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Holohoax!! 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 https://archive.org/details/1210272314779891798
Video Transcript AI Summary
The speakers share a mosaic of daily life and cultural activities amid the horrors of Auschwitz and nearby camps, highlighting how people sought meaning, small freedoms, and human connection even as starvation, fear, and cruelty persisted.
- Food and water deprivation are described as extreme: “The worst, they never gave us any water. They never gave us any food. The children were screaming.” (Speaker 0)
- Cultural and artistic life persisted despite conditions:
- Music and performance: An orchestra formed by prisoners, with some musicians writing notes for the ensemble; a piano was brought into Block 1 and a downstairs room was converted into a theatre space so women could perform. A pianist who could read notes helped arrange music for each instrument, even composing parts when paper and supplies were scarce. (Speakers 2 and 3)
- Theater and sewing: A curtain and stage were built, and sewing help was provided for curtain rings. (Speaker 3)
- Films and reading: A library and newspapers existed, and later plans for a camp cinema were realized, with films shown in barracks on some evenings. (Speakers 4 and 5)
- Music in daily life: Barracks housed a violin quartet that performed for inmates. (Speaker 5)
- Social life and informal economies:
- On weekends, prisoners formed a soccer group, turning to sport as a mental respite. (Speaker 2)
- A “cantina” and limited shop goods existed; money in the camp was earned as coupons redeemable for items in the canteen. Regular money stopped, replaced by coupon-based payment. Cigarettes and weak beer were among the few items available; food was scarce. (Speakers 4 and 5)
- Education and organized resistance:
- In some camps, like Monowitz and Gross Rosen, prisoners organized soccer teams and even assembled equipment with outside civilian help, sometimes under cover from the SS, reflecting a paradoxical sense of normalcy amid brutality. (Speakers 6 and 7)
- War’s shifting pressure and relative freedoms as the front approached:
- By 1944, as the Germans lost ground, there was a slight relaxation in pressure, with some instances of camaraderie between SS personnel and prisoners during matches, though overall conditions remained dire. The Auschwitz soccer field sat next to the genocidal gas chambers, visible to players, underscoring the proximity of daily life to the Final Solution. (Speakers 1 and 7)
- Personal acts of humanity and resistance:
- Freddie Hirsch coordinated painting for the children; a volunteer artist painted a meadow, cows, sheep, and a backdrop inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs after children requested it. The painter and children collaborated on a Satirical play inspired by Snow White, with a crown made from paper and costumes fashioned from available materials; the child playing Snow White had a remarkable soprano voice. The process occurred hush-hush, with occasional SS oversight when the performance began. (Speakers 9 and 10)
- The children wrote a play satirizing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, following the painting; a parenthetical note mentions a ward ville play and a disliked dynamic with one performer. (Speakers 9 and 10)
- Closing personal note:
- A photograph is described as being taken at a bat mitzvah, showing survivors; the speaker identifies the people in the image as survivors from a family connection. (Speaker 0)
Overall, the transcript intertwines accounts of deprivation with bursts of artistic, athletic, and communal activity, illustrating how inmates created culture, camaraderie, and brief pockets of normalcy within the Auschwitz system and related camps.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: The worst, they never gave us any water. They never gave us any food. The children were screaming.
Speaker 1: Spielberg's USC, survivors of the Showa Visual History Foundation, contains over 50,000 video testimonies. Out of 50,000 testimonies, the Showa Foundation handpicked a bunch of hate filled liars and Zionists for their documentary. Surely, out of 50,000 video interviews, there must be some Jews telling some semblance of truth about life in the concentration camps.
Speaker 2: We also had a, an orchestra where some of the musicians stood together, and one musician was so good that he had the instruments playing and he wrote the notes, so later on we had a band who played over the weekend. And, that was of course helping us, know, we also did plays and stuff.
Speaker 3: Were there any cultural activities happening in Auschwitz? Yes. I told you we had put into not just a piano, a grand piano was brought into Block 1. Once that was built, that new block, the downstairs room was assigned for theatre. When he wanted to build a stage curtain in that new Block which was one big dining room was going to be also with a stage so performances could be done for women there, cultural.
