5 ms·

How did he avoid it?

thechao 5y ago
I know everyone has a story, here, but I knew several survivors when I was younger. The "general" answer is that the few that survived were highly exceptional — they Nazi machine wasn't perfect. So, most of them had stories that were really over-the-top & full of coincidence. Everyone who had a normal story was dead before the war ended. One of the survivors I knew was executed twice. He said "it didn't catch".
dalbasal 5y ago
A long series of events, 3 years. Initially there was a backlog. Not enough trains to Poland. He went through several camps, work assignments. He never got shipped to Poland. Eventually he was freed by his brother, with the help of the Czech partisans using forged/backdated baptismal records. The Slovak subsidiary of the third reich was church oriented. Most survival stories that I know of personally involved the church, one way or another. The brother who worked tirelessly to save him had been the one on the list. He had a baby on the way, born the following morning. My grandfather volunteered to take his place, while the couple hid. The daughter became a teacher. He survived the rest of the war as a partisan. I don't know the whole story. He rarely spoke of it. Many/most of the Lubaks (local SS) were from the area, and he'd gone to school with some of them. That's part of the story, but I don't know exactly how it fits in.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Eventually he was freed by his brother, with the help of the Czech partisans using forged/backdated baptismal records. The Slovak subsidiary of the third reich was church oriented. I want to remind how little people today remember who 3rd reich collaborators were. The myth of "unwilling collaborators," and "forced to work for Germans under a gunpoint" was invented after the war by political forces who got in bed with 3rd reich, and then wanted to save their skin from pitchforks when they lost. Those were often very mainstream, and popular political parties. Some of them exist to this day. Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact, quite plenty of them.
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    I wouldn't even necessarily call the SLS collaborators. They were primaries. Broadly though, yes. When we know a little about a topic, it tends to be clean, black and white stereotypes and cliches. Real history is infinitely complicated. Even (especially) individuals are not one thing or another.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > we know a little about a topic, it tends to be clean, black and white stereotypes and cliches. Real history is infinitely complicated. The history is simple, in this case. There were bad people, and there are bad people trying to muddy the boundary of a very clear cut difference of who was bad, and who was good. One go kills random innocent people — he is bad.
  - AriaMinaei 5y ago
    > The myth of "unwilling collaborators," and "forced to work for Germans under a gunpoint" was invented after the war by political forces who got in bed with 3rd reich, and then wanted to save their skin from pitchforks when they lost. Not to mention Ordinary Men [0], the dynamic that makes your average citizens with no ideological indoctrination become the murderers of tens of thousands of Jews, to the point they'd shoot at small children with a clear conscience. They'd even have the option not to directly take part in the murders, but still do. Again, these were average, ordinary people. No strong party affiliation, SS membership or anything. The fact that Christopher Browning's book was a revelation when it came out shows how little we've learned from WWII. We might have put the lid on undisguised antisemitism, but we have merely channeled its otherising roots elsewhere. Otherwise, we wouldn't find it so easy to turn a blind eye to the settler colonialism happening right now in Palestine. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-dp-0062303023/dp/0062303023/ref=dp_ob_title_bk https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...
