The Holocaust

A Readers’ Theatre

Directions: Each Character will be played by a student wearing that person’s name. Be sure to use

feeling when you read. Read it as if you wrote these words yourself.

Narrator: Juergen Bassfreund, a young man of

twenty-two.

Boder: Now, Juergen, will you please tell me where

were you born?

Juergen: I was born on the thirtieth, ninth, twenty-

three in Bernjastel on the Mosel.

Boder: What does that mean on the thirtieth, ninth?

The thirtieth of September?

Juergen: The thirtieth of September.

Boder: And what year?

Juergen: Nineteen twenty-three.

Boder: Yes, and where?

Juergen:In Bernjastel on the Mosel; that is near

Trier.

Boder: Then you are a German subject?

Juergen: Oh yes, yes. I am a German citizen.

Boder: Will you then tell me what happened to you

from the time Hitler came to power? Who were

your parents?

Juergen: My father was a doctor of medicine…

Boder: Where?

Juergen: Also in Bernjastel. And my father had

died a year before Hitler came to power, that is in

the year of 1932.

Boder: 1932. How old were you then?

Juergen: I was eight years old when my father died.

Boder: And what was your mother doing? What

was your mother’s occupation?

…………….

(Next Reader)

Juergen: My mother had no profession. We lived

from the money that my father has earned – our

inheritance, and in the year 1933 we moved to

Trier.

Boder: Trier?

Juergen: Yes. That is about 40 kilometers from

Bernjastel.

Boder: Near what big city is Bernjastel?

Juergen: Bernjastel is near Trier.

Boder: Trier is near what?

Juergen: Trier belongs to the Rhine province of

Koblenz.

Boder: Is that now in the American zone?

Juergen: No, that is in the French zone. It was very

near to France. Very near to Luxemburg. I visited

there twice.

Boder: Now tell me, Juergen, how were things with

you in the time of Hitler, before the war started?

Juergen: I was then admitted as the only Jewish

child to the Gymnasium in Trier. And already then a

certain military routine was adopted by the teachers

in dealing with the children. When the teacher

would enter in the morning he would greet the

children at the door with ‘Heil Hitler,’ and the

children had to respond with ‘Heil Hitler.’ Of

course, I as a Jew did not do it.

Boder: You did not do it, or you were not permitted

to do it?

Juergen: I was not permitted to do it. And, of

course, I wouldn’t have done it.

Boder: What do you mean of course? How old

were you then?

Juergen: I knew already from my father that Hitler

was coming to power. He himself broke up quite a

few meetings. He threatened people with boycott,

that the Jews will not trade with them, and since

that region lives mainly from the sale of wine, many

were impressed by his threats and would not permit

the meetings to take place. In those times it was still

possible, but after 1933 that would have been an

impossibility.

__________________________________________

Narrator: POLIA BISENHAUS Note: This

interview occurred at the training school of the

ORT. The interviewee is apparently still perplexed

from her war experiences. Her mentality appears

stunted. Her speech is phlegmatic and she seems to

grasp very poorly the situation of the interview

which proceeds in Germa-Yiddish.)

Boder: Now tell me for example, what were people

doing all day in Belsen. Say you got up in the

morning - at what time?

Polia: In the morning there was an appell to get up

say at four o’clock, three o’clock, five o’clock.

Boder: Nu.

Polia: So we went to wash. For washing there was a

room a very small one; cold water very cold, and

we would go in there completely naked, and many

of us caught cold.

Boder: Yes.

Polia: And the organism is weak, one did not eat;

one washes himself with cold water.

Boder: Were there men or women who.....

Polia: Women, these were.

Boder: I mean the Nazis.

Polia: The Nazis? There were women and men. But

the women were much worse to us. They were

much worse to us than the men.

Boder: How come?

………………………………

(Next Reader)

Polia: Well, the women were beating us terribly,

they were beating us. There were many Jews

/women/ Turkish and Romanian /Jews/ who were

the lager leaders, lager trusties and they were much

worse than the Nazis.

Boder: You mean to say there were Jewish lager

leaders?

Polia: Yes.

Boder: And....

Polia: And they were very mean to us, very mean.

Boder: There were Jewish lager leaders and they

have.....

Polia: Yes, yes, they behaved very mean.

Boder: Towards the other Jews?

Polia: Yes, yes. Very mean.

__________________________________________

Narrator: JACQUES BRAMSON, Age 35

Bramson: During this period in the quarantine

lager, I shall never forget the scene when we were

sent to be photographed. I have described already

how we were dressed. During a bad snow storm we

were left in this clothing for a whole day on a

completely open square.

