“WE ARE LIVING CORPSES”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21852, 24 October 1945, Page 8

“WE ARE LIVING CORPSES”

DELEGATES OF MILLIONS OF VICTIMS TO TELL MANKIND OF SUFFERINGS OF JEWS

“We belong to the army of nine million fallen in the war of this organised and cunningly prepared method of murder. We are not alive we are dead,” declared Dr. Z. Grinberg, MD. in a remarkable address delivered at the liberation ceremony in Munich-Freimann. Bavaria, and reported in Reconstruction, a Jewish newspaper published in New York, U.S.A. Dr. Grinbcrg was a former internee of the illfamcd Dachau-Ivau-fering concentration camp.

been annihilated up to 95 per cent, during the last year. “The road of torture is different—one led via Warsaw and Auschwitz to Upper Bavaria, the other from Budapest via Auschwitz to Upper-Bavaria, again, the third from Kovno-Stuttgart to Upper-Bavaria, and the fourth from Lodz to Sachsenhausen. from Sachsenhausen to Belsen. from Bclsen to Leonsberg, from Lconsberg to Kaufering.

“Diifercnt is the road, various are the stations of torture, different the time, but there is one common red thread of blood, torture, torment, humiliation and undignified death . . . One Ter Cent Survived

“Seventeen hundred Jews, the last representatives of the European Jews, after the hardest period of suffering ever heard of, are now here in tne camn of Munich-Flakkasernc, he stated. “These people are the lasi representatives of the venerable, Jewish communities in Europe. Budapest and Prague, Warsaw, Kovne and ~aloniki are represented here. Rnllions ot members of these communities arc annihilated.

(Then comes a detailed account of the sufferings of the Jews, particularly the Lithuanian Jews, under the Nazi regime).

"... We have met here to-day to celebrate our liberation but at the same time we are mourning. For every bright and joyful day at present and in the future, is shadowed by the tragic events of the years gone by. One per cent, survived to see the liberation. and 99 per cent, out of this one per cent, are very ill. Do you enjoy it? Are you able to celebrate?

“What is the logic of destiny to let these individuals remain alive': We belong into the mass-graves of those shot in Kharkow, Lubin and Kovno. We belong to the millions gassed and burnt in Auschwitz and Birkenau. vve belong to those tens of thousands who died under the strain of hardest labour, tormented by milliardes of lice and in mud or starvation in Lodz, Kielce. Buchenwald Dachau, Landshut, Utting, Kaufering. Landsberg and Lconsberg. We belong to those who were gassed, hung, tormented and tortured to death in the concentration camp. We belong to the army of nine million fallen in the war of this organised and cunningly prepared method of murder! We are not alive —We are dead! The Road of Torture

"Hitler lost all battles on all fronts, except the battle against defenceless and unarmed men. women and children! He won the war against the European Jews. “He was helped by the German nation. However, we do not ask for revenge. If we took revenge, we would descend into the depths of ethics and moral to~which the German nation has fallen during the past 10 years. “We are not able to slaughter women and children! We are not able to burn millions of people! We are not able to starve hundreds of thousands!

Nevertheless there might be some sense in my being able to address you to-day. We are merely delegates, of millions of victims to tell all mankind, to proclaim all over the world how cruel people may become, what beast there is concealed in a human being and what a triumphal record of crime and murder there has been achieved by the nation of Hegel and Kant. Schiller and Goethe, Beethoven and Schopenhauer? “Everyone of us suffei'ed a different kind of torture. During six years’ almost 3,500,000 Polish Jews were killed. There have remained approximately 10,000 out of the 350,000 Lithuanian Jews. The Hungarian Jews have

“We are free now, but we do not know what to begin with free mt unhappy life. It seems to us, that for the time being mankind does net comprehend what we have gone through and what we have experienced during this period of time. And it seems to us, neither shall we be understood in the future. “We unlearned to laugh, we cannot cry any more, we do not comprehend our freedom yet, because we are still among our dead comrades. “Let us raise and stand silent to commemorate our dead.”