Chaim (Nazi victims)

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Chaim (last name unknown; * around 1930 in Sędziszów , Powiat Ropczycko-Sędziszowski , Subcarpathian Voivodeship , Poland ; † around 1945 in Pustków near Dębica , Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland) was a Polish farmer's son who was brought up by the Wehrmacht along with thousands of other young Jews Camp Pustków and was killed here on an unknown date. He was 14 years old when he died.

Life

Chaim's farewell letter stuck through the barbed wire was found by a farmer who gave Chaim's letter to his parents. Chaim's letter is documented in the anthology Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea (Last Letters to Death Convicts from the European Resistance).

The Italian composer Luigi Nono chose ten farewell letters from women, men and young people from the anthology for the text of his choral work Il canto sospeso, written in 1956 - including Chaim's letter to his parents. The reading out of Chaim's farewell letter was part of the concert performance of Luigi Nono's composition Il canto sospeso with Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker in the Berlin Philharmonie in December 1992. The recording of the concert is the basis of the so-called nonoproject - an initiative by Claudio Abbado and one of them Freundeskreis IncontriEuropei for schools in Europe, whose sponsorship was later taken over in 2001 by the Fondazione L'Unione Europea Berlin .

Chaim's farewell letter is documented in the concert recording Il canto sospeso and in the teaching project with the following excerpt:

“My dear parents!

If the sky were paper and all the seas in the world were ink

could I not describe my suffering and everything that I see around me to you.

The camp is in a clearing. From early morning we are driven to work in the forest. My feet are bleeding because my shoes were taken away. We work all day, almost without eating, and at night we sleep on the ground - our coats have also been taken away.

Every night drunk soldiers come and beat us with wooden sticks, my body is black with bloodshot stains like a charred piece of wood. Sometimes they throw us a couple of raw carrots or a beetroot, and it's a shame: here you fight to get a piece or a leaf. The day before yesterday two boys broke out, we were put in a row, and every fifth person in the row was shot. I wasn't the fifth, but I know I can't get out of here alive.

I say goodbye to everyone and cry. "

Translations of Chaim's letter cited here are available in several languages ​​on the interactive Italian portal Canzoni contro la guerra .

Monumento alla Resistenza europea in Como

An excerpt of the letter from Chaim stands on one of the panels of the memorial in Como in the city garden at the lakeside (Lungolago Mafalda di Savoia) that on May 28, 1983 commemorating the European resistance against the Nazi regime as Monumento alla Resistenza Europea inaugurated . The monument consists of three marble stairs arranged in a circle, which are supposed to symbolize the way to the labor and extermination camps. In the middle of the stairs are three steel plates anchored at an angle in the floor, on which eighteen short passages from the last letters of European resistance fighters sentenced to death are embedded in their respective original language. The texts come from the Lettere di condannati a morte della resistenza europea, first published by Giulio Einaudi 1954 in Turin.

Web links

literature

  • Piero Malvezzi, Giovanni Pirelli (ed.): Lettere di condannati a morte della resistenza europea - Letters from those sentenced to death from the European resistance , with a foreword by Thomas Mann, Giulio Einaudi publishing house, Turin 1954 (first edition)
  • Jean Lartéguy: Les jeunes du monde devant la guerre: documents . Gallimard, Paris 1955, ISBN 978-2-07-023750-0 , pp. 195, 200.
  • Audio CD Luigi Nono 'Il canto sospeso', Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor: Claudio Abbado , speakers: Susanne Lothar and Bruno Ganz - Sony Classical 1993 (documentation booklet)
  • DVD Luigi Nono Il canto sospeso special edition EU 2013 for German schools abroad - Patronage: Guido Westerwelle , Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs © Fondazione L'Unione Europea Berlin ISBN 978-3-943933-00-0

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea | Last letters from the European resistance condemned to death , edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, foreword by Thomas Mann - Steinberg-Verlag Zurich 1955, p. 467; the editors received the original letter from Chaim, written in Yiddish, as a text in French from the 'Scientific Hebrew Central Office for the History of the Fighters of the Ghettos' (Haifa), cf. P. 461 ibid.
  2. ^ The basis of the text of Nono's composition are also those in the anthology Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea | Last letters of suicide bombers from the European resistance published farewell letters from Anton Popov (Bulgaria), Andreas Likourinos (Greece), Eleftherios Kiossès (Greece), Konstantinos Sirbas (Greece), Esther Srul (Poland), Lyubow Grigoryevna Shevtsova (USSR), Irina Malozon (USSR), Eusebio Giambone (Italy) and Elli Voigt (Germany).
  3. ^ Website for the nonoproject
  4. ↑ Chaim, Luigi Nono. Il Canto Sospeso
  5. ^ Lettere Il canto sospeso
  6. ↑ Como on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945
personal data
SURNAME Chaim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish farmer's son
DATE OF BIRTH around 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Sędziszów , Powiat Ropczycko-Sędziszowski , Subcarpathian Voivodeship , Poland
DATE OF DEATH around 1945
Place of death Pustków near Dębica , Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland