updated:
August, 5 1998 21:24		 help previous up home down next Email!   basad

Welcome to my Historypage!

NEW!!!  Did you see myAutobiographic letters?
 

     Remember Anne Franck,
               the girl from the Holocaust Diary?
Well, they are going to publish soon the complete diary, though I would like to know, who needs it? If you can read a bit between the lines, you realize, that she was having a relationship with that boy, who was hiding with them in the same hideout. Big deal!
Anyway, she's been dead for a long time, because she succumbed to typhus and hunger, shortly before the end of the war (W.W.II).
I'm not criticizing. People, who are locked together for weeks on end, in a situation of dread and terror, waiting to be found and dragged to their deaths, will seek warmth and love (and sex). I would certainly have reacted in a similar way.    But what I mean is, that the role, which the father, Otto Franck, played, was not such a positive role.   He succeeded in running for Switzerland and saving his life.    But he sacrificed his family.   Criticizing?    Maybe, because my dear late father, could have done the same!    But he didn't!
My father was very resourceful and capable. He could easily have jumped off the train, which took us to the concentration-camp. Jumping off the train is a feat, which is more complicated, than it sounds. You don't just jump off a train, even when it's only doing 30 mph. If you do, you should expect to land up, looking like a hamburger. You have to find a way, to roll off it, hunched up, like an unborn baby, while protecting your head with your arms. Most did it with their heads first, though I think, that some tried it feet first. I doubt, that there are statistics on the success of either.
As I said, my father didn't. He stuck with his wife and four kids and saw them through the whole ordeal, catching the brunt of it. And after that, he had to take them back, to a society, that resented the fact, that they had survived! Yes, in Western Europe, anti-semitism is as alive, after the Holocaust, as it was before. The survivors, who had lost their parents, siblings and children, were given no time to mourn or to treat their wounds. They had to get a job and earn their living, as if nothing had happened! Business as usual!
 
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