Mark S. Smith's Blog
April 14, 2015
August 15, 2014
Why I wrote Treblinka Survivor
I began with the idea that I wanted to write something about anti-Semitism. Few Jews over the past two millennia have not been subjected to this vile phenomenon that is so deeply ingrained in European and more recently Middle Eastern cultures. I have been at the receiving end of it many times and so has my family, and I wanted to stick my oar in.
How many others – black, white, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Native American, Hindu, Muslim – still feel the sting of racial hatred, discrimination and persecution upon them? I have always held the view, perhaps best expressed by Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi: “I can't bear how a man can be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he happens to belong.” History teaches us that the consequences of hatred and discrimination are murderous and genocidal – 800,000 slain in Rwanda, two million Cambodians, 450,000 in Darfur, a million Armenians, six million Jews. An estimated four million Africans died chained in the belly of slave vessels en route to America. The list is continuous, the suffering incalculable, extending from the remotest days of human life to the present and forward into the future. Anti-Semitism, the theme of my book, is but one manifestation of evil. Yet it transfixes me – not only because I am a Jew, but also because it expresses the senseless self-loathing of Mankind. I wanted to analyze it, understand it, nail it down and, ultimately if naively, cure it.
I read volumes on the subject. I learned of the origins of anti-Semitism during the early days of Christianity, whose gospels – violently anti-Jewish and political in nature – placed exceptional blame on the Jews for the death of Jesus. Their motive, conveniently circumventing the fact that Jesus died a Roman death on the cross, was self-interest – to demonstrate that the Christians had not shared Jewish disloyalty towards Rome during the revolt of 70AD. The words of the Gospels have had terrible consequences for Jews through the centuries. The attacks in the Koran are no less brutal for Jewish refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet. Muslims who cite these abuses to vindicate their own anti-Semitism disregard other Koranic passages which show respect for Jews and preach tolerance. I saw how anti-Jewish vitriol through the ages – both Christian and Muslim – had been used by religious and political leaders to manipulate the herd. For many months, I churned my theme in my head, but I was a writer without a story.
Then, one day in 2005, while the world was commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, my deliberations came to an end. I have been a journalist for more than a quarter of a century, and I recognize a good story when I see one. I was on the phone with my friend, Sam, in London. It must have been late January or early February, because Auschwitz had been liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
Sam said: “You remember what my father used to say, ‘Auschwitz was nothing. Auschwitz was a walk in the park.’”
I had known Hershl Sperling very well when I was a teenager. After all, he was my friend’s father. His death in 1989, a suicide from a bridge in the Scottish city of Glasgow, had shocked and perplexed me. Suddenly, I saw him on the bridge and I was struck by the recollection of the blue-black number tattooed on his arm. He had survived almost everything the Nazis could throw at him – blitzkrieg, the ghetto, prison camps, work camps, concentration camps, death camps, death marches. He also had been in Treblinka, the most murderous place on earth. Of the near-million souls who were transported there to die, Hershl Sperling was among approximately seventy who survived. What possessed him to take his own life almost fifty years later?
“Did you know my father wrote a book after liberation?” Sam told me during that same conversation. I hadn’t known.
“Have you read the book?” I asked.
He hadn’t. It wasn’t until months later, after tracking down the work in an antiquarian bookshop in Jerusalem and getting it translated from the original Yiddish, that I discovered Hershl had, in fact, written just a part in this book, titled ‘From the Last Extermination’. His contribution, however, was called simply ‘Treblinka’. Only after reading it did I begin to understand the riddle of his suicide. In Treblinka, the most gruesome and efficient death machine ever known, the horror of Mankind’s self-loathing plunged to a terrifying nadir.
I had begun with anti-Semitism and end up writing the story of my friend’s father. Recently, I read an online report on research by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which revealed the prevalence of anti-Semitism among Norwegian Muslims. It was jarring, because Scandinavian countries are usually regarded as liberal and tolerant. According to the study, teachers at Norewegian schools with large numbers of Muslim students often reported that these students "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews". According to the research, Muslims believe "Jew-hate is legitimate” and "Muslims laugh” or demand teachers desist from efforts to educate about the Holocaust. I suspect Hershl Sperling would not have been surprised.
I know that my friend’s father tumbled from that bridge at least partly because the trauma of Treblinka had become a part of his very being and he could never be cured. But I suspect also that he understood the world could not be cured either.
Anti-Semitism is a disease passed from one generation to another. Yet the optimist in me knows that no child is born an anti-Semite or a racist. I paraphrase others when I say I do not know what a Jew is – or for that matter a Christian, a Chinese, a Muslim or even a Pygmy – I recognize only human beings. It occurs to me that every time we resist hatred and each time we teach tolerance to our children, we make the future of the world that much better.
