The memory of The expulsion and disappearance of The Jewish communiTy in prekmurJe OtO Luthar Martin Pogačar what brought about one of the saddest chapters in human history? 2 3 Prologue 1944 marked the end of an era in prekmurje, the northeastern province of slovenia, which from 1941 to 1944 was occupied by hungarians and then by nazi Germany until 1945. a land that used to be home to a community of three or four languages, three religions and a multitude of different customs was, almost overnight, robbed of people who had, over the previous two centuries, crucial y contributed to its economic and cultural development. it began on an april morning and ended with a november announcement of winter, when the province between the rivers mura and raba lost all trace of the members of the Jewish families sonnenfeld, hiršl, weiss, ebenšpanger, Berger, arvay and schwartz… The nazis, assisted by hungarian armed police forces, drove away Jew- ish children, women, men, young and old, sick and, wel … everyone. This is their story or, more precisely, a humble attempt at narrating the reasons why they had to leave and why nothing has remained of their rich culture but tombstones, obscure family stories and half-forgotten names – making a per- son who has delved into the history of the province sometimes feel as if being drowned in the land of shadows. The more we struggle to understand why and how this could have happened, the more questions are raised, questions to which we will probably never know the definitive answers. yet most confusing of all is the question why so little has been known about this tragedy until recently, why the memory of it has been so obscured and, final y, why some of the houses, workshops, prayer rooms etc. have been so utterly demol- ished as to not even cast a shadow… why, then… 4 5 and final y: . . why is the plan for the destruction of the Jews Why did the plan for the destruction of the Jews find so many supporters one of the saddest episodes in human history? throughout Europe and the world, who bear the responsibility for the fact that during the course of five years almost six million Jews of all ages and Why do we call it the Holocaust rather than the Shoah standings perished in concentration and labour camps and secret killing as the Jews do? locations. Women and children, young and old, sick and healthy alike were killed indiscriminately. Holocaust (Gr. holókaustos: hólos, “whole” and kaustós, “burnt”) • in Greek, this term denotes burnt sacrificial offering, presently it stands for the systematic murder of Jews, as well as slavs, roma and the mentally and physically disabled by nazi Germany during world war i . Shoah (hebrew HaShoah, “catastrophe”) • the Biblical word shoah became the standard hebrew term for the holocaust in the 1940s, especially in europe and israel. most Jews prefer to use the term shoah, mainly for theological reasons, as they associate the term “holocaust” with ancient Greek pagan rituals. The nazis and their col aborators even used specialised vans to kill the Jews. a van like the one in the photograph (photo from chelmno extermination camp) was also used in Belgrade between april and may 1942 to murder 5,200 Jewish women, children and elderly people. www.starosajmiste.info/sr2012/#/mapa/gasni_kamion. 6 7 hmm, questions keep on coming, so we’d better start finding answers. Why is it that, seven decades after the first To do that, we should first try to answer the most fundamental questions: reports on the systematic killing of the Jews appeared, we still cannot understand: Who are the Jews and why did they suffer such a devastating fate in the middle of the 20th century? How was it possible? and: we wonder: Did the massacre have anything to do with the Jews Who was to blame? themselves… or did the blame lie squarely on those who decided that the Jews were to be exterminated? and: What about those who knew about it Why at that particular point in time? and did nothing to stop it? Given that, despite irrefutable evidence, there are still some individuals in addition, we would also like to know: who try to minimise the blame of the perpetrators, let us be clear on one thing at the very outset: Who were the people who elicited so much hatred and contempt? The sole responsibility for the genocide of the Jews Was it really just hatred? rested on its perpetrators, that is, those who devised What about jealousy, fear, insecurity…? it and those who executed it. and finally: Genocide (Gr. genos – “race” and lat. occidere – “kill”) Did Slovenian Jews share the same fate? • is any form of systematic destruction, in whole or in part, What happened to them? of a national, ethnic, racial or religious community. 8 9 “Final solution to the Jewish question” (nem. Endlösung der Judenfrage) • was the National Socialist term for the envisioned kil ing of all Jews in Germany and all territories occupied by the German army and placed under the control of the German reich. adolf hitler already made his intention to annihilate the Jews publicly known on 30 January 1939; the expression “final solution to the Jewish question” was first used on 12 march 1941, by adolf eichmann, head of the department for Jewish affairs of the reich main security office. By that date, thousands of Jews in poland had been kil ed in mass executions by special ss squads; the first deportations of polish Jews to ghettos and concentration camps had also taken place. from 22 June 1941 onwards, German military units entering the soviet union were followed by special squads with the task Adolf Eichman was one of the key organisers and responsible for the machinery to achieve “the ful -scale extermination of Jews.” of deportation to the extermination camps. directly subordinated to adolf hitler, The plan for a large-scale organisation of the “final solution to the Jewish the most responsible for the execution of the “Final solution to the Jewish question” was further elaborated on 20 January 1942 at a conference question”, eichmann organised the deportations and killing of hungarian Jews, held in Berlin’s suburbs on the shores of wannsee lake. in september including those from the slovenian province of prekmurje. after the war, eichmann 1941 – four months before the “wannsee conference” – the first gas- escaped to argentina, where he was tracked down by the israeli intelligence sing experiments were performed in auschwitz. in october 1941, the first agency mossad fifteen years later. mossad agents secretly transported him to order was issued for the deportation of Jews from the German reich. israel, where he was found guilty at a public trial and sentenced to death. on 23 october, Jews were prohibited from emigrating. in december 1941, Botsch 2008, 104. the first mass murder took place in the polish chelmno extermination camp, with the use of mobile gas chambers that were fed engine exhaust fumes. Between 1942 and 1945, mass transportations shipped Jews from all territories under national socialist power to concentration and extermination camps. according to the results of studies based Deportation/deportees almost exclusively on ss documents, european countries estimated • a process in which a person that approximately six mil ion Jews were victims of the final solution. was stripped of their freedom and property and “transported” to a concentration camp. 10 11 why do we stress guilt and responsibility at the very beginning? Partly because after World War II many attempted to throw the blame on their su- periors, saying, “it was our duty to follow orders,” while those who gave orders tried to avoid punishment by claiming that their hands were, in fact, not stained with blood… despite the overwhelming body of evidence, many still continue to maintain that the holocaust never happened, that there were no concentration or extermina- tion camps built to kill people; that prisoners died only of war-related disease and scarcity. The fact is that extermination camps did exist and were used to “industrialise” murder. But let’s go back to the beginning and take a look at where the hatred towards the Jews stems and when it started. In this case, too, we’d better start with the latter question. Therefore: since when…? although answers may differ in details, they all agree in principle that Jews have often evoked hatred, fear, feelings of superiority and inferior- a depiction of the looting of Jewish shops and workshops in ity, envy, malice and so forth. or to put it more accurately: these feelings 17th-century frankfurt. Botsch 2008, 19. could be perceived whenever Jews came into contact with their