ADRIAN GOLDBERG'S BLOG
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

AUSCHWITZ REVISITED

9/9/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
The ongoing controversy about asylum seekers and migrants - and especially the plight of unaccompanied children in the Jungle at Calais - can't help but resonate for me with my father's experience in pre-war Germany.  

In 1938, as a 13 year old Jewish lad he was sent by his parents from the town of Ratibor
 to England under the Kindertransport programme and re-settled in the UK.  

Immediately, he was set to work on a farm in Derbyshire, while his 11-year old brother Werner who'd accompanied him was adopted by a family in Southampton and allowed to complete his schooling.

It's hard to imagine the mental anguish of an adolescent boy arriving in a strange country with an unfamiliar language, separated  from his sibling by 200 miles and uncertain about what was happening to his family.

Yet however tough it was, my Dad's fate was certainly preferable to those he left behind.  His mother, father, grandad, aunts and uncles all perished - with Auschwitz their final destination.

So I'm baffled that so many people ask, "How can parents send their kids, unaccompanied, hundreds of miles from home?"  In most cases, I'm guessing it's because it gives those youngsters a way out of Hell and offers  them at least a chance of survival.

A trip to Auschwitz is a grisly reminder of what can happen to those who stay behind.

I've been twice now, and the industrial scale of the extermination  - the banal architecture of death - never fails to appal.

It was a destiny my Dad cheated only because of the singular generosity of the British people.

The likes of Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, or Somalia might not be directly comparable to Nazi Germany of course - and solutions that worked in the 1930's aren't automatically transferable to 2016 either.

But visiting this bleak, hideous death camp is a stomach churning, rage-inducing reminder that truly evil people sometimes do astonishingly terrible things.

What loving parent wouldn't want their kids to avoid the consequences of that.  
2 Comments
Yogeeta link
9/9/2016 11:15:59 pm

I had no idea that your father escaped the evil clutches of Nazi Germany and it breaks my heart to imagine how your grandparents would have suffered. One cannot help but imagine. I've never been to Auschwitz (although read about it a lot and have read recently Mans Search for Meaning) but those images chill me to the bone. The horror of the human mind manifested in such an incomprehensible enormity. Humans never learn though. That is the irony in this World...

Reply
Jamie Dutton
1/10/2019 09:52:16 am

Only recently discovered Rudi was your Dad. I worked with him for a number of years in Newtown Birmingham. Lovely man who always had a smile on his face ( and a pencil behind his ear ! ) Fond memories.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    ​Radio, TV and podcasts

    @bylinetimespod 

    @TheLiquidatorP1

    Film maker

    CV - BBC 1 Watchdog, 5 Live Investigates.

    goldbergradio@gmail.com

    Archives

    September 2022
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2018
    December 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All
    Music

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.