I put this idea to Hershl’s son. He sighed and said: ‘I think that’s too much to hope for.”
How many others – black, white, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Native American, Hindu, Muslim – still feel the sting of racial hatred, discrimination and persecution upon them? I have always held the view, perhaps best expressed by Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi: “I can't bear how a man can be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he happens to belong.” History teaches us that the consequences of hatred and discrimination are murderous and genocidal – 800,000 slain in Rwanda, two million Cambodians, 450,000 in Darfur, a million Armenians, six million Jews. An estimated four million Africans died chained in the belly of slave vessels en route to America. The list is continuous, the suffering incalculable, extending from the remotest days of human life to the present and forward into the future. Anti-Semitism, the theme of my book, is but one manifestation of evil. Yet it transfixes me – not only because I am a Jew, but also because it expresses the senseless self-loathing of Mankind. I wanted to analyze it, understand it, nail it down and, ultimately if naively, cure it.
I read volumes on the subject. I learned of the origins of anti-Semitism during the early days of Christianity, whose gospels – violently anti-Jewish and political in nature – placed exceptional blame on the Jews for the death of Jesus. Their motive, conveniently circumventing the fact that Jesus died a Roman death on the cross, was self-interest – to demonstrate that the Christians had not shared Jewish disloyalty towards Rome during the revolt of 70AD. The words of the Gospels have had terrible consequences for Jews through the centuries. The attacks in the Koran are no less brutal for Jewish refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet. Muslims who cite these abuses to vindicate their own anti-Semitism disregard other Koranic passages which show respect for Jews and preach tolerance. I saw how anti-Jewish vitriol through the ages – both Christian and Muslim – had been used by religious and political leaders to manipulate the herd. For many months, I churned my theme in my head, but I was a writer without a story.
Then, one day in 2005, while the world was commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, my deliberations came to an end. I have been a journalist for more than a quarter of a century, and I recognize a good story when I see one. I was on the phone with my friend, Sam, in London. It must have been late January or early February, because Auschwitz had been liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
Sam said: “You remember what my father used to say, ‘Auschwitz was nothing. Auschwitz was a walk in the park.’”
I had known Hershl Sperling very well when I was a teenager. After all, he was my friend’s father. His death in 1989, a suicide from a bridge in the Scottish city of Glasgow, had shocked and perplexed me. Suddenly, I saw him on the bridge and I was struck by the recollection of the blue-black number tattooed on his arm. He had survived almost everything the Nazis could throw at him – blitzkrieg, the ghetto, prison camps, work camps, concentration camps, death camps, death marches. He also had been in Treblinka, the most murderous place on earth. Of the near-million souls who were transported there to die, Hershl Sperling was among approximately seventy who survived. What possessed him to take his own life almost fifty years later?
“Did you know my father wrote a book after liberation?” Sam told me during that same conversation. I hadn’t known.
“Have you read the book?” I asked.
He hadn’t. It wasn’t until months later, after tracking down the work in an antiquarian bookshop in Jerusalem and getting it translated from the original Yiddish, that I discovered Hershl had, in fact, written just a part in this book, titled ‘From the Last Extermination’. His contribution, however, was called simply ‘Treblinka’. Only after reading it did I begin to understand the riddle of his suicide. In Treblinka, the most gruesome and efficient death machine ever known, the horror of Mankind’s self-loathing plunged to a terrifying nadir.
I had begun with anti-Semitism and end up writing the story of my friend’s father. Recently, I read an online report on research by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which revealed the prevalence of anti-Semitism among Norwegian Muslims. It was jarring, because Scandinavian countries are usually regarded as liberal and tolerant. According to the study, teachers at Norewegian schools with large numbers of Muslim students often reported that these students "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews". According to the research, Muslims believe "Jew-hate is legitimate” and "Muslims laugh” or demand teachers desist from efforts to educate about the Holocaust. I suspect Hershl Sperling would not have been surprised.
I know that my friend’s father tumbled from that bridge at least partly because the trauma of Treblinka had become a part of his very being and he could never be cured. But I suspect also that he understood the world could not be cured either.
Anti-Semitism is a disease passed from one generation to another. Yet the optimist in me knows that no child is born an anti-Semite or a racist. I paraphrase others when I say I do not know what a Jew is – or for that matter a Christian, a Chinese, a Muslim or even a Pygmy – I recognize only human beings. It occurs to me that every time we resist hatred and each time we teach tolerance to our children, we make the future of the world that much better.
I put this idea to Hershl’s son. He sighed and said: ‘I think that’s too much to hope for.”
