By Solly Ganor

HERZELIA PITUACH, Israel—The emotional turmoil we are all going through in Israel may lead to a new concept of how we are going to defend ourselves in a hostile world surrounding us. The Iranians not only deny the Holocaust but are preparing for us a Holocaust of their own. Even a dove like Shimon Peres when asked by a foreign correspondent what he thinks "about the Iranian threat to annihilate Israel," answered: "Annihilation can be a two way street." We all know Shimon Peres knows what he is talking about.

Almost all Israelis are deeply convinced that "we have no other country than Israel" and are ready to defend it no matter what. As Holocaust survivors, Israel means much more to us than people realize. Israel not only gave us back a country after two thousand years of Galut, but it restored our dignity as human beings and Jews.

As a young boy I witnessed how the Nazis were murdering our people but I also remember the contempt they had for us. They humiliated us and ground our dignity and humanity into the dirt. To them we were "less than human," as they repeatedly told us.

I will never forget how a German humiliated my father and made him crawl for his life. There is a big difference when you have to crawl for your life or defend your life for your country with weapon in your hand. Israel not only gave us back our country, but also restored our dignity.

"What does Israel mean to you as a Holocaust survivor? And why did you risk your life after surviving the Holocaust and you went to Israel to fight in its war of Independence?" I was asked that question by a German youth three years ago while lecturing in Frankfurt, Germany.

The young German had read my book Light One Candle, which was translated into German under the title of  Das Andere Leben.

My answer was that I was born in Lithuania where most Jews were Zionist and we all aspired to emigrate to Israel, our ancient homeland. But there was another reason why we Holocaust survivors went to Israel. And that will also answer your first question: “What Israel means to me as a Holocaust survivor.”

Fifty years after our liberation I was lucky to have my book Light One Candle published which was later translated into German and Japanese. The book is based on my childhood diary, describing our sufferings in the Kovno Ghetto and the Dachau concentration camp.

It took me fifty gut wrenching years to be able to expose myself, my family, my friends not only to the horrors of the Nazi camps, but the humiliation of being reduced to a pitiful creature groveling at the feet of our torturers for a scrap of food. We didn’t beg for our lives—we knew that we were going to be murdered sooner or later. We begged for food. The Nazis, in their aim to reduce us to creatures who had no shame, pride or self-esteem, achieved their goal. We were those creatures. We were reduced to creatures whose prime animal instinct was self-preservation. That is why most of us did not commit suicide en masse. Animals don’t commit suicide.

Fighting in the Jewish defense forces with rifle in hand restored our dignity as human beings and as Jews. Regaining our dignity was as important as coming home to Israel.

To give you an idea what I am talking about I will quote a short passage from my observations on the day of our liberation on May 2, 1945.

Memories of our liberation from the Dachau ‘Death March’
Waakirchen, Germany May 2, 1945

The day when time stood still. Suddenly, incredibly, inexplicably, there was all the time in the world ahead of me. It stretched infinitely, without any definite ending. I was seventeen years old and death wasn’t just around the corner anymore. For four long years, every day, every hour every minute, every second, I was just a step away from him. I knew him personally, intimately, as my permanent companion on the wretched road of humiliation, starvation, beatings and slave labor. It was stalking me relentlessly, stubbornly, mercilessly, wherever I went. There was no respite, either day or night. The final stage was always death. For many it was the end of suffering, but not before they reduced you to a pitiful creature, less than human. At times we had the feeling they were sorry you died; you could see their disappointed faces.. What a shame.. If only you held out a bit longer.. I could torture you some more.. But what the hell, there are plenty of victims to go around.

How do you put in words your thoughts, your feelings, your senses, everything that makes you, you, on the day of your liberation? Liberation from the worst nightmare ever created by human beings for other human beings, the Nazi concentration camp. The black hole of the gun pointing at your head is the last thing you will ever see.

Neither of these thoughts came to my mind the day of my liberation. They came much, much later when I had time to reflect, feel, sense.. but mainly when I stopped feeling the gnawing ever present hunger that was consuming my thoughts, my feelings, my senses, my whole being.

It was after I stuffed myself with food that I felt I would explode, waves of uncontrollable emotions, joy, no, ecstasy, no, wordless wonder, were welling up within me. I felt like a volcano that is about to erupt. Instinctively I felt that if I lost control, I might slip into insanity. I panicked, fear sweeping over me. "Oh God, Suppress it! Oh God suppress it!. I screamed aloud. I felt the screaming helped and I continued screaming at the top top of my lungs, the sound echoing through the woods, like a madman’s rage.

