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"We had journeyed onto a metaphysical plane of darkness, where the haze of death obscured the heavens."
Michel Mielnicki has one uplifting Holocaust story.
In 1989, he learned from a Simon Wiesenthal newsletter that Auschwitz-Birkenau ramp selection officer SS Unterscharfuhrer Heinrich-Johannes Kuehnemann of Essen, Germany, had been identified singing opera by none other than Auschwitz escapee Rudolf Vrba.
In 1991, Michel flew to Germany with his wife, June Frischer Mielnicki, another Holocaust survivor, in order to corroborate evidence against Kuehnemann at a trial in Duisberg, Germany. Initially, he had worried that he might be murdered by "some old Nazi or some new neo-Nazi skinhead" if he testified in public.
Kuehnemann, known for his brutality, was identified by Mielnicki and other witnesses for his role in selecting inmates for the gas chambers and he was convicted. The defendant had argued unsuccessfully that he was unaware of any systematic process for murdering inmates at Auschwitz.
Appreciative, the German prosecutor asked Mielnicki if there was any favour to be done in return. Mielnicki told this prosecutor, named Feld, that he remained troubled by never learning the fate of his brother. About a year later, the German prosecutor called Mielnicki and told him he'd come across the contact information for a Ukrainian named Aleksei Mielnicki who had visited Auschwitz seeking documentation of his imprisonment there. Perhaps this was a relative of some sort? Felt gave Mieilnicki the contact info.
Aleksei is not a Polish name. Mielnicki was unaware of other branches of his family beyond Poland. But as soon as Mielnicki made the phone call to Aleksei Mielnicki, he knew he had found his brother who had simply adopted a different first name. Michel Mielnicki and his wife flew to Poland where he was re-united with his brother after a 50-year separation.
Beyond that, it can be argued that Michel Mielnicki endured more time in the Nazi death camps that most other survivors, often under some of the most harsh conditions. He recalls, while in Birkenau, it was memories of his mother's cooking that gave him "the saliva necessary to chew bread that was at least twenty-five percent sawdust."
Born in Wasilkow, a few kilometers from Bialystok in north-eastern Poland, in 1927, Mielnicki was one of 1,500 Jews in a town of 5,000 people. Following the conquest of his area of Poland by Germany in 1941, he lived in the Bialystock Ghetto, then was sent onto the Pruzany Ghetto for fourteen months, before he was deported, at age 16, with his brother Aaron, his parents Esther and Chaim, and his sister Lenka, in a cattle car to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His mother died on the train and his father was beaten to death shortly after arriving at Auschwitz. He witnessed both deaths.
At the concentration camp, Mielnicki’s sister was sent off with the other women. Aaron became ill and was sent to the so-called hospital. The siblings promised they would try to return to Bialystock if they were separated. Michel survived a death march, worked in the slave labour camp at Buna, then at Mittelbau-Dora in Germany and was finally liberated by the British Army from Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Mielnicki returned to Bialystock to wait in vain for his brother, arriving in the middle of the night, the train station was still rubble. It had been destroyed by a German air raid six years before. A switchman kindly pointed to a wooden bench, seeing he was obviously Jewish and entirely alone. "I wouldn’t wander the streets at night if I were you," he said. "At best you’ll be beaten and robbed. At worst you'll be murdered." The racist reality of Mielnicki's homeland increasingly became clear. In the two years following the end of the War, more than 100,000 of Poland's remaining Jews fled the country of their birth in fear for their lives.
The Red Cross had no answers. Mielnicki eventually immigrated to Canada where, from his home base in Montreal, he became known as "Mr. Michel," one of Canada's premier fur fashion designers.
The emotional cost of survivalism is made clear in his memoir Bialystock to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michael Meilnicki (Ronsdale 2000) in which he provides harrowing, first-hand accounts of Birkenau, Buna, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen. He recounts the gallows humour that prevailed when prisoners were forced to stand en masse and witness yet another execution ("Want to split his bread portion tonight?") and references Hannah Arendt's famous phrase about the banality of evil.
"The Nazis had created a subterranean world at Auschwitz that was inhabited by scurrying, craven little like myself, and ruled by diabolic, troll-like creatures beyond the imagination of even a Tolkien.
