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Life after The Holocaust

The Nuremberg Trials

After the war, judges from the Allied powers (Britain, America, France and the Soviet Union) convened to bring those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust to trial. These took place in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1946. 22 Nazis were bought before the court, with 12 being sentenced to death. Charged with Crimes against Humanity, the majority of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charges against them, but claimed they were just ‘following orders’. Those who were directly involved with the murder of over 11 million men, women and children were most harshly sentenced, however, those who played a large role in the Holocaust, who facilitated the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’ (eg: Government officials, business-men who used forced labour, and other executives) were sentenced to lenient prison sentences or no punishment at all.

Many Nazi war criminals, including Hitler who committed suicide at the end of the war, were never sentenced. Many fled the country and have never been found. However, people like the late survivor Simon Wiesenthal continued to hunt Nazi’s across the world. Wiesenthal found Adolf Eichmann, who had helped to instigate the ‘Final Solution’ in Argentina, and he was bought to trial and executed in 1961.

The Nuremberg Trials led to the establishment of The International Criminal Court in 2002, over 50 years later as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression, although it cannot currently exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. As of October 2008, 108 states are members of the the Court.

Rebuilding Lives

Despite what they went through, after the war the survivors never clamoured to be heard and did not demand attention. Few sought revenge against those who had tormented them and most only reluctantly claimed compensation, even for what was theirs by right. Instead, they quietly went about the business of rebuilding lives and reconstructing the societies in which they lived. They set an unrivalled example of dignity and fortitude.

Even today they step forward unwillingly to tell of their extraordinary experiences. They do not insist on any reward: to them it is a civic duty. Their recompense is the knowledge that society is learning from what they had to suffer, the knowledge that younger generations are listening to what they have to say and carrying their message forward. Survivors are not special just because they are survivors. Most will say that they did not escape from Germany or live through the ghettos or the camps because of something intrinsic to them. Most will readily admit that they survived thanks to sheer luck: better people perished, worse ones got away. Survivors of Nazi persecution and mass murder are special because of what they survived and what they have to tell us about that horrific experience.

Few comforting stories emerged from the Nazi dark ages. One of the most important things we can learn from the survivors of Nazi persecution and mass murder is that for people who emerge from war and genocide, suffering and grief do not end instantly with the declaration of peace. The survivors of the Nazi racial persecution and genocide faced a particularly difficult time.

For those in the camps, liberation was a muted experience. They were alive, but they had lost everything. Thousands died of malnutrition and disease even after Allied troops arrived. The sights that greeted Allied servicemen and women marked them for ever. They brought immediate aid to the survivors in terrible conditions and at great risk to themselves. The troops and relief workers should be honoured for that bravery and skill.

But after the initial rescue, survivors often faced incomprehension and even hostility. Those who limped back to their own countries frequently discovered that their homes were occupied by other people and that their belongings were gone. They were treated with fear and resentment.

The post-war experience of Jews was rooted in the ambiguous wartime attitude towards the Nazi policies that singled out the Jewish people and the reluctance to accept that they were special targets of Nazi race hate. Unlike the citizens of occupied countries, the Jewish survivors had no government to represent them or homeland to take them back. Since only a few had been able to take up arms against the Nazis they were not treated as heroes, like resistance fighters or soldiers who came home.

About 50,000 Jewish camp survivors gathered in the British and American zones of occupation in Germany, refusing to return to places that were no more than a graveyard. Outbreaks of violent anti-semitism in Poland led to over a hundred thousand Polish Jewish survivors joining them. But no country in the world was willing to take substantial numbers of Jewish ‘Displaced Persons’, ‘DPs’, as the survivors became known.

The British government refused to allow an influx of Jewish refugees and only a few thousand came to Britain under a scheme for the ‘distressed relatives’ of Jews already in the UK. The government permitted 10,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children to enter the country but ruled out any old enough to work, even though tens of thousands of non-Jewish DPs, including Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, and ethnic Germans, were recruited for labour in Britain.

Today we live in a ‘therapeutic culture’, but few survivors received anything more than essential medical treatment. About 750 boys and girls who were brought to Britain by the British Jewish community were given excellent care and sustained attention – but they were the exception. Neither the survivors nor the liberating troops, many of whom were traumatised by what they had seen, received the kind of support that we would deem essential to their psychological well-being.

In the post-war trials of war criminals the testimony of survivors was almost totally ignored and they were at the bottom of the list of those to get restitution. It took decades before they obtained justice. In Germany Roma and Gay men had no chance of obtaining redress: the laws under which they had been persecuted remained in force for many years. Their experiences, like the Nazi treatment of Germans of African descent, were hardly mentioned. And yet most of the former Jewish refugees and the camp survivors who reached Britain between 1938 and 1945 came through and avoided the canker of bitterness. Some completed interrupted educations while others began their schooling in a new tongue. They mastered trades and professions, and embarked on productive working lives. They married and raised families. They maintained their religious affiliations and cherished memories of a culture that was now in ruins. Above all, they avoided the temptation to hate or to teach their children to hate.

Over time they formed associations and set up memorials to murdered loved ones and lost communities. They fostered commemorations, teaching and research into the origins of the Nazi nightmare and the fate of those it engulfed.

As well as being productive, law abiding citizens, they tried to turn their experiences to the general good by warning against what happens when democracy, toleration, and decency collapse.

They did all this not because of what society expected of them, but despite a pervasive lack of compassion and curiosity. From the 1940s to the 1970s, there was little interest in what they had endured: the Nazi genocide was not taught about in our schools and stories connected with it rarely cropped up in the media. It is only in the last few years that we have recognised the importance of the survivors and given them the acknowledgement they deserve. In 2001, the UK government established Holocaust Memorial Day, and, in 2005, it was recognised as an international day of commemoration by the United Nations.

The Second Generation

The children of Jewish refugees from and survivors of Nazi persecution are known as ‘the second generation’. Their ages vary quite widely as this definition can be applied to someone for example, born in the 1940’s to a camp survivor, or to someone born in the UK any time after 1933 to a refugee. The children of people who came to the UK on the Kindertransport (when they themselves were still children) were born later. Issues of particular concern to the second generation can include learning the facts of their parents’ wartime experiences and the fate of relatives who were murdered during the Holocaust – often their parents find it difficult to discuss such matters. Some second generation people only discover the facts of their family history after the death of their parents. Many second generation people wish to visit the country of their parents’ birth – and sometimes the places where their relatives were persecuted or died in order to pay their respects. The lack of a grave at which to do this and the obliteration of traces of recent family history can be felt as an immense loss. Discussing such issues in groups (whether led by a therapist or not), can be tremendously supportive.