Saturday Morning, February 1, 2025
Arbeit Macht Frei
I tried to avoid the gleam of the German shepherd's teeth and their eyes*... Words spoken by Auschwitz survivor, Tova Friedman, having entered the concentration camp at the age of 5½ alongside her mother. I was their height so I can see them completely. I can still see their eyes to this day. January 27th marked the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp's liberation. The day was observed by hundreds in person, millions on line. Survivors spoke to the assemblage, of the carnage, of the horror, the indifference of one human over another. An inescapable reality of human ideology misdirected.
German shooting competition medals. Left one dated 1926.
Deutscher Kriegerbund. A veteran's organization.
Trouble arrived the day Hitler restricted citizen gun ownership and eased requirements on Nazi Party members.
We were victims in a moral vacuum. Tova's words rang like a clarion bell. Her sharp recollection firmly in hand. Her words worthy of inscription...finally, we arrive in Auschwitz, a gloomy Sunday with a sky obscured by smoke, and a terrible stink hung in the air... There were no secrets in this industrial designed extermination camp. Mother and daughter became one.
The Answer is Blowing in the Wind
The Nazis, in only a few years, murdered millions either through beatings, bullets, or Zyklon B. Genocide on a scale never before experienced. Their movement destroyed Europe, setting back human civility years. One step forward. Three steps back.
Hand made photo album, Sandomierskiej, 1946. Captioned photographs detail the life of post World War II orphans, those surviving Nazi persecution. Each photo is hand scribed.
This week, purely through serendipity, a consignor walked into our gallery Wednesday afternoon. I've had these two books for quite a while. Thought you would handle them. Our mouths dropped. The first, a commercially produced publication, is a photographic journal on an Oriental Cruise around the Mediterranean Sea. A Homeric odyssey with all the usual port-of-calls in 1906.
The second one stopped us. Here, before us, was a first person photographic album detailing a post-World War II orphanage. The date. 1946. The location. Sandomierz, Poland located only 138 miles from Auschwitz. These children, almost lost to history, were gifted a second chance. Their stories are told through black and white images.
Chayei Olam
Tova, her mother and father, survived the final days. She herself was destined to the gas chamber twice. The first was cancelled as prisoners the day before had sabotaged the gas mechanism with an explosive. The second, the Nazi officers refused her entry as her prisoner number was not on that day's extermination list.
Grand Oriental Cruise, S.S. Moltke.
February-April, 1906, photos mounted on board.
By late January, 1945, with Russian troops advancing, the Nazis forced remaining prisoners into a death march, a method to execute them away from the front line. Tova and her mother stayed behind, hidden among the cadavers in the infirmary. Their decisions, their honesty between each other, and their extraordinary luck, spelled survival. By the age of 12, her troika family reached America intact.
Tell Me Why
One question forever lingers. Why? How could such a horror have happened? The answer is in the verb tense. This question is written in present perfect tense. Drop the "have" and the grim reality reveals. Present tense. Look around you. The hatred continues. The intolerance. What is wrong with the human race? Uncontrolled, it wreaks havoc. In World War II we lost Jews, Catholics, Roma, Poles, Americans, Germans, French, English, Chinese, Japanese. Endless faiths under attack.
View from Grand Cruise. The dead respected - Catacombs of Eremeti Monastery, Palermo.
When do we wake up? The words of Roman Kent, he himself an Auschwitz survivor. We don't want our past to be our children's future. None of us do. But how do we change the narrative? How do we eradicate the cliché history repeats itself? Listen to the words of Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Director of the Auschwitz-Berkenau Museum. History is a knowledge of facts...Memory is the awareness of those facts. History does not create trauma, memories can...We must teach memories.** How? The way we always have. Through the humanities. This, in a world where humanities is being eradicated from curricula. What can one do with a Humanities major jokes the advisor? Try simply breathing, understanding, knowing the personal struggles in past generations. The rest, math and science, will follow. This has been a goal of this auction gallery a long time. But no Gabriel horn needed here. Just...
Doors open at 8 AM. Auction starts at 9 AM. PA AU 1265L [bb]
* Tova Friedman, excerted from her eyewitness testimony delivered to the 80th Auschwitz Memorial remembrance, January 27, 2025, Oświęcim, Poland.
** Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, speech delivered at the 80th Auschwitz Memorial remembrance, January 27, 2025, Oświęcim, Poland.