An Ethiopian perspective on Auschwitz

‘Many Ethiopian immigrants tend to keep their thoughts to themselves, but some of them are hiding painful feelings behind this silence.’

By NATHAN ROIE
PARTICIPANTS ON the trip walk through Auschwitz (photo credit: NATHAN ROIE)
PARTICIPANTS ON the trip walk through Auschwitz
(photo credit: NATHAN ROIE)
Just before our Lot Polish Airlines flight took off from Ben-Gurion Airport for Poland, Menachem Tadeg was busy with last-minute tasks such as storing his carry-on in the overhead compartment. When he had finished, he sat down next to his travel companion, who was also an Ethiopian oleh, and both of them waited silently for the plane to take off. For Tadeg, this was a journey into the world of the unknown. It’s not often that adult Israelis of Ethiopian origin participate in study tours to Nazi death camps in Poland. But Tadeg had been acutely excited to take part in this experience.
“My daughter, one of my eight children, recently arrived back home from her school trip to Poland. It was an extremely emotional experience for her. After listening to her talk about it, I realized that I, too, have to make this journey, since it is part of my heritage as a Jew,” Tadeg told me.
We were a motley group of Israelis. Some of us were children or grandchildren of survivors; others’ families had been living in Israel for generations. And a few had made aliya from Ethiopia. All of us worked for the Jewish Agency for Israel, and I had been chosen to be the group leader.
David Ga’ash, who for years had worked at the Israeli embassy and the Jewish Agency’s camp in Addis Ababa, was also on the trip. He immediately recognized Rivka Wanda, one of our Hebrew teachers from Addis Ababa, and their reunion generated much excitement. She and the other teachers had taught Hebrew to the children, teens and adults who resided in the camp as they prepared for the organized mass aliya that later became known as Operation Solomon.
The atmosphere among the group participants was friendly. Everyone seemed relaxed. In fact, it almost felt like we were going on a fun vacation together.
The Ethiopian-Israeli participants came from varied backgrounds. Some of them had lost family members along the way as they walked through Sudan during Operation Moses in the 1980s. Others had arrived in Israel through Operation Solomon in the 1990s. Some of the participants had been young children when they finally reached Israel from Ethiopia. They all had their own stories and memories of hunger and struggle for survival during the difficult journey to the Land of Zion.
Once we reached Poland, our first stop was the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. As I led our group along the dirt paths that circumvented the 34-hectare cemetery that was home to more than 200,000 graves, we paused for a moment in front of the mass grave of the Warsaw Ghetto victims who had died from hunger or been shot dead within the walls of the cemetery.
Many of the group participants were surprised that the cemetery was still standing. They were horrified to hear that this was where the Poles dumped the bodies of Jews so that the Germans could dispose of them. This was where children who had been caught and then killed for smuggling food into the ghetto were deposited. The bodies of unnamed Jews who had been shot had been thrown into the mass grave.
During the war years, young Jewish children and teenagers had lived in the sewer system underneath the cemetery. One of these survivors, Matti Drobles, has served on the boards of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization and recently published his memoirs (with writer Razi Mamet), in which he tells how he escaped through the sewers of Warsaw.
As we wrapped up our visit to the cemetery, I glanced over at one of our group members, Adane Tadele, an Ethiopian-Israeli who manages an absorption center in Kiryat Gat. We had met before the trip, but I was surprised how quiet he was during the tour, and he rarely removed his sunglasses. Many Ethiopian immigrants tend to keep their thoughts to themselves, but some of them are hiding painful feelings behind this silence. I have experienced this phenomenon many times.
Jewish Cemetery, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. As I led our group along the dirt paths that circumvented the 34-hectare cemetery that was home to more than 200,000 graves, we paused for a moment in front of the mass grave of the Warsaw Ghetto victims who had died from hunger or been shot dead within the walls of the cemetery.
Many of the group participants were surprised that the cemetery was still standing. They were horrified to hear that this was where the Poles dumped the bodies of Jews so that the Germans could dispose of them. This was where children who had been caught and then killed for smuggling food into the ghetto were deposited. The bodies of unnamed Jews who had been shot had been thrown into the mass grave.
During the war years, young Jewish children and teenagers had lived in the sewer system underneath the cemetery. One of these survivors, Matti Drobles, has served on the boards of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization and recently published his memoirs (with writer Razi Mamet), in which he tells how he escaped through the sewers of Warsaw.
As we wrapped up our visit to the cemetery, I glanced over at one of our group members, Adane Tadele, an Ethiopian-Israeli who manages an absorption center in Kiryat Gat. We had met before the trip, but I was surprised how quiet he was during the tour, and he rarely removed his sunglasses. Many Ethiopian immigrants tend to keep their thoughts to themselves, but some of them are hiding painful feelings behind this silence. I have experienced this phenomenon many times.
