Mary Wattenberg (Mary Berg), left, walks down a street of the Warsaw Ghetto with her boyfriend in this undated photo slide. Berg s published account of surviving the Holocaust was widely read. But only after a man discovered this photo and others in an album won at a Red Lion auction earlier this year did it become clear that Berg lived and worked here in York County for years. INSET: The cover image of The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto, published by Oneworld Press. (Main photo courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Lodz, November 3, 1939
Almost every day our apartment is visited by German soldiers who, under various pretexts, rob us of our possessions I feel as if I were in prison. Yet I cannot console myself by looking out of the window, for when I peer from behind the curtain I witness hideous incidents like that which I saw yesterday:
A man with markedly Semitic features was standing quietly on the sidewalk near the curb. A uniformed German approached him and apparently gave him an unreasonable order, for I could see that the poor fellow tried to explain something with an embarrassed expression Then a few other uniformed Germans came upon the scene and began to beat their victim with rubber truncheons. They called a cab and tried to push him into it, but he resisted vigorously. The Germans then tied his legs together with a rope, attached the end of the rope to the cab from behind, and ordered the driver to start. The unfortunate man's face struck the sharp stones of the pavement, dyeing them red with blood. Then the cab vanished down the street.

Lodz, November 12, 1939
Percy, my mother's younger brother, has returned from Nazi captivity. Only a miracle saved him from death. On the battlefield, seeing the approaching Nazis, and realizing that his unit had surrendered, he decided to commit suicide. As he was in a medical unit he had all sorts of drugs on his person; he swallowed thirty tablets of Veronal and fell asleep. He lay thus on the open field when suddenly a pouring rain began to fall. This awakened him. "I don't know how it happened", he told us, "but I suddenly began to vomit, and spat up almost all of the poison". He was too weak to move, and soon the Germans picked him up and placed him in a prison camp Next day, with a comrade, he managed to get through the barbed-wire fence and after wandering for a week in the so-called Kampinowska forest, made his way to Lodz.

November 15, 1940
Today the Jewish ghetto was officially established. Jews are forbidden to move outside the boundaries formed by certain streets. There is considerable commotion Our people are hurrying about nervously in the streets, whispering various rumours, one more fantastic than the other.
Work on the walls -- which will be three yards high -- has already begun. Jewish masons, supervised by Nazi soldiers, are laying bricks upon bricks. Those who do not work fast enough are lashed by the overseers. It makes me think of the Biblical description of our slavery in Egypt. But where is the Moses who will release us from our new bondage?
At the end of those streets in which the traffic has not been stopped completely there are German sentries. Germans and Poles are allowed to enter the isolated quarter, but they must not carry any parcels. The specter of starvation looms up before us all.

Street scene in the Warsaw Ghetto -- Jewish Virtual Library

January 4, 1941
The ghetto is covered with deep snow. The cold is terrible and none of the apartments are heated. Wherever I go  find people wrapped up in blankets or huddling under feather beds. That is, if the Germans have not yet taken all these warm things for their own soldiers. The bitter cold makes the Nazi beasts who stand guard near the ghetto entrances even more savage than usual. Just to warm up as they lurch back and forth in the deep snow, they open fire every so often and there are many victims among the passers-by. Other guards who are bored with their duty at the gates arrange entertainments for themselves. For instance, they choose a victim from among the people who chance to go by, order him to throw himself in the snow with his face down, and if he is a Jew who wears a beard, they tear it off together with the skin until the snow is red with blood. When such a Nazi is in a bad mood, his victim may be a Jewish policeman who stands guard with him.
Yesterday I myself saw a Nazi gendarme "exercise" a Jewish policeman near the passage from the Little to the Big Ghetto on Chlodna Street. The young man finally lost his breath, but the Nazi still forced him to fall and rise until he collapsed in a pol of blood. Then someone called for an ambulance and the Jewish policeman was put on a stretcher and carried away on a hand truck. There are only three ambulance cars for the whole ghetto, and for that reason hand trucks are mostly used. We call them rickshas.
Snow is falling slowly, and the frost draws marvelous flower patterns on the windowpanes. I dream of a sled gliding over the ice, of freedom. Shall I ever be free again? I have become really selfish. For the time being I am still warm and have food, but all around me there is so much misery and starvation that I am beginning to be very unhappy.

