Accident of Fate: A Personal Account, 1938–1945

Preface

7A xi PREFACE By the time I turned twenty in January 1945, my father was long dead of tuberculosis, my mother had been murdered in Auschwitz, and my aunt Camilla and uncles Ferdinand and Oskar had been shot by the SS. I had been on the run for almost seven years, dug mass graves as a prisoner in the Jasenovac death camp, escaped deportation to Auschwitz thanks to the protection of the army of Fascist Italy, and was now a second lieutenant in Tito’s Communist Partisans. Over the years, people of all kinds had tried to kill me: Austrian and GermanNazis,CroatianandBosnianFascists,andevenaRoyalistChetnik mole planted among the Yugoslav Partisans. During those same years, people of all kinds had done what they could to save or at least to help me: our Catholic Croatian peasant maid in Zagreb, a Jewish shopkeeper in a border town in Hungary, an anonymous Croatian waiter in a train station restaurant, soldiers of the army of Fascist Italy, the Communist political commissar of my Partisan unit—and even, incredibly, a Nazi general. Overall, my story is one of persecution, sufering, betrayal, and death. It is also, however, one in which lashes of elementary respect for human life appear at times and in places in which they might least be expected. Repeatedly during those terrible years, I witnessed the immense power of the random individual to tip the balance of fate from death to life. More often than not, no courage or particular conviction was required; the basic propensity to behave decently was enough. Overwhelmingly, however, my personal survival is due to pure chance. Those who tried to kill me or, conversely, to help me, behaved similarly towards many others. There was nothing special about me, and there is no reason or justiication for the fact that I survived while so many others with probably much more—and certainly not less— 81118 lim1-14.pdf_out 6/17/114:11 PM K 11 FI xii PREFACE innocence, will to live, strength of mind and body, courage and cunning did not. I witnessed crude manifestations of the blindness of fate over and over again. Knowing that my personal stamina or resourcefulness played an insigniicant role in my survival, and that religious belief played no role at all, I am deeply disturbed by the occasional suggestion that those who survived somehow did so thanks to their courage, their resilience, or their faith. The implication that those who perished could also have survived if only they had shown the same qualities is profoundly disparaging of their memory. It is, in fact, nothing but mindless nonsense that lies in the face of the stark evidence. We who survived owe our lives to chance; in no way were we more worthy, wise, or strong than those who were gassed, hanged, shot, or slaughtered. If I have lived to write these words, then, it has been nothing but an accident of fate. And I must seize the opportunity. Imre Rochlitz 81118 lim1-14.pdf_out 6/17/114:11 PM K 12 7A xiii NORTH SEA GERMANY DENMARK SWEDEN FRANCE BELGIUM SWITZERLAND ITALY AUSTRIA YUGOSLAVIA GREECE ALBANIA HUNGARY ROMANIA BULGARIA A D R I A T I C S E A BALTIC SEA CZECHOSLOVAKIA POLAND LITHUANIA EAST PRUSSIA LATVIA ESTONIA NETHERLANDS 1938: CENTRAL EUROPE before the Anschluss 81118 lim1-14.pdf_out 6/17/114:11 PM K 13 FI 81118 lim1-14.pdf_out 6/17/114:11 PM K 14 ...