Beni Virtzberg
Encyclopedia
Beni Virtzberg was an Israeli forester
, Holocaust survivor
and writer who was among the first in Israel to write an autobiographical account of his experiences during and after the Holocaust. He began writing his book “Migai Hahariga Lesha'ar Hagai" (“From the Valley of Slaughter to the Gate of the Valley") in the wake of the Adolf Eichmann
trial, when court testimony by survivors prompted Israelis to openly and publicly discuss what the survivors had lived through.
, Germany
, to Gabriel Gustav, a merchant, and Rachel, a university graduate and homemaker.
Alarmed by the events of Kristallnacht
in 1938, the family relocated to Poland and moved into the Jewish quarter in Sosnowiec
. They were subsequently transferred to the Środula ghetto during the war, and on August 12, 1942 they were sent to Auschwitz as part of the mass deportation of Zagłębie.
Virtzberg’s mother was killed upon their arrival at the camp. Virtzberg and his father were separated from one another, prompting Virtzberg to turn to one of the Nazi officers nearby and ask him to let the two of them stay together. By fate, the officer he approached was Josef Mengele
, who supervised the selection of prisoners in the camp. Mengele opted to spare the father’s life, and young Beni was assigned to work in the camp hospital where Mengele conducted his notorious experiments.
For several weeks he served as Mengele’s personal servant and errand boy. Mengele spared Virtzberg’s father from subsequent selections, and assigned the father to a block where Virtzberg was able to smuggle him food.
In January 1945, with Allied troops approaching, Auschwitz was vacated and its remaining prisoners were forced into a death march
in an attempt to conceal evidence of the atrocities that took place there. Virtzberg’s father was too ill to walk, and when he finally collapsed an S.S. soldier shot and killed him as Virtzberg watched in horror.
After he was liberated, Virtzberg spent a few months in the town of Santa Maria in Italy before immigrating to Israel as part of the Youth Aliyah
in November 1945. There he was taken in by members of Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha
, where he trained for service in the Palmach
, the military force organized by Jews in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine.
He joined the Palmach in February 1948 and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. During the war he participated in efforts to break the blockade of Jerusalem’s Jewish residents, and later he joined in the battles down in Negev Desert, during which four of his brothers in arms were killed.
After his release from the army, Virtzberg married Rachel Issachar (Bashari), a native of Rehovot of Yemenite
ancestry who like Vitzberg fought in the Palmach. Virtzberg worked for the Jewish National Fund
as a forester, and later directed the research department for the Southern region forestry operation. During his tenure there, he developed the Liman irrigation system, a technique inspired by Nabataean
irrigation methods.
His book, which was published in 1967, did not meet with commercial success and was eclipsed by the flood of books published following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. The book chronicled his experiences and those of nine friends who like him survived the Holocaust, immigrated to Israel, and participated in the War of Independence. He wrote:
“Ten children together left the gates of death, six of us were left, not six orphaned children but six fighters. We fought and will fight when necessary, so that Jewish children, wherever they are,
shall never become orphaned as we were.”
The Israeli historian Avihu Ronen described Virtzberg’s book as follows: “This is a unique book that was ahead of its time, and includes extremely important and authentic personal testimony. Virtzberg’s story is importantly unique and has no parallel among the various testimonials and stories from the Holocaust.”
On August 4, 1968, a little over a week before turning 40 and plagued with depression, Virtzberg took his own life and shot himself in his family home,
leaving behind his wife Rachel, a son, Ilan Virtzberg, who went on to become an acclaimed songwriter and performer, and a daughter, Dahlia. At his funeral, the chief rabbi of Beer-Sheba, Rabbi Eliyahu Kushelevsky, eulogized him by noting: “Eichmann killed him twenty-five years ago. But we only received the body today.”
played an essential role in the narrative: Virtzberg’s account went beyond his experiences in the camps and described how he immersed himself in his adopted new homeland and how he participated in the armed struggle for its existence. It was one of the few books in Israel at the time to offer harrowing details of life in the concentration camps. Although the Eichmann trial had broken the implicit taboo among Israelis regarding the Holocaust, many survivors, including those who had written for most of their lives, remained uncomfortable committing their experiences to paper for various reasons.
Virtzberg decided to lay bare his past as an uprooted refugee
despite having willingly forged a new Israeli identity and all but erased his diaspora
identity. By his own admission, writing the book was an emotionally wrenching process. His book describes life in Auschwitz from the vantage point of a minor, and offers a rare perspective on Dr. Mengele and his experiments on human subjects.
