June 14, 2016 (Tuesday)
It was on this day, June 14, 1940, that Polish political prisoners were moved from overcrowded local jails to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. This awful place was originally a Polish village, annexed by Germany and renamed. The homes of the residents were demolished and the people were evicted.
Originally the concentration camps were intended to be slave labor camps, supplying labor for German war projects. But only 3 months after the first prisoners were transferred to Auschwitz, extermination began. Nearby Auschwitz II was the main extermination location. In addition to Jews, those deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses, and tens of thousands of others of diverse nationalities, including an unknown number of homosexuals. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.By war’s end, more than 3 million people were murdered there and 3 million more in other such camps.
In 1939, an Austrian Jew by the name of Josef Herschkowitz was freed from a similar camp at Dachau, due to the pleadings of his Gentile wife, Hermine, and the work of an organization dedicated to salvation of Jewish people (The American Board of Missions to the Jews, Inc). He was given passage on a train to the Netherlands and the last ship to the United States. His wife voluntarily remained behind, giving her tickets to Jews. Refusing to divorce her husband, she lost her job as head nurse in a world-famous psychiatric hospital. The couple would not see or hear from each other until the war was over.
In his new world, Josef became a Christian, and a preacher of the gospel. He and Hermine moved to Rockport after retirement, and lived in Palm Harbor, south of town. They joined the First Baptist Church of Rockport, where I was pastor. He died in 1971. She died 3 years later.
Josef showed me his forearm, crudely tatooed with his prisoner number. It was there to stay, as were horrible memories he shared from time to time of the days he spent in the concentration camp.
There are strong movements in the world to indoctrinate new generations with the belief that the Holocaust is a myth. I assure you, it is no myth. It really happened. Can it happen again? What do you think?