Whanganui Chronicle
  • Whanganui Chronicle home
  • Latest news
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology

Locations

  • Taranaki
  • National Park
  • Whakapapa
  • Ohakune
  • Raetihi
  • Taihape
  • Marton
  • Feilding
  • Palmerston North

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • New Plymouth
  • Whanganui
  • Palmertson North
  • Levin

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Whanganui Chronicle

Jay Kuten: 15,000 children passed through death camp, only 35 survived, including my cousin Leo

By Jay Kuten
Columnist·Whanganui Chronicle·
30 Jan, 2020 04:00 PM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Auschwitz Camp Birkenau Holocaust Concentration Camp.

Auschwitz Camp Birkenau Holocaust Concentration Camp.

Comment

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp whose chief function was the murder of Europe's Jews.

The number of people murdered at Auschwitz, is often given as 1.2 million, nearly 1 million Jews.

While many non-Jews were also killed, including Roma, Poles, Russians, Czechs, the unique situation of the Jews, was that they were the only group targeted in the Nazi plans for complete annihilation.

Like others, I must concede that the Holocaust is incomprehensible.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Seemingly impossible to understand how the German nation which at the turn of the 20th century was at the forefront of science and the arts, a nation which had produced the likes of Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven, could in a few short decades descend into such barbarism.

Dr Jacob Bronowski attempts an answer in the BBC series Ascent of Man, his presentation on science. His answer, given while standing in a stream at Auschwitz, where his family members' ashes were strewn, is straightforward. It is thinking that is the opposite of science, which he describes as tentative in its conclusions.

READ MORE:
• Holocaust survivors mark 75th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation
• Holocaust survivor reveals how he was beaten and starved at Nazi camps
• 'Security issues' behind New Zealand absence from holocaust memorial
• Local Focus: Holocaust survivors speak of horrors

Bronowski attributes the inhumanity to a dogmatic belief in absolutes carried to extremes and abetted by the immorality of allowing ends to justify means.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

My own imperfect understanding is about the way in which deception played such a central part in implementation of the Nazi plan.

In his monumental film Shoah, Claude Lanzmann interviews survivors, witnesses and perpetrators.

Discover more

Technology company plans 30ha complex near Marton

28 Jan 04:00 PM

Whanganui family donate AED to community to honour their late father

29 Jan 04:00 PM

Coronavirus: No alarm about international students

29 Jan 04:00 PM

Chemotherapy may soon be available in Whanganui

29 Jan 01:41 AM
The Shadows of Shoah exhibition.
The Shadows of Shoah exhibition.

The result is direct evidence of the way in which the Nazis used divisiveness and separation of their potential Jewish victims from fellow citizens, along with language designed to lull suspicion every step of the way from the cities to the ghettos to transit camps and from transit camps to death camps.

Even to each other the Nazis spoke of "the final solution," meaning murder and of "shipment to the east," for Auschwitz, and its gates claiming "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work means freedom).

The prospective victims would not, could not believe, the report of rare witnesses. It was their own very human sense of hope which fostered their gullibility until it was too late to resist.

Stalin said "one person's death is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Those statistics contain the murder of nine members of my immediate family but not the singular example of my cousin Leo, who spent two years, as a child along with his mother Soucha in one of the Nazi masterworks of deception, Thereseinstadt, just outside Prague.

The camp is famous for its use by Adolf Eichmann as a stage set, a model concentration camp, designed to fool the visiting Swiss Red Cross who reported it as tolerable.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

In reality it was a transit camp, with most inmates shipped on to death camps. Of the 15,000 children who passed through, only 35 survived. Leo is one of those survivors by virtue of his mother's heroism. At liberation, he was 10 years old.

In 2008 as Leo was rounding on his 75th year, he invited my family along with his to visit his former concentration camp, in order to help his children and grandchildren and my family understand what he had endured.

Marking the anniversary of the Holocaust.
Marking the anniversary of the Holocaust.

Today, while he bears some scars of his experience, he hasn't allowed it to distort his outlook.

Leo has had a distinguished career as a pharmacologist. He has a loving wife, a family of devoted daughters and five granddaughters. For him, as for British poet, George Herbert, living well is the best revenge.

READ MORE:
• Best of 2019: Jay Kuten: Mid-life delusions and Paula Bennett
• Jay Kuten: Psychobabble as a weapon
• Premium - Jay Kuten: The disempowerment of anonymity
• Jay Kuten: An open letter to David Bennett

Since Auschwitz, the world has witnessed several genocides — Indonesia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Myammar (formerly Burma) – with minimal consequence, despite the resolution of "never again."

The very least we can do is to be better witnesses, to secure the facts of what happened and not to look away or be deceived.

We must be in pursuit of the truth, especially when it leads to dark places. Only by bringing light to bear on the darkness can we strive to retain our common humanity.

NewsletterClicker
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Whanganui Chronicle

Whanganui Chronicle

'He's just scared of me': Teen's Māori wards challenge to PM

06 Jul 03:55 AM
Whanganui Chronicle

Brazen hammer heist: Police hunt jewel thief, staff distressed after store raid

05 Jul 05:11 AM
Whanganui Chronicle

Kāinga Ora needs to be ‘responsive to need’, says minister

04 Jul 06:00 PM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Whanganui Chronicle

'He's just scared of me': Teen's Māori wards challenge to PM

'He's just scared of me': Teen's Māori wards challenge to PM

06 Jul 03:55 AM

Chris Hipkins agreed to meet him in Wellington after the Prime Minister said 'no'.

Brazen hammer heist: Police hunt jewel thief, staff distressed after store raid

Brazen hammer heist: Police hunt jewel thief, staff distressed after store raid

05 Jul 05:11 AM
Kāinga Ora needs to be ‘responsive to need’, says minister

Kāinga Ora needs to be ‘responsive to need’, says minister

04 Jul 06:00 PM
Work begins on key phase of port project

Work begins on key phase of port project

04 Jul 06:00 PM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Whanganui Chronicle e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Whanganui Chronicle
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • NZME Events
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP