The COMMONWEAL in its Christmas issue wishes to remember the Jewish race, privileged and selected, in which the Son of God took human flesh. We publish therefore this account of contemporary Jewish (and Christian) agony and humiliation, awed before that suffering as we are awed before the redoubtable and mysterious responsibility of those who inflict it. We ask our readers to see in the action we have taken no hatred for the persecutor, nor any incitement to hatred, but only pity and terror before the evil of our world.—The Editors.
Singe, unsterbliche Seele, der sündigen Menschheit Erlösung. (Klupstock, “The Messias”).
HERR GRUENEWALD, Standartenfuehrer and commander of the Concentration Camp, had a tall Christmas tree erected in the center of Dachau, on the parade ground, a week before Christmas. The tree was more than fifteen feet high and lighted with hundreds of bulbs, shining at night strangely through the ghastly darkness.
It was, of course, designed for the Gentile guests, who were as numerous as the Jews—mostly political opponents of nazism: communists, social democrats, liberals, Catholics, monarchists, conscientious objectors. We Jews had been taken there as hostages for the murder of Herr vom Rath in Paris.
The tree itself was neither "unto the Jews a stumbling-block" nor "unto the Gentiles a foolishness." On the contrary, all of us agreed that it was rather a blasphemy on Herr Gruenewald's part—the representative of a party which had declared: "We do not require Jesus as leader"— to place this symbol of love and peace on such a spot. But perhaps we wronged the commander, since for the modern German the Christmas festival, like the Yule festival of the ancient Teutons, is in fact "the solemn acknowledgment of Strength, that Strength which apart from transcendental theories hides within itself redemption from the eternal sin of the weak." Indeed nazi teachers tell the children at Christmas, or rather at the "festival of the winter solstice," that it is idle to look for the star of Bethlehem or the wondrous birth, since "in every new-born child God still comes into the world."
Yet in the evenings when, after an exhausting drill, we were forced to stand at attention for two or three hours at a stretch, to contemplate the Christmas tree, most of us were too weak and too frozen to enjoy the beauties of its symbolism. Storm troopers silently moved through our rows, cycling through the deep snow, ready to strike if a man dared even to turn his head away.
All of us had been looking forward to the holidays. There was a rumor of a coming amnesty which would include the Jews. Good God, we prayed, allow us to go home. We planned then to leave our beloved native country as fast as we knew how, leaving behind everything that remained of our belongings. On December 22 we were ordered to clear the camp of snow and ice. Snow-sweeping is a chore in Berlin as well as in Vienna, in New York as well as in Moscow, but in Dachau all work had to be done at the "double-quick," with not a minute's rest, under the kind eye of the storm troopers, who kicked all those people who should slip or collapse from strain. I remember an elderly man whose loaded wheelbarrow skidded into the water where we had to dump the snow. The nazi guard kicked him into the icy water, too. He remained there until after Christmas day. . . .
December 24 came—but no reprieve. All work, however, was stopped in the afternoon. This was not done for the benefit of the prisoners, but for the sake of the nazi guards, who really deserved a few days' vacation and recreation in Munich after such exhausing work as vexing the elderly people among us. The Gentile prisoners were allowed to receive little Christmas packages from their relatives, except for members of the Exegetist sect, which had opposed National Socialism from the first, as these people had felt it was contraryto the moral thought of the Bible. The Jews, of course, were not permitted to receive any little Christmas packages from their relatives since Herr Gruenewald respected the traditions of the orthodox and did not want to offend their feelings. And we cannot blame him for not knowing that by giving little presents we Jews celebrate "Chanukkah," the "Feast of Lights," at the same time as Christmas—a feast commemorating the victory of the Maccabees over Antiochus Epiphanes, whose army was defeated and driven out of Palestine.
Anyway we could expect to get a little rest; we would be awakened an hour later in the morning and, above all, would be spared those dreaded visits of the supervising storm trooper—or so we were told by our "trusty." And he knew the conditions at Dachau fairly well, since he had been imprisoned in 1933 and had a number below Soo whereas mine was above 30,000. He was a former Social Democratic leader, a stickler for custom himself, a veteran who had spent his Christmas there five times and knew well that Gruenewald would not leave any part of the ceremony out.
For him and the five other Gentile prisoners who were in charge of our batch of some 800 Jews, we prepared in the "dining-room" of our department as nice a Christmas dinner as we could manage. There was no turkey, of course, but we bought some corned beef at the camp canteen, and instead of pies and tarts we furnished the Christmas table with cookies and jars of jam and marmalade. Our trusties were not allowed to visit their Christian friends in the Gentile camp, so they were to have as good a time as prisoners can prepare for their co-prisoners.
We had in our particular batch several converted Jews, one of whom, a man of fifty, had been baptized as a child and brought up in a monastery. According to the Nuremberg laws he was nevertheless regarded a Jew. He was a bit queer, lean, and had a high voice, yet he was very friendly, enduring and tolerant, having made friends even with our orthodox Jews. He had been a bookkeeper, was unmarried, had no relatives or friends, nobody who would help him regain his liberty, and he did not even make use of the opportunity of writing letters to people, given every fortnight or so.
In the late afternoon, while we could hear the chimes of the church of Dachau village proclaiming, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will," Herr Suendermann (that was the convert's name) suddenly rose to address us all. "Do you know," he asked his surprised audience, "for whom we prepare our meal? For Jesus Christ ! He Himself is to visit our hut tonight." Now our supervisor, though a good Christian and a bright man, made the grave mistake of not taking him seriously: "No, my friend," he laughed "the storm troopers will not let Him in!" But the orator, filled with prophetic fury, shouted: "That is a blasphemy—none can stop the Lordl I myself will go to the gate to receive Him when He comes."
We felt rather uneasy, so seriously and gravely did he utter his pronouncement. We knew of a man who had escaped from the hut in a fit one evening and had gone to the gate and had tried to pass as Herr Gruenewald himself. He was taken to the hospital for his pains. . . . We tried to quiet our prophet, divert his attention by talking about the weather. But he kept to his fixed idea that Jesus would come in person and that we all should meet Him at the gate.
So, for his sake and for our own safety, we thought it best to bind and gag him; but when we approached him, he saw our intention and roared in a stentorian voice: "Jesus Christ, come and help me against these infidels!"
We knew that the few guards left in the camp must have heard the cry. And in a moment an unfamiliar guard entered the room. When he had heard the story from our supervisor, he knew how to cure the prophet, who lay exhaustedly on the floor, white foam flecking his lips. He dragged Herr Suendermann to the door and pushed him out, putting his face into the snow to "cool him off." Quietly he waited for some twenty minutes. Then he ordered the prisoner to get up. "Now, what have you to say about Jesus Christ?"
"Our Lord Jesus Christ will forgive you," the convert quietly said.
"What, you damned Jew," the enraged nazi cried, and beat the poor man with his fists. Two of our men were ordered to carry Herr Suendermann, who was bleeding incessantly, to the nazi barracks. The others should have their fun with that damned queer Jew.
But before leaving our hut, the guard looked at the Christmas table, heaped with good things. And with a sudden kick he overthrew the table—so that the marmalade and the cookies and the corned beef splashed over the floor and the wall, and the tin plates rolled into the corners and under the stove.
On Christmas Eve, 1938, we lay down in our plain straw very early.