neigh- bours and especially upon their first encounter with european peoples. The latter simply needs to be emphasised, because too many stil hold the since this was a more common and intense occurrence during the middle opinion that Jews only immigrated after the conditions became favourable ages, persecution of the Jews was more severe during the so-called high for them to engage in activity for which they later became the most famous middle ages, when the first cities began to emerge also as a result of the and hated. This was, of course, trade and everything related to it: purchases, activities of the Jews. sales, bargaining, loans, debt claims and collection of property from those who were unable to pay off their debt. 12 13 all of the above aroused repugnance, but also respect and awe. The second rea- son for repugnance and distrust was the Jews’ religion and the ways it affected their daily life, making it significantly different from the life of christians. The latter were, first and foremost, performed by enemies of the Jews, or anti- semites, who based their prejudice against various races and peoples on sup- differences were also apparent in the clothes they wore and the food they ate, posedly scientific findings. in so doing, they diligently employed the principles of and, on top of everything, toward the end of the 19th century Jews were often so-called social darwinism, principles arising from a comparison between the ascribed certain psychological attributes that engendered many stereotypes of origin and evolution of animal species on the one hand and of human races and large noses, black glaring eyes, black hair and beards… it is also often forgotten nations on the other. that a particular way of life was imposed upon the Jews already in the middle ages. Thus they were decidedly “marked,” thus prevented from integration. This meant that Jews • were not allowed to become artisans • were not allowed to own land • were forced to dress differently • were forced to live in designated areas. ever since the mid-middle ages, however, depictions of Jews and their customs have also portrayed their rituals that, according to christian conceptions, reveal Jewish hatred or at least malice towards non-Jews. Jews were depicted as sac- rificing the blood of christian children or poisoning wells, which was the basis for christian anti-semitism. Both charges are historically unfounded. physical characteristics became subject to systematic studies only at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, stirring particular interest among racist propaganda poster: “weak persons are reproducing faster medical doctors and other scientists investigating human races. while most than healthy people.” Botsch 2008, 18. studies exhibited genuine scientific interest, a small part regrettably amounted to nothing more than completely unscientific assessments of individual traits. 14 15 in this case, darwin’s findings on the survival of the fittest and the most adapt- able no longer applied only to individuals but began to determine the destiny of whole societies and groups. This occurred in a century marked by the establish- ment of nation states; by then, societies were no longer just groups of people settled in a common territory, but were bound together by common origin or, in anti-semitic and racist terms, by the same blood. modern anti-Semitism is therefore a fusion of racial theory and traditional ha- tred of Jews. at the beginning of the 20th century, traditional anti-semitism ste- Racial science (scientific racism) • is the use of reotyping Jews as hook-nosed schemers and murderers of children definitively scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the transformed into modern racist anti-semitism. in addition to traditional christian belief in racial superiority or racism; it draws on the anti-Judaism, which mainly rested on a different interpretation of the holy Bible, works of 18th-century scientists. the new development was largely based on the findings of “racial science.” Anti-Semitism • until the 19th century, anti-semitism such and similar “findings” helped establish anti-semitic value scales, was most often religious and based on Christian or Muslim at the top of which were aryan peoples from northern europe; slavs interpretations of Judaism (for example, holding Jews responsible were classified as considerably inferior, whereas Jews, roma and sinti for the death of Jesus christ). for this reason, the Jews were (who were seen as “racially distinctive” and “asocials”) were ranked at often the main targets of religious violence and persecution. the very bottom of the racial scale. according to racial scientists, this This form of anti-semitism was directed predominantly against lowest category also included blacks. religion, hence religious anti-semitism, and not against people of Jewish descent who converted to some other religion. another kind of anti-semitism is economic anti-semitism, which is based on stereotypes about the economic status and occupation of the Jews as wealthy, greedy, heartless businessmen. from the 19th century onwards, racial anti-semitism became the prevalent form of anti-semitism. it was based on anthropological ideas from the Racism • is the belief that there are biological y enlightenment period. here, the hatred or prejudice against the grounded and verifiable differences among the humans, Jews as believers is supplanted by the idea that the Jews are which often serves as the basis for abuse and a racial group and that, irrespective of their religious belief and discrimination. customs, they are inferior or unworthy. 16 17 The mention of German or, better, hitler’s National Socialists instantly takes us back to Germany between the two world wars. But not only there. although anti-semitism spread across all of europe, it “Typical” features of Jews brought to the extreme, was taken to the extreme in defeated, post-wwi Germany. in comparison with the aryan “norm.” Botsch 2008, 21. an important time in this process was the period of world war i, which, according National Socialism/National Socialists, Nazism • Nazism to German racial scientists, the Germans lost also because of the Jews. namely, built on elements of the German extreme right-wing racist nationalist after 1919 many interpretations in the popular German press portrayed Jews as movement and violent anti-communism. After World War I, Adolf Hitler war profiteers who let the German army down or even acted to its detriment in used this ideology in an attempt to encourage workers to turn away from pursuit of their own selfish ends. communism and embrace popular nationalism. At first the Nazis advocated anti-capitalism and anti-bourgeois viewpoints, which they later replaced and here is where our story about the last chapter of this with anti-semitism and anti-marxism. nazism promulgated the superiority differentiation begins. our aim in narrating it is to learn of the aryan race, which they claimed could only evolve by preserving its about the conditions that led to the so-called “Final solution purity and instinct for self-preservation. in this respect, the greatest threat to the Jewish question,” as the nazis called the process of was identified in the Jews, as wel as homosexuals, Slavs, Roma, blacks, destroying european Jewry. political opponents and the physical y and mental y disabled. 18 19 let’s take a look. . … at how Jason lutes depicted the life of Jewish children in 1930s Berlin, after nazi propaganda influenced public opinion. “Germans, do not forget!” a malicious caricature depicting the alleged betrayal by wealthy Jewish families during world war i. “Typical” features of Jews brought to the extreme, in comparison with the aryan “norm.” Botsch 2008, 21. During the last sixty-five years, this subject has inspired a prolific pro- duction of scholarly and literary works, as well as many documentary and fictional films. One of the particularly intriguing ways of present- ing the Holocaust is graphic novels, which over the past twenty-five years became an acknowledged approach to historical representation. From this point on, we are going to rely on excerpts from two graphic novels, Jason Lutes’ Berlin and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. These authors found a particularly felicitous way to describe the events that led to the Holocaust and the genocide itself. 