Boder: Why?

Bramson: To lead us one after the other to be

photographed.

Boder: What for were you photographed?

Bramson: To complete our dossier.

Boder: Oh.

Bramson: ...for the lager.

Boder: So.

Bramson: And the result of it was that

approximately half of the new arrivals caught

pneumonia. Our block of eight hundred people was

transformed into a block of two hundred fifty, three

hundred people, while all the others without

exception “went through the chimney”.

Boder: What do you mean by “went through the

chimney”?

Bramson: ....”through the chimney”, in other words

they died from pneumonia and similar causes, and

they had to be sent to the crematories.

Boder: And were there crematories in Buchenwald?

Bramson: Yes. There were crematories in all the

lager. In all the lagers where there were more than

six thousand prisoners, there were crematories.

Boder: And did they have in Buchenwald also

installations for the extermination of people?

Bramson: Installations of the kind that existed in

Auschwitz were not available in Buchenwald.

Because Buchenwald was not an extermination

camp. In Buchenwald there was a gas chanber, but

it was not located in the lager, it was located behind

the lager.

Boder: So.

Bramson: It was used only when they wanted to

annihilate ,somebody inconspicuously. But official

mass exterminations such as in Awuschwitz did not

exist in Buchenwald.

Boder: So.

…………………………………….

(Next Reader)

Bramson: I myself know of a case when an entire

group of three --four hundred people were

annihilated there on the spur of the moment.

Boder: In Buchenwald?

Bramson: Yes. Buchenwald. But this did not have a

systematic character as in the Eastern lagers.

Boder: What kind of a group of three hundred

people was that?

Bramson: For instance, they brought over a group

of Russian officers. And the next day it was ordered

to annihilate all of them. They were led to the little

house which we called the “little house of

miracles”, where the gas chamber was located, and

there they were asphyxiated. We learned about it --

exterminations took place daily,--but I only know --

I may speak only about cases at which I was present

myself.

Boder: Which..

Bramson: Which I know. For instance I was

present at the shooting of eighty parachutists,

mostly Canadians and Frenchmen.

Boder: So.

Bramson: It was already after the Anglo-American

invasion of Europe.

Boder: So.

Bramson: And they were young men who formed

the small squads of reconnaissance who

parachuted/behind/enemy lines.

Boder: So.

Bramson: They, eighty men....they were brought to

us, and after two weeks a search started for them all

over the lager. We endeavored as far as possible to

hide them in the lager, but we succeeded to save

only two.

__________________________________________

Narrator: The interviewee is George Kaldore, 23

years old, born in Hungary. Interview took place on,

August 31, 1946.

Kaldore: That was in the year ‘44, in June. The

Hungarian gendarmerie were lined up at the railroad

station and told us--with rifles and sticks--told us,

‘All Jews disembark.' We thought that maybe they

would take us into the bunker because it was an air

raid alarm, the English air force had come. They

would take us into a bunker or maybe into an open

field, so that we should not be standing at the

railroad station. But they did not take us to an open

field. Within two minutes from there, in a sugar

factory, there was the ghetto, a small ghetto, a small

ghetto where the Jews of the city lives. It was--the

Jews already lived there together in the factory. We

arrived there. It was pitch dark. We were ordered to

put down our baggage on the floor and sit down.

Nobody should say a word; nobody should tear

anything up--money or documents; and one should

be very quiet.

Boder: How many people were there of you?

……………………………..

(Next Reader)

Kaldore: We were there 150 of the labor service.

We only noticed that in another place there were

bundles, which we recognized as the baggage of

people from other labor services. We were sitting

there for half an hour and the trumpeted the end of

the air raid. There came a German officer with

Hungarian officers and policemen, and then came a

Jewish policeman and told us that all valuables and

all documents we had on us should be put down on

the floor. We did so. We didn't know yet what

would happen to us afterwards. The guards came

and searched our pockets for things we still might

have had in them. We had nothing. We were afraid.