July 10, 1941
I am full of dire forebodings. During the last few nights, I have had terrible nightmares. I saw Warsaw drowning in blood; together with my sister and my parents, I walked over prostrate corpses. I wanted to flee, but could not, and awoke in a cold sweat, terrified and exhausted. The golden sun and the blue sky only irritate my shaken nerves.

Street scene in the Warsaw Ghetto -- Jewish Virtual Library

July 29, 1941
The typhus epidemic is raging. Yesterday the number of deaths from this disease exceeded two hundred The doctors are simply throwing up their hands in despair. There are no medicines, and all the hospitals are overcrowded. New beds are constantly being added in the wards and corridors, but this does not solve the problem, and the number of victims is growing daily.

September 20, 1941
The Nazis are victorious. Kiev has fallen. Soon Himmler will be in Moscow. London is suffering severe bombardments. Will the Germans win this war? No, a thousand times no! Why do not the Allies bomb German cities? Why is Berlin still intact? Germany must be wiped off the face of the earth. Such a people should not be allowed to exist. Not only are the uniformed Nazis criminals, but all the Germans, the whole civilian population, which enjoys the fruits of the looting and murders committed by their husbands and fathers.

December 9, 1941
America's entry into the war has inspired the hundreds of thousands of dejected Jews in the ghetto with a new breath of hope. The Nazi guards at the gates have long faces Some are considerably less insolent, but on others the effect has been exactly opposite and they are more unbearable than ever. Most people believe that the war will not last long now and that the Allies' victory is certain.

Children in the Warsaw Ghetto -- Jewish Virtual Library

February 27, 1942
Shootings have now become very frequent at the ghetto exits. Usually they are perpetrated by some guard who wants to amuse himself. Every day morning and afternoon, when I go to school, I am not sure whether I will return alive. I have to go past two of the most dangerous German sentry posts: at the corner of Zelazna and Chlodna Streets near the bridge, and at the corner of Krochmalna and Grzybowska Streets. At the latter place there is usually a guard who has been nicknamed "Frankenstein", because of his notorious cruelty. Apparently this soldier cannot go to sleep unless he has a few victims to his credit; he is a real sadist. When I see him from a distance I shudder He looks like an ape: small and stocky, with swarthy grimacing face. This morning on my way to school as I was approaching the corner of Krochmalna and Grzybowska Streets, I saw his familiar figure, torturing some ricksha driver whose vehicle had passed an inch closer to the exit than the regulations permitted. The unfortunate man lay on the curb in a puddle of blood. A yellowish liquid dripped from his mouth to the pavement. Soon I realized that he was dead, another victim of the German sadist. The blood was so horribly red the sight of it completely shattered me.

July 5, 1942
Fewer and fewer students come to our school; now they are afraid to walk in the streets The Nazi guard Frankenstein is raging through the ghetto, one day he kills ten persons, another day five ... everyone expects to be his next victim. A few days ago, I too, ceased completely attending school. Today I boldly removed my arm band. After all, officially I am now an American citizen.
The inhabitants of the street looked at me with curiosity: 'That's the girl who is going to America'. In this street everyone knows everyone else. Every few minutes people approached me and asked me to note the addresses of their American relatives, and to tell them to do everything possible for their unfortunate kin.

Children on Nalewki Street Warsaw Ghetto -- Jewish Virtual Library

December 17, 1942
Dita W., one of yesterdays arrivals, told us last night what she had heard about the camp at Treblinki. During her frequent visits to Gestapo headquarters at Aleja Szucha she became acquainted with a German who was an official in this death camp. He did not realize that she was Jewish, and told her with great satisfaction how the deported Jews were being murdered there, assuring her that the Germans would finally "finish off" all the Jews.
At the Umschlagplatz the cattle cars are loaded with one hundred and fifty people each, after their floors have been covered with a thick layer of lime. The cars have no windows or other openings. The people lie on top of each other without sufficient air to breathe, and without food or water. The cars are often left for two or three days at the Stawki station. The locked-up people must perform their natural functions in the closed cars and, as a result, the lime dissolves, filling the cars with poisonous fumes The survivors are unloaded at Treblinki station and divided according to  their trades. Shoemakers, tailors, etc., are grouped separately in order to make the victims believe that they are going to be employed in workshops. The real purpose is to make them go to their deaths more obediently The women are separated from the men.
Mary Berg (pseudonym) Poland, 15 years old


