Interview with Holocaust Survivor About Zionism and Her Bad Experiences with Zionist Organizers after the War
Interview with Holocaust Survivor Maryla (nee Husyt) Finkelstein About Zionism and Her Bad Experiences with Zionist Organizers after the War
I was not a Zionist because I did not believe that this problem of a lot of Jews, of a congregation of so many Jews in the world, can be solved by a small country like Palestine. Naturally, I didn't think that we should build our country over dead bodies. So I did not believe that Zionism will solve the Jewish problem.
After the Holocaust as I told you, there was more enlightenment. I started to think that maybe I am wrong. In my idiotic mind I thought that if we would have during the Second War a country like Israel and a representation in the League of Nations we would be saved. Well I started to think about Zionism. But the experience with the Judenrat. The experience with the leaders in the DP camp in Austria which had everything what they wanted. They had as much money for nothing as they wanted. And still there was pilferage, injustice, outright discrimination against the sick and the poor. They were so ruthless. I said to myself well I won't be able to function under a Jewish rule. I cannot function in a society where the word protection is connected -- not that they protect you but this is a door opening for the most plain job, I didn't like them. I can give you millions of examples.
Now coming here to this country and what happened to me with the money from Germany was an outright antidote to any Zionist thoughts I ever had. If you could take Jews after such a horrible tragedy to steal money from not only me, but like me, a handful like me, to steal money, and force us to go back to primitive situation and to start build ourselves up from scratch after a concentration camp, life in a ghetto, horrors of war. If they could take away what the damn Germans agreed to give me, you understand, on the way to the forum, the money on the way to the forum, I was robbed by Jews and not poor because after the first thievery they were already rich. But they wanted the most. I'm telling you, this was my antidote to any thought of Zionism.
Oy Jewish people have to go through big and big and big indoctrination and cleansing to be able to stand up and ask and demand and show that we are a state. That we are capable of having a state. A state cannot exist on tanks because tanks kill, so what are you going to rule over dead bodies? We have to show that we can build. And the leadership must be brought up not from the scum. But from the what is in the middle, the more human humans. What shall I tell you.
The Pope once was told, asked to recognize Israel. And the Jewish argument was we are a state. So he said if you are state so act like a state and we will recognize you. Now imagine my tzuris I have to side with the Pope. But I agree with him. You cannot have even in this wild crazy world, you cannot have a state behaving so rowdily like Israel. And it's not a state. Again and again. It's a garrison. It's a garrison. And I dream and I feel that our salvation, our lives, just lives, flesh and blood and bones, depends on the behavior in Palestine, in Israel, on Israel and Palestine territory. I don't know even how to call it.
The leadership in Israel is the prolongation of the Judenrat and these [commedists-?] in the DP camps and they finally arrived there to destroy and to really take our, get our [mouths?] forever claiming that we have the right to live. And in order to live in today's world you have to have a government. Whether you like it or not. I am not so fond of so many borders on the map. I wish we will be united all. Borders only create more wars. But be it as it may, we have to have representation, but not the kind we have.
Interview with Maryla (nee Husyt) Finkelstein, Holocaust survivor. She grew up in Warsaw, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Died 1995.
Judenrat (plural: Judenräte; German for "Jewish council") was a widely used administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany during World War II, predominantly within the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. The Nazi German administration required Jews to form a Judenrat in every community across the occupied territories.[1]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Garrison: a body of troops stationed in a fortified place.
I was not a Zionist because I did not believe that this problem of a lot of Jews, of a congregation of so many Jews in the world, can be solved by a small country like Palestine. Naturally, I didn't think that we should build our country over dead bodies. So I did not believe that Zionism will solve the Jewish problem.
After the Holocaust as I told you, there was more enlightenment. I started to think that maybe I am wrong. In my idiotic mind I thought that if we would have during the Second War a country like Israel and a representation in the League of Nations we would be saved. Well I started to think about Zionism. But the experience with the Judenrat. The experience with the leaders in the DP camp in Austria which had everything what they wanted. They had as much money for nothing as they wanted. And still there was pilferage, injustice, outright discrimination against the sick and the poor. They were so ruthless. I said to myself well I won't be able to function under a Jewish rule. I cannot function in a society where the word protection is connected -- not that they protect you but this is a door opening for the most plain job, I didn't like them. I can give you millions of examples.
Now coming here to this country and what happened to me with the money from Germany was an outright antidote to any Zionist thoughts I ever had. If you could take Jews after such a horrible tragedy to steal money from not only me, but like me, a handful like me, to steal money, and force us to go back to primitive situation and to start build ourselves up from scratch after a concentration camp, life in a ghetto, horrors of war. If they could take away what the damn Germans agreed to give me, you understand, on the way to the forum, the money on the way to the forum, I was robbed by Jews and not poor because after the first thievery they were already rich. But they wanted the most. I'm telling you, this was my antidote to any thought of Zionism.
Oy Jewish people have to go through big and big and big indoctrination and cleansing to be able to stand up and ask and demand and show that we are a state. That we are capable of having a state. A state cannot exist on tanks because tanks kill, so what are you going to rule over dead bodies? We have to show that we can build. And the leadership must be brought up not from the scum. But from the what is in the middle, the more human humans. What shall I tell you.
The Pope once was told, asked to recognize Israel. And the Jewish argument was we are a state. So he said if you are state so act like a state and we will recognize you. Now imagine my tzuris I have to side with the Pope. But I agree with him. You cannot have even in this wild crazy world, you cannot have a state behaving so rowdily like Israel. And it's not a state. Again and again. It's a garrison. It's a garrison. And I dream and I feel that our salvation, our lives, just lives, flesh and blood and bones, depends on the behavior in Palestine, in Israel, on Israel and Palestine territory. I don't know even how to call it.
The leadership in Israel is the prolongation of the Judenrat and these [commedists-?] in the DP camps and they finally arrived there to destroy and to really take our, get our [mouths?] forever claiming that we have the right to live. And in order to live in today's world you have to have a government. Whether you like it or not. I am not so fond of so many borders on the map. I wish we will be united all. Borders only create more wars. But be it as it may, we have to have representation, but not the kind we have.
Interview with Maryla (nee Husyt) Finkelstein, Holocaust survivor. She grew up in Warsaw, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Died 1995.
Judenrat (plural: Judenräte; German for "Jewish council") was a widely used administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany during World War II, predominantly within the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. The Nazi German administration required Jews to form a Judenrat in every community across the occupied territories.[1]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Garrison: a body of troops stationed in a fortified place.
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