Customer Reviews

The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando (Judaic Studies Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This Holocaust survivor account is unlike any other in that it chronicles the fate of the Greek Jews in detail. Daniel's narrative is orderly and factual, bringing forth important items of history I have not seen in other studies. The description of the deadly cattle car ride to Auschwitz is broken out in great detail, to the degree that Daniel and the author place the reader in the midst of the un-imaginable dehumanizing experiences told there. The day-to-day tasks of the Sonderkommando are told in a slightly different light than one would read in Filip Mueller's "Eyewitness-Auschwitz", yet they are instructional from Daniel's point of view. His life was saved in some of the deadliest circumstances in what I believe was Divine intervention. One part of the book I especially enjoyed from a historical aspect was the fate of the ss officer Otto Moll, who I read of in other Holocaust literature (several survivors write extensively on this person-no morbid fascination with him, however). There is one account in the book that is a black cloud over an otherwise fine work, and that is the treatment the Greek Sephardic Jews were given by the European Ashkenazic Jews---the Greek Jewish people were looked down upon and reviled as "whores" and "cholera" by their fellow inmates. I highly recommend this work to any serious student of history, and I wish that I could meet Daniel Bennahmias someday. God bless you, sir!

This work gives insights into the fate of Greek Jews, their deportation to Auschwitz, and the work of a sonderkommando who lived to tell about his experiences. The reader gets chilling eyewitness details about the modus operandi of the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For instance, the Sonderkommandos' gruesome task of "processing" each train shipment of victims was not finished until they had pulverized the bones from the cremains, and dumped them in the Vistula River. (p. 51).

Much has been written about Christian prejudices against Jews, and how this is supposed to have paved the way for, if not caused, the Holocaust. In actuality, prejudices were universal. For instance, Ashkenazi (northern European) Jews used to look down on Sephardic (Mediterranean) Jews, calling them "cholera" and "korva" (whore). (p. xxii). Even in Auschwitz, Polish Jews ridiculed Greek Jews for not being able to speak Yiddish. (p. 56). Someone betrayed the location of the dynamite hidden in preparation for the revolt. (p. 68). The Nazi-German roundup of Greek Jews itself enjoyed the assistance of Jewish traitors Pepo and Costa Recanati. (p. xiii).

While beginning his work as a sonderkommando, Daniel received a verbal and cut-throat gesture warning, from a fellow Jew, as to what would happen to any sonderkommando who seemed unfit for work. (p. 40). (This adds refutation to the claim, in Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH, that a similar gesture made by a Polish peasant implied a mockery of the doomed Jews.)

The author, Fromer, shows subtle Judeocentric bias in her characterization of the Polish inmates: "The Polish Gentiles, who were the first prisoners in Auschwitz, were able to set up a sophisticated network that was able to smuggle individuals and information in and out of the camps; in addition, they were able to protect various persons deemed important to their mission of chronicling the atrocities and in preparing for the revenge they hoped to take when the Germans lost the war. To them, a physical revolt was considered to be an option only, one to be resorted to only in the case of a Nazi decision to annihilate the entire prison population. The Resistance in the forest was ancillary to this underground and acted as couriers; as such, they maintained contact with the main body in the camp. As long the Nazis were preoccupied with killing Jews, however, the Polish Gentiles evinced no urgency to implement their plans for a revolt." (p. xx). What Fromer forgets is the fact that the Auschwitz-incarcerated Poles also did not revolt on behalf of those Poles who were being murdered, and, likewise, the Auschwitz-incarcerated Jews did not revolt on behalf of those Jews who were being murdered. All revolts were symbolic (and suicidal) in nature, incapable of halting the German killing process against either Poles or Jews.

A fair amount of detail is provided about the abortive Sonderkommando revolt itself. Unfortunately, Fromer (p. xx) repeats the false accusation about outside Polish help. For the truth, see Fighting Auschwitz: The resistance movement in the concentration camp.