Bernard Offen (b. 1929) grew up in Kraków, was sent by the Nazis to several concentration camps, and survived. After the war—having lost his parents and his sister, but reunited with two brothers—he emigrated to the United Kingdom, then to the United States in 1951. He enlisted in the Army and served in the Korean War. Eventually he produced four documentary films about his concentration camp experiences and wrote a memoir, My Hometown Concentration Camp (2008); in 1981 he revisited Poland for the first time, later leading tours of the camps and the former Kraków ghetto.
War tax resisters write all sorts of letters to the IRS, offering all sorts of rationales and self-portraits. Offen’s stands out among them for the devastating parallel he makes between his father’s acquiescence in paying taxes—“For Zyklon B gas. For gas ovens. For his destruction”—and his own refusal to support “a nuclear arms race . . . that is both homicidal and suicidal.”
TO: Internal Revenue Service:
The guards at Auschwitz herded my father to the left and me to the right. I was a child. I never saw him again.
He was a good man. He was loyal, obedient, law-abiding. He paid his taxes. He was a Jew. He paid his taxes. He died in the concentration camp. He had paid his taxes.
My father didn’t know he was paying for barbed wire. For tattoo equipment. For concrete. For whips. For dogs. For cattle cars. For Zyklon B gas. For gas ovens. For his destruction. For the destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. For the destruction, ultimately, of 50,000,000 people in World War II.
In Auschwitz I was tattoo # B-7815. In the United States I am an American citizen, taxpayer # 370-32-6858. Unlike my father, I know what I am being asked to pay for. I am paying for a nuclear arms race. A nuclear arms race that is both homicidal and suicidal. It could end life for 5,000,000,000 people, five billion Jews. For now the whole world is Jewish and nuclear devices are the gas ovens for the planet. There is no longer a selection process such as I experienced at Auschwitz.
I am an American. I am loyal, obedient, law-abiding. I am afraid of the IRS. Who knows what power they have to charge me penalties and interest? To seize my property? To imprison me? After soul-searching and God-wrestling for several years, I have concluded that I am more afraid of what my government may do to me, mine, and the world with the money if I pay it . . . if I pay it.
We have enough nuclear devices to destroy the world many times over. More nuclear bombs are not the answer. They do not create security; they have the opposite effect.
I do believe in taxes for health, education, and the welfare of the public. While I do not agree with all the actions of my government, to go along with the nuclear arms race is suicidal. It threatens my life. It threatens the life of my family. It threatens the world.
I remember my father. I have learned from Auschwitz. I will not willingly contribute to the production of nuclear devices. They are more lethal than the gas Zyklon B, the gas that killed my father and countless others.
I am withholding 25 percent of my tax and forwarding it to a peace tax fund.
Yours for a just world at peace,
Bernard Offen