- Richard Oestermann
The day before yesterday I was visiting the Danish-Jewish journalist, Richard Oestermann. An elderly man, 88 years old, who is seriously ill, but even so insist on continuing the publication of a series of articles each week with news from the Holy Land. It was also on this occasion that I visited, along with the Danish volunteer Emma, who helps to write down and translate his articles.
At this visit, I did not just learn about the world as it is seen by a (Danish) journalist (in the Middle East), but I also got another glimpse of how antisemitism in Denmark before and during the Second World War has left deep scars in a Danish Jew. Richard and his family were among the Danish Jews who succeeded in escaping to Sweden during the action against the Jewish people in 1943, but far from all Jews were as “lucky” as him.
- Robert Fischermann
It is now more than three months ago that another elderly Jewish man, Robert Fischermann, was invited to come to the pastor’s apartment in French Hill – but it almost feels like yesterday that he was sitting in front of me, telling about his horrible memories from 1½ years in a concentration camp during WWII. In more than 60 years he has not been willing to talk about it, because as he says: “Writing about it and talking about it, is to experience it all again.”
Robert was born in Copenhagen in 1928 by parents immigrated to Denmark from Latvia. In 1943, Robert is 15 years old. As a Jewish family, they have been warned in advance of the action against the Jews in October 1943 and therefore seek refuge at a Christian family’s home. But as the youngest sister suffers from epilepsy and that exacerbates, they decide to go back to their home and call a doctor. They have heard from family members in Norway that the Germans have come to take the Jewish fathers and older children; and Robert’s father and the two older siblings are therefore on their way to escape to Sweden when the Germans come knocking on the family’s door at 5 o’clock in the morning Oct. the 2nd.
To their surprise they (the mother, Robert and three younger siblings), however, are instructed to gather the most necessary belongings together and follow the Germans. They are sent with a cattle truck packed with people to the concentration camp,Theresienstadt – a trip of 3½ days. But after the arrival it get’s even worse.
“It’s possible to get used to much, but you never get used to hunger!” Many die of starvation in the KZ and naked bodies are being carried away along the open roads to be burned. Robert and his younger brother work as helpers for other Jewish prisoners when they are told to go east, that is to concentration camps with gas chambers. And they are all constantly living with the fear of being told to go there themselves.
After many months, Robert, his brother and mother are instructed to build a house, their own gas chamber, but before the work is finished, they are told to come to a meeting and leave the camp for a special journey, they have been selected for. “What journey? What will happen to us?” The journey turns out to be their rescue – a journey with the Swedish Red Cross buses up through the bombed Germany. A journey which is not completely harmless, as there are bombers in the air from which they have to run in coverage.
April the 17th they arrived at the Danish border. “We felt that now we were finally saved. The Danish people stood with flags to welcome us home. I’ll never forget it!”
But .. to return to Denmark is not pure delight and happiness. With a trembling voice Robert tells about how they are confronted with the truth about the elder brother and father who died by drowning in the attempt to escape to Sweden 1½ years ago. The older sister had lied to them in a letter sent to them while they were in the KZ.
The years after the war is terrible. “Everything that previously had happened paled! Every day for six months my mother cried. I had to be in my father’s place as, now, the oldest son. My mother tried to commit suicide twice – with gas; I succeeded in preventing it.“The younger sister suffering from epilepsy is moreover seriously ill after not having received any medication during the time in the KZ; she takes an overdose at the hospital and dies before her 20th birthday. “I still blame myself for not having taken better care of her.”
“How could this happen? … Why was such an inconceivable amount of people, especially innocent children, killed just for the reason that they were Jewish?”
I’m sitting in silence, left with tears in my eyes, while I’m starring into the eyes of this man who has experienced so much pain, seen so many terrible things happen and who’s talking about how he still, after so many years, is plagued by nightmares.
But what has the world learned from the Second World War? Antisemitism unfortunately did not disappear after the war. Robert’s granddaugther is also being present this morning. She previously lived in Denmark and go back every summer, but this summer (2014) was horrible for her. “I really felt that I experienced a little bit of what my grandfather has been through.” The media coverage of the events in Gaza and the subsequent debates and comments did that she experienced a great resistance against her as a Jew. “I like to be in Denmark, but I could not imagine letting my children grow up there. Israel is the best place to be as a Jew!” – “Why can’t we just believe in what we want and think what we want? Why must we constantly be at war with each other? – I do not understand that.“
Israel experienced by Heidi 