Auschwitz and Birkenau, A Third Time
A memorial at the destroyed crematoria #2 at Birkenau. The Nazi’s blew up the building as they retreated. “To the memory of the men, women, and children, who fell victim to the Nazi Genocide. Here lies their ashes. May their souls rest in peace.”
As of this writing, I have now been to Auschwitz three times in my life. The first time was in 1990 the summer after my sophomore year of High School. That trip was the experience of a lifetime - the whole trip…not the Auschwitz part. I was a participant on the Shorashim Teen Tour that summer which combined American teens and Israeli teens for a week in Poland and five weeks in Israel. The Israelis met us in Poland and we toured several of the camps including Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. It was a very different time. Poland had literally just become independent and the concentration and death camps had been largely left untouched since WWII. I had just gotten a new fancy camera as a gift for my Confirmation and I have dozens of photos I took at the camps. Some are grizzly and show ash in the ovens. One of the most memorable experiences of that visit…something no one could do now, and we probably should not have been allowed to do then…was crawling through the destroyed crematoria just to the right of the above photo. There was no memorial. There were no ropes keeping people out. It was not set up like a museum the way it is now. We were there to witness and seeing the ovens inside those destroyed building was part of why we were there.
Even so, I recall feeling pretty removed from the destruction that took place in those camps. It was hard to assimilate that information. It was before Shindler’s list and so many of the other movies that have come out since then that helped us all imagine the unimaginable. AND, as far as I was aware, the Jewish People, my people, were horribly impacted, but my family was not. My family had come to the United States two or three generations before the Shoah. At that time, I didn’t know much about my Grandfather Harry Oster’s family in Germany. As I think back on that first visit, it was largely academic and sterile. I left Poland and never imagined I’d visit again.
Fast forward to my fourth year of Rabbinical School. Debbie and I were living in Cincinnati and I was asked by the Hebrew Union College to be a representative at a Dialogue at Auschwitz that was to take place between seminarians of different faiths. That trip was a rewarding experience in many ways. The other representative from HUC was my classmate Rabbi Shoshanah Conover and we will always be linked by that experience. I know it is dark, but she and I may be two of a very few Jews who ever broke into Birkenau. We were on a late night walk and found ourselves standing in front of the gate. Wondering what it sounded like inside the camp, I pushed aside the chains on the gate and we went in and sat on the train tracks. In the 20 plus years since then, I can say for certain that experience impacted us both on many levels.
I also recall, that being older than most of the “seminarians,” some who were German college students who attended a Christian institution, I was put in the position a couple of times of offering pastoral care to some younger studnents who were very upset upon learning of the atrocities in a way that they had not before - including the realization that their families (grandparents, Great-Grandparents etc) were in Germany then, leaving them to wonder what roles they had played.
I also made a lifelong friend on that trip - Ola Wilczura. She was at that time at the beginning of her journey of reclaiming her family’s Jewish identity as a young Polish Woman and I have had the honor of watching her develop and to call her my friend as she has worked so hard to help others living across Poland experience the joy of Jewish life.
But that too was largely an academic experience because, then too, I didn’t really know anything about my family’s connection to the Nazi horrors, aside from the impact on my own Jewish identity.