20 21 Grown-ups often preferred to hide the truth from their children, which is also evi- dent from the narratives of the rare slovenian Jews who survived the horrors of a German concentration camp. They remember that during the war some people would help Jewish refugees from austria, which hitler had annexed already in 1938. But they knew nothing about the reasons for their plight – just as they did not know that the Germans were sending the Jews to concentration and extermi- nation camps and began systematically killing them a little more than two years into the war. on the other hand, grown-ups tried to prepare themselves, if only for the worst. in this respect, too, one of our informants offers a very illustrative account by recalling that a few weeks before being sent away to a concentration camp her parents took her and her sister to the woodshed and showed them where they hid the family jewellery and papers pertaining to her father’s education. But that was only later on. Before the war, the hatred towards the Jews and people of different opinions was fuelled also by a severe economic crisis. In combination with stringent demands for war reparation pay- ments, the crisis was especially severe in Germany, where political extremists, including Hitler, emerged in force in the early 1930s. however, the nazis also targeted their political opponents, primarily communists and socialists, whom they denounced as Bolsheviks. The ideological leaders of nazism (Joseph Goebbels, heinrich himmler, adolf hitler etc.) even tried to con- vince people that the greatest responsibility for the spread of Bolshevism lay with the Jews. let’s take a look at how the atmosphere was envisioned by the author of the graphic narrative about interwar Berlin. 22 23 Neither the Germans nor the Jews could have ever anticipated that this kind of hatred and intolerance would lead to such an unparalleled disaster. The extraordinary imprudence of the coalition parties was clearly visible after Germany’s last free election before WWI , in 1933, when they gave Hitler enough support to form a strong coalition. 24 25 what the election would mean soon became evident, since hitler did not hide his ambitions. most of what he wrote as his political plan in the book My Struggle ( Mein Kampf) was put into effect immediately after the election victory. The 1938 was marked by a campaign of arson and plunder against adoption of racial legislation or, more accurately, the Blood protection act, part Jewish property, which followed a policy of ostracising the Jewish of the so-called nuremberg laws, classified the Jews as second-class citizens. population from society; for instance, state officials could only be in every sphere of activity, hitler paid particular attention to the economic and Aryan, Jews were prohibited from certain jobs, Jewish shops were cultural destruction of the Jews. boycotted. In addition, new concentration camps were established. members of Jewish communities were prohibited from nearly all forms of deal- The first camps opened soon after the 1933 election and were initially intended ings: from pursuing lucrative and prestigious professions to marrying non-Jews. mostly for non-Jews, i.e. political opponents and criminals. later on the camps Those who failed to comply with the legislation were subject to ridicule, vicious were increasingly used to detain numerous other groups and individuals who attacks and punishment by the law. failed to meet the nazi political and moral norms; particularly after the beginning of wwi , the Jews, roma, slavs and pows were deported and interned in the concentration and extermination camps. What is more, the Jews also became unwelcome wherever their pres- Germans and their collaborators introduced similar measures in the occupied ence did not happen to be directly forbidden. Signs stating “Juden territories, where they built veritable “death factories.” sind hier unerwünscht,” or in English “Jews are not welcome here,” or simply “Juden unerwünscht”/“Jews not welcome” appeared across public spaces. 26 27 By this we are referring to a system of concentration and extermination camps, the most infamous being Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, to which Jewish prisoners were deported beginning in 1942 and where they were systematically killed starting one year later. Concentration and extermination camps • a camp in which regime opponents, “public enemies,” members of ethnic minorities etc. are detained for the purposes of re-education or extermination. The first concentration camps in Nazi Germany were founded in 1933 (dachau already in march 1933); their number quadrupled between 1938 and 1942. in this period, many became part of the machinery of the systematic murder of Jews and other “unworthy” groups. Concentration camps forced prisoners to do hard labour until they died of exhaustion; prisoners also died as a result of torture and medical experiments, malnutrition, epidemics and poor hygiene. in extermination camps they were kil ed in gas chambers and mass executions, and their bodies were then burnt in crematoria or buried in mass graves. The way Jews were collected and transported to camps from local and regional centres across most of central and eastern europe is most graphically illustrated by the american comic-book artist, art spiegelman. in his graphic novel Maus, map of nazi concentration and extermination camps. he describes how his father, Vladek spiegelman, experienced the extermination adapted from Botsch 2008. camp. 28 29 30 31 32 33 And what happened to the Jews in Slovenia? 34 35 Before we answer this question, we must first learn at least some basics Jewish settlers in the austro-hungarian monarchy earned their livelihood as about the Jewish community in the territory of present-day Slovenia. merchants trading in wine, wood, horses etc., with their partners scattered around the greater part of the Balkans, the central austrian provinces, hungary and northern italy. in the 15th century, Jews from maribor and ljubljana estab- The first Jews arrived in the territory that today is slovenia during the period of lished an especially lucrative trade with Venice, from whence they imported emerging hamlets, settlements and towns. only rare places were granted town various kinds of commodities, silk, spices, precious stones and gold. apart from or market town rights in the absence of Jewish settlers. most Jewish families merchants, sources also mention seal makers, goldsmiths, medical practitioners came to the territory of present-day slovenia from carinthia and the rhineland and landowners. and settled in Trieste, Gorizia, ljubljana, maribor and ptuj. The first verifiable mention of their settlement refers to ljubljana or, rather, its synagogue in the The biggest and most influential medieval Jewish community in the Slovenian ter- early 13th century. references to Jews in maribor, ptuj, celje and slovenj Gradec ritory was in Maribor, which is also confirmed by a fair number of documents kept can be found somewhat later, in the first half of the 14th century. at a still later in the Regional Archives Maribor. These documents contain the first mention of the date, sources mention Jews in slovenska Bistrica. synagogue in maribor, which dates back to 1429. The constantly strained relations between the native population and the Jews underwent a considerable change in the second half of the 15th century, when the inner austrian provincial estates demanded from emperor frederick i i (in return for monetary compensation) that he banish the Jews from carinthia and styria. his son and heir to the throne, maximilian i, finally yielded to the pressure and issued the edict of 18 march 1496, which not only held the Jews accountable for the eruption, spread and consequences of contagious diseases, but also accused them of so-called host desecration, the killing of christian children and the poisoning of wells. we cannot provide any original images of the synagogue in present-day Židovska ulica in Maribor, but the recently renovated building gives a Synagogue (gr. synagogē ) • a Jewish place of gathering, sense of what its ancient predecessor looked like. a community centre where people pray, study and meet. photo: Bojan nedok, (c) sinagoga maribor. in modern communities, a synagogue also includes a room for religious school and a library. 