‘The tombs and graves of people murdered in martyrdom are ever increasing all over the country. Every village and town, every forest abounds with graves looming from a distance as a historical lesson and a warning. Once the living witnesses are gone, then those graves will speak volumes. They will accuse the whole world with an eloquence a hundredfold mightier, of having committed or having failed to act against the crudest of crimes.’ This is from a short prison diary kept by Samuel Golfard, a Polish Jew, before being shot - 80 years ago this month - by the Germans and then buried by a friend in the forest. A fully comprehensive and annotated edition of Golfard’s diary was published in 2015 and is considered to be an important addition to the Holocaust literature,
Golfard was sent to the Iaktoriv (Jaktorow) labor camp some time in late spring or summer 1942. Mania was able to bribe the Jewish Council to release him from the camp, perhaps by exchanging him with another Jew from the ghetto. Golfard then secured a job as a scrap collector in the early months of 1943 (perhaps for the German Equipment Works). This “privileged” position gave him the opportunity to secretly write a diary.
After the Peremyshliany ghetto was liquidated in May 1943, Samuel hid at the Nebenlager (labour camp) for three weeks. He secured a gun, and planned to escape to the forests in Czupernosow with Litman. On the eve of their escape, in June 1943, the camp was surrounded by SS and police, and prisoners were forced to line up outside. Golfard pulled out his pistol, and aimed it at the German commander, but the Germans responded with a hail of bullets, killing him and several prisoners nearby. Litman buried Golfard in a nearby forest.
Almost nothing else is known about Golfard other than that revealed through a prison diary that he kept between January and April 1943, and which survived the war. A first English translation of the diary from its original Polish was completed by Litman in 1983. A second translation was completed by Magdalena Norton in 2006. The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia by Wendy Lower was first published by Alta Mira Press in 2011, largely following the Litman translation, and then reissued in paperback by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015.
In her introduction to the book, Lower states: ‘Through the pages of Golfard’s diary, we can glimpse how a Jew marked for annihilation viewed the outside world and its failure to affect the course of the Holocaust. By expressing his “contempt for the worlds cowardice and heartlessness,” he spoke for other Jews who were just as outraged that the Allies did not intervene to stop the Holocaust. Perhaps Golfard assumed that the Allies should have known better or were morally superior and prepared to act. His view of a post-Holocaust world was not one of reconciliation, but one plagued by vengeance and haunted by the landscape of mass graves. In his diary he wrote on 11 April 1943, “The tombs and graves of people murdered in martyrdom are ever increasing all over the country. Every village and town, every forest abounds with graves looming from a distance as a historical lesson and a warning. Once the living witnesses are gone, then those graves will speak volumes. They will accuse the whole world with an eloquence a hundredfold mightier, of having committed or having failed to act against the crudest of crimes.” ’
‘Golfard’s diary is remarkable’, concludes Alexandra Garbarini, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Williams College. ‘It is searing, moving, emotional, yet also analytically sophisticated. [It] will make a substantial contribution to several fields of study, including the history of Jewish responses during the Shoah, the perpetration of genocide, and Holocaust literature. Lower has done a beautiful job of framing the diary entries so that the reader gains a broader perspective of the unfolding history. This book is a most welcome contribution to the existing body of published source materials, illuminating a lesser-known dimension of the Holocaust that is at the forefront of recent research being conducted in the field.’ Some pages can be previewed at both Amazon and Googlebooks.
Here are two further extracts.
25 January 1943
‘I am not composing these words for myself. They are intended for those who will survive and who might quickly forget what they had lived through not so long ago. Let these words refresh in their memory the moments of horror, the bloody scenes that took place before their eyes, the black night of savagery. Let it [open?] wounds already healed.
In embarking upon this notebook, I am not motivated by a writer’s ambition. I am subjected to an unspeakable burden by every word; every reminiscence hurts cruelly; contemplating present-day events fills me with despair. I realize that these words will not alleviate my own suffering, but since I do not want to spare others, it is fair to have no regard for myself.
