‘There is no neutral ground’: San Antonio series details Holocaust atrocities through letters
Edward B. Westermann, professor of history at Texas A&MUniversity-San Antonio, discussed letter sent home from by German soldiers.Anna Salton Eisen, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, grew up with parents who survived the atrocities but never spoke about it.
She was about 7 when she found two small watercolors depicting brutalities of Nazi Germany and signed “L. Salzman” — a name she didn’t know — and began piecing together the truth. “When I would ask my father about his background or about his family, he would get a look of anguish. And he would say, ‘let’s not talk about it.’” Antisemitism reached an all-time high with more than 2,700 reports of harassment, vandalism and assault across the nation in 2021, according to the Anti-Defamation League, whichSome of those acts — threats and protests by Holocaust deniers and flyers left near homes with messages of hate — have unfolded in San Antonio and other Texas cities. Last year, a gunman held four people hostage in a North Texas synagogue and was killed by federal authorities. The 10-hour standoff stirred horrific memories of a 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that claimed 11 lives. Texas was one of the first states to recognize a need for education on the Holocaust, antisemitism and genocide that has occurred in Cambodia, Darfur and other parts of the world. In observance of, held on the anniversary of the the liberation of prisoners at Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945, the San Antonio Public Library and Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted four presenters for the 11th annual “Learn and Remember” series this month. Eisen was in her 30s and had moved to North Texas, where she studied the Holocaust, when she finally confronted her father, who had changed his name from Lucjan Salzman to George Lucius Salton. Together, they wrote “The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir,” published in 2004, about his ordeal, overcoming indignities, beatings and starvation. He witnessed countless atrocities in 10 different camps from age 14 to 17. Salton, who grew up in Poland, came to the United States after the war, joined the Army and became a U.S. citizen. He died in 2016. A founding member of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, where a frightening standoff occurred last year, Eisen her story in “Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust,” co-written with her son Aaron Eisen and published in May. “Since I first became involved in learning about the Holocaust more than 30 years ago, I have been speaking in schools and doing everything I can to preserve the truth in history and fight hate,” Eisen said. “When my father was in the sixth grade, he was called a dirty Jew and sent home from school. And when my son Aaron here was in sixth grade, he was called a dirty Jew in Texas.” The family’s faith in humanity was reaffirmed again when her son won an essay contest on the Holocaust. “In some ways … the Holocaust has no bottom,” she said. “It is a history of inter-generational trauma and pain and loss. But it is our story. And if we do not protect it and keep it and learn and put it in the hands of other people, then we have to deal with all the distortion and denial that is going on now that we must fight.”Nazi troops were authorized to shoot unarmed civilians for showing “active or passive resistance.” “‘Shot while attempting to escape’ becomes another euphemism for finishing people off,” said Edward B. Westermann, author and history professor at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Translations of letters sent home by German troops reveal how they became hardened. Viennese police official Walter Manner, writing to his wife, admitted his hands shook during his first “special action.” But on his 10th mass execution, “I calmly and surely shot at the many women, children and infants.” He and fellow policemen made a game of shooting children. He wrote he now knew the meaning of shared with his wife that “in Russia, wherever the German soldier is, no Jew remains.” He “needed some time to come to grips with this.” is not very popular round here.” Konrad Jarausch, a German sergeant who died of typhoid in 1942, questioned the brutalities, writing to his wife a few months before his death, “This is truly the work of the devil.” His son, German history scholar Konrad H. Jarausch, edited the letters for a book, “Reluctant Accomplice.” But most showed little remorse. Diary entries of SS Dr. Johann Kremer chronicled mass-gassings he oversaw at Auschwitz and details of the food he ate: “baked pike…real ground coffee, excellent beer and open sandwiches.” “So you see this jarring juxtaposition, matter-of-factly talking about the murder of thousands during the day … and how he had a nice cozy evening,” Westermann said.“I want to give a voice back to people it was taken away from,” said Reyna Stovall, a 19-year-old San Antonio sophomore studying human rights at Fordham University in New York City. “The lessons of the Holocaust are more important today than ever,” she said. “Sadly, I don’t think a lot of younger people have the awareness of the Holocaust that they should.” Reading “The Book Thief” as a teenager sparked her yearning to learn more about the atrocities. She encouraged her mother, who was adopted, to take a DNA test. They discovered they had Jewish roots. Freedoms of speech and the press were taken away in Germany in the 1930s, and new laws forced segregation of Jewish people. “The Nazis used the term ‘final solution’ as a euphemism for the mass murder they would end up committing,” Stovall said.
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