36 37 Ghetto • The term “ghetto” can be traced back to the establishment of a Jewish quarter in Venice in 1516. This was the first case of official y sanctioned segregation of the Jews in europe (although Jewish quarters existed already before). in the 16th and 17th centuries, the practice spread across europe, as local and state authorities ordered the creation of ghettos for Jews in some of what were then the biggest european cities, for instance in frankfurt, rome and prague. The idea was to put the Jewish population under strict regulation. Through time, the concept of the ghetto and its characteristics changed considerably. from a “Jewish quarter,” the area of a city traditional y inhabited even though the Jewish community in maribor was younger than the by Jews, to an ethnical y homogenous and, as a rule, unruly and poor community in ptuj, the memory of it is much stronger, mostly thanks segregated area that can be found in many cities of the world today. to a long line of generations of the marpurgo family, whose many Throughout history, ghettos were places of poverty and exclusion. a wal , members even had contacts with florentine bankers. yet, despite their exacerbating the exclusion, usual y surrounded ghettos. By the end of the bustling trade activities and extensive connections, medieval Jewish 19th century, Jewish ghettos were being abolished and the wal s torn down. quarters have left only a faint mark on slovenian towns. The reason The regime of ghettoisation, the segregation of the Jewish from the non- for this was the relatively small number of Jewish families and their Jewish population, was revived by nazi Germany. during wwi , nazi dispersed settlement pattern. in other words, Jews in slovenian towns Germany established its own system of Jewish ghettos in eastern europe, were not limited to individual quarters from which ghettos would aiming to control, segregate, terrorise and exploit the Jews. in German- later emerge, but to individual houses and streets that later obtained occupied poland alone, the nazis established at least 1,000 ghettos. the name “Jewish” street, alley or road. in any event, every such during world war i , the Germans concentrated the municipal and designation required special consent. sometimes regional Jewish population in the ghettos, thus separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities. The first such ghetto was established in Piotrków Trybunalski, poland in 1939. The biggest was the warsaw ghetto, with more than 400,000 inhabitants. some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years. living conditions were terrible also due to malnutrition, unbearable hygienic standards, violence and disease. with the implementation of the “final solution” in 1942, the ghettos were eliminated. The residents were either shot or deported to extermination camps. 38 39 a fresco from st martin’s church Given the above, it is little wonder that some contemporaries labelled Murska in martjanci, dated to the end Sobota the “Jewish nest” or the beginning of “Jewish dominion.” The latter of the 14th century, shows a supposedly reached as far as Budapest, which in the most fervent anti-Se- Jew spitting at Jesus christ. mitic discourse was dubbed “Judapest.” The image demonstrated the established myth about Jews, in the early 1930s, the situation turned from bad to worse. This was primarily the murderers of christ. due to developments in Germany, from whence the news spread about the photo: Boris hajdinjak. expropriation and persecution of the Jews. however, the major cause for alarm was the changing political climate in the kingdom of yugoslavia. here, we are referring both to the change that fol owed the death of king alexander in 1934, who was regarded as a patron of the Jews in yugoslavia, and to specific legislation that in many ways imitated the Nuremberg Laws in Germany, compel ing some Jews to convert to christianity. The latter process was especial y characteristic of the last years before the war, when even slovenian newspapers would feature articles portraying Jews as swindlers, traitors to Jesus and, indeed, a misfortune for the “slovenian nation.” This crucial event pushed the Jews to the margins of the slovenian provinces, where they remained until the end of the 18th century. The restoration of the Jewish community in slovenian territory was made possible only with the modernisation of the economy, which slowly but eventually also reached prekmurje. Thus, in 1778, lendava, too, recorded its first fourteen Jewish settlers. Then, in the middle and the second half of the 19th century, a fair number of Jewish families settled in Beltinci and murska sobota. most of them engaged in trade, and there were also many innkeepers and butchers. as well-connected dealers, they first purchased honey, hides, cattle, feathers and linen cloth from villagers and later sold them to wholesalers in bigger towns. from the end of the 18th century onwards, they could also rent and work the land, and many even became landowners. They also controlled a major share of the cattle trade. 40 41 Children continued to go to school until autumn 1943, I think, when they ordered us to put on the Star of David. This identified us as Jews. Quite a few girls from school, friends, avoided me in the street because of the star I was forced to wear on my coat. I can say that Slovenian children weren’t ashamed to walk down the street with me… [erika fürst’s account is not entirely accurate; in the hungarian zone, the Jews were not forced to wear the star of david until spring 1944; all quotations hereafter are from an interview with erika fürst recorded Just about that time, during the 1930s, Erika Fürst, in august 2011] our main informant, was born as the second child to a Jewish family in murska sobota. her mother was the daughter of a successful merchant who ran a store with his wife in a village some ten kilometres from murska sobota. Before she married erika’s father, who was a transporter, she worked as a cashier at her father’s shop. erika had one sister, and the family of four led an ordinary life in murska sobota. when prekmurje came under hungarian rule in 1941, the then ten-year-old erika attended primary school. at the end of 1943 she felt like an ordinary girl, no different from her friends at school. after 1943, however, her life and the life of her family began to change. They were forced to wear yellow Jewish stars, just like their coreligionists in Germany and elsewhere in europe: 42 43 prekmurje’s Jewish community, the largest in slovenian territory, found itself in an increasingly precarious situation. having been placed in the hungarian occupation zone, the Jews in prekmurje were initial y spared the fate of their acquaintances and relatives from countries and provinces occupied by the Germans and the Germans’ local al ies. namely, during much of the war hungary refused to comply with the German demands to deport its Jews to concentration and extermination camps. for this very reason Jewish families in the hungarian territory and areas occupied by the hungarian army were initial y not directly affected by decisions on the “Final solution.” erika fürst with her sister and aunt. courtesy of erika fürst. a copy of a part of the original minutes of the wannsee conference containing the data on the Jewish population in europe at the beginning of the 1940s. erika fürst’s aunts. Botsch 2008, 76. courtesy of erika fürst. 44 45 as the hour of deportation drew near also in prekmurje, erika’s family quickly were being assembled, and they saw the German soldiers, members of the ss, tried to adapt to the new circumstances. erika’s father showed her and her sister erika realised that the situation was very serious. a makeshift hiding place for small valuables in the family woodshed: The woodshed was fil ed with wood, [and] there was a big hive in one corner. The very moment we saw the Germans, [. .] with their shepherd dogs [. .] we knew Underneath it father dug a hole… and told us there were some very impor- they were [. .] far more bloodthirsty than the Hungarians [hungarian police] . tant things [in it], and should anything happen to him and any of us might The Hungarians were somewhat more considerate, however you look at it. return, it would do at least for a start. Back then I didn’t know what it was Šarika horvat, erika’s acquaintance three years her senior told the shoah and what was in it. After the war mother told us it was a large storage jar. In foundation that it was not only the dogs and the ruthlessness of the Germans this jar was a box and in this box were father’s business licence and some that frightened her, it was the entire process. after being herded in front of the jewel ery… They ordered us not to tell this to anyone and for the first time synagogue, they were forced to wait there for others to be driven from the nearby that strange feeling came over me that something bad could happen to us. villages. in the meantime, the German soldiers repeatedly