  - gambiting 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say - hopefully not that there weren't any unwilling collaborators? Read the biography of Stanislaw Lem for instance, who grew up in Lwów(current Ukraine, back then Poland) - Nazis frequently recruited local population to both kill and then bury anyone they wanted to get rid of, under a) promise of reward b) threat of being killed themselves. But you don't need to trust the biography of one man and his experiences - we also know this because Nazis kept extensive video and photo evidence of those executions, which they would show back in the 3rd Reich as "evidence" of the barbarism of the local people in places they were occupying ("look at those stupid Poles/Ukrainians/Jews, killing each other for a scrap of food!"). "Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact, quite plenty of them." Again, because some of them were given a choice of either joining the ghetto kommando unit, or being shot there and then, along with their families. It didn't matter at all in the end of course, because they all got executed in the end anyway. Can you say with with 100% confidence that you wouldn't make the same choice in the same situation? And I do mean 100% confidence? Polish nobelist, Wiesława Szymborska, said something about these choices people faced in WW2 that I will always remember - "we only know ourselves as much as we have been tested - and I pray that my moment of trial never comes". I think she's absolutely right - it's easy to judge what people have done from the comfort of our homes in 2021. But I do hope that I am never put in front of the same choice. I hope I will never be tested in the same way those people were. And I will clarify here - of course there were willing collaborators too. 100%. But your comment reads as if that wasn't the case and the "myth" of unwilling collaborators was purely made up. I see no reason to believe such a thing.
- andischo 5y ago
  As a German, born roughly 40 years after the war, I still cannot fathom the atrocities we Germans brought to the world at large and to so many million individuals. I grew up learning the history, I know my grandparents (as well as probably great grandparents) played their part in what happened. I am deeply sorry for what they/we did and even saying it these words just sound hollow in light of the magnitude of cruelty and injustice that happened. I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and I am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past I will make sure that my children and grandchildren will remember what happened in order to prevent anything like that happening in our lifetimes again.
  - shrubble 5y ago
    The Allies also committed war crimes, the bombing of Dresden being the most well-known I would guess. The Soviets brutally enslaved and worked to death 1000s of German POWs at a minimum also. War is detestable...
    - jasonshaev 5y ago
      Playing the "both sides" card is a hell of a take regarding WW2, especially when the article is literally about liberating Auschwitz. Of course both sides committed atrocities in war. But only one side committed mass genocide on an industrial scale.
      - shrubble 5y ago
        I was responding specifically to the German poster above. Crushing guilt laid on a generation that wasn't even alive at the time is unwarranted.
        morelisp 5y ago
        Germany has an extremely healthy attitude towards the Holocaust; it would do most western nations well to model it as regards their own historical atrocities.
    - 5y ago
- galuggus 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this story

