December 18, 2021

"At one point, a woman hid them in a haystack; at another, Mr. Orenstein secreted himself in an oil drum. The Nazis 'were actually hunting people' like animals..."

"[T]he Orensteins escaped a roundup of Jews by taking shelter in a neighboring house, where a hideaway had been fashioned for them between two walls. They were eventually forced to surrender to the Nazis when they ran out of food. Separated from their children, Mr. Orenstein’s parents were executed over a pit in the local cemetery. Along with his siblings, Mr. Orenstein was deported for forced labor. He survived five Nazi concentration camps. At the Budzyn camp located in Poland... he heard a camp official call for 'all Jewish scientists, engineers, inventors, chemists and mathematicians.' Drawing upon his ingenuity, he decided to take a chance. Although only one brother was a doctor, Mr. Orenstein attested that he and all his siblings met the qualifications for the select group, which was ostensibly tasked with aiding the German war effort. In fact, the prisoners detailed to the operation did little but operate adding machines, performing meaningless mathematical operations, and other useless tasks. 'It was a cover-up on both sides!... German professors created this project to keep themselves from being drafted into the army. If they told the Gestapo that we were faking, we would have been killed, but they would have been drafted into the German army. … So they decided to fake the whole thing. Lucky for us.'"

18 comments:

rcocean said...

Amazing story. Curious how many jewish holocaust surivivors live into their 90s. Maybe they had unbelievable inner strength that allowed them to survive and after WW 2 live long healthy lives.

mikee said...

Never again. At least the Israelis have held firm to this. Pity everyone else hasn't.

Joe Smith said...

Wow...so many people live incredible lives.

This is not what one would wish for, but incredible nonetheless.

How many others lived amazing lives that we never hear about?

BG said...

This is why calling all Germans Nazis is like painting them all with the same brush color, while in reality they were all different colors. My dad was a tank driver in WWII. He grew up speaking German since that is what was spoken at home. He said that they weren't allowed to fraternize with the German citizens (until after the war, as the Army of the Occupation) but the Germans would talk freely amongst themselves, thinking they wouldn't be understood. Many rural Germans did not like Hitler and celebrated the arrival of the Americans.

Temujin said...

Every time I read or hear about someone who survived the Holocaust and went on to leave his or her mark on the world, I wonder about how callous we humans are about life. How many murderous regimes have we witnessed generation after generation? How many thugs in the streets of our cities killing our kids? And how many millions more to be aborted to keep things convenient?

I wonder about how much greatness we have just thrown away. How many discoveries buried instead of bestowed on humankind. How many cures for illnesses hidden away with time? How many new methods of powering cars, houses, ships lost until eternity comes around? Why is it we have only one Elon Musk when there could have been several?

It seems we never learn. From generation to generation, it's not only that we don't get it, but we literally refuse to learn lessons. How otherwise would socialism- National or otherwise- even have a pulse?

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

German Nazis remind me of American Antifa.

James K said...

Curious how many jewish holocaust surivivors live into their 90s.

True, though of course the ones dying now are all in their 90s. But I suspect you're right that this was survival of the fittest, as well as of the luckiest and most clever.

We have a friend whose father was in Salonika doing forced labor at gunpoint. A local young woman managed to whisper to him that she'd "distract" the guard so he could escape, which he did to the forest, and managed to survive.

Rollo said...

*Sigh* It gets dark early, and I'm kind of depressed and just not up for Holocaust highjinx. Sorry.

Narr said...

I wouldn't wager a lot of money on the precise figure, but I have read in a credible source that something like 15,000 (15k!) Jews (half- or quarter?) were alive in Berlin at the end of the war. That's impressive to me. Even 1500 would be something.

Mostly German Jews of course, and Berlin was never the anti-Semitic city that many others were--notably Vienna.

There's a large Jewish community here, with many Holocaust survivors and others who lost family to the shits. Europe's loss has generally been our gain.

Narr said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
West TX Intermediate Crude said...

BG-
I’m puzzled at your implication that anyone, anywhere calls all Germans Nazis. That’s not to say that the German culture may have predisposed pre-war Germans to turn a blind eye to what was going on, but, c’mon man, nobody says all Germans were Nazis.

Mikee-
Israelis say, “Never again.”
American leftists say, “Maybe just one more time?”

Temujin-
Yes! How many Musks, yes, how many Norman Borlaugs, Jonas Salks, Sergey Brins, lost in indiscriminate slaughter by war, abortion, senseless crime?
[Struggling to think of a non white guy to add to the list, but Systemic Racism…].

William said...

I suppose he had his share of 3 am thoughts, but he had a successful life and after such a harrowing start too......The Jews had it worst, but during that era just about everyone in Central and Eastern Europe had God-awful lives. You could do everything right and still end up vaporized or beaten to death or going on a long journey in an unheated box car. It was very hard to cash your white privilege card in that era.....I was born into that era. I'm very glad to have been born in America.

Howard said...

He is a hero against fascism, not quite as heroic as Meade whom courageously refused disclosure of hiss vaccine status at the David Sedaris lecture who was then condemned to suffer a long wait in the heated theatre lobby.

rcocean said...

Its been 75 years since WW2, where 20 millions Soviets died, 30 million Chinese, and millions of Japanese, Poles, Eastern Europeans and Germans died. Not to mention 400,000 Americans. And of course, there's all the millions of innocents who've died since.

Yet, I find the suffering of the Holocaust victims like the Orenstein the most tragic.

Boy, do I hate Nazis.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Such a difficult life. Being aborted could have saved him from all that.

BG said...

Blogger West TX Intermediate Crude said...
BG-
I’m puzzled at your implication that anyone, anywhere calls all Germans Nazis. That’s not to say that the German culture may have predisposed pre-war Germans to turn a blind eye to what was going on, but, c’mon man, nobody says all Germans were Nazis.


Ah, but there are some people in this world who comment on other blogs, hide behind their anonymity and end up showcasing their ignorance about history and the people who lived it. There are now only a few blogs where I bother to read the comments.

Paul said...

And people wonder why we have the 2nd Amendment in the USA... we have it just cause of things like this the Nazis did...

Yes sometimes people are murdered with guns that 'might' not have been murdered but once a government goes tyrannical the death toll is always in the millions.

Just look at North Korea now... China... even closer go look at Venezuela. All of them socialist.. communist.. authoritarian.

The only way to stop such is if citizens have the right.. and ability... to use arms. And without REGISTRATION... government has no business registering what people own.

Unlike Biden's "F-15 and nukes" quip, you will notice insurgencies have worked even in the face of F-15s, tanks, helicopters, etc...

No one is gonna nuke their own cities... and F-15s can't tell who is whom. You have to get troops to go in... and they get shot (and they have families SOMEWHERE.) It gets nasty but the populace, if enough of them get pissed, can overthrow a tyrannical government and not just allow them to line them up at a cemetery and shoot them.

Biff said...

Temujin said...
I wonder about how much greatness we have just thrown away. How many discoveries buried instead of bestowed on humankind. How many cures for illnesses hidden away with time? How many new methods of powering cars, houses, ships lost until eternity comes around? Why is it we have only one Elon Musk when there could have been several?

The numbers are probably large enough that the statistics even out. You might also ask how many serial killers, tyrants, and other horrifying malefactors have we "thrown away."