We knew that if we did not give them up we would

get a bad beating. We surrendered everything, and

they took it for themselves. We saw ourselves that

they put it in their own pockets. After we had

surrendered our things, the Hungarian officer told

us in Hungarian, and then came a German officer

who really wasn't a "German" officer but a

Hungarian officer /in German uniform/, the famous

captain Sodi. Captain Sodi, who ordered the

pogroms in Novitz of which the whole world has

been talking. He was a "German" SS man, and he

told us, ‘Jews, you are here in the ghetto. We shall

transfer you to a work lager. You will work there,

and you should behave well. Now go into these

barracks. You will remain there until morning, and

in the morning you will know what will happen to

you next.' At six in the morning the Jews in the

lager--not in the lager, that is, in the ghetto--got up,

and we were given a warm vegetable soup, and we

saw that the Jews were crowding together. A

policeman came and asked what was going on here

in the ghetto, and they said that today the whole

ghetto would be shipped away. Yesterday a

transport had gone, and today we, the rest, were

going. Again the SS officer appeared, ‘Those who

are not Jews and those who are citizens of other

countries, who are not Hungarian citizens, should

step forward.'

Boder: Jews or non-Jews?

………………………………..

(Next Reader)

Kaldore: Also Jews, if they were not Hungarian

citizens. There stepped forward three people. One

had a Swedish passport; he took him and led him

away. Two Jews stepped forward and said that they

were Christians. So he said, ‘Do you have

documents?' So they said, ‘But yesterday you took

away our documents.' So he said, ‘I haven't taken

away any documents; you gave them to me. Step

forward, I shall examine you whether you are

Christians or not.' And so in the presence of

everybody he started to examine "their race." He

examined their eyes, their hair, their face. So he

said, ‘My friend, it may be that you are a Christian,

a convert to Christianity, but your father was a Jew,

and you are also a Jew.' And he beat them with a

stick that he had in his hand.

Boder: He examined just his face and his eyes,

nothing else?

Kaldore: He did not examine anything else. Only

the face. He said, ‘You are not of the Mongolian

race; you are of the Jewish race.' We did not stay

for a long time in the ghetto.

Boder: Why Monogolian?

Kaldore: The Hungarian race belongs to the

Mongolian race.

__________________________________________

Narrator: Geneva, August 27th, 1946. The

interviewee is Abraham Heisler, eighteen years old,

from the Czech territory which presumably has

become Russian now. He carries a tattoo number A

(A is possibly just a triangle) 4470.

Boder: Yes. and so, good. Now tell me. The

Germans arrived. How did they enter /the city/?

Heisler: Right away the army entered. We saw the

German occupation with the army, and all of a

sudden it became black before the Jews’ eyes. And

two weeks later one morning they came, and we did

not know why the houses were occupied, and they

said in two hours everybody has to be packed up to

be taken away. We did not know where to. The men

/people/ were led into a building. They were driven

together into a large building, and they were taken

in trucks to the ghetto.

Boder: Yes. Where...where was the ghetto? Where

did they make the ghetto?

Heisler: The Mukachevo Ghetto. There were large

barracks of a brick factory. There were large

wooden barracks where the bricks were stored, and

there we were quartered. It was very crowded there.

We could not stand it, because there were terribly

many people. In one barrack lived three thousand

persons, because there was no room. And they

crowded the people terribly, and...

Boder: Men, women, and children together?

Heisler: Everything together. The families still

were...the families were still together.

Boder: Yes. Nu, and you were the olde-...yes, you

have a brother and a …

Heisler: Yes, the two brothers.

Boder: You had two brothers.

Heisler: Yes.

Boder: Were they older or younger?

Heisler: Younger brothers.

Boder: Younger brothers. Now, and how long were

you there, in that brick factory?

Heisler: In the brick factory we were four...four

weeks.

Boder: Yes? Who gave you to eat? What were you

given to eat?

……………………………………..

(Next Reader)

Heisler: Yes, the Kehille (community) still

supported itself. All the food supplies which we still

had, had to be moved /taken along?/. We did not

have much any more, because everything had been

taken away.

Boder: Hm. Yes?

Heisler: And what was short /insufficient/ was

brought from the town.

Boder: Yes. And who was the Kehille?

Heisler: That was the Jewish Community which

took care that there should be sufficient. Everything

was still not taken away due to money protection

(bribery) and so forth. They were in __________, so

they permitted to bring in some food supplies.

Boder: Food supplies. Nu, and after...that lasted,

you say, four weeks.

Heisler: Four weeks, yes.

Boder: What happened then? Tell me all the details.

How was it?

Heisler: And so one morning comes, and it was said

that whoever has citizen’s rights of that and that

city, the citizenship, then it is possible for him to

remain there...for him to be released home. And so

everybody brought his papers. We, too, showed

/ours/, all good /valid/ papers. They were taken

away. And suddenly we see he makes a big fire

with those papers. They were just making fun of us.

And the next day...

Boder: And so you say that the papers were

collected, and then what did they do?