Why I wrote Treblinka Survivor
I began with the idea that I wanted to write something about anti-Semitism. Few Jews over the past two millennia have not been subjected to this vile phenomenon that is so deeply ingrained in European and more recently Middle Eastern cultures. I have been at the receiving end of it many times and so has my family, and I wanted to stick my oar in.
How many others – black, white, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Native American, Hindu, Muslim – still feel the sting of racial hatred, discrimination and persecution upon them? I have always held the view, perhaps best expressed by Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi: “I can't bear how a man can be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he happens to belong.” History teaches us that the consequences of hatred and discrimination are murderous and genocidal – 800,000 slain in Rwanda, two million Cambodians, 450,000 in Darfur, a million Armenians, six million Jews. An estimated four million Africans died chained in the belly of slave vessels en route to America. The list is continuous, the suffering incalculable, extending from the remotest days of human life to the present and forward into the future. Anti-Semitism, the theme of my book, is but one manifestation of evil. Yet it transfixes me – not only because I am a Jew, but also because it expresses the senseless self-loathing of Mankind. I wanted to analyze it, understand it, nail it down and, ultimately if naively, cure it.
I read volumes on the subject. I learned of the origins of anti-Semitism during the early days of Christianity, whose gospels – violently anti-Jewish and political in nature – placed exceptional blame on the Jews for the death of Jesus. Their motive, conveniently circumventing the fact that Jesus died a Roman death on the cross, was self-interest – to demonstrate that the Christians had not shared Jewish disloyalty towards Rome during the revolt of 70AD. The words of the Gospels have had terrible consequences for Jews through the centuries. The attacks in the Koran are no less brutal for Jewish refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet. Muslims who cite these abuses to vindicate their own anti-Semitism disregard other Koranic passages which show respect for Jews and preach tolerance. I saw how anti-Jewish vitriol through the ages – both Christian and Muslim – had been used by religious and political leaders to manipulate the herd. For many months, I churned my theme in my head, but I was a writer without a story.
Then, one day in 2005, while the world was commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, my deliberations came to an end. I have been a journalist for more than a quarter of a century, and I recognize a good story when I see one. I was on the phone with my friend, Sam, in London. It must have been late January or early February, because Auschwitz had been liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
Sam said: “You remember what my father used to say, ‘Auschwitz was nothing. Auschwitz was a walk in the park.’”
I had known Hershl Sperling very well when I was a teenager. After all, he was my friend’s father. His death in 1989, a suicide from a bridge in the Scottish city of Glasgow, had shocked and perplexed me. Suddenly, I saw him on the bridge and I was struck by the recollection of the blue-black number tattooed on his arm. He had survived almost everything the Nazis could throw at him – blitzkrieg, the ghetto, prison camps, work camps, concentration camps, death camps, death marches. He also had been in Treblinka, the most murderous place on earth. Of the near-million souls who were transported there to die, Hershl Sperling was among approximately seventy who survived. What possessed him to take his own life almost fifty years later?
“Did you know my father wrote a book after liberation?” Sam told me during that same conversation. I hadn’t known.
“Have you read the book?” I asked.
He hadn’t. It wasn’t until months later, after tracking down the work in an antiquarian bookshop in Jerusalem and getting it translated from the original Yiddish, that I discovered Hershl had, in fact, written just a part in this book, titled ‘From the Last Extermination’. His contribution, however, was called simply ‘Treblinka’. Only after reading it did I begin to understand the riddle of his suicide. In Treblinka, the most gruesome and efficient death machine ever known, the horror of Mankind’s self-loathing plunged to a terrifying nadir.
I had begun with anti-Semitism and end up writing the story of my friend’s father. Recently, I read an online report on research by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which revealed the prevalence of anti-Semitism among Norwegian Muslims. It was jarring, because Scandinavian countries are usually regarded as liberal and tolerant. According to the study, teachers at Norewegian schools with large numbers of Muslim students often reported that these students "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews". According to the research, Muslims believe "Jew-hate is legitimate” and "Muslims laugh” or demand teachers desist from efforts to educate about the Holocaust. I suspect Hershl Sperling would not have been surprised.
I know that my friend’s father tumbled from that bridge at least partly because the trauma of Treblinka had become a part of his very being and he could never be cured. But I suspect also that he understood the world could not be cured either.
Anti-Semitism is a disease passed from one generation to another. Yet the optimist in me knows that no child is born an anti-Semite or a racist. I paraphrase others when I say I do not know what a Jew is – or for that matter a Christian, a Chinese, a Muslim or even a Pygmy – I recognize only human beings. It occurs to me that every time we resist hatred and each time we teach tolerance to our children, we make the future of the world that much better.