Children in the Holocaust and World War II, their secret diaries -- compiled by Laurel Holliday  c. 1995

Canadian Jewish Outlook, June 1985

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

The Ottawa Gathering

An unique happening took place in Ottawa from April 28th to the 30th, 1985, marking the fortieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany's infamous death camps. This momentous occasion, the first of its kind in Canada, was produced under the auspices of the Canadian Jewish Congress in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the Liberation. The Canadian Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors - and Their Children was meant to be a recognition of the unforgettable, a re-affirmation of the tenacity of individual endurance and collective memory, and a shout to the world that such events can and have happened and that we must all pledge ourselves to ensure that this may never ever happen again.

The only way in which we can be certain that such a cataclysmic horror would never again occur, it is recognized, is to evoke the memory, and with it the pain, of the past. The memory and the pain must never be permitted to dull with the passage of time. Like a precious object, this jewel of our anguish must come to the public light time and again and the facets of its many dimensions polished by whatever means at our disposal to shine the ineffable light of truth and justice in the eyes of the unbelievers.

The Gathering began on a rainy Sunday in this capital city of Canada. About two thousand Jews gathered to celebrate memory and perseverance and to honour the dead. A two-hour remembrance ceremony evoking the past and honouring those who survived began on Parliament Hill and proceeded from there to the War Memorial where wreaths were laid in recognition of Jewish soldiers who fought alongside their peers in Germany.

Without doubt Elie Wiesel was the eloquent luminary of this opening session and the passion of his words kindled both fears and resolve in the hearts of his listeners. Six death camp survivors lit torches from the Eternal Flame burning before the Centre Block of Parliament in commemoration of the six million who perished in the agony of the Holocaust. They were assisted by children of survivors, and the symbolism of the ceremony could have been lost to no one.

The Gathering was meant to provide a forum from which those who attended (and those many who were there in spirit but at a remove, reading the reports in their daily newspaper) could experience a manner of re-dedication, where all could derive sustenance from the proceedings and one another, and be energized and re-imbued with the will to continue the struggle for recognition and for justice and above all, for assurance that truly never again could such a dreadful tragedy occur.

The theme of the Gathering actually summed up its purpose: "From Awareness to Action". this is hardly to say that those who attended were not acutely aware in every fibre of their being. Many, however, resonated a kind of painfully individualistic awareness, that of a wound refusing to heal and in some manner perceived by the self to be a shameful wound to be hidden. Through the forum of the Gathering and the opportunities which it presented to meet with others, to discuss through halting and then strengthening purpose of dialogue, it became possible to relinquish and bury for all time the sense of personal shame. Pride replaced the covert injury, and people embraced both physically and metaphorically in a union of shared grief and understanding bolstered by the determination to influence all people of good will in the struggle for world peace through understanding.

While there as a participant, as an onlooker, as someone who intended to report on the proceedings, it was possible to be at one and the same time involved and detached. The detached part of me wrote down ceaselessly every impression, every observation articulated by the speakers, and each summation of the workshops. The involved part kept recalling how, as a child, my father never tried to 'protect' me from the realities of existence as a Jew - kept recalling the words of the song Zog nit Kainmohl - kept recalling the volumes devoured detailing the savage activities of the fascist Third Reich. And too I remembered tattered sepia prints and one in particular of a young man with a moustache who was my father's older brother who, like all my father's other relatives and my mother's, were slaughtered.

I remembered too my shock as a child on encountering another young girl in the cloakroom of our classroom at school forty years ago and this weeping child was bemoaning the cruel fact that she was born Jewish. How anyone could deny their Jewishness was beyond me, then as now. And the thousands of people who came out to Ottawa for the Gathering were there not in mourning as much as in proud affirmation of their Jewishness which has blossomed throughout the millennia despite unspeakable persecutions, and has never diminished to this day.

