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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 563 |
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| Photocopy 42, 43, 44 |
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| Translation: |
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Charles HERMELINE
ACROSS EUROPE
TRAVEL
NOTES
Sanard & Derangeon
174, rue Saint Jacques
__________
PARIS 1898 |
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The women are walking rainbows Red, blue, green shimmer in their
clothing. With a ray of sunshine on these sparkling clothes the main
square offers the spectator a veritable orgy of bright colors. All
around Sukiennice, a sort of museum-treasurehouse-bazar that
occupies the center, there is a multicolored teeming that recalls
one of our flowering meadows agitated by the wind. But here the
flowers are alive, they rush about, they come and go, and in the
middle of them, almost immobile, like the scarecrows that stand in
our fields, the black figures of the Jews.
They form a very
curious population, these, Cracow Jews. Without doubt, all the
Polish Jews are worth seeing. But in Russia they are subject to more
control.
It is in Galicia that the Polish Jew is seen in all
his native filth, and also at his most picturesque.
He can
be recognized by his dress, to which he clings as obstinately as to
the practices of his religion. Wearing a lone, black coat, reaching
to his feel, a felt hat or a large cap, boots of course, his hair,
long and curled over the temples like that of our old dowagers. The
Jew waits nonchalantly at the door of his little shop, where the
goods, heaped up in slovenly disorder, hardly leave room for the
customer to move.
Nothing seems able to make him hurry;
immobile as the spider waiting for a fly, he knows that the
Christians will be forced to come to him, for he holds them through
money. If he walks in the street, it is with a mournful, almost
fearful air. His wan face seems to have emerged from a dark basement
that scarcely sees the sun. He perhaps feels how much he is despised
by those who brush by him, but he nevertheless continues on his way
with a mournful quiet air, certain that in the end he will do well
out of it.
Jewish children already have this pale complexion
and mournful air; they too wear the long coat and boots and have
their hair curled over the temples. And it is a very curious thing
that youngsters so attired play gravely in the street.
The
most curious of all, however, are the old men who can be seen
scurrying silently about in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter, where the
names of the roads are inscribed in Hebrew; they turn towards the
ground a wizened face, from which juts a hooked nose and hangs a
long, grey beard. Their coat is often no longer anything but a dirty
greenish rag, faded by age They are certainly no ordinary figures,
and a painter, fond of picturesque types, would be in his element
here and find ample material to exercise his pencil.
All
this population has such a miserable air, so sickly, that at first
one is overcome by a feeling of deep pity, and none seem more
deserving of sympathy than they. But in reality they are the true
masters of the town.
One of Poland’s misfortunes has
been not to have the middle class that gives so much solidity to a
nation. Everybody was either a noble or a peasant, and the space
between these two extremes was filled by the Jews. All trade passed
into their hands, and has remained there.
God knows that
they take advantage of it! I therefore save my pity for the Polish
peasants who are in their clutches and can do nothing without them,
and are obliged to accept the conditions dictated to them by Israel.
Illustration caption: “A Cracow Jew”
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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