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65 results in My Shadow in Dachau

Page 4 of 4

  • Arthur Haulot, Belgium, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 149-152

  • Summary

    Arthur Haulot was born in 1913 in Liége, Belgium. A journalist, writer, and radio announcer, Haulot was also chief of the Belgian General Commission for Tourism. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 on account of his membership in a resistance movement. In July 1942, Haulot was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp and later transferred to Dachau on November 9, 1942 (prisoner number 39,095), from where he was liberated in 1945.

    Haulot was deputy spokesman for his compatriots on the International Prisoners’ Committee of the concentration camp of Dachau after liberation. He was among the few who were able to write while interned at Dachau. Between January 1943 and 1945, even though he was a Nacht und Nebel prisoner, fortunate circumstances in the hospital barracks allowed him access to writing material, which he used to keep a “camp diary”—even sometimes at extreme risk. This diary was later published under the title J'ai voulu vivre (1987). The poem included here, “Contrast,” comes from this diary. But Haulot also wrote many other poems during this period, which were published shortly after his liberation in Si lourd de sang (1946). In the introduction to this collection of poetry, he wrote: “I was and am a prisoner of that drama, in which I had a part….”

    Following his return from Dachau concentration camp, Haulot resumed his position as head of the General Commission for Tourism in Brussels, edited the Journal des Poètes, and published more poems of his own. Later he became Vice-President of the Comité International de Dachau and lived in Brussels until his death in 2005. Arthur Haulot, too, had a clear answer when asked about what his time in the camp had meant for his subsequent life: “In truth, the time in the concentration camp has marked our entire lives and not just the years we spent behind barbed wire….” Both his poetry and his prose are in pursuit of a goal that Haulot constantly bore in mind, regarding it as the main lesson drawn from his experiences: “Whether writing or speaking, I am pursuing a goal: to pass on knowledge of the camps of the Third Reich. However, this is no act of hatred toward the German people. The young must be told that the human being is capable of everything: of the very best and the very worst….”

  • László Salamon, Romania (Hungarian mother tongue)

  • from Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 200-204

  • Summary

    Felszabadulàs

    Győzelmi zászlók lengenek; az ellen

    ejtett homlokkal hordja szégyenét,

    májusi illat leng a levegőben

    és ünneplő palástot ölt az ég.

    A germán horda alázatos arccal

    néz felém, akit tegnap még ütött,

    a szívem telve oly keserű daccal,

    mit meg nem ért más, csak az üldözött.

    Nagy Jenky-tankok dübörögnek, zúgnak

    Munich felé, amely most csupa rom,

    az utak egy új világ felé futnak:

    felemelem ejtett homlokom.

    Tíz hónapi szörnyű gyötrelemben

    elvesztettem a lelkem jobb felét

    s megnyugvásra még most sem leltem,

    szívemben a pokol még most is ég.

    Ujjongó mámora a győztes hadnak

    engem is elkap és ajkam éljenez,

    csúf percek fakadnak:

    a ráeszmélés szörnyű perce ez.

    Ó, hol porladnak, akik meg nem érték

    a nagy napok üdvét, zsenge mámorát,

    ó, mivé lett a sok emberi érték,

    mely díszitette népünk homolokát.

    Ó, él vajon életem drága társa,

    az én kedves, jóságos asszonyom,

    ó, hol porlad a legjobbik anyácska,

    ki őrködött gyermeki álmomon?

    Ha gonosz véreb megölte őket:

    szörnyű lesz a szabadság mámora.

    s e diadalból majd nagy időknek

    ragyogása lesz szívem ostora.

    Könnyel viszem majd hivatásom terhét,

    hogy gyűlölködjem mindhalálig én,

    ki szelíden hordtam sorsom keservét,

    mosolygva az istenek ötletén,

    kik szívemmel játszva úgy meggyötörtek,

    mint Prométheust a rút keselyűk,

    míg gonosz lelkek kínomon röhögtek,

    akiket ott találtam mindenütt.

    Liberation

    Flags of victory flutter, the enemy

    has hung his head in shame. Fragrance of May

    drifts in the air and even the spring sky

    is wearing its festive cope to speed the day.

    The German horde now all humiliation

    look up at me, the men who beat me senseless;

    my heart is full of bitter satisfaction

    that none can understand save the defenseless.