But the true value of such a gathering is not so immediately perceived. It is later, re-thinking the event, one's exposure to passionate, brilliant speakers; the milling crowds where on occasion one soul finally meets another after a long separation; the poignant riffling of faded photographs from another, now vanished world in a sandbox-like display; of the mutely beseeching baby shoes, the tattered remnants of clothing in another display; the proud affirmation of strength in the contemporary sculpture illustrating the mother-figure in fierce protection of the young. These are all emotion-laden images, designed to evoke the gut response that they did, and in the end, recall the onlooker to his future through the past.

On Monday, April 29th, thousands of Jews gathered in the huge Main Hall of the Ottawa Congress Centre for the opening Forum on Hate Propaganda. Chairman Les Scheininger (Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario Region) reminded the gathering that they were all duty-bound to eradicate any fomentation against minorities, any kind of racism or discrimination against those pinpointed in some way as being 'different'. And he reminded the audience in the words of Emil Fackenheim that the Holocaust was no war, but a deliberate plan to eradicate a group made unpopular by a public appeal to the ugliest emotion in human nature. And, he went on, Jews are a living monument of what humanity can aspire to; dignity of existence, tolerance for all ... that racism is a virulent pestilence which has the capacity to destroy all that is civil in man and society.

Manuel Pritschi (National Director, Community Relations, C.J.C.) spoke on Holocaust Denial. The term 'holocaust' itself having been coined to describe the deliberate and systematic destruction of European Jewry. Denial, he maintained, was the point at which Nazism and neo-Nazism converge; denial is an unabashed attempt to rehabilitate the Third Reich. The process of denial is to excel in the perversion of language; semantic athleticism whose end result is a kind of sordid doubt of the undoubted, by focusing on absurd innuendo to shift attention away from reality, by declaring incriminating documents to be forgeries, by total illogicality of the argumentative process. The complete dissolution of logic; a desecration of truth and the memory of the victims, and of democracy.

Alan Shefman (National Director, Field Services, League for Human rights, B'nai B'rith) who assisted during the Zundel trial) explained that to understand denial one must try to understand Hitler - looking to the history of Genghis Khan as a great conqueror and that history would handily 'forget' mass atrocities and recall only the romanticism of the conqueror. And the way to deal with these impossible historical slurs is to seek recourse in law to battle libel, racist defamation, and the contempt of ethnic and other minorities. Western democracies have enacted laws to deal with hate propaganda, but incredibly the United States has no such laws. Canada has responded with such a law as a result of Alberta's Keegstra affair. We must challenge by any means possible through the media, to the general public, the courts, any such re-writing of history. The Zundel trial and its accompanying publicity, Shefman maintained, did more to undermine denial theory than any previous attempts. Each such success is a major impediment to Nazi rehabilitation.

Dr. Irving Abella (Professor, Glendon College, York University), co-author of None is Too Many, pointed out that the serenity of the myth of Canada being a home for the needy, the immigrant, was punctured irremediably by historical fact-finding. That Canadian immigration authorities did everything within their powers to keep Jews before, during and after the Second World War from entering Canada. Immigrants from any other background were preferred, no matter their political affiliation, no matter how suspect their past. And these barriers were erected to keep out Jews, Blacks and Asians, those most despised members of the human race, those traditionally most in need of succour.

He spoke of the many heart-rending letters from European Jews pleading for admission to Canada, contained in the Public Archives of Canada - our national shame. Jews simply did not fit into the public concept of 'what a Canadian should be'. Jews were seen as urbanites, not loggers, farmers, fisherfolk; Canadians feared the impending possibility of a 'Jewish invasion' and hence no Jews, not even Jewish orphan refugees were welcome and were sent instead to their deaths. Lies that go unchallenged, Abella reminded the audience, may become public policy - and silence is mistaken for acquiescence. Distortion of truth, and of history creates the atmosphere for future disasters.

Following the Plenary Session of the opening forum, Bernard Ostry (Deputy Minister, Ministry of Citizenship and Culture, Province of Ontario) chaired the forum "Holocaust Denial on Trial: Marshalling the Evidence". Ostry reiterated the need for vigilance, for everyone to be involved to ensure that history would not be rewritten. Yet we must see ourselves as neither avengers nor victims. Those who portray themselves as victims tend to be treated as victims. Our search is for Justice; that is a universal, never-ending preoccupation.