checked their presence, until “300 or perhaps 400 people” were gathered by the evening , “packed like indeed, barely a few weeks later, it was on a monday in april, two members of herrings in a barrel” in the synagogue. the hungarian armed police force and two state officials knocked on the door of erika’s house at five o’clock in the morning. The family was woken up and ordered Then we were taken to Čakovec, some of us in wagons and the rest in a train. to pack in thirty minutes and turn over all their possessions. erika and her sister In Čakovec they locked us in a school building. We slept on the floor. We were knew that it was going to be a long journey, so they wanted to say goodbye to their best friend living right next door: held there for two days until they examined each and every one of us. There was a small room in which two officers were sitting. They cal ed each My sister and I wanted to say goodbye to our best friend, and the gendarmes one of us by name, examined us and asked whether we had any money or gave us permission. They were our next-door neighbours. We went there jewel ery left. I was shaking with fear then, I was only 13 and alone with the and took memory books with us, so she would put them away, and we said aggressive officers, [who looked] threatening. They had a dog; they searched our goodbyes. Her father had already been imprisoned at a base in Hun- me from head to toe, thinking I was still hiding something. [. .] gary, and he took it the hardest. He put his arms around us, tears running They searched al of us. They happened to find a broken fil ing on Mr Hiršl down his face, and said: “Poor children, I’m afraid I know what waits for you Karman from Murska Sobota and they beat him up so badly that his face was there.” Anyway, a few moments later we were back home. all swol en up and covered with blood. Two days later they loaded us on cattle trains and took us to Nagykanizsa [a/n where a deportation centre was]. erika’s mother, scared out of her wits, was completely unable to pack, so erika and her sister helped her. one of the officers said they should take as much food as possible. when they arrived at the synagogue in murska sobota, where they 46 47 The next morning all young men and girls were assembled in the courtyard. unfortunately, this group also included erika’s father, who was sent back to collect his luggage, along with others. They were lined up and taken to the railway station. This was the last time she saw her father: Everyone was crying. We were al locked in classrooms, watching out the window, waving to each other. I will never forget that look, that sad look on my father’s face. They were taken to the railway station and to Auschwitz. That was the first transport to Auschwitz. Although some data differ, we can safely claim that in April 1944 about 330 Jews were driven from Lendava, Beltinci, Murska Sobota and nearby villages. That was the first wave of deportations that spared only Jews who had earned special merits for Hungary. The map shows prekmurje Jews localities and deportation centres. map design: Jerneja fridl. The first group of deportees was followed by a second one at the beginning of may, a third one on 20 october 1944, and in november the last and the smallest The concentration camp was a “true ordeal” for erika: group was arrested after having escaped previous deportations based on the aforementioned “merits for the hungarian nation.” The course of the expulsions They opened the wagons, German soldiers were shouting at us “al e was more or less identical: early morning arrests were followed by rounding raus,” everybody out. We were not al owed to take anything – women up, identity verification and transport to croatia and hungary, from whence the not even a toiletries case, nothing. There was word going around that deportees were taken to auschwitz. we would only be left with what we were wearing. So we put on some underwear, a blouse dress, a skirt to cover that, then a winter coat, and a trench coat over the winter coat. My sister and I looked older, stronger, and so we jumped off the wagons. There we were lined up by soldiers who were constantly shouting, “‘faster, faster,” and then we walked along the railway line until we reached an intersection […]. 48 49 similar developments were documented by a German soldier. The photograph was first published in a book written by two concentration camp survivors, ota kraus and erich kulka, a little more than ten years after the war. They were among the first to refer to auschwitz as the “death factory.” Crematorium • a facility intended for burning human remains; in German extermination camps cremating technology was used for burning corpses after gassing. The horror upon the reception at the concentration camp was further exacerbated by dehumanisation, which erika faced when she was stripped of all her personal belongings, including her clothes, and sent with others to the showers: We were taken to a building where we were forced to strip naked, then they cut our hair, and we left our shoes and al our clothes on a pile. My mother kept a family photo and an SS woman pul ed it out of her hands, saying: “What’s this, you won’t be needing this,” and tore it up before our mothers and children from a hungarian transport. auschwitz album, (c) yad Vashem. eyes. We went to the showers. The water was lukewarm and we were Soon after her arrival during the selection process Erika found herself face to cold, because our heads were shaved bald. We came out on the other face with the infamous doctor mengele, who performed experiments on people, side and, of course, we had no towels, nothing to dry ourselves off with. preferably twins. We were given grey dresses; no socks, no underwear, only dresses and [He sent] elderly people, children and young mothers to the right […], and the shoes. My sister and I had rather small feet, so the SS woman al owed us few of us who were fit to work went to the left. When we came up to Mengele, to take our own shoes. My mother was given a different pair; some were my sister and I were wearing the same clothes and we were of approximately given wooden shoes. the same height, though my sister was two years older than me; he asked my mother whether we were twins. Mother said no, we weren’t. “How old are they?” it is quite possible that photographers continued to follow the new arrivals, She said 17 and 15, and added in German: “We want to work.” Then he smiled like recording their transformation from terrified and tired newcomers into increasingly expressionless concentration camp prisoners. a weasel and said, “Left.” That’s how we stayed alive and were not driven straight to the crematorium. Only 34 women survived from the entire transport. I know that because we were lined up by fives in six rows, and because there were only four in the last one, instead of five. 50 51 The just-shaved hungarian women were forced to wait for hours to be distributed clothes and sent to the barracks. auschwitz album, (c) yad Vashem. shivering with cold, dressed in rags and shaved “to zero,” erika as well as other children and women from murska sobota realised after a few days that it would be difficult to survive in the new environment. The peak of the initial systematic dehumanisation was when the prisoner was tattooed with a camp number. The latter is also recounted in the story of art spiegelman’s father, who arrived in auschwitz in the dead of winter. 