I know everyone has a story, here, but I knew several survivors when I was younger. The "general" answer is that the few that survived were highly exceptional — they Nazi machine wasn't perfect. So, most of them had stories that were really over-the-top & full of coincidence. Everyone who had a normal story was dead before the war ended. One of the survivors I knew was executed twice. He said "it didn't catch".

dalbasal 5y ago

A long series of events, 3 years. Initially there was a backlog. Not enough trains to Poland. He went through several camps, work assignments. He never got shipped to Poland. Eventually he was freed by his brother, with the help of the Czech partisans using forged/backdated baptismal records. The Slovak subsidiary of the third reich was church oriented. Most survival stories that I know of personally involved the church, one way or another. The brother who worked tirelessly to save him had been the one on the list. He had a baby on the way, born the following morning. My grandfather volunteered to take his place, while the couple hid. The daughter became a teacher. He survived the rest of the war as a partisan. I don't know the whole story. He rarely spoke of it. Many/most of the Lubaks (local SS) were from the area, and he'd gone to school with some of them. That's part of the story, but I don't know exactly how it fits in.

baybal2 5y ago
> Eventually he was freed by his brother, with the help of the Czech partisans using forged/backdated baptismal records. The Slovak subsidiary of the third reich was church oriented. I want to remind how little people today remember who 3rd reich collaborators were. The myth of "unwilling collaborators," and "forced to work for Germans under a gunpoint" was invented after the war by political forces who got in bed with 3rd reich, and then wanted to save their skin from pitchforks when they lost. Those were often very mainstream, and popular political parties. Some of them exist to this day. Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact, quite plenty of them.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  I wouldn't even necessarily call the SLS collaborators. They were primaries. Broadly though, yes. When we know a little about a topic, it tends to be clean, black and white stereotypes and cliches. Real history is infinitely complicated. Even (especially) individuals are not one thing or another.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > we know a little about a topic, it tends to be clean, black and white stereotypes and cliches. Real history is infinitely complicated. The history is simple, in this case. There were bad people, and there are bad people trying to muddy the boundary of a very clear cut difference of who was bad, and who was good. One go kills random innocent people — he is bad.
- AriaMinaei 5y ago
  > The myth of "unwilling collaborators," and "forced to work for Germans under a gunpoint" was invented after the war by political forces who got in bed with 3rd reich, and then wanted to save their skin from pitchforks when they lost. Not to mention Ordinary Men [0], the dynamic that makes your average citizens with no ideological indoctrination become the murderers of tens of thousands of Jews, to the point they'd shoot at small children with a clear conscience. They'd even have the option not to directly take part in the murders, but still do. Again, these were average, ordinary people. No strong party affiliation, SS membership or anything. The fact that Christopher Browning's book was a revelation when it came out shows how little we've learned from WWII. We might have put the lid on undisguised antisemitism, but we have merely channeled its otherising roots elsewhere. Otherwise, we wouldn't find it so easy to turn a blind eye to the settler colonialism happening right now in Palestine. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-dp-0062303023/dp/0062303023/ref=dp_ob_title_bk https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...
- gambiting 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you are trying to say - hopefully not that there weren't any unwilling collaborators? Read the biography of Stanislaw Lem for instance, who grew up in Lwów(current Ukraine, back then Poland) - Nazis frequently recruited local population to both kill and then bury anyone they wanted to get rid of, under a) promise of reward b) threat of being killed themselves. But you don't need to trust the biography of one man and his experiences - we also know this because Nazis kept extensive video and photo evidence of those executions, which they would show back in the 3rd Reich as "evidence" of the barbarism of the local people in places they were occupying ("look at those stupid Poles/Ukrainians/Jews, killing each other for a scrap of food!"). "Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact, quite plenty of them." Again, because some of them were given a choice of either joining the ghetto kommando unit, or being shot there and then, along with their families. It didn't matter at all in the end of course, because they all got executed in the end anyway. Can you say with with 100% confidence that you wouldn't make the same choice in the same situation? And I do mean 100% confidence? Polish nobelist, Wiesława Szymborska, said something about these choices people faced in WW2 that I will always remember - "we only know ourselves as much as we have been tested - and I pray that my moment of trial never comes". I think she's absolutely right - it's easy to judge what people have done from the comfort of our homes in 2021. But I do hope that I am never put in front of the same choice. I hope I will never be tested in the same way those people were. And I will clarify here - of course there were willing collaborators too. 100%. But your comment reads as if that wasn't the case and the "myth" of unwilling collaborators was purely made up. I see no reason to believe such a thing.
andischo 5y ago
As a German, born roughly 40 years after the war, I still cannot fathom the atrocities we Germans brought to the world at large and to so many million individuals. I grew up learning the history, I know my grandparents (as well as probably great grandparents) played their part in what happened. I am deeply sorry for what they/we did and even saying it these words just sound hollow in light of the magnitude of cruelty and injustice that happened. I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and I am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past I will make sure that my children and grandchildren will remember what happened in order to prevent anything like that happening in our lifetimes again.
- shrubble 5y ago
  The Allies also committed war crimes, the bombing of Dresden being the most well-known I would guess. The Soviets brutally enslaved and worked to death 1000s of German POWs at a minimum also. War is detestable...
  - jasonshaev 5y ago
    Playing the "both sides" card is a hell of a take regarding WW2, especially when the article is literally about liberating Auschwitz. Of course both sides committed atrocities in war. But only one side committed mass genocide on an industrial scale.
    - shrubble 5y ago
      I was responding specifically to the German poster above. Crushing guilt laid on a generation that wasn't even alive at the time is unwarranted.
      - morelisp 5y ago
        Germany has an extremely healthy attitude towards the Holocaust; it would do most western nations well to model it as regards their own historical atrocities.
  - 5y ago
galuggus 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this story