  • František Kadlec, Czech Republic, biography

  • from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 48-55

  • Summary

    František Kadlec was born in Prague in 1911. Kadlec was arrested in May 1940 for his membership in a left-leaning nationalist workers’ youth organization that had been banned on March 15, 1939. He was first held in a Prague prison, then sent to Terezín concentration camp, finally arriving at Dachau on October 18, 1940 (prisoner number 20,601). After being liberated there in 1945, Kadlec returned to his birthplace, Prague, where he worked as an architect. He died there in 2003.

    In 1992, František Kadlec returned to Dachau concentration camp for the first time to participate in the ceremony of commemoration on the anniversary of the liberation. He described the circumstances under which he created the poems included here, during his captivity in Dachau:

    I am a sensitive person … and it was with this frame of mind that I arrived in Dachau concentration camp … in this hellish, seemingly unreal world … in this anus mundi … I was in the same position as someone who has fallen into a bog and is forced to try to get his feet on solid ground to keep his head above water. I surmised that every move, every attempt to rest and recover meant certain death. All around me there were thousands of people in the same situation, and yet I was all alone among this sea of people.

    Nevertheless—I do not know how—I did find a friend there, or he found me … other friends, previously strangers, followed … these people and I thought in the same way. I ceased to be lonely in the sea of people; these friends helped me, especially by making me part of a “work kommando” [i.e., work detail]…. I started on the “plantations” [i.e., the herb gardens], later I shifted potato sacks in another kommando, then moved to another work group yet again, wielding pickaxes and pouring cement, … and finally ended up in the “working unit” of the SS-Wirtschaftsbetriebe [i.e., SS-economic concerns]…. Here I endured dysentery and found writing materials and a place to hide all that I had written.

    Finally, I saw a way of giving testimony to those who were going to succeed us, testimony about what I had seen and suffered through, all through the most powerful medium available, the medium of poetry.

  • Roman Gebler, Germany, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 125-132

  • Summary

    Roman Gebler was born in 1896 in a German settlement near Lódz. Gebler had studied art, but his training was interrupted during the First World War by his internment in 1916. He later continued his studies in Berlin. As a painter, study visits across Europe followed. He was arrested as a socialist in 1933, then deported to the Flossenbürg and Dachau concentration camps (prisoner number 72).

    After his liberation from Dachau in April 1945, he lived in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, working as a fine artist. The following three poems are taken from his collection Aus dämmernden Nächten, which appeared in 1947. The publisher added an explanatory note to the edition, which, like so many others, was published as a one-off edition with a very short print run: “The following poems are not echoes of peaceful days and hours of solitude,—no, they came into being among the noise, fear, pain, and death of the concentration camp.”

    Leben

    (Dachau 1933)

    Ich will es ertragen

    und in mir behalten, was du mir gebracht.—

    Dem einsamen Raunen in dämmernder Nacht

    nur will ich es sagen.—

    Ich werd’ es ertragen,

    denn noch ist in mir nicht das Hoffen zerbrochen.—

    Noch hör’ ich die Stimme, die in mir gesprochen:

    Du mußt es ertragen!

    In einsamen Tagen,

    wenn brennend die Sehnsucht mich droht zu ersticken—

    mich auch keine Freude vermag zu beglücken:

    Dann werd’ ich es tragen.—

    Wenn Träume mich jagen,

    Erinnyen meine Gedanken umschweben,

    im Traume des Nachts mich die Parzen umgeben—

    Ich werd’ es ertragen.—

    Dir will ich es sagen:

    “Der du uns zum Sterben das Kleid hast gewebt,

    bedenke—ich habe noch gar nicht gelebt

    und muß dies ertragen!”

    Dir will ich es klagen:

    “Der du unser Hoffen und Sehnen vernimmst

    und über das Schicksal im Weltall bestimmst—

    Ich werd’ es ertragen!”

    Life

    (Dachau 1933)

    I'll bear this weight.

    What you give me I'll hold inside.

    Lonely rustling in the evening twilight,

    I've something to say—

    I'll take on this weight.

    My hope is still unbroken.

    A voice inside starts speaking:

    You've no choice but this weight.

    On lonely days,

    when yearning's a fire and I think I'll choke,

    and pleasure's impossible, I know

    I'll carry this weight.

    When dreams hunt me,

    and furies hover about my thoughts,

    and spirits surround my nights,

    I'll bear this weight.

Page 4 of 4