52 53 Bigger children were sent to a special room every day where we were to erika and the rest of the survivors were sent to women’s camp a and settled in sort out wool. People brought all sorts of things to the camp, including the barracks. There they had their first premonition of what was waiting for them. heaps of wool. Not in skeins, but wool of various colours, to hide gold, erika was hungry, thirsty, terrified and shivering with cold. she suffered terribly. and maybe some money. Our job was to spin these bales of wool into yarn she was given scraps of food, a piece of bread and a small tin plate of soup. The bunks in the barracks looked like “shelves.” of various colours. I worked with two Hungarian girls… and one day we found a gold ring and a pair of earrings in a yarn. The older girl put them Then began the long roll cal s or “appel s,” beatings and hard labour. Šarika took a few away. Unfortunately, I never saw these girls again. They probably found beatings as wel , although children were less likely targets of physical punishment than that gold on them and took them to the crematorium older prisoners. erika had a great problem getting used to the poor toilets and the fact that she could not go to the toilet when she needed to, but only when she was al owed This is roughly how more than one million Jewish and romani children, women to: “There was one SS man making his rounds if you happened to be squatting for and men, as well as a considerable number of russian prisoners, disappeared five minutes more.” on top of it al , she was extremely cold in the beginning, especial y from auschwitz and nearby extermination camps. a million… it is impossible to at night. Bedbugs were a terrible pest and kept her from sleeping at night: “In the imagine such a number, just as it is impossible to think how many had died just morning we all had our faces covered with blood. […] After they moved us to Camp before the liberation or during the evacuation of the concentration camp. The B […], there were no bedbugs, but there were lice; only bedbugs are far worse than latter is one of the saddest and cruellest episodes of this story. lice.” sleepless nights alternated with days of slave labour: although the German army was in great disarray by January 1945, that did not We did hard work. We were loaded with bricks and forced to carry them deter it from undertaking preparations for the so-called “Todesmarsch,” the in our hands several kilometres away. The road built with bricks from death march. erika made a split-second decision that she would not go, she did Auschwitz still stands today. not want to leave her sister and mother behind. she jumped into the snow and remained hidden until the rest of the prisoners were gone. on either side they for erika, a girl of barely thirteen years at the time, life in the concentration camp were escorted by armed soldiers with dogs: was an even harder ordeal; on the other hand, it was precisely her youth that saved her life at a certain moment. after she was separated from her mother I waited […] there, [and then] headed for the barracks where my mother and sister, erika had no one to talk to; however, in the barracks where she was was, and hid under her bunk. The Germans were still coming back, liter- transferred she was at least spared long roll calls. But there was plenty of work; al y tearing the female prisoners from the bunks and shooting them… it was, indeed, not as physically demanding, but still: and how does Vladek spiegelman remember that moment? 54 55 meanwhile erika took care of her mother and sister. They were weak and sickly and, between the Germans’ departure and the arrival of the russian liberators, she kept them alive by searching for food and clothes in the abandoned camp: [My] sister and mother were unable to stand on their feet. […]. I walked around the storage facilities with other prisoners [to see if] the Germans left any food. […] We col ected water from the pool […] in which the Germans used to bathe during summer [… and] I found flour in one storage […]. I put it in my scarf and later made žganci [a dish made of buckwheat flour cooked in water] with it. […] In another storage […] I also found [a tin of] cabbage. The tin was [too] big to lift, so I rol ed [it] […] to our barracks. survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp; the camp was liberated on 16 april 1945. www.history.com/photos/holocaust-concentration-camps/photo10. 56 57 That tin kept all three alive until the arrival of the russians, who, as erika recounts, came to the camp ten days after the Germans evacuated it. They were wearing white sheets […], as camouflage, and some female prisoners were kissing their feet, throwing their arms around them, and some of us were terrified. We couldn’t tell whether they were real y Russians […], [until] they began to speak in Russian. They were shocked by the sight of us, the state we were in, nothing but skin and bone […] auschwitz, children after liberation in 1945. (c) yad Vashem. www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/index.asp. Then […] my mother decided that we would go home with a Romanian transport […], there appeared to be many Romanians, and they were coming to col ect their relatives in Krakow […] The first transport […] was Romanian. […] The journey was long, hard, we rode in open wagons until we reached the Czech border, I think, […] then through Prague […] to Budapest. At the Budapest railway station we were awaited by people from the Jewish municipality; they took us to some school again and gave us food […] Survivors from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, after liberation in 1945. in Budapest an international Jewish organisation (it is impossible to say with (c) yad Vashem. www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/index.asp. certainty which one it was) offered to organise their emigration to the united states: The russians took them to auschwitz and settled them in the barracks of former guards and soldiers, where they could recover some of their strength and begin For people like us, the Jewish community would arrange a journey to to make preparations for their return home. since the war was still going on, the America. But my sister and I wouldn’t hear of it, because our father’s journey to murska sobota was not possible until the beginning of may. and even then last words were: “See you back home.” We were convinced that he was they could only go as far as krakow and from there through prague to Budapest. waiting for us. 58 59 Therefore, instead of going to america, they went back to the Budapest railway waiting for a while, erika, her mother and sister assumed that he might have died station: there as well, even though the circumstances of his death remained unclear. not least because her mother’s sisters had had such a premonition; they had met him We boarded an open wagon […] stacked with potatoes, and on that train […] at least once on their return to Birkenau from work at auschwitz and said that his we then continued to Szombathely, where […] the Jewish municipality […] feet were very swollen and covered with blisters, which was why he was most arranged […] for us to sleep at some gentleman’s house. There we could likely sent to the gas chamber. take a bath, wash and then […] continue […] towards Körmend on foot. after the war erika nevertheless wrote to the red cross in Buchenwald, having heard some rumours that her father had died in that camp. The highest survival from there to prosenjakovci in prekmurje they were frequently stopped by rate was, in fact, among those who had been chosen to work in other camps, russian soldiers who took them for refugees. in prosenjakovci they were awaited while only six returned from auschwitz camps, one man and six women. by their father’s acquaintance, who took them to murska sobota, where they found everything in a shambles: One barn and one cel ar were destroyed, only the woodshed was still standing. The house was occupied by the partisan army. The flooring was torn out, the electric wiring likewise. The partisans slept on the floor, on hay. Upon our arrival, they emptied the house immediately. But the house was a complete mess, [so] we stayed a few days […] with a family in Murska Sobota. My mother was granted a loan, I can’t imagine on what basis; she had the house painted and new electrical instal ations fixed in the kitchen and one room. We slept on the floor dressed in […] what we were wearing upon our return from the concentration camp. […] With nothing. [A former] farmhand brought a small pot of lard, neighbours pitched in a bit of flour, and so little holocaust survivors from prekmurje soon after their return home. by little we were returning back to life. courtesy of erika fürst. at that time and until summer, twenty-five other inhabitants of sobota and As later became clear, very few men returned home. A little more than one-fifth, twenty-three Jews from lendava returned home, like erika, her sister and mother. statistics suggest. The survival rate for the Jewish community in prekmurje was Together with the survivors from other towns and villages, sixty-five or a little higher for women, most of whom left Prekmurje soon after the war. They mainly less than twenty per cent of those who had been deported a year before returned migrated to palestine and the us, and some moved to other parts of slovenia. erika’s to their homes. according to the data presently available, 387 persons, including sister moved with her husband to Maribor, where she died not long afterwards from erika’s father, died in concentration camps or as a result of forced labour and the a bizarre accident in which a dress she was ironing caught fire