Edith Millman Testimony Analysis
The beginning of Edith Millman’s testimony is indicative of just how good pre-Hitler life was—even for those living in Poland—for the Jewish people. Edith Millman was born in 1924 in Bielsko, Poland, near the Czech and German border. She lived an upper-middle-class lifestyle growing up and overall had a very normal and happy childhood: going skiing at the mountains, going to the beach, and attending private schools. “It was very much the life of a suburban kid in America” (Millman). Although she was young—born in 1924—when all of the changes began to occur, she can recall the memories vividly. Although she attended a Polish school and didn’t grow up with a strong religious education, she was raised with a strong Jewish ‘feeling’ (Millman). She had a lot of interaction with gentile children, until Hitler came to power which shows that the ramifications of Hitler’s rise could be felt countries away. Like many Jewish children in Germany and Poland, Edith had experienced anti-Semitism before Hitler’s rise (Bergen 24). She recalled that even as a child people referred to her as a “dirty Jew”, with stones being thrown sometimes (Millman). She mentions that although she faced persecution and anti-Semitism at times, it wasn’t nearly as frequent or bad as it was in other parts of Poland, especially at the universities in Warsaw where right-wing students frequently started fights with Jewish students (Millman). Even previously to 1933, (1933 being when the legislation began to catch up to the social and political climate in Germany), “animosity was characteristic of the everyday behavior of many Germans toward one another” (Kaplan 40), which Edith confirms that the political and social trend in Poland followed the same anti-Semitic rise that Germany's did.
Her father was an executive for an American Oil Company, which meant that her experiences following the start of World War II were a bit different than many other Jewish youths who were not fortunate enough to have American ties prior to the start of the war. It is important to note that Edith was an only child, which meant that after the war began, her family expenses were not nearly as high as other Jewish families with two and more children which meant that she was afforded more ‘luxuries’ (like food) in the ghetto. Edith and her family moved to Warsaw, Poland in 1937 where she remembers really beginning to feel the Nazi propaganda’s effect on her and her relationships with gentile people. After Hitler came to power, Edith’s father knew that something negative was coming, and he tried to emigrate with the family in 1936, but due to the quota system her family was put on a waitlist until 1941, and her dad refused to emigrate illegally (although it would have been possible through bribery or buying tickets). As a result, her family never made it out of Warsaw before the war had begun (Millman).
In Warsaw, Edith and her parents lived in a very nice neighborhood—a gentile neighborhood—when the bombs began falling almost immediately after the start of the war. An announcement was made following the first few days of bombings calling all able-bodied men to leave Warsaw and head east. He left with a knapsack and headed east. Edith and her mom left in the middle of the night about a week after the war had started because their house was bombed, injuring Edith. They had to seek shelter in a sub-basement. This was where Edith experienced her first truly cruel encounter with anti-Semitism. The landlord of the sub-basement refused to give Edith and her mother water—giving it to their dog, but not to them, as Edith and her mother suffered through unthinkable conditions, sleeping on coal piles in the middle of summer (Millman).
Almost immediately following the conquest of Warsaw, Nazis marched in and Warsaw finally surrendered. Soup kitchens were established, and the Jewish (or even those who “looked Jewish”) were singled out. The Germans would pull on their beards or make them lay on the floor just for Nazi amusement. Orders began to be given that legally allowed and promoted the persecution of Jews. Jews were required to take their hats off to Germans and step off of the sidewalk when passing a German. After the order for all Jews to wear the Star of David violent acts towards Jews increased because it became much easier for Poles and Germans to identify the Jews (see image). There were only certain places to get water, bread, or rations and the police had the right to chase Jews out of lines or send them to the back of the lines. The orders given in Poland were an extension of the Nuremberg Laws given by Hitler. Edith’s recounts of such anti-Semitic behavior from everyday gentile people shows that even in Poland “non-Jewish people gave little thought to the [oppressive, racist laws] and other anti-Jewish policies because they were seen simply as bureaucratic measures” with virtually no direct effect on their daily lives (Bergen 94). Edith recalls that because she didn’t look Jewish, she often left the house without her armband (despite the consequences), and doing so helped a great deal in her ability to get food and water.
Edith tells an anecdote highlighting how sentimental Jewish people were about life, especially after the war had begun. Her father, on his way east, had met a group of other Jewish men heading east, all of whom were quite weak, and they decided to pool their money to buy a horse and wagon to carry their knapsacks. They were all city men who had not a clue what type of horse to look for or what a good horse looked like and they ended up with an old, partially lame horse, but they couldn’t bring themselves to just leave it, so they spent more money keeping him fed, and brought him city to city until they gave a farmer money to take the horse and promise not to kill him. This anecdote shows that despite the horrible persecution that these men were experiencing during these times, it didn’t rob them of their compassion or morality, which is quite amazing.
Before moving into the ghetto, Edith and her mother were living in her father’s office (at an American company) with a few other employee families. They slept on the desks and ate at the food kitchens. By some miracle, Edith’s mother’s canned fruits survived the bombings and they were able to use those to trade for other items, which brought a sense of camaraderie (Millman).
