When man appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he is asked is not, “Have you believed in God?” or “Have you prayed or performed ritual acts?” but “Have you dealt honorably or faithfully in all your dealings with your fellowmen?”
—THE TALMUD
Soon the Jews began building homes and new chemical factories and experimental facilities for new medicines and medical treatments. Some German doctors visited, even assisted in the experiments and were immensely impressed with what the Jews were doing inside the medical offices they built in Dachau. They promised huge rewards from these experiments in the future.
We saw the films of the new community of the men in their beards and women in their long, black dresses going to pray and then to work. The less religious moneymakers and traders built up their new city-state. The Jews were finally ending their stateless wandering around Europe. Because of the brilliance of the Fuhrer, they were all finally together in one place.…
And so too the economies of the countries of Europe flourished. Using these new resources, everyone begin to thrive. Unemployment went down. Inflation went down. Because of the master plan, the Fuhrer’s final solution to save the Jews, to solve the Jewish problem, which had plagued Europe for centuries, was in place for lasting peace in Europe. For this accomplishment, the Fuhrer happily accepted the Nobel Peace Prize from the Nobel Prize–winning Norwegian writer, Knut Hamsun. A photo of Hamsun, with his bearish smile, welcoming the Fuhrer to Oslo hung on my wall.
And then came the greatest shock to all of us.
Suddenly, even inside our home in Munich, we began to smell horrid fumes sweeping in from over the border, which was only ten miles away. At first, we ignored it. Eichmann and Himmler investigated and claimed it was the Jews right to do within their lands whatever they chose. They were experimenting with new technologies of power, a new gas, Zyklon B, which would make them a self-sufficient energy state and financially stable. My father seemed worried. But not the Fuhrer. During his radio broadcast, he reassured us that all was well. “Trust me,” he said, “the Jews will act honorably and live up to their part of the bargain.”
Then came the dirty dishonor of what they had done to themselves. Of how they betrayed the Fuhrer’s hope for the Jews. My father, who was one of the policemen chosen to investigate, told us before we saw the unimaginable photographs of the devastation. He came home a shattered man. He couldn’t understand why six million (six million!) people would kill themselves in mass suicide. And to starve themselves like that! If they needed help, we would have given bread. Soup.
But killing themselves with such monstrous gas—we couldn’t understand. I was a teenager and did not comprehend why they chose to meet their god. I cried and cried at the madness and my father’s sadness. He spoke to me of what he’d seen and happened for many months. So hurt he was, he never talked to me of it again.
He could never comprehend such mass societal insanity. Such calculated taking of life. So like the Jews to be so orderly and quiet, he said. Still it is not comprehensible. No one, not the most intellectual of men or wisest of philosophers or the most spiritual priests and reverends could explain it.
Simply, even after all these years, I have one explanation: the Jews were to blame. No one else. They killed themselves by their own hands of their own free will. We did all that we could to save them. It was their choice to meet their god, who did not stop or save them.
—from CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE