64 Friday, July 13, 1919

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Gisi Fleischmann: Her Nobility in Martyrdom

By JOAN CAMPION

(Copyright 1979
by Joan Campion)

0

(Concluded from
Last Week)
(Editor's note: Gentile
freelance writer Joan
Campion of Bethlehem,
Pa. was moved to re-
search the life of Gisi
Fleischmann after read-
ing Nora Levin's
standard historical work;
"The Holocaust." This
article, which began in
last week's Jewish News,
summarizes a book on
Mrs. Fleischmann which
Mrs. Campion is now
writing. This section of
Mrs. Campion's article
begins with the effort to
ransom the lives of the
Jews of Europe during
the Holocaust.)

Also in May 1943, there
convened in Bermuda an
Anglo-American Confer-
ence on Refugees. The
Working Group had looked
forward to this conference,
hoping it would provide a
practical escape route for
Europe's oppressed Jews.
But the conference pro-
duced no concrete results,
and no hope.
Gisi, meanwhile, engaged
in feverish efforts to raise
the money_ Wisliceny de-
manded. The Jews of Pales-
tine announced they were
willing to send $100,000 at
once if the "Joint" could
make up the rest.
In Geneva, Saly Mayer
hedged and made condi-
tions. The payment of this
sum of money would cer-
tainly be interpreted as aid-
ing the Axis war effort, al-
though as Prof. Nora Levin
points out in her historical
work The Holocaust," the
amount would have kept
Germany going for just one
additional day.
Mayer first offered to
put the money in a
blocked account, pay-
able to Wisliceny in the
United States after the
war — an impractical
condition, to say the
least.
Wisliceny, naturally, re-
jected such an idea. Instead,
he suggested that he receive
$200,000 for every month
without deportations.
Mayer agreed to this, but
wanted to put the money in
a Swiss bank, again payable
after the war.
Rather than be the bearer
of such news, Gisi sought
and received permission to
go to Hungary to raise the
money. Permission was
granted, and she went; but
this effort, too, was destined
to fail.
Gisi had been playing for
time; she was about to lose.
On July 20, 1943, she in-
formed Mayer that the final

date for negotiations was
July 31.
"My dear uncle, if a
person is in the condition
of spirit which prevails
here, he cannot under-
stand how monies are
more important than
life," she wrote sadly,
adding, "You should
know that we do not
understand the decisions
coming from America,
because they are dead
rules and instructions.
They have no soul. They
have no understanding of
sorrow and pain.
"... I have to conclude
this letter today by telling
you that I will not be re-
sponsible if Willi" (Wis-
liceny) is not ready to dis-
cuss the cancellation of the
transports."

$2 Million
Ransom Plan
Is Foiled

July 31 came and went
without the Working
Group's being able to raise
the vital $2 million; in
August, Himmler annulled
the Europa Plan. But it pro-
vided the basis for the later
"Blood for Goods" negotia-
tions conducted by Hun-
gary's Dr. Rerso Kastner.
The integrity of Kastner's
efforts was later thrown
into doubt, and he himself
was murdered as a result;
but apparently no such
criticism has been leveled at
Gisi Fleischmann and the
Working Group of Bratis-
lava, always excepting the
charges of "credulity" and
"gullibility."
Could they have believed
the Nazis would negotiate -
in good faith? It hardly ap-
pears they had any other
choice but to believe just
that. The mind must have
recoiled from the supposo-
tion that the Germans
planned the systematic de-
struction of an entire
people, although we know
that to have been the case.
Despite the daily horrors
witnessed by the Working
Group's members, sanity
demanded clinging to the
hope that somehow, at some
point, self-interest would
compel their enemies to talk
seriously. It was not much of
a card, but it was the only
card they had; so they
played it, and lost.

Berlin, meanwhile, was
not satisfied with the
Slovak government's in-
creasingly reluctant and
dilatory approach to the
"Jewish question;" in
December 1943, special
envoy Edmund Veesen-
mayer was dispatched to
Bratislava to speed
things up. President
Joseph _Tiro promised

