Dachau: The Harrowing of Hell

Appendix C

APPEND/XC Postscript: 1972 Where are they now? I sent out many letters requesting information about some of the former inmates of Dachau. There were only a few responses. From Ruth Jakusch, a staff member of the Dachau concentration camp, now a memorial site. From the International Tracing Service at Arolsen, Germany, an arm of the International Research Service, in turn a department of the International Committee of the Red Cross. From the Secretary General of the Comite International de Dachau, GeorgesValery Walraeve, "en 1945 aDachau Kapo de la Desinfection Kommando Revier" (in 1945, a Dachau Capo assigned to supervise the disinfection crew working in the inner compound hospital ). At the time of this writing, Albert Guerisse (Patrick O'Leary) is a general in the Belgian Army, and holds the office of Executive President of the Comite International de Dachau, an appropriate position for the man who was the first president of the International Prisoners' Committee. General ~ikolai Michailow , who succeeded Guerisse as president of the IPe, lives in Moscow, and Arthur Haulot, the IPC vice-president, in BelglUm . A little information is available about certain members of the IPC. Dr. Franz Blaha resides in Czechoslovakia, and Pim Boellaerd in Holland (in our records of 1945 he was listed as Willem Boellaard). I have not been able to confirm a report that Ali Kuci became a l!nited ~ations delegate, and later died in a New York sanitarium of the disease he contracted at Dachau. Oskar Mueller became a Minister of Hessen; he died as a result of an accident in 1970.1 George Pallavicini, the Hungarian member of the IPC, is said to have died in a Siberian concentration camp in 1948.2 For Edmond Michelet, the leader of the I 275 French, death came in 1970 at the age of 70; he left behind his widow, seven children, and forty grandchildren. We know more about him than the others because he had become a public figure. The son of a wholesale grocer, he became a businessman, but it was in the Catholic Trade movement that he was able to devote himself to social work. A fervent Gaullist, he helped found "Combat," one of the earliest Resistance movements to be organized in southern France. A year later he was arrested and sent to Dachau. After leaving the camp and recovering his health, he held public office continually until his death, representing the Catholic Popular Republican Party. A member of the French cabinet, he succeeded Andre Malraux as Minister of Culture; in this position he labored to alleviate the desperate situation of the Paris Opera. A great French patriot, he will be remembered for the leaflet he distributed in June 1940, asking the French people to continue the war. One day later, Charles de Gaulle reached the same decision. "Open mind, generous heart, faithful companion." These were the words Charles de Gaulle used to describe his steadfast supporter.3 In Malraux's Anti-Memoirs, I read that Charles de Gaulle waited at the station to welcome Michelet and the deportees returning from Dachau with him. What were Michelet's feelings? "Are we the pensioners of Hell?" he asks. "When we came back, what we felt to begin with was that life was a bonus. . . we should have been dead; after that everything was a jumble." The Anti-Memoirs conclude with a memorable passage in which Michelet, Malraux, and three other survivors assess the impact on themselves and the world of the organized brutalization and the degradation that characterized the Nazi prison camps. "The true barbarism," says Malraux, "is Dachau; the true civilization is first of all the element in man which the camps sought to destroy." 4 In the offices of the International Tracing Service is a Master Index of thirty million cards, in which individuals' names are classified according to a phonetic-alphabetical system which allows for variations and modifications of Slavonic names and suf276 I Appendix C fixes. There is a continuing demand for information from all over the world; in 1970, more than 169,000 reports and certificates , many of them relating to deaths, illnesses, and pension and indemnification proceedings, were dispatched from Arolsen.5 The Director of the International Tracing Service, Mr. A. de Cocatrix, has been generous in his efforts to answer my questions , but despite a search of the voluminous files has been unable to provide information about Leon Malczewski, the IPC secretary, Mr. Farnik, the warehouse supervisor, and some of the other internees...