The Past Rarely Stays in the Past

By Sandor Slomovits

Sometimes it’s hard to uncover the truth about past events. Other times the past reveals its truths almost unbidden. Either way, the past rarely stays only in the past.

I came upon a striking personal case of that recently and then noticed some correspondences to current events in our country.

It began with a book review by Chuck Newman in the Washtenaw Jewish News. (Newman also hosts a biweekly series of “Conversations” presented by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor.) The book Newman reviewed is called The Nine, by Gwen Strauss. Its subtitle is what caught my eye: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany. I am the son of two survivors of the Holocaust. Between them, my parents lost more than a dozen close relatives. When I see the words “survived” and “Nazi Germany” I tend to pay attention. Very soon after I started reading The Nine, I realized it was going to hit even closer to home than I had anticipated.

The Nine is about nine women who were imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944. My mother was also imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.

The nine women were forced to labor at a munitions factory in Germany during the war. My mother, too, was forced to work in an airplane parts factory in Germany during the war. My brother and I were about sixteen when our mother first told us of her wartime experiences. Of course, we believed her, but still, her stories had a kind of unreal, mythical quality. The events she described had taken place so far away and years before we were born. Additionally, it was—and still is—very hard to imagine or accept that people had done to other people the things she described; that they had done them to her! That despite everything, some people managed to survive those ordeals and return to ordinary life--that she’d managed to do that.

As I read The Nine, I found that Strauss’ detailed accounts of what the women endured—culled from interviews and from their writings after the war—not only confirmed everything our mother told us, they also made evident that our mother had in fact toned down or even completely hidden some of the harshest aspects of her detention in Ravensbrück, as well as of her subsequent transfer to forced labor in Penig, and her escape from a death march in April of 1945.

In researching The Nine, Strauss travelled to Germany and visited the Gedenkstätte Für Zwangsarbeit, the Memorial for Forced Labor in Leipzig. The Memorial is located near the site of the HASAG munitions plant where the nine women, and thousands more, were held captive and forced to build weapons for the Nazis. The Memorial is devoted to preserving the history of that lager (camp) and of other Nazi labor camps in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. It makes its library and archives available to scholars, survivors and their relatives, and also offers lectures, tours, and other educational events. Anne Friebel, a member of the museum staff, helped Strauss find documentation about the nine women’s detention in the HASAG lager.

Shakespeare had it right when he wrote in The Merchant of Venice (where else, of course!) “Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long… in the end truth will out.”

When I finished The Nine, I sent Friebel a brief email in which I related what I knew of my mother’s wartime experiences and asked if the Memorial might have any further information about her. A few days later I had a reply from Friebel. Yes, she had found my mother in the Arolsen Archives. (The Arolsen Archives are the most comprehensive archives on the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.) She attached digital copies of my mother’s prisoner card in Ravensbrück, and of her prisoner card in Penig.

Friebel also wrote, “Today in Penig, there is an active association commemorating the women of that camp” and offered to put me in touch with them. In the next few weeks, I exchanged dozens of emails with her and with two of the people in the Erinnerungsort-Penig (Penig Place of Remembrance) and they sent me more information about the Penig lager. In response to my questions, they wrote, “Our group was founded in 2013 after neo-Nazis brutally beat up a student [in our community]. At first, we started to raise awareness, to promote democracy and tolerance. In this context, the idea arose in 2015 to investigate the history of the concentration camp that existed in our hometown from 1944 to 1945 and especially what crimes intolerance, anti-Semitism, and racism can lead to. That is our motivation.” Their website says, “…over the past 15 years a neo-Nazi scene, which was prone to violence and had a strong national network, had been able to establish itself in our rural area, and was responsible for a whole series of attacks on non-whites, people living differently, the homeless and those committed to democracy.” Their mission statement ends with, “Above all, we want to counteract racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-fascism with the help of education and awareness-raising work.” I continue to be in contact with them.

I’ve roller-coastered through an enormous range of emotions since I first read The Nine and wrote to Friebel. I’ve felt in turns, excited, fascinated, horrified, repelled, frightened, furious, sad, grief-stricken, and more. I often questioned what I was doing and why. I felt a variation of survivor’s guilt; I only researched what happened—they had had to endure it. When I felt overwhelmed or numb, I withdrew, but found I could not look away. I remembered a line from Crimson Joy, a mystery by Robert B. Parker. “If she could suffer it, I could look at it.”

Through it all, I couldn’t help but notice current parallels in our country--the craven attempts to deny and erase truth and history, some focusing on the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, others more broadly on slavery, racism, and the treatment of Native Americans. Rising anti-semitism, xenophobia, and efforts to marginalize and attack the LGBTQA+ community are just some of the despicable echoes of the Nazis’ past.

I don’t know where continuing the search for my family’s past will lead me. Here’s what I do know: Where I stand now is in gratitude—gratitude for Gwen Strauss for her tremendous skill and effort in creating The Nine; to Anne Friebel and the other staff and volunteers at Gedenkstätte Für Zwangsarbeit and Erinnerungsort-Penig for their dedication to preserving and teaching what at times must be some very painful truths; for their kindness in helping me and many others who are still seeking those truths; to those people in our country who rejected the lies about the 2020 election, and the violence of January 6; to all people everywhere, who courageously stand for truth on behalf of all humanity. Above all, I feel more gratitude and admiration for my mother than I can put into words.

Almost exactly four years after she was deported to Germany in a cattle car bound for the hell that was Ravensbrück, then shipped, again in a cattle car, to Penig and forced to labor for the Nazis, my mother endured another painful and difficult but this time, freely-chosen and joyous labor: she gave birth to twin sons—my brother and me.

Sandor Slomovits plays folk music for children and families with his brother and daughter in the trio, Gemily. He also writes essays and articles on a variety of topics. His website is SandorSlomovits.com.

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