I put this idea to Hershl’s son. He sighed and said: ‘I think that’s too much to hope for.”
How many others – black, white, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Native American, Hindu, Muslim – still feel the sting of racial hatred, discrimination and persecution upon them? I have always held the view, perhaps best expressed by Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi: “I can't bear how a man can be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he happens to belong.” History teaches us that the consequences of hatred and discrimination are murderous and genocidal – 800,000 slain in Rwanda, two million Cambodians, 450,000 in Darfur, a million Armenians, six million Jews. An estimated four million Africans died chained in the belly of slave vessels en route to America. The list is continuous, the suffering incalculable, extending from the remotest days of human life to the present and forward into the future. Anti-Semitism, the theme of my book, is but one manifestation of evil. Yet it transfixes me – not only because I am a Jew, but also because it expresses the senseless self-loathing of Mankind. I wanted to analyze it, understand it, nail it down and, ultimately if naively, cure it.
I read volumes on the subject. I learned of the origins of anti-Semitism during the early days of Christianity, whose gospels – violently anti-Jewish and political in nature – placed exceptional blame on the Jews for the death of Jesus. Their motive, conveniently circumventing the fact that Jesus died a Roman death on the cross, was self-interest – to demonstrate that the Christians had not shared Jewish disloyalty towards Rome during the revolt of 70AD. The words of the Gospels have had terrible consequences for Jews through the centuries. The attacks in the Koran are no less brutal for Jewish refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet. Muslims who cite these abuses to vindicate their own anti-Semitism disregard other Koranic passages which show respect for Jews and preach tolerance. I saw how anti-Jewish vitriol through the ages – both Christian and Muslim – had been used by religious and political leaders to manipulate the herd. For many months, I churned my theme in my head, but I was a writer without a story.
Then, one day in 2005, while the world was commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, my deliberations came to an end. I have been a journalist for more than a quarter of a century, and I recognize a good story when I see one. I was on the phone with my friend, Sam, in London. It must have been late January or early February, because Auschwitz had been liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
Sam said: “You remember what my father used to say, ‘Auschwitz was nothing. Auschwitz was a walk in the park.’”
I had known Hershl Sperling very well when I was a teenager. After all, he was my friend’s father. His death in 1989, a suicide from a bridge in the Scottish city of Glasgow, had shocked and perplexed me. Suddenly, I saw him on the bridge and I was struck by the recollection of the blue-black number tattooed on his arm. He had survived almost everything the Nazis could throw at him – blitzkrieg, the ghetto, prison camps, work camps, concentration camps, death camps, death marches. He also had been in Treblinka, the most murderous place on earth. Of the near-million souls who were transported there to die, Hershl Sperling was among approximately seventy who survived. What possessed him to take his own life almost fifty years later?
“Did you know my father wrote a book after liberation?” Sam told me during that same conversation. I hadn’t known.
“Have you read the book?” I asked.
He hadn’t. It wasn’t until months later, after tracking down the work in an antiquarian bookshop in Jerusalem and getting it translated from the original Yiddish, that I discovered Hershl had, in fact, written just a part in this book, titled ‘From the Last Extermination’. His contribution, however, was called simply ‘Treblinka’. Only after reading it did I begin to understand the riddle of his suicide. In Treblinka, the most gruesome and efficient death machine ever known, the horror of Mankind’s self-loathing plunged to a terrifying nadir.
I had begun with anti-Semitism and end up writing the story of my friend’s father. Recently, I read an online report on research by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which revealed the prevalence of anti-Semitism among Norwegian Muslims. It was jarring, because Scandinavian countries are usually regarded as liberal and tolerant. According to the study, teachers at Norewegian schools with large numbers of Muslim students often reported that these students "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews". According to the research, Muslims believe "Jew-hate is legitimate” and "Muslims laugh” or demand teachers desist from efforts to educate about the Holocaust. I suspect Hershl Sperling would not have been surprised.
I know that my friend’s father tumbled from that bridge at least partly because the trauma of Treblinka had become a part of his very being and he could never be cured. But I suspect also that he understood the world could not be cured either.
Anti-Semitism is a disease passed from one generation to another. Yet the optimist in me knows that no child is born an anti-Semite or a racist. I paraphrase others when I say I do not know what a Jew is – or for that matter a Christian, a Chinese, a Muslim or even a Pygmy – I recognize only human beings. It occurs to me that every time we resist hatred and each time we teach tolerance to our children, we make the future of the world that much better.
I put this idea to Hershl’s son. He sighed and said: ‘I think that’s too much to hope for.”