"As Himmler's slaves, we lived our lives at a level so primitive that the reader's imagination is undoubtedly strained in trying to come to grips with such a reality. For example, when the physical event called sunshine did occur at Birkenau or Buna, I jumped at any chance to stand or sit in it. If I could find a place away from the ever-prying eyes of killer guards and murderous Kapos, that is.
"…You cleaned your teeth with your dirty fingernails or slivers of wood… and you rubbed your gums with your fingers in hopes that this might prevent pyorrhea. Among the last things you wanted on earth, this side of being gassed or burned, was to lose your teeth.
"And because the Grim Reaper was our constant companion in the death camps, we prisoners tend to run each waking hour on pure adrenaline. Which is more than most human bodies or psyches can endure.
"Studies show that most of those who did survive, like many combat veterans, continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. But unlike sailors, soldiers or airmen, we had no guns with which to fight. Consequently, survivors have few tales of personnel daring-do to share. Just those of unremitting horror. And terror."
Mielnicki's story ends with a blistering indictment of the callousness of the British liberators, and his discovery on returning to Poland that no Jew was safe there.
"...his depression, already clinical, became profound," writes John Munro, who co-wrote the memoir. "I can only guess how ghastly this must have been for him. For me, his Holocaust experiences filled my dreams to the point where constant nightmares interrupted my sleep, which caused me to begin to worry about my own sanity."
Increasingly, Michel Mielnicki volunteered to speak to high school students about the Holocaust: His daughter Vivian Claman recalled in 2018: "It was cathartic for him to tell his story, and he believed that passing it over to students was of utmost importance. I cannot deny that he is a complicated man, whose identity was forged by the trauma and loss he endured during and after the war. He was emotionally volatile and haunted by memories of what he went through.
"He spoke endlessly about the Holocaust to anyone who would listen, sometimes to the detriment of his mental health. But in spite of his experience and his need to talk of these heinous crimes, he always advocated for tolerance, education and love as the antidote to hatred, racism and genocide."
BOOKS:
Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki (Ronsdale 2000) $19.95. Co-written with John Munro, with an Introduction by Sir Sir Martin Gilbert.
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Michel Mielnicki has one uplifting Holocaust story.
In 1989, he learned from a Simon Wiesenthal newsletter that Auschwitz-Birkenau ramp selection officer SS Unterscharfuhrer Heinrich-Johannes Kuehnemann of Essen, Germany, had been identified singing opera by none other than Auschwitz escapee Rudolf Vrba.
In 1991, Michel flew to Germany with his wife, June Frischer Mielnicki, another Holocaust survivor, in order to corroborate evidence against Kuehnemann at a trial in Duisberg, Germany. Initially, he had worried that he might be murdered by "some old Nazi or some new neo-Nazi skinhead" if he testified in public.
Kuehnemann, known for his brutality, was identified by Mielnicki and other witnesses for his role in selecting inmates for the gas chambers and he was convicted. The defendant had argued unsuccessfully that he was unaware of any systematic process for murdering inmates at Auschwitz.
Appreciative, the German prosecutor asked Mielnicki if there was any favour to be done in return. Mielnicki told this prosecutor, named Feld, that he remained troubled by never learning the fate of his brother. About a year later, the German prosecutor called Mielnicki and told him he'd come across the contact information for a Ukrainian named Aleksei Mielnicki who had visited Auschwitz seeking documentation of his imprisonment there. Perhaps this was a relative of some sort? Felt gave Mieilnicki the contact info.
Aleksei is not a Polish name. Mielnicki was unaware of other branches of his family beyond Poland. But as soon as Mielnicki made the phone call to Aleksei Mielnicki, he knew he had found his brother who had simply adopted a different first name. Michel Mielnicki and his wife flew to Poland where he was re-united with his brother after a 50-year separation.
Beyond that, it can be argued that Michel Mielnicki endured more time in the Nazi death camps that most other survivors, often under some of the most harsh conditions. He recalls, while in Birkenau, it was memories of his mother's cooking that gave him "the saliva necessary to chew bread that was at least twenty-five percent sawdust."
