loading . . . Craig C-E (@craigce) Some of the best people I have ever met, I have met in Weimar - the heart of the German Enlightenment, home to Goethe and Schiller and the Weimar Republic, the city currently an international centre for art and thought and culture. These people whom I adore were unfortunately here during the city’s darkest days, when the Nazis fitted it into their nationalist propaganda machine and Hitler stood on the balcony of the Hotel Elephant in front of a cheering crowd. My friends didn’t come here by choice. They were inmates of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Buchenwald wasn’t a death camp like Auschwitz, although the same family business made the crematorium ovens for both camps and not a few people who passed through Auschwitz also passed through Buchenwald. Buchenwald was a labour camp - a place to aggregate undesirables but also make a buck off of their labour, as many German business es did (and many Nazis skimmed off the top of the fortunes made through war profiteering). During its operating years, you would find Jews, Poles, Sinti-Roma, communists, homosexuals, Dutch police officers, French resistance fighters, people with mental illness, even a few Allied Airmen. The Nazis didn’t respect international law or even basic human morality; they made or ignored laws to suit their purpose. They also didn’t rise in a vacuum, as much of the world was gripped with xenophobia in general and antisemitism in particular. Immigrants were by and large unwelcome in much of the West, including many fleeing persecution in Germany “Not our problem” said many countries, including Canada, turning away some refugees who had nowhere else to go but back to Germany and the Camps. Two of my survivor friends are pictured above. On the left is ÉVA FAHIDI-PUSZTAI who passed away some years ago I. Her mid-90s. It’s worth googling her name; she was an incredible woman, bold and defiant, smart and charming, formidable in person. She was a dancer of incomparable skill who could still touch her knee to her shoulder at 92. Eva was also a Hungarian Jew when she was sent to Buchenwald. The man on the right is Naftali Furst - he’s still around, living with his partner Tova in Israel. Naftali didn’t have a career before Buchenwald. He was taken as a child, lost all his family, and managed to survive as a young boy in Buchenwald thanks to the resistance inside the camp. Today, Naftali is a bit of a celebrity. He’s met world leaders and Hollywood stars, and was the last President of the IKBD - they modern day committee which evolved out of the camp resistance on the day of its liberation on April 11, 1945 - to have been a camp inmate. That’s how few survivors are left. To me, Naftali reminds me of most survivors, and indeed many refugees I have met who came to Canada after escaping conflict in their own countries. These aren’t “war people” or thrifters looking for some kind of handout. They are just people. While some people look at Naftali as a statesman and powerful spokesperson (which he is), to me he’ll always be the guy who pulled me aside before a big event we were attending and at which he was speaking and sheepishly asked for a tie, because he forgot to bring one. I always bring a spare with me when I come back to Buchenwald, just in case. one of my friends I have been looking forward to seeing, even though we struggle with language barriers, is Yulia Romanchenko from Ukraine. We text throughout the year, and I worry constantly as she talks about Russian attacks and power outages because of civilian targeting. Russia under Putin also ignores international law, human morality, and determines what is right by what is of service to him. Yulia’s grandpa, Boris, was also a friend of mine, and also a survivor of Buchenwald. He was killed a couple years ago by Russian bombs. While most of my survivor friends are gone - or perhaps BECAUSE there are so few of that generation left to share their cautionary tales - we are seeing a renewed rise in nationalism, xenophobia, and as always, antisemitism. We have even seen migrants stolen from their homes or off the streets and secreted away to internment camps. How do we carry the lessons forward? https://substack.com/@craigce/note/c-241151859?r=29vkdz&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