I described to the group how the Germans had practically starved the Jews (Warsaw Ghetto residents were allowed 181 calories each per day). Afterward, as I listened to group members talking to each other about this, I realized I had touched a nerve.
“It wasn’t easy for me to hear how the Jews were only given 181 calories’ worth of food a day, how they were starving,” Tadele told me.
Later, when we were sitting just the two of us, Tadele told me how he, his parents and six brothers and sisters had arrived in Israel in the mid 1980s, but had left behind three siblings (six- and eight-year-old sisters and a four-year-old brother) who had died during the difficult trek through Sudan.
“I’ve wanted to visit Poland for many years. I thought I’d be able to handle hearing all these stories, but it has not been easy at all. This has been especially hard for me, since I, too, lost siblings and suffered much trauma on my way to Israel. But we were lucky, since even though we didn’t know how to deal with the loss, when we arrived at the absorption center in Kiryat Yam, people at the center helped us. Now, during the visit to Poland, these painful memories are resurfacing,” he told me.
“I’ve been preparing myself for this trip for years,” he added. “My wife didn’t want to come with me. What I’m seeing and hearing now has not been easy for me at all. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we talk with our children about the horrors that took place in Europe, but seeing all this firsthand has not been easy. It’s going to take some time until I can digest everything.”
When we arrived at the remains of the ghetto wall on Zlota Street, our group met with a polish partisan named Vatran who had been a member of the Armia Krajowa, the Polish resistance movement, during the war. I watched Wanda as she listened intently to Vatran, 85, tell his heroic tale. She and the group were mesmerized by his stories.
Wanda told me later that she had wanted to come to Poland for years and that she was finally fulfilling her dream. She spoke with me about this numerous times during our trip.
Next, we walked inside what used to be the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, where half a million Jews – including my grandmother and grandfather and numerous other relatives – lived on top of one another in inhumane conditions. Later, they were sent to Treblinka, where they were forced to walk along the Himmelstrasse (Road to Heaven) leading to the gas chambers. I was therefore knowledgeable about the beautiful culture and communities that the Jews had created in Europe and that the Nazis eradicated. There hadn’t just been a Holocaust, I explained; an entire culture had been destroyed.
The next day, our group visited Treblinka. It took us five long hours to reach the camp. We stopped in the village on the way and then walked up the innocuous-looking ramp that led straight into the gas chambers. We passed by the field of 17,000 stones, representing the lost Jewish communities, and then heard survivors tell their stories. These tales took our breath away, especially in light of how empty and quiet everything there is now. The Israelis in the group said they couldn’t understand how any of this had come to pass. The Ethiopians remained silent.
The transition from the gray woods and the green fields to the death camps left us all feeling unsettled. As the rain poured down on the Lopohova Forest, where multitudes of Jews from the town of Tikozin had been taken and shot, we tried to digest even more horror stories. We tried to picture the thousands of women and children who had been killed there. The stories were crazy.
As we listened to our guest speaker, I watched some of our group participants: Vered Achihun, who had been young when she left Ethiopia; her sister- in-law Aviva Achihun; and another woman, Shoshana Zagiya. The three of them were paying close attention to the stories.
“A few times, I was about to say something, but I couldn’t since I was choking on my tears,” Tadele told me later.
When we reached the Polish town of Kielce, where Jews were murdered in a pogrom after the war had already ended, the group had a hard time understanding where all this hatred had come from.
Our next destination was Auschwitz.
On our way to the concentration camp, I briefed the group about some of the atrocities the Nazi murderers had carried out there. I peered into all of the participants’ faces, knowing that each one was going to be a different person when they came out.
Our local guide gave us the standard introduction on arriving at the camp, and then we started walking through the barracks. We passed by the pile of children’s shoes, the mountains of hair, the sea of glasses, the blankets made from human hair, and the ashes of victims stored in glass jars.
Some of the participants broke down and cried.
When we reached Birkenau, Tadeg stood next to the barracks and said to me, “I know it’s not the same thing at all, but when I was a prisoner of Zion under the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, I lived in a tiny space. They tried to break my spirit by torturing me. Seeing all of this reminds me of that time. Seeing this will leave a heavy imprint on my soul.”
As we stood inside the barracks where during the war all new inmates’ clothes and possessions had been collected and sorted (it was called “Canada,” because the Nazis had considered Canada the land of plenty), we listened to the guide describe how the Sonderkommandos had been trained. Then two of our group members, Baruch Kostsheva and Ilana Levy, spoke about how each of their parents had been through Auschwitz and survived.
At that moment, it became clear that all the Jews around the world had one common fate, and just one homeland where we could protect ourselves.
The author works for the Jewish Agency for Israel and led a group of adult Israelis of Ethiopian origin on a trip to Auschwitz.
Translated by Hannah Hochner.