Witnesses: Five Teenagers Who Died

¶ … Witnesses: Five Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust

Jacob Boas' descriptive and poignant book is a refreshingly different look at WWII history; indeed as many people should read it as possible. And that having been said, one person in particular who should read We Are Witnesses: Five Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust is the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president should be advised by his religious advisors to take time one day and find out what happened to Yitzhak, David, Moshe, Anne and Eva as they struggled to survive and save their families during the bloody period of mass slaughter perpetrated against Jews by the Nazis. It is a safe guess though that Ahmadinejad will not read the book because, as he said in September, 2009, the holocaust was "…a false pretext to create Israel" (CBN.com, 2009).

Unfortunately, the five teenagers presented in Boas' book are no longer alive to personally tell their stories to Ahmadinejad, but their diaries are both believable and chilling. In his Introduction, author Boas explains that Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement was responsible for the brutal deaths of six million Jews, which is a well-known fact among most civilized, educated societies. But it not as well-known that about one-fourth of those who died in the Nazi carnage were children.

Meantime, in addition to the stories of the five teenagers, Boas offers a short and hard-hitting history of the persecution of Jews in Europe. Young readers who are coming into contact with the history of Jews for the first time will find this section worthy of attention. The first Jews arrived in Europe after the Romans had pushed them out of Palestine, which had been their ancient homeland (documented in the Old Testament of the Bible). That was about a thousand years before Hitler's reign of terror. Once the Roman Empire fell, Jews had a difficult time getting along in society, partly because Christians blamed them for Christ's crucifixion. Laws were passed preventing Jews from owning land or weapons, and in some cases Jews were prevented from taking certain occupations (Boas, p. 4).

The Lateran Council of 1215 ordered all Jews to place a badge on their clothing to show the world they were Jewish; they were also forced to live in ghettos during that era. In the 12th Century England expelled Jews and in the 15th Century Jews were pushed out of Spain as well, Boas writes (p. 5). However, by the 19th Century Jews began to enjoy the rights that all citizens enjoyed and as a result they flourished and became adept in writing, the medical field, university scholarship and in business enterprises. This, Boas writes, caused a "backlash" and Hitler capitalized on resent many Christians and others felt towards Jews. The slaughter of Jews began in earnest on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland

In Eva's case, she had nightmares of being sent in a railroad boxcar to Poland to be killed. Eva's best friend Marta had been murdered by the Nazis, and as hard as Eva tried to avoid becoming another victim, eventually she was shoved on a train heading for Auschwitz and her final demise. It was a different story for David, and yet at the same time it was very similar. His life became a constant dread, a horrible fear that German militia would kill him or his family.

On June 16, 1941, the Nazis ordered his father to report to the militia. "I looked out the window for hours on end," David wrote in his diary (p. 17). He thought his parents would return soon but "…the hours went by and still no sign of them…in the end I didn't know what to think." On the 17th of June, the Nazis came into David's village and searched other houses but not David's. One day a Nazi (David always referred to them as "militiamen") pushed a motorcycle into David's house after the motorcycle had broken down. While the Nazi was still in the neighborhood, some Jews came along; the Nazi checked their papers and then administered "…a severe beating" to an innocent man (p. 18).

"Nowadays a person can be arrested for any trifle," David wrote on December 26, 1941. On December 12, 1941 David witnessed some militia driving along the highway near Bodzentyn. "As they were driving along…they met a Jew who was going out of town, and they immediately shot him for no reason, then they drove on and shot a Jewess, again for no reason."

On December 28, 1941, David wrote that "Under such terrible conditions, days and weeks pass full of fear and terror" (p. 20). He wrote those words because that day he heard about five Jewish victims in a particularly hideous burst of unnecessary violence. "Militia" had killed the five Jews because the five were reported to have hidden furs. Any valuables, like art, money, furs and other items were not to be hidden, but instead they were to be given over to the Nazis. After shooting them to death, the Nazis ordered that they be buried in a hole in their own yard.