and the flames death march. auschwitz claimed the highest number of deaths. Therefore, after spread to the ironing board… 60 61 After 1945, Erika, her mother and her sister tried to lead a life as normal as they slav citizenship upon the outbreak of war were expropriated as German nation- possibly could. already at the end of may, the girls returned to school to complete als, which was particularly painful for them. even though they had gone to great the validation process: first they had courses and then exams. It was the first win- lengths to obtain citizenship that was never granted to them due to strong local ter that she would “go to school without stockings” and in a knee-long coat. anti-semitism, the Jews were expropriated after the war because they had not been citizens of the pre-war kingdom of yugoslavia. But the worst of it all was Then my uncle gave me a pair of men’s knee socks and some boots […] that they were officially equated with the nationality of their persecutors. probably my aunt’s. I had two aunts in Martjanci, and people in the vil- lage would take a lot of things and then give them back. Unfortunately, Nationalisation • was the process of socialising private property that this was not possible in Sobota. took place after world war i in socialist countries and in the territory of the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia. in this way, most industry, she clearly recalls that she had terrible problems concentrating, that she could much landed property and the food processing and transport industries not remember anything. what she learned in the evening, she had forgotten were brought under state ownership. by morning. evidently, the subconscious need to forget the past year’s horrors also began to eat away at her newly acquired knowledge. erika’s problems with memorising school lessons were shared by the majority of survivors who sought This is another reason why there is absolutely no justification for post-war “comfort” in conscious oblivion. courts to have “overlooked” the fact that the majority of Jews were, indeed, There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but the survivors have most “Yugoslav citizens of Slovenian nationality and Jewish religion” and whose often mentioned fear that something similar might happen again and the desire to documents, like Erika’s, stated that they were Slovenes. forget the horrors they had faced as soon as possible. The number of those who resorted to hatred was, according to survivors’ testimonies, somewhat lower. no less striking is the modest scale on which the memory of Jewish victims was regardless of how survivors dealt with the consequences of their experience, honoured in the first decade after the war. one of the first reports to appear in most of them left slovenia and europe. apart from the us, australia and Great the Obmurski tednik, for instance, was a short announcement that the “the Jews Britain, their most frequently mentioned destination was palestine or israel from from sobota, too” were driven to concentration camps. and, while the author 1948 onwards. as data suggest, nearly two-thirds of all Jews who left prekmurje of the announcement also gave an incorrect estimate of 117 holocaust victims, forever after 1945 migrated to the newly established Jewish state. in the light he did devote more attention to ali kardoš, one of the main instigators of the of this, the destruction of the Jewish community in northeastern slovenia was resistance movement in the province. it seems that there was little room for almost complete. more than 85 per cent were killed during the war and an individual Jews and their stories during socialism unless they appeared in the additional ten per cent left soon afterwards. indeed, there were not even enough role of revolutionaries. Jews in murska sobota and lendava to restore the religious community. The post-war attitude towards Jews was also manifested by the demolition of the synagogue in murska sobota. The city people’s committee of murska sobota physical extermination by the nazis was followed by the nationalisation of purchased the building for a modest sum of money in mid-1949 and five years later Jewish property by the new socialist state. This had nothing to do with religious decided to demolish it. The future was brighter for the synagogue in lendava, which or racial background – only with property. Those Jews who did not have yugo- was renovated in the 1990s and presently serves as a performance venue. 62 63 The synagogue in Beltinci was subject to the most persistent process of erasing historical memory. a simple family house converted into a synagogue in 1859 apparently met with the same destiny as the local Jewish cemetery. after the last burial took place there in 1943, that of the Jew Jan ebenšpanger, “the Jewish cemetery in Beltinci was plundered to the core. not a single monument has been preserved,” as Bojan Zadravec states. until 2009, no other memorial had been built in the memory of the holocaust in prekmurje. Quite the contrary: by setting up a monument to the victims of fascism among the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in dolga vas in 1947, the municipality had, deliberately or not, caused the memory of the deportation and killing of the majority of prekmurje Jews to fade even faster. in a similar way, the worst consequences of the war on prekmurje soil were obscured in the teaching curriculum, due to which new generations of the inhabitants of prekmurje, as The synagogue in murska sobota. Photo: J. Kodrič. well as other slovenians, have until recently lived in the belief that the holocaust took place only somewhere far away. The synagogue in lendava in 2010. photo: aleš Topolinjak, (c) sinagoga maribor. “in memoriam: victims of fascism 1941–1945.” inscription on a monument set up in the Jewish cemetery in dolga vas near lendava. photo: marko Zaplatil, (c) arzenal. 64 65 at least two generations have lived in the belief that gas chambers and forced Righteous among the nations • In 1963 Yad Vashem, World labour were part of German but not also slovenian history. in recent years, this center for holocaust research, education, documentation and memory is slowly being revived: most often through the agency of teachers and commemoration, initiated a worldwide project to pay tribute to the professors who help their pupils explore the Jewish cemetery in dolga vas or en- righteous among the nations, that is, non-Jews who in the time of courage them to explore the remnants of the Jewish culture on their own. slove- nazi rule, under threat of death and terror, risked their lives to save nian history is, moreover, still oblivious to the destiny of the roma in lower car- Jewish children, men and women. niola and prekmurje. some from the former location were shot by the partisans during the holocaust the plight of the Jews met mostly either and the majority from the latter were driven to labour camps by the hungarians. indifference or hostility. most often, people stood by watching as their former neighbours were rounded up, taken away and eventually killed. nothing has, likewise, been heard about people who aided Jews and were thus some collaborated with the perpetrators and many benefited from the recognised as the Righteous among the nations, as the few brave individuals expropriation of the Jews property. who were willing to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones by hiding There were, however, a small number of people who were so Jewish children, forging their documents and trying in various ways to save disturbed by the horrors of these events and by the elimination of all them. among the tens of thousands whose names are inscribed in the park of the human feeling, that the decided to stand up against it. some acted famous yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem there are also seven slovenes. out of political, ideological or religious convictions; others were not idealists, but merely human beings who cared about the people around them. in many cases they never planned to become rescuers and were totally unprepared for the moment in which they had to make such a far-reaching decision. in their accounts there was usually a “turning point” that set them in action: witnessing either deportation, murder or confiscation. in many cases it was the Jews who turned to the non-Jews for help. it has to be emphasised that the rescued Jews should not be viewed as passive in this process, but rather as taking active part in negotiating the hardships of the total annihilation of their rights and in resisting the nazi regime. The price that rescuers had to pay for their action differed from one country to another. in eastern europe, the Germans executed not only the people who sheltered Jews, but their entire families as well; some of the righteous among the nations were incarcerated in camps and killed. 