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March 16, 2003
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!
There won't be any news on Ernst Zundel's situation
until March 31, when another immigration hearing will take place. I am sure
he keeps distressing things from me, but every once in a while the truth
slips out. Can you imagine living in a cell with no window but with the
light on at all times, and with no sign what day it is, what time of day or
night, what's going on outside - and if a pencil breaks, and the two pencil
sharpeners outside the cell don't work, he cannot even write? A ball point
pen is forbidden!
I had sent him some articles I pulled from the Net about the
horrid censorship in Germany. The articles were very well researched and
pertinent to his defense. They were, however, kept from him, only my
personal letter was given to him. Today he negotiated that he will be
allowed to see those documents, one at a time - if there are more than two
papers in a cell, that means there is a fire hazard!
I can see how a psyche can crack!
Not that I think his will - but knowing him the way I do, I
can surmise the price that kind of injustice extracts. And all for what?
Because he missed an immigration appointment the Immigration bureaucrats
never saw fit to reschedule - or even to advise us that something was
remiss?
=====
Just a few days ago, I thought we would be spared a war -
what with all the revelations about faked documents and blackmail and
what-have-you. But today the news is glum, and if the war begins, then
heaven help the children!
[START]
Back to the Holocaust in Germany
Margit Alm
Melbourne Australia, <mailto:malm@ica.net.au>malm@ica.net.au
Here is how I remember the 1943 air raids over Hamburg. It
is a story far removed from Zionism but it turned into a Holocaust of its
own kind.
It had been a particularly beautiful sunny summers day in
July and a busy one for us children. My baby brother, my older sister and I
were safely tucked into bed, watched over by the elderly lady from next door
whilst my mother had walked to the Central Station to collect my father, who
was a conscript soldier in the Wehrmacht, but stationed in North Germany
whilst rehabilitating from a war injury sustained the previous year. This
enabled him to spend his free days with his family.
We lived in a flat in a big block of commercial/residential
apartments in Hamburg's inner city (CBD), some 300 m away from the "Binnenalster"
(Alster lake).
My parents had just arrived home; my mother had put the
kettle on for a cup of coffee and a piece of freshly baked cake when the
howl of the sirens sounded and simultaneously the buzzing roar from the
squadron bombers filled the air. We were torn from our beds, hastily
dressed, my mother grabbed her handbag with the family documents and some
photos and we raced down the stairs from our 4th floor flat to the cellar.
As we passed the window between the 4th and 3rd floor I could see the bombs
falling and the "Christmas trees" lighting the sky to guide the
bombers.
We hovered in the cellar together with other people from the
building, everyone preoccupied with their own thoughts and fears. My father
meanwhile raced up and down the four floors, scouting for fires. He put out
some 18 spot fires. Eventually he reappeared in the cellar, took my mother
in his arms, told her that everything was lost, and then ordered everyone
out. A huge load of fire bombs had hit the building next door and the fire
was now spreading to neighbouring buildings and streets.
Whilst our cellar was fire proof, it was not smoke proof.
Smoke quickly began to fill the cellar and we rushed up the stairs into the
foyer, holding wet handkerchiefs over our mouths and noses. There was only
one entrance/exit to/from the building and that was enveloped by flames.
There was a lonely chair in the foyer, which my father grabbed and smashed
the window, through which all of us escaped, the adults jumping the two odd
metres, the children being lifted out.
The air raid was still in full swing, so my father took our
group some 50 m down the burning street into another building that had not
yet caught fire and temporarily "parked" us there whilst he
continued on his way to investigate the air raid shelter another 100 m away.
It was still intact and had room for our group.
As we left our temporary abode I cast a last glance to our
building where my childhood dreams and toys were turned to ashes. It stood
there, a dark and silent silhouette in the fire-lit sky, seemingly untouched
by what was going on around it. However, a blaze of flames escaping through
the roof shot skywards and I knew that the building was burning itself out
from within.
Five metres away from us, across the street, a whole
building came crumbling down and rained a shower of phosphorous sparks on
us. One of them must have hit me in the face as my mother was for a while
fearful that I could become blind. Thank heavens, not so.
