They are fulfilled today, 27 January 2025, 80 years of the release of the Auschwitz concentration camp, In Poland. The Nazis murdered more than one million people there. Most of them were Jews, But Poles were also exterminated, Romani, Soviets, homosexuals… to which the Adolf Hitler regime turned into a simple virus to liquidate. This is the story and voice of Jacques Stroumsa, one of the survivors of that horror. It is convenient to read it, more now that the world seems to look again on the abyss of great wars and unpunished aggressions of nations and their inhabitants, To remember what a collective means to remove the category of human being and turn it into a simple piece of meat to be removed. In VAP we recover this story from 2012 by Ricardo Coarasa and his encounter with Auschwitz's violinist:
It is easy to succumb to calendar lamenting missed opportunities, no time even to be aware of how lucky we are when life winks. This was not the case. Having the opportunity to listen for an hour and a half to Jacques Stroumsa was a real privilege that I began to thank the very moment he entered the room and dwarfed that vigorous old man who wore on his left forearm the number of hell. The meeting took place in Jerusalem (my eternal gratitude for Sephardic House and Yad Vashem, that made it possible), when the "violinist of Auschwitz" I was barely a year old. He then 96 years, but his eyes still shone the determination and courage of lost youth. You heard talk and albergabas the feeling that had been blessed Stroumsa, after all, Don with a divine: longevity and passion of his words were needed to remind us that one day we were barbarians and, Worse, could be again if we forget the dark with civilized indifference of the human soul in Nazi concentration camps.
The story is well known Stroumsa, and he recalled for us roughly, a group of Spanish journalists seminary in the holy city. Sephardic Jewish, born in Thessaloniki, that would be occupied by troops Hitler on April 1941, so two years later was deported to Poland. The 8 May 1943 is a date that will always accompany. That day came to Auschwitz. His wife, eight months pregnant, accompanying. His parents and in-laws were also part of the sad procession. He got off the wagon grabbed the hand of his wife. On the other hand he held the violin. So he told us. In the same platforms were separated. "The violin in the car and leave your wife to go with his mother or yours", ordered an SS. "They went to the right. There were some cars with the insignia of the Red Cross and I thought we would see in three hours ", rememoraba Stroumsa. Not so.
At five o'clock I told the whole truth: "Your wife, your father and your mother, Forget, live only, but do not talk about it "
That same day all women and children were murdered in gas chambers. How little does it cost to write it and how much try to imagine it. "At five in the afternoon they told me the whole truth: "Your wife, your father and your mother, Forget, live only, but do not talk about it ". It was maddening ", explained in Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain their descendants, five centuries later, have not forgotten. Then tattooed on her arm the number that would accompany him to his death, because as he liked to say "I have it recorded in the blood". He could have gone the way of the six million Jews exterminated in gas chambers, but the notes of his violin tamed the wild beasts and became part of the orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau II, of which was the last survivor. The officers of the SS liked to listen to military marches, liturgy atrocious, after gassing thousands of innocent people every day.
For Stroumsa, the violin was the pass to go on living. That and his knowledge of German (spoke six languages). "Being able to speak German engineer and helped me. The SS, they passed by my side, no greeted me, but I had a respect terrible and never threatened to kill me ", remembered. Paradoxically, the only attack suffered while in the concentration camp, at least one of which he was able to remember, was at the hands of a Jewish, "A leader (selected prisoner by the Germans in charge of maintaining order in the barracks), Yugoslavia was, one day I got a kick. I said: "Do not make me rage I have also foot". He was later killed by the prisoners themselves ".
He spoke with his eyes as his words were aimed at the conscience of humanity; for half an hour was not allowed the slightest weakness
In January 1945, "The day I left Auschwitz alive", the violinist of the orchestra of the concentration camp that embodies all the horror none of Nazism, began a new life. He still had almost five months, those in the throes of the regime, in Mauthausen, but the worst was over. He lived in Paris, moved to Israel in 1967 volunteer in the Six Day War and never left Jerusalem, where he died a 14 November 2010. He married again, a descendant of Spanish, survivor as that of a concentration camp. He returned to his native Thessaloniki to settle accounts with the memory of his childhood, perhaps looking at the waters of the Aegean an explanation for such barbarity. An old friend reproached him not to return to live there, "Where even the stones you know". After escaping death needed to be surrounded by life. And boy did. He had three children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. And, especially, retained an enviable vitality until his last days.
It was known herald of the largest of the atrocities and was certainly proud to be the voice of the broken voices in the gas chambers
We were warned that not many questions fatigásemos, but he did not seem to mind. He spoke with his eyes as his words were aimed at the conscience of humanity; for half an hour was not allowed the slightest weakness, the slightest concession to his age. It was known herald of the largest of the atrocities and was certainly proud to be the voice of the broken voices in the gas chambers, his wife, the child never born, their parents, so many other. He did not care to teach his tattooed arm, be photographed, digging for the umpteenth time in the dismal memory of those terrible days. Proudly displayed a copy of a letter from the King of Spain thanking him for his reports on these "years of struggle", distinctive in Auschwitz, then the whole world "that no one forgets one of the most tragic pages of our history". The other, his own, still very much alive in the hearts of all who were lucky enough to hear. As he said, "My story has no end". Descanse in paz Jacques Stroumsa, the violinist who escaped from the jaws of the beast.