When I found out I would be going a third time on this trip to Europe, my first thought was, “I can’t believe I am going again.” But on a family heritage trip to Europe with Debbie that included meeting her parents, Bev and Les Rothschild in Poland, none of whom had been to the death camps, of course I needed to go again. But this time I knew more about my family’s experience. My family was indeed impacted directly by this horror of horrors. And so I honored the memories of those members of my family, however distant, who were murdered there…whose ashes may well have been mixed into the earthen pit beyond the memorial in the photo above. May they never be forgotten.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I distinctly remember my grandmother Annette (nee Lessman) Locketz introducing me to her cousin Abe Lessman, may their memories both be a blessing. I will never forget meeting him. Grammanette whispered to me that Abe was an Auschwitz Survivor. I remember looking for the numbers on his arm - which were in fact visible. They were first cousins. My Great-Grandfather, Mendel Lessman and Abe’s father Zacharia were brothers (same father) who both came to the United States in the 19teens. Mendel stayed and Zacharia went back when their parents needed help in the family business. That Abe survived is pretty much a miracle. Of the more than 1.1 million Jews who entered Auschwitz and Birkenau, most were “selected” for immediate death. They were sent right to the gas chambers and crematoria. Abe was one of only 200,000 who were selected for work. In his time in the camp, he was experimented on by Josef Mengele, he escaped once, he was recaptured, he was sentenced to hanging and managed to evade it. His is an amazing story and we are lucky he gave video testimony to the Shoah Foundation and even now, more than 25 years after his natural death, we can hear him tell his story. Other siblings and his mother perished during the war years, but as this post is about Auschwitz, I will only list his father and youngest brother who were selected for immediate death upon arrival at the camp. His father was Zacharia Lessman and his brother was Meyer Wolf Lessman. Both were murdered in Birkenau in 1942.
The others directly connected to my family tree were all members of my Grandpa Harry’s family. As I’ve previously written, he didn’t talk much about his experiences in the war. By the time he himself died in 1978, he must have known that three of his uncles and two cousins perished in Auschwitz and that a dozen others died in other camps. Could he have known while he was fighting as a Ritchie Boy during the war that their lives hung in the balance?
Ernst Pick, the husband of Anna Ostertag, the business parter and brother-in-law of my Great-Grandfather Ernst Ostertag was murdered at Auschwitz on December 18, 1942. Anna (nee Ostertag) Pick died in Stuttgart in 1935. Ernst Pick was pressured into closing his business and selling his house in 1940 and went to live with his daughter Hilda (nee Pick) Kahn and her family. Max and Hilda (nee Pick) Kahn and their daughter Hannelore were deported to Riga on December 1, 1941. Hannelore survived and eventually came to the United States and wrote and spoke about her experiences until her death just a few years ago. In 1941, Ernst Pick was expelled to Buttenhausen and deported to Theresienstadt on April 17, 1943, and to Auschwitz on December 18, 1943. Being that he was 78 years old upon entering Auschwitz, he was likely murdered immediately.
Siegfried Schwarzschild was the brother of my Great-Grandmother Elsa Schwarzschild. I have written extensively about him here. It is quite possible he remained in Germany when the rest of the family, including his wife Josephine Einstein, left the country because as one of his businesses, he was a travel agent and is the one who arranged everyone’s emigration. He stayed too long and perished. On August 22, 1942, he was deported to Theresienstadt. At the age of 67, he was sent to Auschwitz, and his death, on May 16th 1944.
I don’t know very much about Alfred Ostertag one of the older brothers to my Great-Grandfather, Ernst Ostertag. Alfred was born on October 29, 1871 in Stuttgart, Germany. He married Gertrud Callomon in Breslau, Preußen on July 8, 1907. They may have had a child, but I cannot confirm that at this time. Alfred was murdered on November 9, 1942 at Auschwitz. I am not sure of her fate.
When my Grandfather Harry’s brother, Bernard Ostertag, came to the US in 1939, on the ship manifest, he listed that he had been living in France with a cousin, Rose Kaufmann, in Vincennes. Rose was born, Rose Sara Einstein, daughter of Hermann Einstein and Sophie Ostertag. Rose was second cousins to Grandpa Harry and Bernard. She gave Bernard refuge on his way out of Germany, but she herself did not make it. She and her son Gabriel were sent to Drancy, the concentration camp outside of Paris and ultimately to Auschwitz. Gabriel was murdered on July 24, 1942 and Rose was murdered a few days later on August 1, 1942. She was 44. He was 18.
Auschwitz is a museum now. And it is set up to tell the story of the Nazi horrors and it does a good job of doing that. There are moments when I walk through the camp and wonder about those that were my family and their awful fate. Their lives were not lived in vain. And it is an honor to help extend their memories. We said kaddish for them in that place…where they were their lives ended. May their memories for ever be a blessing to humanity…and a reminder. May we never forget.
