"The Sonderkommando"

In Part 4 of Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, we hear from several Sonderkommandos about the experiences of prisoners who were forced to remove bodies out of the gas chambers and transport them to the crematoria. Lily Brett was born in Germany after World War II but grew up in Australia. Thus she did not have direct experience in the camps. As a poet, however, she chose to write a poem about the Sonderkommando.

Source: From The Auschwitz Poems by Lily Brett. Melbourne: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, 1986. Used with permission of the author.

The Sonderkommando
those prisoners
known as
the Death Squad

merely
shuffled
death around

re-arranging
and
re-packaging
the components

they
herded
crowds
into the showers

pulled
them
out
gassed

hosed
them
to get rid of
the crap

hooked
the slippery bodies
with
thongs around the wrists

and
piled
them

into
the
elevators

for
the
ovens.

* Look at the form of the poem. Why do you think Brett chose to use such short lines and so little description? What effect does this have on the reader?

* According to the poem, what did Sonderkommandos have to do?

* What tone does Brett use to describe the work of the Sonderkommandos? What effect does this tone have on the reader?

* Why do you think the Nazis chose Jews to do this task?

"Would You Like a Star Too?"

This vignette is taken from “Hide and Seek,” Vos’s autobiographical story about a young child’s experience under Nazi occupation in Poland.

Today for the first time Rachel must go to school with a yellow star on her coat, a big yellow star, with the word Jew written in the middle of it. Thus everyone can see that she is Jewish. The Germans have ordered the wearing of the star, and Rachel finds it horrible.
All her mother did yesterday evening was sew stars on their clothing. "I see stars," Mother said, and they even had to laugh about it.
"I'll take you to the tram," says Papa. "Come on, hurry up, otherwise you'll be late for school."
They put their coats on. How big the star is. Esther's star is even bigger than Rachel's. "It looks that way because Esther has such a small body," their father explains. "That's why her star seems larger."
When they arrive at the tram stop they see many other people with stars on, grown-up people and little people. "All Jews," an old man says. "Yesterday I did not know they were Jews, although I suspected they were."
"You must hold your schoolbag under your arm as you usually do, not against your star," Father admonishes her. Rachel blushes. Father saw that she was trying to hide her star.
"It's difficult, but if you don't hide your star now, you'll get over the embarrassment more quickly. When the war is over, we'll make a huge fire and we'll throw all the stars of the whole world into it."
"Boy, will that stink!" Rachel exclaims.
"It stinks right now," Leo says. "I smelled the star when I put my coat on."
"Children, here comes the tram," Father calls.
The moment has come. For the first time Rachel will have to go on the tram with that horrible star.
"Come in!" the driver of the tram calls out to them. "It really is springtime in my tram now. All these children with yellow daffodils on their coats. I wish I could wear one."
When they are all inside, many people begin to clap, just as an audience does at the end of a play. Rachel does not understand. A man nudges her. "Bow, the clapping is for you, for your stars."
Rachel does not dare to move. What is that? Are the people clapping for that big yellow star? The children look at one another. "They are clapping for us," Leo says, and he begins to bow. "Thank you, people. Thank you very much."
A few people do not clap, but look straight ahead instead. Leo approaches one of those people. "Ma'am, would you like a star, too? Tomorrow I'll bring you one. Would you like a star, too, mister?"
"Go away, you little Jew boy," the man replies, and to the woman sitting next to him he says, "You can't cut them down to size. Not the big Jews and not the little ones, either."

Source: Hide and Seek by Ida Vos. Copyright © 1981 by Ida Vos. Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

This story is told from early in the war, before the Jewish people were being deported to the ghettoes and the camps.

We meet quite a number of people in this brief story: Rachel, her mother, her father, her sister Esther, an old man, her brother Leo, the tram driver, a man on the tram. What are the different feelings that they have about the Star and about the Jews in general?
Why might a Jewish child feel differently about having to wear the Star as opposed to an adult?

Red Sector A

The Holocaust has been the subject of many songs in mainstream culture. Often, the references to the Holocaust are not stated explicitly but depend on the listener to actually understand and consider the lyrics. Watch the following video and then read the lyrics to Red Sector A by the Canadian prog-rock band, Rush. Then, read the short piece and answer the questions.



Red Sector A:

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves
Is stay alive...

Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones

I clutch the wire fence
Until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal-
A heart that cannot feel-
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow-We'll all be freed

Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger-too weak to cry

I hear the sound of gunfire
At the prison gate
Are the liberators here-
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother-it's too late
But I must help my mother
Stand up straight...

Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings
To survive?...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sector_A]

Rush's 1984 album "Grace Under Pressure" included the track "Red Sector A." The song, written by drummer Neal Pert, focuses on the experience of a person struggling to survive at an unnamed prison camp. "Red Sector A" was particularly meaningful to the band's lead singer/bassist/keyboardist Geddy Lee:From "How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee", Jewish News Weekly, June 25, 2004:

The seeds for the song were planted nearly 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.) The whole album “Grace Under Pressure,” says Lee, who was born Gary Lee Weinrib, “is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive.”

Though “Red Sector A,” like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls “the psychology” of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.

“I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated,” Lee says during a phone conversation. “She didn’t believe [liberation] was possible. She didn’t believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in.”

1. What motivated Rush to write Red Sector A?
2. According to the lyrics, what impact did the camp have on its captives physically and mentally?
3. In the song, what hope surfaces for the camp's captives?
4. According to the final lines of the song, what are the captives left thinking and feeling after being freed?

Orders and Initiatives

Orders, rules and laws have important places in society. Most regulations exist to ensure the safety of citizens within a community and make sense from a common sense or moral point of view. We have been conditioned to follow orders, based on those laws, given by people in authority. When a police officer arrives at the scene of a crime or an accident, we follow the orders because, we assume, the situation is going to be taken care of. When a soldier is given an order from a commanding officer, those orders are normally followed without question. When the officials giving those orders have questionable motives though, can we trust the orders that they give and the laws that they make?
We learn that it was actually a small but influential group of Nazi leadership - Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich - that made the secret plans to annihilate the Jews. At the Wansee Conference in 1942, the "Final Solution" was agreed upon. The poisonous gas, Zyklon B would be used in order to exterminate large numbers of people in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the other death camps. In order to do so, a vast number of people had to either follow orders or turn a blind eye to what was going on. Murder on such a vast scale simply could not happen unnoticed.

What are alternative actions can one take if one feels that an order is morally wrong?
What are some consequences if people do—or do not do—as they are ordered?
Professor Kissi has talked about "respecting authority but questioning information." Give an example where one could "respect authority" but "question information."