Explain what they are saying and analyze their purpose and significance. Explain who is talking and any technical terms in the document. Make sure you take into account the context, authorship and audience of the document. What do you think the author was trying to achieve with the document? If the document is trying to persuade someone of something, how does it do that? What kind of rhetoric or language is used? In short, you should discuss anything that seems relevant to understand this piece of paper as a piece of history. Is it a window in on a place and time in history? How distinctive is its vantage-point? How significant is it?
Comment on ALL THREE of the documents below. For each document, you will be expected to write between 300-350 words.
For each document do the following:
Explain what they are saying and analyze their purpose and significance. Explain who is talking and any technical terms in the document. Make sure you take into account the context, authorship, and audience of the document. What do you think the author was trying to achieve with the document? If the document is trying to persuade someone of something, how does it do that? What kind of rhetoric or language is used? In short, you should discuss anything that seems relevant to understand this piece of paper as a piece of history. Is it a window in on a place and time in history? How distinctive is its vantage point? How significant is it?
Make sure you draw on what you have learned in lecture and from your reading. You are free to access the originals in the Matthäus volume, and any other sources at your disposal. Your answer need to address and interpret only the extracts below, not the full document.
DOCUMENT 1:
Manifesto calling for resistance in the Vilna ghetto, January 1, 1942, Moreshet Archives D.1.4630 (translated from Yiddish). (Matthäus pp.85-6)
Let Us Not Be Led Like Sheep to the Slaughter!
Jewish youth, don’t trust those who deceive you. Of 80,000 Jews in ”Yerushalayim de Lita,” only 20,000 are left. Our parents, brothers, and sisters were torn from us before our eyes.
Where are the hundreds of men who were seized for labor by Lithuanians?
Where are the naked women and the children seized from us on the night of fear? Where are the Jews of Yom Kippur?
And where are our brethren of the second ghetto?!
No one returned of those marched through the gates of the ghetto. All the roads of the Gestapo lead to Ponar.37
And Ponar means death!
Those who waver, put aside all illusion! Your children, your wives, your husbands are no more. Ponar is no concentrationcamp. All were shot dead there.
Hitler conspires to kill all the Jews of Europe. And the Jews of Lithuania have been picked as the first line.
Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter!
True, we are weak and defenseless, but the only answer to the murderer is resistance!
Brothers! Better fall as free fighters than to live at the mercy of the murderers! Rise up! Rise up until your last breath.
DOCUMENT 2:
Account by Abram Jakub Krzepicki, Warsaw, of the Treblinka death camp, recorded by Rachel Auerbach under the title “A Fugitive from Treblinka,” December 1942-January 1943, (translated from Yiddish) (In Matthäus, p.127)
[…] The doors of the train cars were opened by Ukrainians. There were also German 55 men standing around with whips in their hands. Many people still lay on the floor, unconscious. Among them there might have been some who were already dead. We had been in transit for about 20 hours. If the trip had gone on for another half day, the number of dead would have been much greater. We would have been killed by the heat and the lack of air. As I learned later, entire transports arrived in Treblinka from which only corpses were unloaded.
When the doors were opened, some of the people who had been lying half naked tried to get dressed, but not all of them managed to get ahold of their clothes. At the command of the 55 men, the Ukrainians leapt into the train cars and used their whips to drive the people out of the cars as quickly as possible.
“So Many Clothes! But Where Are the People?”
We exited the cars tired, exhausted. After traveling for so many hours in the half-dark train car, the sun blinded us. It was around 5 p.m., but the day’s heat still burned at full strength. The first thing we saw was endless mountains of rags. The sight pierced our hearts: so many clothes-where are the people? The tales of [mass murder in] Lublin, Kolo, Turek arose in our memories, and we said to each other, “This is no good, we’re in trouble.” They hurried us faster, faster. Through a different entrance, guarded by a Ukrainian, we left the square by the side road and entered a fenced-off area where two barracks were located. One of the Germansgavea command:”Womenand childrentothe left, men to the right!” A little later, two Jews were stationed at that spot as interpret ers and showed the crowds where to go. […]
Document 3
Written account by Sonderkommando member Leib Langfuss, “The Horrors of Murder,” about the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz 11-Birkenau, 1943-1944, transcript in Ester Mark, “Arba teudot mi-Aushvits-Birkenau: ‘Bizvet hartsa,'”Gal-Ed, no. 1 (1973): 309-35(translated from Yiddish) Matthäus, p.154)
[…] A group of Jews were brought from a camp, thin, emaciated. They undressed in the courtyard and one by one went in to be shot. They were terribly hungry and begged for a piece of bread while they were still alive. Much bread was brought. Their eyes, which were dull and burned out from starving hunger, lit up with a wild fire of surprised joy, and with both hands they snatched a piece of bread and swallowed it with appetite, going upthe steps right to be shot. They were so surprised with pleasure from the bread that death came much easier for them. This is how the Germans can torture people and conquer their psyche. It is worth emphasizing that they all had come from their homes just a few weeks before.
It was around the end of 1943. 164 Poles had been brought from the surrounding area, among them 12 young women. All were members of the underground. A group of SS men arrived. At the same time, several hundred Dutch Jews from the camp were brought to be gassed. One young Polish woman made a short, fiery speech in the gas bunker to all who were present, all already naked. She spoke against the murderous acts of the Germans and their oppression and ended[, “W]e will not die now, we will be immortalized by our people’s history. Our initiative and spirit live and bloom. The German nation will pay more dearly for our blood than one can even imagine. Down with barbarism in the form of Hitler’s Germany! Long live Poland![“] Then she turned to the Jews of the Sonder-kommando: [“R]emember that your holy duty is to take revenge for our innocent blood. Tell our brothers, our people, that we go to our deaths with much pride and deep conscientiousness.[“] Then the Poles kneeled on the ground and solemnly said a certain prayer in an impressive pose[.] Afterward they stood up and together sang the Polish national anthem in chorus. The Jews sang Hatikvah. The cruel common fate in that accursed corner melted together the lyrical tones of these very different anthems. With a deeply moving sincerity, they poured out their last feelings and their consolation and hope in the future of their people[.] Afterward they sang the “Internationale” together. In the middle, the car [with a] red cross came and threw gas into the bunker. Their souls expired in the midst of their song and the ecstasy of a dream about brotherhood and improving the world.