rose Schindler

Dates: October 13 (Tue) - 9:30am / October 15 (Thu) - 9:30am

Location: Your couch/computer! See your e-mail for the class link.

Website: https://twowhosurvived.com/

Writings this week come to us courtesy of Emily Nye, of Rediscovering San Diego Online!

Before World War I, Czechoslovakia was actually two separate countries: Czech and Slovak. The land included what we called Bohemia, as well as Moravia and Slovakia. When the Austria-Hungary empire collapsed in 1918, the new Czechoslovakia was formed. It was one of the more stable, prosperous parliamentary democracies in eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, 2020a).

It was also a multicultural population, with languages including Czech, German, Slovak, Hungarian, Ukranian, and Yiddish (Czechoslovakia, 2020a)

In the years leading to World War II, the German minority in the western part of the country gained power and followed Hitler. The Nazis, who came to power in 1933, “re-claimed” for Germany the ethnic populations across Europe (Holocaust Explained, 2020).

According to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Germans demanded that the Sudentenland (the border area surrounding part of Czechoslovakia) be turned over. The Munich Pact of 1938 was a meeting between leaders of Germany, Britain, Italy and France, that agreed to give the Sudentenland to Germany so long as Hitler promised peace (Czechoslovakia, 2020b).

In effect, this pact led to the partition of Czechoslovakia, which erased borders and allowed neighboring countries like Hungary and Poland to claim Czech land. But it also allowed the Nazis to invade Czech provinces, install leadership under the Reich, and systematically eradicate the Jewish population.

About 263,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. Just 14,000 Jews remained after the war (Holocaust Explained, 2020).

• Holocaust: From the Greek word holokauston, meaning sacrifice by fire. It refers to the Nazi persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people and others considered inferior to "true" Germans.

• Shoah: A Hebrew word meaning devastation, ruin or waste, also used to refer to the Holocaust.

• Nazi: German acronym standing for Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Worker's Party).

• Final Solution: Nazi term referring to their plan to exterminate the Jewish people.

• Kristallnacht: Literally "Crystal Night" or The Night of Broken Glass, refers to the night of November 9-10, 1938 when thousands of synagogues and Jewish-owned homes and businesses in Austria and Germany were attacked.

• Concentration Camps: Although we use the blanket term "concentration camps", there were actually a number of different types of camps with different purposes. These included extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps.

The following statistics from the U.S. National Holocaust Museum list those killed:

• More than 17 million people were killed during the Holocaust

• 6 million Jews (2/3 of all Jews living in Europe)

• 5.7 million Soviet civilians were killed (an additional 1.3 Soviet Jewish civilians are included in the 6 million figure for Jews)

• 3 million Soviet prisoners of war (including about 50,000 Jewish soldiers)

• 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jewish)

• 312,000 Serb civilians

• Up to 250,000 people with disabilities

• Up to 250,000 Roma

• 1,900 Jehovah's Witnesses

• At least 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and "asocials"

• An undetermined number of German political opponents and activists.

• Hundreds or thousands of homosexuals (might be included in the 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and "asocials" number above) (Rosenberg, 2020)

(Pappas, 2016) (How did Hitler Happen?, 2016)

This week, we will hear the horrific story of a woman’s survival of one of the most unimaginable circumstances, the holocaust.

History has remembered Adolf Hitler as a murderous tyrant and the picture of evil. And yet, there was a point when he was not respected or accepted as a major leader. How could someone with these goals and values rise to the top tier of leadership, sparking one of the most disturbing eras in our lifetime? And how could the German people come to terms with this violent period of time? In this section, we will look at the circumstances that led to his rise to power.

Adolf Hitler was not a charismatic person by nature. He had few genuine friends, an overinflated view of his intellect and no inborn connections which would have assisted to his rise.

He was from a lower-middle-class family in Austria. His ideas were from philosophies of others. There were approximately 70 right-wing groups in Germany after World War I; the German Workers’ Party (which became the Nazi party after Hitler became the German leader) was only one of them.

But in post-World War I Germany, Hitler’s party would rise. And it was Hitler, with his speaking talent and tactics that allowed this. Once he achieved fame, he used media to project a cultured gentleman who was loved by children and animals.

His background included art (he was unsuccessful), avoidance of mandatory military service in Austria and eventually he found the German military. He worked in military intelligence, where he began to attend lectures on German history, socialism and bolshevism from a right-wing perspective. He particularly followed right-wing economist Gottfried Feder and a right-wing historian, Karl Alexander von Müller. It was Müller who recognized Hitler’s talent for speaking and he recommended Hitler for a job in the intelligence unit as a spy for the German Workers’ Party.

It was his power as a speaker that reversed his role from informer to party member. During a German Workers’ Party lecture, someone suggested that Bavaria should break from the rest of Germany. Hitler was appalled and argued against the idea. The leader of the party was impressed and asked him to join the party.

He became a fiery speaker on the beer-hall circuit and was willing to risk low turnout by organizing rallies in large spaces. He rose to the top of the party’s leadership. In 1920, the name of the party changed to the National Socialist German Workers’ party (Nazi). In 1921 he was voted chairman and the once small group began to draw new members, many of them from the other right-wing groups.

The ultimate aim of the Nazi Party was to seize power through Germany’s parliamentary system, install Hitler as dictator and create a community of racially pure Germans loyal to their leader who would lead them in a campaign of racial cleansing and world conquest.

As the early Nazi Party began to flourish, the chaos and resentment in Germany worked to help this grow. The German people were in shock after losing World War I, having been told that they were winning. They faced food and shortages, and lost millions in fighting. But the army insisted these sacrifices were necessary because victory was close.