The whole group made it safely to the air raid shelter where
we waited out the end of the air raid and the end of the night.
I cannot remember whether I was scared. This air raid was a
totally new experience for me. There was no time to become scared. I also
had 200% confidence in my father's ability to see us through safely.
Although air raids had taken place earlier over Hamburg, they left only
sporadic damage to the inner city and were mainly targeting the port and
industrial areas. They provided some excitement to us children. We would
tour the bombed-out buildings the next day.
But this air raid was not child's play. It was meant to
destroy more than infrastructure, and it certainly did just that; yet it
could not have targeted civilians as there were relatively few civilians
living in the inner city. Maybe it was a practice run for what was to come
next.
As soon as daylight broke, and being summer it broke early,
my father made his way across town to my aunt, who lived on the other side
of town, some 5 km away, in a large residential area. They (two aunts lived
there and one uncle but he was on the eastern front) had escaped the
bombings and we found shelter in their apartment - but only for one night.
The second night the sirens once again forced us into the
building's cellar. This time there was a much larger group, the building
being residential only. My father, now on compassionate leave from the
Wehrmacht, again patrolled the building like a security guard would patrol a
casino, checking every corner. Again, he told us we had to vacate. A time
bomb had fallen into the small courtyard (where the rubbish bins were
stored) and it could explode any time. But escape where to? The whole suburb
was burning. Luckily the emergency services had earlier on dynamited an
entrance through the walls of the underground, and this was the only safe
spot far and wide.
The rule was that my father carrying my brother would lead
the way, followed by my mother who dragged me along and my aunts who took
care of my older sister. But when we emerged from the cellar and I stood on
top of the stairs leading into the street I could only see fire: all
buildings were ablaze, fire was raining from the sky, and as the sparks were
ricocheting from the stones it looked to me as if the road was burning. I
jerked away from my mother's hand and told here I was not running through
that. My mother followed my father, screaming "I lost Margit" (I
have never ceased wondering whether at that moment my father was not cursing
her for being unable to control a pre-school child), and I just stood there
and watched in abhorrence. To my left shadows were rushing past me
disappearing into the firy night, following my father to safety. No one
noticed me, or so I thought. Suddenly I felt swept off my feet and strong
arms held me. I buried my face in a broad chest. It turned out that my
rescuer was a young Dutchman who lived in the apartment building and knew us
quite well. When my feet touched the ground again at the dynamited entrance
to the underground I looked into my father's face. He was about to run
through the fire and air raid once more and fetch me. However, he would not
have made it. The time bomb explored just after the last person had left the
building, turning the building to rubble.
We were lucky, everyone in the building was saved.
We spent the remainder of the night cowering and squatting
on the rail tracks. At daylight my father again went on his by now familiar
scouting trip to find the best way out for everyone. The best way out turned
out to be a long, long walk along the tracks until we reached platforms and
a station in another suburb. When my father investigated the devastation
from the previous night, he not only found the rubbled buildings but piles
and piles of corpses just lying in the streets. He wanted to spare us such a
sight.
They say, 45000 people perished during that night.
From the railway station we were taken to big halls in
Neumünster, and a new episode of our lives began. For the next four years
we settled elsewhere, but that is a different story.
My father was a decorated soldier (and threw all his
decorations into a river because they would have hindered his escape from a
Russian POW camp back to Germany after the war had ended), but I think his
greatest deed was to show leadership in those two air raids. Neither our
family nor all those belonging to the two groups would have escaped the
bombing and the fires without his initiative. There were mainly women and
children in the cellars, but I remember a few males present, yet apart from
the Dutchman who carried me to safety, no one showed initiative (maybe for
that reason the men were at home and not at the front).
I now look forward to the book Der Brand and what it says
about Hamburg's firestorm.
By the way, more than 30 years ago I saw a play here in
Melbourne by Rolf Hochhuth, called The Soldiers. It dealt with the planning
of this air raid over Hamburg. At the time a Swiss girl from work was in our
group of theatre goers. She was quite devastated after the play and said to
me: "but they never carried it through". I had to tell her that
they did.
[END]
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