem, Backenroth and his work teams added a little color to the drab military life of the Germans and to their boring routine in occupied Galicia.
In the course of this strange experiment, Naftali identified several good Germans and provided them with the opportunity to prove their humanity. The rare combination of Backenroth's qualities - courage and creative thinking - and the sympathy which several of the German conquerors felt for their Jewish victims accounted for his success. When the Drohobych ghetto was liquidated and all the Jews sent to death camps, many of Naftali's work teams remained at their jobs.
Backenroth's rescue enterprise had been assisted by three good Germans, officials serving the occupation administration: Eberhard Helmrich, his wife Donata Hardt-Helmrich and Berthold Beitz. All three Germans were recognized by Yad Vashem – the Holocaust memorial and museum located in Jerusalem – as "Righteous Among the Nations" – the title bestowed on gentiles who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.
Backenroth's activities under the German occupation were so amazing, that several of the Jews whom he rescued have told me that they truly believe that he was sent by divine providence. Even for the secular among them, Backenroth seemed a 'miracle-worker'. No other Jew succeeded in bringing hundreds of his fellow-Jews safely through the war in one of the worst places for Jews. His audacity and daring knew no bounds. Even that renowned savior of Jews, Oscar Schindler, whose story was filmed by Steven Spielberg, did not display as much courage, ingeniousness and creativity as Backenroth, if only because Schindler was a German.
(Originally published at GoArticles and reprinted with permission from the author, Michael Karpin).
Michael Karpin is an Israeli author and investigative journalist. His new book: Tightrope – Six Centuries of a Jewish Dynasty recounts an epic tale that, though exceptional, has resemblance to that of most of the European Jewish families that migrated to the United States. Visit Karpin's website: Michael Karpin. Karpin's e-mail address: Michael.karpin@gmail.com.
Source:www.isnare.com |