He said, for heaven's sake, isn't there anybody here who can help me sew on these curtain rings for the stage? I do it for you he says. And I came forward and I helped him with the curtain stage and that was wonderful because I had a man sitting across me for a change. And my roommate is in charge of work assignments and if you happen to know music what instruments do you play? Said I learned piano but not good enough for an orchestra.
I can tell you that right now. And he said well then maybe you know the notes. I said yes. He said well then I can use you because we have to write it from the original music piece what the director gets to the instruments. And so each instrument has only a short line on the whole paper so I had to take it apart and write for each instrument.
From that what I had to do. I had to even make the lines. We didn't have paper that was pre printed for notes, nothing. So I spent the whole day there for a while until we were taken away from Auschwitz. Then she saw me work there I had a big table where I could work and lay out all the paper and it was very peaceful and relaxing and Otto wanted to talk more to me.
That is when I met that SS man at one time. That was the last job I did while I was in Auschwitz. The other job when I was in Block 10 we went out to pick the leaves and from these leaves they would make tea for the whole camp for the whole Auschwitz
Speaker 4: How did you entertain yourselves?
Speaker 5: Well, there were at that at the beginning of those days, there was a library where you people could get books to read. There were newspapers which we could get. And that and also among ourselves, sometimes we had, what do call, a violin quartet. Used to come and play in barracks. And they even that was and later on, they said, they're gonna build a movie in the camp.
And the president the president said only you must be crazy. They gotta make a movie for us in the in the camp. And the real thing happened. They made a movie in the camp. Yeah.
And we we went in barracks after barrack. We we could go to see a movie sometimes in the evening. They brought movies in to the in the evening. And
Speaker 4: What kind of movies would they show?
Speaker 5: Well, German movies. Once I came to the main camp they were allowed twice a month to ride home. Once a postcard and once a letter.
Speaker 4: They gave you the materials?
Speaker 5: Yeah. They gave us the letter, the materials, so we could
Speaker 4: How did you get the stamps?
Speaker 5: Stamps. We could buy stamps.
Speaker 4: Could You had money?
Speaker 5: Yeah. We got we still got money with the money we got through the Jewish community from Vienna who sent us everybody some money.
Speaker 4: And and in the camp, you could have currency?
Speaker 5: Yeah. They could have money because there was in camp also what they call a cantina. And not many times, but once in a while, they sold a few cigarettes or they sold something, whatever they had. So if you had money, you could buy in that canteen there. Food, there wasn't really any food, really.
They usually sold and sometimes they sold some weak beer that sold also in in container. But not really anything else, not much. Mostly cigarettes.
Speaker 4: And when you went to the movies, did you have to pay?
Speaker 5: Yes. We had to pay After the the money stopped, the regular money stopped, we got paid in coupons then.
Speaker 4: Paid for your work?
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know if it was for whatever. We got paid for in coupons for which were redeemable in the in that canteen if they had something. So that was their their way of distributing money then to everybody, everybody got this money then.
Speaker 2: Of course what we did is for the weekends we got together, we got a group of us together and we made a soccer team which was over a little later where we played soccer.
Speaker 6: Well it's amazing that there would be a soccer team, that there'd be enough energy left to do something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think we were quite as energetic as we were with the other, regular team, but we did something to, you know, it kept our mind off problems of we had.
Speaker 6: You mentioned to me the other day that Monowitz was like a college library.
Speaker 7: Well, that was
Speaker 6: in what way?
Speaker 7: Especially the Germans start losing the war, nineteen forty three, forty four. So 1944 we had soccer games in Rorschachen, soccer teams, organized very well, soccer teams, nationality organized a soccer team and we organized our equipment, everything and played soccer on the assembly line, on the assembly place.
Speaker 4: In Rosen?
Speaker 7: In Gross Rosen. So you know that much free I was in there but it was 1944. Russians already pushed away, Americans already invaded from the other side so they have to give more freedom. But that was much more freedom and food didn't improve very much because simple reason, they didn't have it very much themselves.