Serge Klarsfeld (President, Association des filles et Fils des deportes juifs de France, Paris, France) spoke of his and his wife Beate's activities in tracking down Klaus Barbie and their struggle to uncover unacceptable evidence which would be recognized by a court of justice to bring Barbie to trial and finally, to justice. He described how, at one point in their joint activities, the prosecution was merely a symbolic act as no one really knew where Barbie was - and then went on to describe the slow methodical tracking down of the war criminal and his eventual deportation to France where he now awaits trial. The successful search and location of a key document, the original telex in the Archives of the International Court of Justice, used in the Nuremberg trials, presented the final irrefutable evidence in the case against Barbie.

Robert Menkes, a doctoral student in Jewish history, Brandeis University, reminded the gathering that once survivors are no longer with us, Holocaust deniers will become more bold and more vocal. History, he asserted, provides the ammunition to bring the truth to light through the rational and methodical work of documentation by accredited historians. Yet revisionists like Faurisson and Keegstra and Zundel should be taken seriously as it is necessary to familiarize oneself with their theories to be able to adequately refute them. One must bear witness as one can, but always with dignity and commitment.

Sol Littman (Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Canada) spoke on "Searching out Canada's War Criminals; The Rauca Case" and reminded the audience that Canada was a major haven for war criminals, and has been since 1945. Despite this, only one extradition took place, that of Helmut Rauca. Rauca 'disappeared' in 1945 and 'reappeared' again in 1982, living in obscurity in a 35% Jewish suburb of Toronto. Currently, war criminals and collaborators of Yugoslavian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian, Slovakian and Hungarian background are experiencing a sense of disquietude, for there will be additional cases of actions against criminals and criminal collaborators. There will, certainly, be a movement to derail the momentum in war crimes prosecutions, but we all must make an effort to keep this particular struggle alive.

In between the workshops there was opportunity to view films such as The Revolt of Job, Breaking the Silence, Raoul Wallenburg - Buried Alive, Charlie Grant's War, and Genocide. I managed to view the film Breaking the Silence which focused on Holocaust survivors and their relationship with their families, primarily their children. The anguish of the parents is writ large on the psyche of the children.

Parents are exceedingly reluctant to speak to their children of their death camp experiences. Much resentment and bitterness erupted between the generations because of this lack of communication ... the parents desperately wanting to shield their children from knowledge of their unspeakable experiences ... the children badly wanting to know of their parents' experiences, wanting to help in their own way to diminish their parents' grief. Through a gradual breaking down of the barriers of silence, understanding and a keener appreciation of the needs of one another is finally expressed.

In actual fact, however, there never really was time to do or see everything. The forums and films and other activities were congruent one upon the other. One had of necessity to scrutinize the program and try to arrive at an intelligent deliberation.

Finally, the words of Professor Irwin Cotler (Professor of Law, McGill University, Montreal) placed the whole matter in a cogent perspective. There are things in Jewish history too terrible to be believed - but they were not too terrible to have happened. Elie Wiesel told us that "Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims". There are no words sufficient to describe the horrors of the Holocaust. Yet Canada was the world forum of denial of the existence of the Holocaust [i.e, the Zundel and Keegstra trials - Ed.]. The anti-human description of Jews, and the wide acceptance of those calumnies paved the way for the Holocaust.

(President Ronald) Reagan equated the suffering of the victims with the suffering of the oppressors prior to his Bitburg wreath-laying; an obscene and immoral observation. The uniqueness of the Holocaust has an especial resonance; the Holocaust could never have occurred without the silent acquiescence of the world. The crime of indifference led to the success of the Holocaust. But the work of a handful of righteous people gave mankind back its dignity. In a world which is not safe for Jews, there is no safety for the existence of democracy. It is the survivors who have redeemed humanity by their very existence. We have learned not to despair, for that would be a denial of Jewish future.

Dr. Victor Goldbloom (President, Canadian and International Council of Christians and Jews, Toronto) should perhaps have the last word in this report. He said that, to commemorate is to mourn - and to teach. We face the challenge of communicating with a new generation. It would represent a compounded tragedy after the Holocaust if nothing had changed. We must be the conscience of the world and work to make the world "more human". We must strive to work with people of good will with respect and harmony and good faith. We must work together forthrightly and with humility, patience and an open mind. To this we must all dedicate ourselves.

c. 1985 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.23, No.6