Kinder Action


     It took some digging.
     But I eventually found out that this snapshot of a hand led to a body which led to a cousin which led to her father Baruch Shapiro, which led to the memoir he wrote that I eventually found in a library that collected testimonies of the holocaust.
     Here is what the memoir said:

     I lived in Vilna on Subocz Street. 
     That was my street, my home.  It was a nice place to grow up.  Butcher, blacksmith, grocer.  You know, an ordinary place.  But during the war, it became a labor camp for the German SS.  A labor camp, right there in Vilna!  Not so much a home anymore then.
     But it was different from the ones you have heard about, the famous ones.  This one was run by an engineering unit known as HKP 562.  The commanding officer I personally met a few times.  His name was Karl Plagge.  He was not a bad man, not an evil man really.  He was a chess player like myself.  He played the piano quite well.  He was educated, an engineer.  A humane man.  In fact, he was sympathetic to our situation.

     When he learned of the final liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, he moved almost a thousand of us, workers and our families, to another camp on the outskirts of town.  Conditions there were not good for certain, but nothing like what we all know so well elsewhere. 
     There he gave us work certificates to prove that we were skilled and needed for the war effort.  He brought in extra food for us and our families.  He protected us from the rest of the Wehrmacht, the German army.  He looked the other way when we smuggled in warm clothing, medical supplies, firewood.  He issued orders to his men that we were civilians who were to be treated with respect.
     Can you imagine this?  This Nazi, this officer, this German major, who refused to become an animal.  They should make a movie about him.

     But even he could not stop the SS.  Many times they came in and took people away or executed them on the spot.  Sometime in 1944, in March I think, while Plagge was away in Germany, the SS came in and rounded up most of the children living with us.  Maybe about 250 of them.  They took them away to who knows where, or perhaps to Ponary to be shot, or to one of the extermination camps.
     We never held them again, our children.  And this was called in German the Kinder Aktion, you know, an action against the children.  I think in English this is quite ironic, no?

     After that, even Major Plagge knew what was to come for all of us.  And so when we heard news of the advance of the Soviet Army, we did not know whether to cheer or cry.  Perhaps they would save us or perhaps the Germans would try to kill us first. 
     Then Major Plagge entered the camp and made a speech to all of us.  There was an SS officer standing right next to him.  I remember how young he looked, how stiff, and how careful Plagge was with what he said.  He told us his unit would be transferred to the west and that he would not be allowed to take his workers with him.  Instead, he told us that we would be relocated on Monday, July 3rd.  I will never forget that date.  I will never forget his words to us.  “Do not worry, you will be escorted by the SS, an organization devoted to the protection of refugees.”
     Well…we all knew what that meant.  It was not much of a secret code, after all, although it may have fooled that young officer.
     On the day the SS arrived, half the prisoners tried to run or hide.  The remaining ones were rounded up, taken to a field, and shot.  For days after that, the SS searched the camp and found most of the others.  These they shot right there in the courtyard.  On that day, the labor camp had become a death camp and Plagge was helpless to prevent this.
     But wait a moment.
     A few days later, after the camp was abandoned by the Germans, 250 of us walked out into the sunlight to greet the Red Army liberators.  We must have looked like corpses strolling.  I know because I was one of these.  This is how I survived the war.  Major Plagge had allowed us to gather wood and saws and hammers and nails and paint in the week before.  He knew we would use them to build hiding places.  In the rafters, in the cellars, behind false walls.  He knew that some of us might survive.  He hoped, I should say.

     I know that at his trail he refused to exonerate himself, in spite of much testimony in his favor.  I know that he blamed himself for not having done enough.  I read that he thought of himself as Dr. Rieux, you know, the character in the novel The Plague by Albert Camus, hopelessly fighting impending death.  What can I say…not quite so hopelessly in my case. 
But where is the comfort in that?
     His name appears on the plaque for the “Righteous Among the Nations” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.  I went there and touched his name.  And the names of the others who refused to give in but who are also long forgotten.
     But not forgotten by me.  No, not by me.

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