66 67 helped save Jewish children in Croatia; Ljubica and Ivan Župančič; Olga forms of help by the righteous can be categorised in four different types: Rajšek Neuman and Martina Levec Marković. Hiding Jews in the rescuers’ home or on their property. The rescuers Very little has been known so far about these people. however, let us would provide a secluded part of their home or arrange for a dugout mention the story of father Tumpej, which has also been told in the film under houses or barns. living conditions in dark places were harsh. Three Promises (centropa 2011). although he dedicated his life to helping The rescuers, whose lives were under threat, would provide what little others, to this day his most-remembered deeds remain saving five Jewish food they could and tend to their needs as best they could. sometimes women in wwi serbia. for them he arranged false papers and identities. the hiding Jews were presented as non-Jews, as relatives or adopted Two of these girls were discovered seeking work in Germany and all children. Jews were also hidden in apartments in cities, and children traces led to father Tumpej. he was arrested and interrogated by the were placed in convents with the nuns concealing their true identity. Gestapo and released only after months in prison. This was a time of great False papers and false identities. assuming the identity of non-Jews fear for the other three Jewish women, antonija kalef and her daughters required false papers and assistance in establishing an existence under matilda and rahela. an assumed name. in this case, rescuers were forgers or officials who father Tumpej knew he was breaking the law that prohibited and facilitated false documents, for example fake baptism certificates. sanctioned any kind of help to Jews. in spite of the danger, he arranged for Smuggling and assisting Jews to escape. This entailed smuggling false papers, using antonija’s maiden name, ograjenšek. Jews out of ghettos and prisons or helping them cross borders into “from now on, your surname is ograjenšek. you, mrs. kalef, now go by unoccupied countries or into areas where persecution was less intense, your original slovenian name antonija ograjenšek. matilda, you are now (switzerland, italian-controlled areas or hungary before the German lidija, rahela, you are Breda.” Thus father Tumpej became their saviour occupation in march 1944). and lifelong friend. rahela kalef decided after the war to keep her new Rescuing children. parents faced agonising dilemmas of separating name, as a sign of gratitude. from their children and giving them away to increase their chances of after the war, father Tumpej continued his philanthropic journey, asking to survival. in many cases individuals decided to take in a child; in other be relocated to skopje after the earthquake in 1963. he stayed there until cases and in some countries, especially poland, Belgium, holland and retirement in 1971. he was a nationally conscious slovene and a dedicated france, underground organisations tried to find homes for children and yugoslav, deeply attached to the Balkans. he is buried in the Belgrade to provide food and medication. military cemetery Topčider. (adapted from: http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/about.asp) (Adapted from Jure Aleksič, Mladina 21, 28 May 2001, http://www.mladina.si/95997/se-en-slovenski-so far yad Vashem has recognised righteous from 44 countries and schindler/; marjan Toš, “slovenski schindler iz Beograda,” 7 march 2012, http://www.7dni.com/v1/ default.asp?kaj=2&id=5756235) nationalities, among them also seven Slovenes: Uroš Žun, a solicitor from radovljica, who saved the lives of sixteen girls; andrej Tumpej, a The deeds of other slovenian righteous parish priest who saved the Belgrade Jewish family Kalef; Zora Pičulin, who saved a baby whose parents were deported; ivan Breskvar, who are waiting to be rediscovered. 68 69 Much unlike anti-Semitism . . as hatred and distrust of the Jews has been preserved almost intact. This is, not least, evidenced by events that have taken place over the last two decades in Slovenia… including Prekmurje. acknowledGemenTs This publication would not have been possible without the help, thorough reading and invaluable suggestions of the “neglected Holocaust” Traces of black swastikas on tombstones in the Jewish part of the ljubljana project team members eleonore eppel lappin, ana hofman, Žale cemetery and red paint on monuments in Dolga vas may have disappeared, Tanja Petrović, Ivo Goldstein and Goran Hutinec; external experts Heidemarie Uhl, but not the realisation that in slovenia, as elsewhere in europe, hatred has Éva kovacs and wolf moskovich. for extremely insightful feedback outlived mercy. we are grateful to pavla karba from the directorate for education and the teachers photo above: fotodokumentacija dela; photo below: marko Zaplatil, (c) arzenal. Nataša Litrop, Boštjan Majerič, Klavdija Sipuš, Aljaž Selinšek, karina sekereš, dušanka horvat and mateja Jevšnik. 70 71 References: “about the righteous,” The righteous among the nations, yad Vashem, www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/about.asp, accessed 21 July 2012. Jure Aleksič, “Še en slovenski Schindler,” Mladina, no. 21, 28 may 2001, www.mladina.si/95997/se-en-slovenski-schindler/, accessed 21 July 2012. Gideon Botsch et al., Die Wannsee-Konferenz und der Völkermord an den europäischen Juden, Katalog der ständigen Ausstel ung – Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Berlin, 2008. erika fürst, testimony, interwiew oto luthar, august 2010. Šarika horvat, testimony available from the shoah foundation. ota kraus and erich kulka, Die Todesfabrik, Berlin, kongress-Verlag, 1957. Jason lutes, Berlin: City of Stones, drawn and Quarterly, montreal, 2010. Jason lutes, Berlin: City of Smoke, drawn and Quarterly, montreal, 2011. holocaust concentration camps photo gallery and related media, history.com, www.history.com/photos/holocaust-concentration-camps, accessed 20 July 2012. The holocaust resource center, yad Vashem, www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/index.asp, accessed 18 July 2012. posete starom sajmištu, www.starosajmiste.info/sr2012/#/mapa/gasni_kamion, accessed 18 June 2012. edward serrota, Three Promises, centropa film, 2011. art spiegelman, Maus, A Survivor’s Tale, random house, new york, 1991. marjan Toš, “slovenski schindler iz Beltincev,” 7dni, pisan kot življenje, 7 march 2012, www.7dni.com/v1/default.asp?kaj=2&id=5756235, accessed 18 June 2012. Bojan Zadravec, Židje v Beltincih, manuscript, Beltinci, 2006. 72 73 74 75 THE LAnD OF SHADOWS The memory of the expulsion and disappearance of the Jewish community in prekmurje authors oto Luthar, Martin Pogačar Translator Manca gašperšič copy editor Mitch Cohen review Eva Klemenčič, goran Hutinec publication design and layout tanja radež photographs Courtesy of Erika Fürst; Boris Hajdinjak, Fotodokumentacija Dela, Marko Zaplatil, J. Kodrič, aleš topolinjak, Bojan nedok, Yad Vashem map design Jerneja Fridl, Manca Volk images from graphic novels Jason Lutes, Berlin, City of Stones and Berlin, City of Smok e; art Spiegelman, Maus, A Survivor’s Tale. publisher Založba ZrC, ZrC SaZU editor-in-chief aleš Pogačnik print Collegium graphicum, d. o. o., Ljubljana print run 100 copies This publication is a result of the “neglected holocaust: remembering the deportation of the Jews in slovenia” project funded by the Task force for international cooperation on holocaust education, remembrance and research, the republic of slovenia ministry for education, science, culture and sports and education research institute. © 2012, ZrC Publishing House, ZrC SaZU all rights reserved. no part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from the authors or Zrc publishing house. CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 94(497.411=411.16) 341.485(=411.16) luThar, oto The land of shadows : the memory of the expulsion and disappearance of the Jewish community in prekmurje / oto luthar, Martin Pogačar ; [translator Manca Gašperšič ; photographs Erika Fürst . . et al.]. - Ljubljana : Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2012 isBn 978-961-254-381-5 1. Pogačar, Martin 262882048 76 What brought about one of the saddest chapters in human history?