There she was interrogated
for several hours by Brun-
ner himself, in an apparent
effort to get her to reveal the
whereabouts of Jews in hid-
ing; when the "information"
she gave turned out to be
false, her last possibility of
escape was cut. off.
On or about Oct. 17, sepa-
rated from her associates,
Gisi Fleischmann was, in ef-
fect, smuggled onto a trans-
port bound for Auschwitz.
When the train arrived at
its destination the following
day hers was one of three
names called out, and she
was led away and
presumably murdered at
once.
It may be a tendency to
sentimentalize that led
one of her companions on
GISI FLEISCHMANN
the transport to say that
Throughout the early her last 'words to them
that by April 1, 1944,
16,000-18,000 Jews would part of 1944, Gisi Fleis- were, "Farewell, Jewish
be in concentration chmann continued to live in children." At the same
camps; and for good her own apartment with her time, such a statement
ill mother, as she had seems consonant with
measure Prime Minister
Vojtech Tuka offered up throughout the war. One of everything that is known
the lives of 10,000 Jewish her last actions before her or that can be deduced
converts to Christianity final arrest (she had been about her character.
arrested and imprisoned
as well.
An Epilogue:
But for the time being twice before, on justified but
Why
Was Gisi
unprovable
suspicions
of
il-
nothing happened, al-
Martyred?
legal activities) was to have
though in March the "Final
her mother smuggled into a
One important question
Solution" began to be im-
remains. A number of her
plemented in neighboring -hospital as a gentile.
Gisi also continued to go associates survived, among
Hungary. Slovak Jews who
had fled there started to re- to her office, although the them Rabbi Weissmandel
turn, and shortly Dr. Kast- building in which it was and Dr. Neumann. Why not,
housed, No. 6 Edelgasse, therefore, Gisi Fleis-
ner arrived in Bratislava to
ask the Working Group's had been converted some- chmann?
At this point we cannot
help in arranging his "Blood time during the year into a
Gestapo prison. Since the know the answer with cer-
for Goods" plan.
guards stood to profit in tainty; still, at least two
Slovak Jews
monetary terms,. they did hypotheses suggest them-
Reveal Horror
not bother her as she used selves:
the remaining illegal funds
of Auschwitz
The less complex of these
In the spring of 1944, two from the "Joint" and other is that her murder may
young Slovak Jews, Rudolf organizations to supply the have been the result of a
Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, Jewish prisoners with food. simple miscalculation on
In the meantime, the her part. As has been seen,
. made a daring escape from
Auschwitz with full details Slovaks had grown increas- her letters reveal a person of
of the atrocities committed ingly restive under German immense sensitivity and
there. Making their way domination, and in late compassion, the sort of per-
summer of 1944 a revolt son who would feel others'
back to Slovakia, they told
their story to Working exploded against the Slovak suffering as her own. There
is nothing either suicidal or
Group members; and any government.
On Sept. 21, Heinrich grandiose in the letters
ideas about Auschwitz that
might formerly have been Himmler arrived in generally available, and her
regarded as mere horrifying Bratislava and ordered obvious love for her daugh-
the deportation of the ters no doubt provided her
conjecture now stood con-
in
remaining Jews
firmed as fact.
Slovakia; around the
The information was
passed on to Switzerland same time Gisi and the
surviving members of the
through the Apostolic Dele-
Working Group began
gate in Bratislava, and also
LONDON — The revival
frantic efforts with Col. here of a work by Giacomo
to Philip Freudinger, head
Kurt Becher to try to Meyerbeer recalls an in-
of the Orthodox community
avert the impending teresting history of the
in Budapest, Hungary.
catastrophe. Bechler German-Jewish-born com-
With the report of Vrba
hurried to Berlin in a poser.
and Wetzler went an ur-
last-ditch effort to get
Meyerbeer, born Jakob
gent letter from Rabbi
Himmler to relent, but Liebmann Beer, to a rich
Weissmandel, urging the
Himmler would not German-Jewish family, was
Allies to bomb rail lines
budge. When the would- urged by a wealthy relative
leading to the extermina-
be negotiator returned to to add Meyer to his surname
tion camps. Jewish
Bratislava he found the so that he could be named
organizations through-
Jews there already under the relative's heir.
- out the world joined in
the thumb of Alois Brun-
In 1815, he went to
Weissmandel's appeal;
ner, infamous for his
but the request was
cruelties in Paris and
turned down as present-
Greece.
ing "technical difficul-
Gisi herself was arrested
ties."
in late September or early
October. According to her
associate, Dr. Y.O.
Neumann, she had been
caught replying to a clan-
destine appeal for help, and
had in-fact just written the
words, "Unfortunately, I too
am in the lion's mouth."
She was taken to the
camp at Sered, now a stag-
ing point for Auschwitz.
MEYERBEER

with a ready-made reason to
_
continue living._
At the same time, she
turned down a minimum
of three, and probably
many more, offers of re-
scue, including at least
one in 1944, when her
situation had become
truly precarious. It may
be that, preoccupied with
the pain she saw around
her, she felt she must not
leave while the chance
remained that she could
alleviate it — and in it
end she waited too Ion
escape.
A second possibility is
that at some point existen-
tial despair set in, different
from a suicidal impulse in
that at no point would it
have been either conscious
or volitional. "I have done
all I could, and the evil is _
only stronger and more
encompassing than ever,"
her subconscious may have
decided; and with such sub-
liminal thoughts may have
come a carelessness, a let-
ting go, a readiness, not to
vote "no" on life, but to abs-
tain. In her situation such
an attitude could easily
have proved fatal — and in-
deed, if this theory is ac-
cepted, it did.
The historian Leon
Poliakov believes the initia-
tives taken by Gisi Fleis-
chmann and the Working
Group in 1943 eventually .
paved the way for the Nazi
concentration camps to be
closed without further de-
vastating life.
In "Harvest of Hate,"
Poliakov writes perhaps the
noblest epitaph on her brief
and tormented but well-
spenf'life. Says Poliakov,
"In the last analysis, the
`great work of human love'
begun by the unknown
Jewess of Bratislava saved
the lives of thousands of de-
portees of all categories and
nationalities and prevented
the worst from happening
during the collapse of the
German concentration
camps."

Meyerbeer is Recalled as
Opera Revived in London

Italy, where he fell in love
with the country and
with Rossini's music, and
it was there he changed
his first name to
Giacomo.
He joined the librettist
Scribe in Paris and together
they virtually establis
French Grand Opera,
cording to Harold Rosent
in the London Jewish
Chronicle.
"L'Africaine," was re-
vived in London last year
for the first time since 1888.
Meyerbeer's operas en-
joyed much success in the
latter part of the 19th Cen-
tury in Paris, Vienna, Ber-
lin and New York. Yet, ac-
cording to Rosenthal,
"within 25 years of the com-
poser's death he was denig-
rated by most musicians,
reviled by Wagner in his
anti-Semitic outbursts, and,
soon after, his works had all
but vanished from the
stage." -