Only there were dead men lying twisted in the snow as if observing me with stares of wonder; the dead men who died of exhaustion or were shot by the fleeing SS guards. After five years of humiliation, starvation, beatings and hard labor they died only a few hours before liberation. A tragedy beyond the scope of human emotions; can anyone imagine anything more tragic?

Yet on the day of our liberation I did not sense the tragedy. Only years later I realized the full scope of the tragedy, and the tragedy of my generation of Jews in Europe. Only recently, a man by the name of Thomas Hoffman, a theology professor, put it in the right words:

"Never in the history of men was there a more innocent people than the Jews, who were through endless centuries, maligned, slandered, demonized and murdered by the Christians nations of Europe, only to end in the Holocaust orchestrated by the German people in the present century."

But on the day of liberation my fellow survivors and I were busy eating. Eating anything that was edible. We watched the American tanks streaming by towards the snowy mountains in the distance throwing at us chocolates, canned food, bread, apples, oranges and other delicacies straight from paradise. Yet I was busy cooking in my aluminum container the flesh from the belly of a horse we found dead on the road. Despite the food of the Americans thrown at us, we cut up the horse till there was no flesh left on it. Only the head and the tail of the horse remained intact. Why did we do it with all the American food lying around? To this day I have no answer to it. Perhaps its was because we didn’t quite believe that we were free and the horse was our true reality.

I saw Gershon walking about looking dazed. He was from the Lodz ghetto and came to our camp in Utting through Auschwitz. He looked like a scarecrow, thin like a rail, with sunken cheeks and a ‘Muselman’s’ eyes. He had some kind of food he got from the Americans in both hands. It looked like mush. I called out to him but he didn’t hear me. From time to time he would put the food from his right hand into his mouth, followed by the left hand. He tried to swallow it and his eyes bulged with the effort. The grey stripes of his prisoner’s uniform were soiled. He had diarrhea and couldn’t hold the food down and the feces streamed down his leg on the snow coloring it brown. He was on his way out and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Death had no mercy. Let the poor wretch live.. Let him live after all the suffering he had gone through. After losing his wife, his children, his family.. In Auschwitz he stood naked before the gas chambers, when the SS man told him to get dressed and sent him to us in Kaufering, to get the last ounce of strength out of him. Yet he survived all that only to die today of American rich food, on the day of his liberation, die in such a ignominious way in his own shit. But death had no pity. He had a job to do and he did well.

I saw Gershon collapse in the snow not far from the American tanks streaming by on the road. The tanks had white stars painted on them and the smiling soldiers tossed food at us and waved. For them the war was over and soon they would be returning to the paradise called America where the streets were paved with gold.

David came back with a huge can of carrots and peas that he found outside an American army field kitchen. The can was bulging out and it was obvious that the food inside was spoiled.
He tried to open it with a sharp stone, but the can wouldn’t budge. I told him that the food must be spoiled and he laughed. He reminded me of the rotten potatoes we found in a field and ate, when we were in Lager 10. He didn’t think that food inside the can could be worse.

Gershon suddenly got up and started running towards us screaming, his eyes bulging and vomiting all over himself. Then he collapsed on the snow, twitched a few times and lay still.

The horsemeat was getting soft. I tasted a piece it was still hard but soon I would be able to eat it. I put some more twigs on the fire to keep it going and the melted snow bubbled in the can softening the horsemeat. David was still trying to open the can of carrots and peas. Gershon’s face was getting grey. David finally managed to make a hole in the can and a stream of
foul smelling gas came out of it.I offered him some of my horse meat. We chewed the hard meat and looked at Gershon.

“ You know they not only murdered us, but murdered our feelings and compassion.” David said continuing to chew the horse meat.

Years later I spoke to some of my survivor friends about their feelings and thoughts on the day we were liberated. The majority told me that they don’t remember having any feelings. They only felt sensations and the overwhelming one that drowned out all others was the insatiable craving for food. It took some time for the stunning shock of being free to sink in. That happened only after the craving for food gradually subsided, when we stuffed ourselves with huge amounts of food provided by the passing US army. Many died from overeating the type food that our emaciated bodies couldn’t digest.

Years later I described myself as a trunk of a burnt tree that gradually through the years grew new branches and restored myself to a normal human being. I managed to get married, have children and lead a satisfying life. But I was not the same human being that I was before the Holocaust.

Everything that I am today I owe to my country, the State of Israel. Quite often I strongly disagree with the policies of our politicians but I will quote a saying I once heard in England:

“ Right or wrong, this is my country.".