Speaking out on Auschwitz
MULGRAVE holocaust survivor Abraham Cykiert walked out of Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp, thanks to his wits, some dirty jokes and the compassion of an unlikely ally.
Now 82, the Polish-born author, playwright, lecturer and broadcaster, who suffered through poverty, torture and slavery during World War II, has spent more than six decades telling the world of the atrocities inside.
Cykiert arrived at Auschwitz in August 1944 and, while there, wrote a poem detailing the horrific reality for prisoners.
His words were found by the chief cook, who was second-in-charge of the camp in which the 18-year-old was being held.
The cook, who Cykiert believed to be a German but who was actually a German-Jew, secretly ordered the young poet to be saved from the gas chamber four times and arranged for him to read dirty jokes to Nazi soldiers. “Pornography is literature compared to the gutter material by which I entertained the inside hierarchy,” Cykiert said.
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Five days after the war ended on May 8, 1945, Cykiert was interviewed by British newspaper The Manchester Guardian. “I was the first to inform the western world of the existence of gas chambers, the selections and the German doctor and sadist, Joseph Mengele,” Cykiert said.
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Source:
oakleigh-monash-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/speaking-out-on-auschwitz/
02 SEP 08 @ 08:23AM BY ADRIAN BERNECICH
Webmaster note: So, how exactly were the western allies supposed to stop the Holocaust if no one knew about it until May 13, 1945?