ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
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ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR |
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 MAIN - SITE MAGAZINE-SITE HLC. INFERNO Inferno Children Survivors Forgotten Memor. The Last Sermon The Jumper Lovers & Enemies Shlojme Balagule The Fall of Sevast.
MEMOIRS -SURV.Autobiogr. Notes The Shtejtl World Collapses The Russians. Shtejtl survives First Kaddish. Out of the Grave Yom Kippur Action The Baby Bunker Building Bunker Collapses I Almost Killed ... Ghetto Escape In Hiding The Liberation.
POETRYPoetry Prayers Survivor Creed Archivist Poetry
HLC. EDUCATI0NFinal Solution What Happened? The Killings Why Jews? Organizers Collaborators War against Jews Anti-Semitism Victims of Antisem The Worst Camp Nazi Methods Hitler - Syphilitic Hitler the Man Hitler & Jews Perpetrators Himmler Heydrich Goebbels The Victims Hlc. Syndrome The Rescuers Jewish Resistance Church Silence Nazi Revolution Jews Abandoned Other Genocides Schindler. Courageous Christians Remebr. Day
POST-HLC . ISSUESHlc. Legacy Revisionism Jews & Germans Jews & Poles Other Victims Research Topics
MISCELLANEOUSHlc. Sites Links Our Mail & Press Bibliography
HLC. PLAYSThe Verdict
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JEWISH COLLABORATORSby Alexander KimelThe key of understanding of the actions of the Sondercommando and the Judenrat is to consider the conditions in which they lived and perished. A man is a social animal and is a product of the society, its culture and values. Many of us moving from country to country experienced a cultural shock. THE HOLOCAUST SOCIETY. The Final Solution lasted for about four years ( 1941-1944). The Jews, isolated in the ghettos or deliberately starved to death, subjected to permanent killings, random terror developed an unique society, a dying society with peculiar values guided by: 1. Fear of Death. 2. The Will to Live, at all cost. 3. The Fear of Hunger 4. Holocaust Syndrome. FEAR OF DEATH. Fear of death is understandable, bur it was also fear of a cruel agonizing death, fear of losing the loved ones and to be left alone. People in the ghettos were praying for a swift death that will include all the family. FEAR OF HUNGER. In the ghetto one saw many skeletons moving on hunger swollen legs. I, for example, developed a psychological hunger and regardless how much I ate I was hungry, constantly foraging for food and devouring anything edible. WILL TO LIVE. We in the ghettos had a tremendous powerful urge to live, to survive at all cost. It was the allure of the forbidden fruit. Life, denied to us, was a tantalizing dream, a desert mirage. To live, to experience love, joy, to experience moments of security, free from fear and hunger, was a dream, an unfulfilled alluring dream. THE HOLOCAUST SYNDROME. The Holocaust Syndrome, explains the total resignation of individuals subjected to hunger, terror and isolation. Hunger and terror destroys the fabric of the human personality like a pressure cooker disintegrates the organic cohesiveness of the food. The victims lose the ability of rational thinking, and are molded into a amorphous mass, easily guided into the gas chambers. A healthy, young individual cannot perceive his own destruction, his own death. In a few moments he sun will stop shining, darkness will prevail; no plants, any animal life, everything will die. The victim knows that this not true, doesn't believe in his own death and fully cooperate with his executioners. The fear of death overrides rational thinking, makes the victims believe in the most obvious lies, and in a paradoxical way, their full cooperation with their executioners, makes their killing easier. THE SONDERCOMMANDO AND JUDENRAT. Under the prevailing conditions, any individual given food and a remote, ambiguous promise of survival will grasp the opportunity like a drowned man grasp a straw. I don't believe anyone of us would behave differently. As Rabbi AKIVAH said: "Don't judge your fellow man until you are in his shoes." For the compulsive judges I would suggest a simple exercise. Try to live for one week on 3 onzes of bread and glass of water. You will see how hunger changes the values and the perceptions.
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