Speaker 4: Did the civilians try to help you at all? Did they trade goods for things?
Speaker 7: It's as I say, we have almost everything what we wanted for the soccer teams from the civilians, from outside civilians. But that was strictly under cover. SS didn't know that. They knew it but they didn't do much about it because they knew the war was almost over so they didn't, they even played soccer with us. That just to make the store funny that the incident funny that one time the Polish team played against German teams and one of the top enlisted SS men decided he wants to play for the Polish team.
So we say, Okay, we can play for us. And then the commandant, SS commandant, he was like a captain, you know, he decided to want to play for the German team. So he went in the field. I think they were a little bit tipsy.
Speaker 8: How did you feel about that?
Speaker 7: And the funny part of it, we said, just let them play, they play all by themselves. We just run around. But that was one of the incident which stuck with some fun in it. But that's happened, but it was 1944 so it almost things came to close.
Speaker 4: So is what you're saying then that the closer the end
Speaker 8: of the war came, pressure was let up rather than In becoming more cruel or
Speaker 7: our camp, pressure you you did feel the pressure later.
Speaker 1: The big problem is that the Auschwitz Soccer Field was right next to the so called genocidal gas chambers and would be in full view of the so called final solution.
Speaker 9: Freddie Hirsch called me to the children's barracks. He was heading then. And he asked me if I could paint something on the wall for the children. And I said, well, if you can get the materials he said, I'll get the materials. I said, okay.
And then a very handsome young blonde man from the men's camp came over one day, and Freddie Hirsch called me to come and meet him. And he asked me what I need. So I said, well, if I can get any wall paints, so any tempera paints, I would like those. If you can get me some, and he said, yes. Anything you want.
And so before I knew it, Freddie had the stuff ready for me, and I started painting. At first, not knowing what, I looked at that huge drab. It was kind of olive colored, like all the barracks were. And I thought, well, the thing to do is to make it look like we are in a Swiss chalet on the deck, and there is a balustrade with flowers and flower pots on it. And we are looking out at the beautiful meadows and maybe see some cows and sheep and stuff, and I started painting.
And then afterwards, far in the distance, I was putting some sheep and some cows, and then I noticed that all the kids were standing around me, behind me. So I turned around and I asked them if they would do they have any special wish what to put in that meadow? And they said Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And that was a very surprising answer. So I made a painting of Dopey standing on another dwarf's head with a cloak around him, so he looked like a tall guy.
So he would be as tall as Snow White. And they were dancing together. And the shoes, those soft shoes and everything. And the kids loved it. And I made some other dwarves around, one who was playing the accordion.
I think that was Grumpy, the mean one. And the professor with the glasses. I made almost all the dwarfs standing around. Some of them were clapping, and that's what the kids like. I now understand that there was another painter who continued something painting on the walls after I've left.
I don't know about that.
Speaker 10: When you were in the process of doing that
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: What did it do not only for for you, but for the for the children on on an emotional level?
Speaker 9: Well, it did several things, not just emotional, but the children then wrote play which was a satire of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. So I figured out a way of making a crown out of paper, and the kids were painting it gold and putting jewels on it. And then I took some paper strips and I painted them with a black paint. And I don't know about the costumes, what they made costumes out of, but the play was very successful because the little girl who was playing Snow White had an incredible voice, a gorgeous soprano, just like the one that you hear in the movie.
Speaker 10: How were they allowed to put on a play in Auschwitz?
Speaker 9: I don't know, but it was done kind of quite hush-hush, all of it, except that when he was put on, suddenly some SS men appeared, and they watched. And then when Arnold Behm put on that play, he he wanted something like a ward ville ward ville play, which I was into. That was when I couldn't stand the breath of the guy who was playing with me.
Speaker 10: What was the So the process for the casting? I mean, how were people selected to be in this play or that play?
Speaker 0: Ahead. This is a picture, that was taken at my father's cousin's grand child's bat mitzvah three years ago and these people in this picture are all survivors.
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