“You know, I just have to go out and see a smoking chimney. It’s there, it is still, all the time,” she says. Motivated to help bring hunger awareness to the community, and to help Worcester youth never to forget the Holocaust, Aschkenase frequently speaks at local schools. Her impact is felt. “The children are so responsive. They want to meet a survivor. I have boxes of letters [from students].” Teaching Worcester youth about the Holocaust and sharing experiences with them is vital to many Holocaust victims and researchers. Still Aschkenase wonders why she lived when so many did not. “I had survival skills,” she says. “The children [at area schools] say, ‘You’re alive so you could tell your story.’ And if I see my grandchildren and children, I think ‘Maybe this is why.’ But it is incomprehensible. Why my brother? Why the babies? Why me? It’s kind of a guilty feeling,” Aschkenase says nodding silently and glancing away.
on the table,” Carlson remembers. Still though, the Carlson family was not in total support of the Nazis. Aware of Hitler’s tactics and seeing the resulting abuse on Jews, Carlson’s father took a staunch stand and refused to join the Nazi party. He was even once arrested by the Gestapo when an unfriendly neighbor turned him in for listening to foreign radio.
“It’s important to remember, to remember the people who lost their lives.”
A Haunting Era But what was life of a typical German like under the Nazis? Herta Carlson, 88, has lived in Worcester for more than 60 years. But she spent the first two decades of her life in Germany. Born in Berlin in 1922 to Willy and Marta Kortüm, a working class couple, Carlson’s family was hit hard by the Depression. “We were poor, but we had a lot of love,” Carlson says. “I had a wonderful childhood.” Carlson remembers fondly playing with her older brother Rudy and the neighborhood children, including Jews. Carlson recalls no distinction between herself and the Jews of her area. “My parents felt they were people just like us,” Carlson says. When Carlson was about 10 years old, Hitler came to power. He promised to deliver Germans from the Depression, and he did. “My father got a job, and we had meat
Compass of the Future “I think that the Holocaust was, until now, the greatest catastrophe of Western civilization in the modern era,” says Debórah Dwork, Rose Professor of Holocaust History and director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. “But it doesn’t mean we can’t do worse. Now we know how to do it.” “The past can serve as a compass to bring us to a future we hope to achieve,” says Dwork. She feels strongly that discussing, studying and understanding the Holocaust and its causes is vital for all people. “We must look at the past and take a stand.” Rabbi Seth Bernstein of Worcester’s Temple Sinai concurs with Dwork’s feelings. “Because this happened in a civilized 34 SEPTEMBER2011
Hitler. Oh my goodness, he was terrible,” Carlson says. Later her brother was killed in the war. Still Carlson maintained her stance. Against the rules of the factory in which she worked, and against the law, Carlson once befriended a Russian prisoner of war who worked alongside her. “I wasn’t supposed to talk to her. [But] one day I invited her to lunch,” Carlson
- Herta Carlson Herta Carlson
“Many Germans say they were forced to join,” Carlson says, “but that was not true.” As a young girl, she refused to join the Hitler youth movement. “I hated him, that Hitler,” she says making a fist. As Jews began to suffer, Carlson explains, she felt powerless. “There was nothing you could say, or you’d end up in a camp yourself. The way to survive was to stay neutral, mind your business and keep your mouth shut,” Carlson expounds. Things were different for Carlson’s brother though. “[He] was brainwashed. He loved
recounts. “The next day she was gone.” Carlson never saw her friend again, and was sent to a harder work detail for her actions. While Carlson knew that concentration camps existed, she says she was not aware of what was happening there. Carlson endured the hardships of war including bombings and the loss of a husband and brother. After Berlin fell in 1945, Carlson and her family also had to go through the difficulties of living in a devastated and defeated city. Now under Russian control, it was only
nation…it could happen anywhere. No one is immune to it,” says Bernstein. Bernstein also holds that the impact of the Holocaust is global and extends to every generation, making telling the story vital. “[The Holocaust] was the beginning of developing another psyche of Jewish identity including in America,” Bernstein remarks. “Before that, there was a separate Jewry. But since the Holocaust it has allowed us to develop an old world Judaism. One-third of us are gone; that reality patterned us in a way that we are still reeling from.” “Within the last century of World History we are acutely aware that 11 million people were killed,” says David Coyne Director of Hiller at Clark University. “We have a responsibility to remember it, and to make sure it never happens again.” Coyne worries, though, that this most important part of our collective history is in danger to being forgotten.
“We are at the point where we are beginning [losing eyewitnesses]. I think we are at risk of people forgetting and minimizing [the Holocaust]. It is incumbent upon us to make sure it is studied and remembered,” Coyne asserts. “[Survivors] don’t want [the victims’] names, their lives forgotten,” Bernstein points out, “This is our family; you don’t forget it. We may not know their names, but they are not an anonymous people. They lived, they died, they are remembered.” But how did millions of German citizens allow Hitler to perpetrate one of the greatest crimes in human history? Dwork explains, “There was a lack of imagination, lack of political will and [they had just come out of] the Depression. I think they were pretty exhausted. That may explain it, but it doesn’t excuse it.” Dwork does not limit responsibility to German citizens of the era though. She also points out that other nations, including the United States, could have
then that the truth about the concentration camps was revealed to Carlson. The Russians ordered all Germans to view graphic footage taken at camps. “I went. I wanted to see what was going on there,” Carlson says. What she saw was shocking. “I cried all the way home,” Carlson says. “I was so ashamed of being a German that day.” Those images still haunt Carlson some 65 years since seeing them. Yet Carlson also sees the value of never forgetting. “It’s important to remember,” she says, “to remember the people who lost their lives.” In postwar Germany, Carlson met and married an American soldier from Worcester, Harry Carlson. The Carlsons moved in the 1950s back to Worcester, where they raised two children. She is now the grandmother of three and the greatgrandmother of four. Carlson has not shared her story with her grandchildren, who are now in their late 30s. “It doesn’t seem to interest them that much. They are not impressed,” she says. She has spent many years in Worcester doing volunteer work. For decades she has educated Worcester residents about the hope that the Bible offers. “The Bible says that all those people will be resurrected to a wonderful life,” Carlson says, “and the memory of the camps will be wiped from their minds.” Perhaps the most enduring question about the Holocaust is “Why?” It is a question Aschkenase has pondered many times. “I don’t know about faith. You question [God], ‘Why did you permit all these little babies and innocent children to die?’” In the 68 years since her liberation, Aschkenase has not found an answer, “I don’t think anybody has.” C. Kelleher Harris is a freelance writer who lives in Central Massachusetts. Harris’ has worked for over five years for various publications and newspapers. This article first appeared in baystateparent’s sister publication, Worcester Mag.
acted earlier to help halt Hitler’s rise. Initially many countries supported and even admired Hitler. For instance, in 1938, well after Jews’ rights were being stripped and some were being sent to concentrations camps, Time Magazine named Adolph Hitler “Man of the Year.” “Before the war even began, if the world had stood firm with Nazi Germany and said, ‘You can’t treat a populous this way [it could have been prevented].” Despite documented and undeniable proof, there are still some today that say the Holocaust never happened, or that its horrors were greatly exaggerated. “I don’t dignify them with an answer,” says Aschkenase, “I don’t discuss it with them. It’s certainly not worth arguing with people about it.” “I applaud Thea’s position…I agree with her,” remarks Dwork. “As a scholar, I can’t allow deniers to dominate the narrative. I do not enter into debate with deniers. I will not tolerate that structure.”