Edith and her parents moved into the ghetto after a lot of confusion over orders for the ghetto were given and rescinded, and given and rescinded, and given. The Warsaw ghetto was established in an old, industrial area that was dilapidated. At first, they were fortunate enough to find a room in an apartment in the outskirts of the ghetto, but they had to move shortly thereafter because the German’s kept squeezing the perimeters of the ghetto further in. Edith’s parents refused to move to the middle of the ghetto, and they moved many times because each time the borders were closed in more, they moved one street inside the boarders, because the outskirts of the ghetto were halfway decent (at the beginning at least). As previously mentioned, it was quite fortunate that Edith was an only child because there were fewer mouths to feed, and fewer bodies to find a home for which helped them be able to (some degree) live as comfortable as they could—given the circumstances.
Edith recalls the first time that she had horsemeat. They were at the soup kitchen and Edith’s friend told her about a delicious stew but warned her that it was horsemeat (Millman). Edith said she didn’t care and told her mother about it, but her mother didn’t believe that it was actually horsemeat until another lady told her, after which she vomited it up in the street (Millman). Edith says that this becomes a crucial contrast from what life is like in the ghetto when horsemeat is all that they have available for protein, and her mother becomes so good at preparing it that her father didn’t know the difference. Due to food shortages, Edith’s mother had to put their family dog down, which caused her to cry so forcefully on the way home from the vet, that many people thought that something had happened to her husband or Edith. It was a terrible price to pay for the ability to survive, but a price that paled in the shadows of the grander tragedies occurring around them. Edith’s father had the foresight to take most of the money out of the bank before the war started and converted it into dollars, that they were then able to use to buy food on the black market. At the beginning of the move to the ghetto, her father was still actually able to work and earn an income because his company was American owned, which helped with money and food shortages, but eventually all of that stopped, and they had to rely solely on the money her parents had saved. Edith’s experience with food shortage, although poor, paints her story in a more positive light than many people's in Warsaw. Between 1940 and 1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation or disease, with 5,000 people a month dying by August of 1941 (USHMM Encyclopedia Warsaw). Adam Czerniakow, in his diary, wrote about “children starving to death” on May 8th, 2941 (Czerniakow).
Education in the Warsaw ghetto was banned at almost all levels, until 1941. Adults could attend seminars and lectures, often led by top professors in their fields, such as Professor Hirsczfeld (Millman). Until 1942, Jewish bookstores in the ghetto were also open. In the ghetto between 1939 and 1941, all of the high schools were closed, and Edith spent a lot of time studying English, and her circle of friends also were reading English books and deliberating together. There were secret courses for ghetto students that were organized by high school teachers and university professors forced to leave their jobs and move into the ghetto, where groups of four or five students would meet. This was especially dangerous because there was a death penalty for being caught studying. She received an excellent education because she was being taught by extremely well-known professors in small groups, and she took her studies very seriously, partly due to the severe consequences they all faced if caught. She studied Physics, English, Calculus, Latin, French, literature, etc (Millman). Given the dire situation outside of her study groups, although they did not totally forget about the terrible state of Poland, and the world, their study groups allowed them to focus their energy and attention on something that gave them hope, and this helped keep them out of trouble in the ghetto and off the streets.
The ghetto was terrible, apart from the great education she was able to receive. Typhus broke out and typhoid fever causing many of her friends to fall terribly ill—these diseases affecting young people the most. During 1941-1942, the lice problem was so bad (due to terrible hygiene conditions, and the extreme crowding in the streets) that when the wind blew, you could be sure it brought with it some lice. Edith recalls that in her house they all had to completely strip before entering the apartment, to shake all of the lice off (Millman). However, despite all of the cautions taken, a woman in their shared apartment died of typhus, and her eight-year-old daughter died shortly after (Millman), which was Edith’s first personal encounter with death, which was extremely unusual for youth in the ghetto, that goes to show just how fortunate Edith was, despite living in the ghetto.
While the conditions in the ghetto were extremely difficult, some inhabitants were determined to continue cultural aspects of their previous life, much like Edith Millman with her concert attendance in the Warsaw Ghetto. Edith remembers particularly liking going to watch the symphony perform Mozart and Beethoven (Millman). However, these decent times were cut short when the deportation orders were given. Up to this point, most people had no real idea as to what was happening outside of the ghetto, and they didn’t know about the concentration camps or how bad they really were. The impression that they were given about the camps was just that they would have to go to them to work, no one knew about the Final Solution. They were all just trying to survive, and they never lost faith that the Allies would eventually win. Edith states that their only way to fight Hitler and the Nazis was to stay alive (Millman). In the ghetto, there was not too much active resistance, according to Edith. When the deportations started the summer of 1942 (“Deportations”), they began to doubt that there were, in fact, going for resettlement and labor. Which in fact, many of the deported Jews ended up at Treblinka, the death camp.
Edith has an amazing story, where she escaped every camp she was put into and was able to disguise herself as whatever ethnicity best suited each particular situation. She spoke German so fluently that she did not have an accent, along with Polish (with no accent) and she did not look Jewish—she had light hair and light eyes. With all of these traits and language expertise, she spent the majority of her time pretending to be a German girl, which worked quite well as she was able to liberate her mother and a few others by falsifying letters of liberation. She entered and escaped the Warsaw ghetto many times. Edith accredits a lot of her successes and survival of the Holocaust to her education which allowed her to seamlessly transition from Jewish to German to Poland, with no one ever suspecting anything.