Heisler: And they were burned. They only said

so /about citizenship/, because they did not want us

to have anything to show /identification/ for the

right to travel.

__________________________________

Second Part:

(Next Reader)

Heisler: After the eighty kilometers we arrived

there. We were chased into a field...

Boder:

Yes?

Heisler: ...of snow, and there they began to shoot,

and then they said for everybody to lie down,

because they did not want us to stand.

Boder: Yes.

Heisler: And there was no room to stand on that

field. And they said to lie down. And they began to

yell. One simply fell on top of another, because they

were shooting over our heads. Many also fell there.

Boder: Why did they want you to lie down?

Heisler: They had such a fantasy in their heads.

Boder: Nu?

Heisler: And everything /everybody/ lay down.

And there was snow and a severe frost. The night

was terribly cold. I myself was surprised how I

lived through it a whole night. I had fallen into the

snow, and I slept there. In the morning I arose

completely wet, because the snow had melted. I am

surprised today how I pulled through that night.

And in the morning we got up, and fifty per cent

remained lying there in the snow. And the rest that

had remained, we had to bury them there, dig

ditches and bury them. And we went on.

Boder: With what did you dig the ditches?

Heisler: They had brought tools.

Boder: They had brought tools.

……………………………

(Next Reader)

Heisler: Yes.

Boder: And what was done to those who were not

yet dead?

Heisler: We had to bury them.

Boder: The living?

Heisler: No. The living had to bury the dead.

Boder: Yes, but the ones who were sick?

Heisler: They were also while still ali-...alive

thrown into the grave. Who...whoever was not able

to walk was shot and thrown into the grave.

Boder: Shot and thrown into the grave.

Heisler: Yes. But there were also many people on

the road who were not able to walk any more, so

they would take a blanket over the head, put the

head in it...

Boder: Yes.

Heisler: ...and sit down. The SS man would pass by

and finish him off with a shot.

Boder: Did he at least see if the man was dead

when he shot him?

Heisler: If he was not dead he remained that way.

He waited until he died /?/

__________________________________________

Narrator: Interview with MISS EDITH ZIERER,

age fifteen, at Bellevue, near Paris, a home for

displaced children, who are here with a group of

teachers which /who have/ removed them from

Poland.

Boder: Oh. You went with the parents on foot to

Cracow.

Zierer: To Cracow.

Boder: You did not want...

Zierer: To the Aryan side. Because there was

already a Ghetto.

Boder: In Cracow /there/ was a Ghetto. Did you...

Zierer: In Cracow /there/ was a Ghetto.

Boder: Yes.

Zierer: But we went to the Aryan side.

Boder: How were you admitted to the Aryan side?

Zierer: We had not (words not clear). We came in

on Aryan papers.

Boder: Did you have Aryan papers?

Zierer: The mother had Aryan papers.

Boder: Oh. And you /?/?

Zierer: We were still very small. We did not need

any /?/.

Boder: And the father?

Zierer: The father was hiding. He had a very

Semitic appearance, so he had to hide.

Boder: What kind of an appearance?

……………………………..

(Next Reader)

Zierer: Very, very Semitic...

Boder: Semitic. He was...he looked Jewish.

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: So he hid himself.

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: And the mother with the children took the

risk...

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: ...to pass over...

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: ...to the Aryan side.

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: And what happened then?

Zierer: And then we were...we were in Cracow a

few days, on the Aryan side. And then somebody

reported on the mama, no? A German, he did...he

did...about her. He knew her.

Boder: He denounced her...

Zierer: Yes. He knew her, and he reported on her,

and she was /taken/ to the police, to the Gestapo.

Boder: And where did you remain?

………………………….

(Next Reader)

Zierer: We...we remained in the city, with my

sister, all alone.

Boder: That means the two children?

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: You...you were nine years old, and...

Zierer: I was then already ten.

Boder: Ten years old. And the sister, how old was

she?

Zierer: Eight.

Boder: And they took...they took away the mother

without you?

Zierer: Yes.

Boder: How did that...how did that come about?

Zierer: Because we remained home, and the mama

went out on the street /?/ and...

Boder: She was taken on the street?

Zierer: Yes. And she did not return.

Boder: And your mama did not return any more?

Zierer: No.

Boder: Did you know what happened to her?

…………………………….

(Next Reader)

Zierer: No. We knew nothing.

Boder: Did you find out later?

Zierer: Yes. After four weeks we learned that she

was held in the /name not clear/. That was a prison,

a German prison.

Boder: Yes. And then?

Zierer: Well, then we went to the Ghetto by

ourselves, because we had no other way out.