How is it that Germany was able to target Jewish people in particular? Unable to understand how this type of thing (losing the war, shortages and death) could happen, many German people turned to conspiracy theories. In particular it was the theory that Jewish people on the home front that had stabbed Germany in the back.

Hitler claimed that Germany’s Jewish and communist minorities were trying to take over the country. In 1922 he told a Munich audience, “Either the victory of the Aryan or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.” Hitler saw history as a process of racial struggle with the strongest race (Aryan) ultimately prevailing.

Violence filled the early years of Hitler’s leadership. In 1923, he attempted to overthrow the government of Bavaria by force. This “Beer Hall Putsch” failed, but there was sympathy for Hitler’s aims. His trial became a way for him to broadcast his ideas, and his nine-month stint in prison gave him the opportunity to publish “Mein Kampf”, his biography.

There were a number of factors which contributed to his acceptance in Germany, including economic depression, and the Treaty of Versailles that ended the War. But using mass media, he was able to gain more and more followers.

In 1932, he ran for president, struggling to reach middle-class voters. He focused on his domestic life. His team presented him as a good and moral man. It was fabricated, but effective.

He lost the election but gained the support of many influential industrial interests. When parliamentary elections failed to establish a majority government, Germany’s president Paul von Hindenburg caved to outside pressures and named Hitler chancellor.

In 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire by a young Dutch communist, and Hitler was able to seize emergency powers and detain his political enemies. He was able to push a law called Enabling Act through parliament, which allowed Hitler’s cabinet to institute legislation without parliamentary consent. He also convinced President Hindenburg to declare an emergency decree suspending civil liberties throughout Germany including freedom of the press, freedom of expression and the right to public assemblies.

He then began to dismantle Germany’s democratic institutions and imprison or murder his opponents. When Hindenburg died the following year, he took on three titles: führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army. He expanded the army and began to develop an air force.

Through it all, his popularity was growing. His military spending and ambitious public-works programs helped to restore prosperity. He was able to suppress the Communist Party and he purged his own paramilitary storm troopers whose street demonstrations alienated the German middle class. Germans welcomed this suppression as a blow for law and order, and went along with his policies, sure that they would be eventually advantageous for the country.

And along the way, he again turned to mass media to project his cultured, friendly and lovable nature, with pictures of dogs and children. He created a space with an expansive Great Hall which seemed to be inspired by the artist salons of pre-World War I Munich, and magazines printed fluffy pieces of him at home. These cozy scenes helped to soften the image of Hitler whipping crowds into frenzies at mass rallies. This strategy was so successful that the most sold images of 1934 were pictures of Hitler playing with his dogs or children at home.

In 1938, he began his long-promised expansion of national boundaries to incorporate ethnic Germans. He colluded with Austrian Nazis to orchestrate the annexation of Austria to Germany. And it was during this time that Czechoslovakia was forced to surrender the Sudetenland, a mountainous border region containing mostly ethnic Germans. The Czechs looked to Great Britain and France for help, but wishing to avoid another war, these nations chose a policy of appeasement.

At the Munich meeting in September of 1938, representatives of Great Britain and France compelled Czech leaders to ceded the Sudetenland in return for Hitler’s pledge not to seek additional territory. The following year, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was taken by the German army.

With the demon unleashed, the world faced horrors that would haunt our collective memories while providing a cautionary tale for future governments.

Max and Rose were both freed in 1946.

They met in England at a hostel for orphaned Holocaust survivors. They fell in love and married in 1950. Soon after, they immigrated to the U.S., living in Brooklyn for a few years before moving to San Diego.

Max (who died in 2017) was a software engineer for General Dynamics for 30 years, and he and Rose also ran Roxy’s Fabrics in Allied Gardens. The Schindlers have four children, 9 grandchildren (as well as a few great-grandchildren).

As you’ll learn from her talk, she kept her promise to her father, even after all these years. In fact, her message is more important now than ever.

"Never forget what happened,” she said. “It was such a horrible thing. The whole world was silent when this was going on. Where were the people to help us? We were taken like sheep to the slaughter. Unbelievable."

Yet somehow she has never given up on humankind. "The thing is, if you have problems, don't ever give up," she said. "Things can always be fixed, and hopefully the next day is better, never give up hope."

Connolly, M. (2019). Two who survived. San Diego: MRS Publishing.

Czechoslovakia (12 May 2020a). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/place/Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia (2020b). Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/czechoslovakia

The Holocaust explained. (2020). The Wiener Holocaust Library. Retrieved from

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/life-in-nazi-occupied-europe/occupation-case-studies/czechoslovakia/

Lee, M. (3 September 2019) 'Never forget what happened': Holocaust survivor living in San Diego shares story in new memoir. Retrieved from https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/investigations/your-stories-8/san-diego-holocaust-survivor-rose-schindler-shares-story-in-memoir/509-9ec173b3-b1eb-48d0-893a-b609efb48a1f

Rosenberg, E. (26 February 2020). Essential facts about the Holocaust. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/holocaust-facts-1779663

Rowe, P. (17 January 2017). Holocaust survivor Max Schindler dies at age 87. Retrieved from https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/obituaries/sd-me-schindler-obit-20170117-story.html

Wilkens, J. (2019). ‘Somebody’s got to do it’: Nearing 90, Rose Schindler keeps sharing her Holocaust story. Retrieved from https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/lifestyle/people/story/2019-10-27/holocaust-survivor-rose-schindler