Outside the window there is a shroud of sparkling snow. A dazzling whiteness strikes the eyes. Total stillness reigns, but in my heart a storm is raging. I see beloved faces with a mute reproach in their eye, The image of thousands of murdered - children, boys, and girls - appears before me. Among them I see the tormented face of my dearest sister. With her hand m the sling, she sat cowering in the square among hundreds of other victims. I did not manage to give her a sign. She noticed me briefly, she looked startled and frightened as I was being brutally driven away and was denied the chance to exchange another glance with her.
What did she think of me? Did she know that I ran to save her. In vain. I distinguished her screams among the cries of others, swollen with despair, and coming from the truck as I, dazed and unaware of what was really going on, desperately begged for help. I reacted with a fierce shriek, which did not seem to come from my mouth. And the cry of my little sister amid that of others faded away into the darkness. But I still hear it. What did she think about on the way! Perhaps the pain in her hand, recently operated on, dulled her fear for her life. Did she know that she was on her way to Zloczów to die a horrible, tortuous death? Could she believe this until the very last moment? My dearest Maniusia [Mania]! Forgive your brother for leaving you on your own, that he did not share your fate. Perhaps if you were with me, it would have been easier for you to die. Mania, I was paralyzed with despair. Even now I am shaken by sobs at the thought that terror robbed me of my will, the will to die together with you.
You had enough time to draw up the balance sheet of your young life. They seized you, leaving your brother in a camp from which there was seemingly no way out, your beloved parents having apparently been murdered in faraway R., your siblings seized and most probably put to death as well. And with all that the terrible pain in your finger.
What had your life been? Full of devotion to our parents, to me. Your patience and angelic goodness did not make life easier for you. After a day’s hard labor you walked barefoot many kilometers to the camp in Jaktorow, bringing me greetings from the world of the living with a forced timid smile. You witnessed how they beat me and tormented me. You lived through hell before you could see me at home. And you underwent all this alone, surrounded by indifference and hostility. When you were no more, people told me that during my stay in the camp you regarded even those who wished me well as foes. You thought that no one should laugh, eat, or walk while your brother suffered.
When they snatched you away from me, you wore a brown silk blouse, the gray jacket that I myself had bought for your birthday before the war, and on your feet - summer clogs. Oh, how cold you must have been.
I must stop writing now. My hand is trembling, and sobs are ripping through my chest. Before me I see only you and the gray pavement. My ears are filled with the sound of your cry for life fading in the misty night.’
2 April 1943
‘Now there is no longer a universal date of good fortune, each day brings us a new tragedy. Yesterday’s “prima aprilis” [April Fools’ Day] passed by under the sign of terrible news.
200 girls from the Szwartz military factory in Lwow were shipped away. The girls wore the “W” emblem, which was supposed to protect them from being killed. The number of victims has been estimated at 1,500.
On Thursday in Zolkiew, 600 Jews were carried off during the so-called Überprüfung (reexamination) administered these days. After a few days, an action was set in motion in which the remaining people were rounded up and murdered in the ghetto.
It seems that the last moment is drawing near. The insanity has again assumed blood thirsty forms. We just received word that a mass murder began in the ghetto of Zloczów and that the executioners may drop in here any minute.
I no longer despair. Despite the fact that from a certain point a new feeling has bloomed in my heart, I abhor life. I no longer mourn for my sisters and parents. I no longer weep over them, just as I no longer lament a friend whom I have lost recently. He luckily died in convulsions, having not regained consciousness. Died a rare civilian death - sick with typhus - at the age of 30.
It was pining for Mania that induced me to write these notes. Now I have in front of me your one and only photograph, the last trace of your existence, since all your things have been stolen. I do not believe in life beyond the grave, but if there is such a thing as an immortal soul that manifests itself in man, your, your soul must be blessed beyond words. You appear to me every day as a moving and acting who substitutes for you and to whom I become attached ever more strongly so.’
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