Born in Wasilkow, a few kilometers from Bialystok in north-eastern Poland, in 1927, Mielnicki was one of 1,500 Jews in a town of 5,000 people. Following the conquest of his area of Poland by Germany in 1941, he lived in the Bialystock Ghetto, then was sent onto the Pruzany Ghetto for fourteen months, before he was deported, at age 16, with his brother Aaron, his parents Esther and Chaim, and his sister Lenka, in a cattle car to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His mother died on the train and his father was beaten to death shortly after arriving at Auschwitz. He witnessed both deaths.
At the concentration camp, Mielnicki’s sister was sent off with the other women. Aaron became ill and was sent to the so-called hospital. The siblings promised they would try to return to Bialystock if they were separated. Michel survived a death march, worked in the slave labour camp at Buna, then at Mittelbau-Dora in Germany and was finally liberated by the British Army from Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Mielnicki returned to Bialystock to wait in vain for his brother, arriving in the middle of the night, the train station was still rubble. It had been destroyed by a German air raid six years before. A switchman kindly pointed to a wooden bench, seeing he was obviously Jewish and entirely alone. "I wouldn’t wander the streets at night if I were you," he said. "At best you’ll be beaten and robbed. At worst you'll be murdered." The racist reality of Mielnicki's homeland increasingly became clear. In the two years following the end of the War, more than 100,000 of Poland's remaining Jews fled the country of their birth in fear for their lives.
The Red Cross had no answers. Mielnicki eventually immigrated to Canada where, from his home base in Montreal, he became known as "Mr. Michel," one of Canada's premier fur fashion designers.
The emotional cost of survivalism is made clear in his memoir Bialystock to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michael Meilnicki (Ronsdale 2000) in which he provides harrowing, first-hand accounts of Birkenau, Buna, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen. He recounts the gallows humour that prevailed when prisoners were forced to stand en masse and witness yet another execution ("Want to split his bread portion tonight?") and references Hannah Arendt's famous phrase about the banality of evil.
"The Nazis had created a subterranean world at Auschwitz that was inhabited by scurrying, craven little like myself, and ruled by diabolic, troll-like creatures beyond the imagination of even a Tolkien.
"As Himmler's slaves, we lived our lives at a level so primitive that the reader's imagination is undoubtedly strained in trying to come to grips with such a reality. For example, when the physical event called sunshine did occur at Birkenau or Buna, I jumped at any chance to stand or sit in it. If I could find a place away from the ever-prying eyes of killer guards and murderous Kapos, that is.
"…You cleaned your teeth with your dirty fingernails or slivers of wood… and you rubbed your gums with your fingers in hopes that this might prevent pyorrhea. Among the last things you wanted on earth, this side of being gassed or burned, was to lose your teeth.
"And because the Grim Reaper was our constant companion in the death camps, we prisoners tend to run each waking hour on pure adrenaline. Which is more than most human bodies or psyches can endure.
"Studies show that most of those who did survive, like many combat veterans, continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. But unlike sailors, soldiers or airmen, we had no guns with which to fight. Consequently, survivors have few tales of personnel daring-do to share. Just those of unremitting horror. And terror."
Mielnicki's story ends with a blistering indictment of the callousness of the British liberators, and his discovery on returning to Poland that no Jew was safe there.
"...his depression, already clinical, became profound," writes John Munro, who co-wrote the memoir. "I can only guess how ghastly this must have been for him. For me, his Holocaust experiences filled my dreams to the point where constant nightmares interrupted my sleep, which caused me to begin to worry about my own sanity."
Increasingly, Michel Mielnicki volunteered to speak to high school students about the Holocaust: His daughter Vivian Claman recalled in 2018: "It was cathartic for him to tell his story, and he believed that passing it over to students was of utmost importance. I cannot deny that he is a complicated man, whose identity was forged by the trauma and loss he endured during and after the war. He was emotionally volatile and haunted by memories of what he went through.
"He spoke endlessly about the Holocaust to anyone who would listen, sometimes to the detriment of his mental health. But in spite of his experience and his need to talk of these heinous crimes, he always advocated for tolerance, education and love as the antidote to hatred, racism and genocide."
BOOKS:
Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki (Ronsdale 2000) $19.95. Co-written with John Munro, with an Introduction by Sir Sir Martin Gilbert.
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