Boder: What does that mean? The two children?

Zierer: Yes. And in the Ghetto we found the father,

and together with him we went to Bierzanow,

because in Cracow there began a resettlement

/expulsion of the Jews/. And we left.

……………..

Boder: Well. Could you tell me, if I ask you about

all this time, which was the hardest moment in your

life?

Zierer: The hardest moment was when they took

away the mama. I remained all alone with the sister.

Without a penny, we had no money, no? And we

did not know where the father was. We remained all

alone on the Aryan side. And then when I left,

without the parents, without the father and the

sister, for Skarzysko.

__________________________________________

Narrator: Glenn Edward Belcher: Dachau

Liberator

Mr. Belcher: Our division (the 42nd Infantry -

about 15,000 men) was heading for the city of

Munich, and as I recall we were going across a wide

expanse of level land and over to the left I saw what

appeared to be a large factory which was enclosed

by a wall -- to the best of my recollection this was

my first view of Dachau although I didn't know it at

the time…

Immediately in front of me after entering the gate -

and about 20 yards away was a moat with water in

it about 4 or 5 feet wide - a dead soldier was laying

face down in it. Just beyond the moat was a high …

On the other side of the fence was a valley which

was about 20 feet wide and 8 or 10 feet deep - on

the other side of the valley were barracks and those

locked up.

…………………………

(Next Reader)

  We did not talk to the prisoners and they did not

talk to us… We stared at them and they stared at us.

It was as if they didn't know what to do and neither

did we.

  On our side of the fence and to the right of where

the dogs were - were the gas chambers and ovens

where people were killed and then burned. There

were stacks of bodies (all looked like skeletons)

apparently prepared for burning.

    In retrospect I suppose we should have done

something immediately to ease the prisoner’s pain

or to free them from their confinement - but on the

other hand perhaps we were all too shocked by the

gruesome discovery to be anything other than

immobilized…

_____________________________________

Narrator: Sophie Yaari was born Sophie

Nussbaum in 1925, in Emden, Germany. Her father

owned a small grocery shop.

Sophie: Then Hitler ordered the pogrom on the 9th

of November, 1938-- Kristallnacht. I was thirteen

years old. We were all in bed sound asleep when we

were suddenly woken by a loud knocking on the

door--it was one or two o'clock in the morning.

"Open up! We're taking all of you to Palestine,"

they shouted.

We never believed that, of course. They broke our

windowpanes, and the house became very cold.

Quickly, my mother tried to gather up some

valuables--some gold things--but one of the men hit

her on the arm with his gun, making her drop them.

They made us leave everything behind when they

took us away--to a Christian school. We were

standing there, outside in the cold, still in our night

clothes, with only a coat thrown over. They kept

bringing more and more Jewish people from all

over the neighborhood. Babies were crying.

The horse butcher and his family were there. He

was Jewish, but his wife was not, and they had not

raised their children as Jews. I can still hear the

daughter crying, "But Mommy, we are not Jewish!"

……………………………..

(Next Reader)

"You are not here because of your religion, but

because of your blood!" said the S.S.

Then they made everyone lie face down on the

ground. It was quite cold.

"Now, they will shoot us," we thought. We were

very afraid.

Then abruptly, "Get up!"

They kept us there until the sky was light, and then

they took us into the gymnasium, and called out

everyone's name. They had lists--wonderfully

organized. After that, we were allowed to go home.

But they kept the men … My mother was afraid

they might come back to our house that night, so

she sent my younger sister Ruth and me to sleep at

our Aunt Lena's house… My mother was afraid to

go down, but my grandmother said, "I'll go." She

found my father sitting there, making himself a cup

of coffee.

The S.S. had sent Father home because he had

influential Christian friends who had interceded on

his behalf. The other men were not so lucky.

Then on a certain date we had to close the shop. My

parents had to leave our house and move all six of

us--grandmother too--into one room in the house of

three Jewish old maids who lived on another street.

…………………………..

(Next Reader)

After Kristallnacht, the Dutch government began

giving visas to German and Austrian children who

had relatives in Holland. Ruth and I had an aunt

there who applied for us. When our visas arrived a

few months later, we immediately packed up, and

went with our mother by train to the border. My

father stayed at home because only one parent was

allowed to accompany the children.

I'll never forget how she said goodbye, crying.

Everything was terrible. My mother told me I was

responsible for my sister, who was ten years old.

She walked with us to the border; we said goodbye

and walked across--it was only a few meters. It was

January 25, 1939. I never saw my parents again.

__________________________________________