into possession of the technology of our time?’
When Wiesenthal reads of disarmament negotiations in Geneva, Vienna, Washington, and Moscow, he wonders whether ‘it is more important to reduce weapons than to reduce hate. I am more
optimistic about their reducing weapons than about their reducing hate. Right now, we have the technology to kill each of us eight times. I like to think that, in my lifetime, the super-and
not-so-superpowers can get together and reduce it to four times. Then I might die more hopeful for my daughter and grandchildren.’
Wiesenthal, who would experience both Hitler and Stalin, says today that ‘the biggest difference between the two as criminals is that Hitler told the truth about what he
would do to Europe, what he would do to the Jews, but nobody believed him. Stalin lied about his genocide, about the gulag, and the world believed him, so he lasted longer and got to kill more
people than Hitler did.’
In 1934 and 1935, Wiesenthal apprenticed as a building engineer in Soviet Russia. He spent a few weeks in Kharkov and Kiev, but most of those two years in the Black Sea port of Odessa, which he
remembers as ‘a lovely city’ in the Ukraine ‘where I spent twenty-one months learning dictatorship from Stalin. When I saw what the Soviets did to their own people – arrests
right and left – this was for me not only very good preparation for the Nazis, but also what would happen if we ever came under Russian control.’ What disturbed him almost as much at
the time, however, was that ‘on the streets, all people looked alike: Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, even ethnic Germans. They wore the same clothes, they had the same faces set in the same
attitude, they seemed to have the same character: everything under Stalin was drab and uniform. When Hitler came, he would have a hard time figuring out which were the Jews and which were the other
“sub-humans”. I myself stood out in the crowd just by being me.’
Returning to Galicia at the end of his Russian apprenticeship, Wiesenthal was at last allowed to enter the Technical University of Lwów for the advanced degree that would allow him to
practisearchitecture in Poland. For a while, he roomed on Janowskà Street: future site of the concentration camp in which he would live much of the war.
Geographically, it was an easy stroll to the Technical University on Sapiehy Street, which also housed Loncki Prison, a future Gestapo torture centre. Even then, Jewish students took the long way
around, bypassing Sapiehy Street, for its residents were Polish officers and officials, professionals and businessmen, whose sons comprised most of the student body of Lwów’s Technical
and Agricultural Universities. These ‘gilded youths’ would fasten razor blades to sticks as weapons with which to attack Jewish students and leave them bleeding on the pavement.
‘In the evening,’ Wiesenthal recalls, ‘it was dangerous to walk Sapiehy Street if you so much as looked Jewish, especially at times when the young National Democrats or Radical
Nationalists were turning their anti-Jewish slogans from theory into practice. And there was never a policeman in sight.’
What perplexed Wiesenthal was that ‘at a time when Hitler was on Poland’s frontiers, poised to annex Polish territory, these Polish “patriots” could think of only one
thing: the Jews and how much they hated them. In Germany, at that time, they were building new weapons factories, they were building strategic roads straight towards Poland, and they were calling
up thousands of Germans for military service. But the Polish parliament paid little notice to this menace: it had “more important” things to do – new regulations for kosher
butchering, for instance – which might make life more difficult for the Jews.’
The Technical University’s yellow and terracotta neo-classical main building stood behind a low stone wall with a high iron fence. Inside lay no sanctuary. In
When Wiesenthal reads of disarmament negotiations in Geneva, Vienna, Washington, and Moscow, he wonders whether ‘it is more important to reduce weapons than to reduce hate. I am more
optimistic about their reducing weapons than about their reducing hate. Right now, we have the technology to kill each of us eight times. I like to think that, in my lifetime, the super-and
not-so-superpowers can get together and reduce it to four times. Then I might die more hopeful for my daughter and grandchildren.’
Wiesenthal, who would experience both Hitler and Stalin, says today that ‘the biggest difference between the two as criminals is that Hitler told the truth about what he
would do to Europe, what he would do to the Jews, but nobody believed him. Stalin lied about his genocide, about the gulag, and the world believed him, so he lasted longer and got to kill more
people than Hitler did.’
In 1934 and 1935, Wiesenthal apprenticed as a building engineer in Soviet Russia. He spent a few weeks in Kharkov and Kiev, but most of those two years in the Black Sea port of Odessa, which he
remembers as ‘a lovely city’ in the Ukraine ‘where I spent twenty-one months learning dictatorship from Stalin. When I saw what the Soviets did to their own people – arrests
right and left – this was for me not only very good preparation for the Nazis, but also what would happen if we ever came under Russian control.’ What disturbed him almost as much at
the time, however, was that ‘on the streets, all people looked alike: Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, even ethnic Germans. They wore the same clothes, they had the same faces set in the same
attitude, they seemed to have the same character: everything under Stalin was drab and uniform. When Hitler came, he would have a hard time figuring out which were the Jews and which were the other
“sub-humans”. I myself stood out in the crowd just by being me.’
Returning to Galicia at the end of his Russian apprenticeship, Wiesenthal was at last allowed to enter the Technical University of Lwów for the advanced degree that would allow him to
practisearchitecture in Poland. For a while, he roomed on Janowskà Street: future site of the concentration camp in which he would live much of the war.
Geographically, it was an easy stroll to the Technical University on Sapiehy Street, which also housed Loncki Prison, a future Gestapo torture centre. Even then, Jewish students took the long way
around, bypassing Sapiehy Street, for its residents were Polish officers and officials, professionals and businessmen, whose sons comprised most of the student body of Lwów’s Technical
and Agricultural Universities. These ‘gilded youths’ would fasten razor blades to sticks as weapons with which to attack Jewish students and leave them bleeding on the pavement.
‘In the evening,’ Wiesenthal recalls, ‘it was dangerous to walk Sapiehy Street if you so much as looked Jewish, especially at times when the young National Democrats or Radical
Nationalists were turning their anti-Jewish slogans from theory into practice. And there was never a policeman in sight.’
What perplexed Wiesenthal was that ‘at a time when Hitler was on Poland’s frontiers, poised to annex Polish territory, these Polish “patriots” could think of only one
thing: the Jews and how much they hated them. In Germany, at that time, they were building new weapons factories, they were building strategic roads straight towards Poland, and they were calling
up thousands of Germans for military service. But the Polish parliament paid little notice to this menace: it had “more important” things to do – new regulations for kosher
butchering, for instance – which might make life more difficult for the Jews.’
The Technical University’s yellow and terracotta neo-classical main building stood behind a low stone wall with a high iron fence. Inside lay no sanctuary. In
Similar Books
Harder
Robin York
Midnight Bayou
Nora Roberts
Going Under
S. Walden
Free Fall
Jill Shalvis
Swansong
Rose Christo
Shepherd's Moon
Stacy Mantle
Fast Buck
James Hadley Chase
The Remedy for Regret
Susan Meissner