On the one hand, Virtzberg’s narrative challenged the conventional view at the time of survivors as “human dust” who passively accepted the generosity of their Israeli saviours. But it also challenged more recent narratives that viewed the absorption process as one that was forced upon immigrants. Virtzberg describes voluntarily choosing to be a “new Jew.” In his book he sought acceptance not just as a fighter and a “new Jew” but also as someone who identified himself as an “old Jew.”
At the time, Israelis had only partial knowledge about the Holocaust, which fed negative stereotypes and hasty judgments towards Holocaust survivors. The Israeli author Rivka Gurfine, writing in 1965, described a partition separating survivors from the Israeli native population: “Fate, which honors the daring and protects the courageous, dictated that those who accepted their deaths and walked towards it thousands of times remained like a flag
planted atop ruins
, as bearers of a grand legend. How unfortunate it is that even these days, their hard journey has not yet ended, even after being drawn to the source of strength, their lighthouse
, whose light drew them from all depths; their blood is laced with memories and echoes that provide them both a burden and an asset
. It requires great effort, both ours and theirs, to bring down the partition that the past has erected, their unique past of which we have no part.” Through his book, Virtzberg aimed to change this attitude among Israeli natives and remove this partition, but he was unable to achieve his goal.
The book did not meet with commercial success. This profoundly affected Virtzberg, who descended into the dark past his book had resurrected. His failure to achieve the goals he set out to accomplish in writing the book turned into an existential threat in the form of a deep depression. His case was another example of the dilemma between writing and life described years later by the Spanish writer Jorge Semprún
, himself a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp
, whereby those who wrote about their memories too soon often ended up paying for it with their lives.
In December 2008 the book was reissued in a new edition by Carmel Publishing, including a new Introduction, Afterword, and photographs.
Forester
250px|thumb|right|Foresters of [[Southern University of Chile|UACh]] in the [[Valdivian forest]]s of San Pablo de Tregua, ChileA forester is a person who practices forestry, the science, art, and profession of managing forests. Foresters engage in a broad range of activities including timber...
, Holocaust survivor
Sh'erit ha-Pletah
Sh'erit ha-Pletah is a biblical term used by Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to refer to themselves and the communities they formed following their liberation in the spring of 1945....
and writer who was among the first in Israel to write an autobiographical account of his experiences during and after the Holocaust. He began writing his book “Migai Hahariga Lesha'ar Hagai" (“From the Valley of Slaughter to the Gate of the Valley") in the wake of the Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
trial, when court testimony by survivors prompted Israelis to openly and publicly discuss what the survivors had lived through.
His Life
Virtzberg was born in Altona, HamburgAltona, Hamburg
Altona is the westernmost urban borough of the German city state of Hamburg, on the right bank of the Elbe river. From 1640 to 1864 Altona was under the administration of the Danish monarchy. Altona was an independent city until 1937...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, to Gabriel Gustav, a merchant, and Rachel, a university graduate and homemaker.
Alarmed by the events of Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
in 1938, the family relocated to Poland and moved into the Jewish quarter in Sosnowiec
Sosnowiec
Sosnowiec is a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in southern Poland, near Katowice. It is one of the central districts of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union - a metropolis with a combined population of over two million people located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Brynica river .It is situated in...
. They were subsequently transferred to the Środula ghetto during the war, and on August 12, 1942 they were sent to Auschwitz as part of the mass deportation of Zagłębie.
Virtzberg’s mother was killed upon their arrival at the camp. Virtzberg and his father were separated from one another, prompting Virtzberg to turn to one of the Nazi officers nearby and ask him to let the two of them stay together. By fate, the officer he approached was Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
, who supervised the selection of prisoners in the camp. Mengele opted to spare the father’s life, and young Beni was assigned to work in the camp hospital where Mengele conducted his notorious experiments.
For several weeks he served as Mengele’s personal servant and errand boy. Mengele spared Virtzberg’s father from subsequent selections, and assigned the father to a block where Virtzberg was able to smuggle him food.
In January 1945, with Allied troops approaching, Auschwitz was vacated and its remaining prisoners were forced into a death march
Death marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
in an attempt to conceal evidence of the atrocities that took place there. Virtzberg’s father was too ill to walk, and when he finally collapsed an S.S. soldier shot and killed him as Virtzberg watched in horror.
After he was liberated, Virtzberg spent a few months in the town of Santa Maria in Italy before immigrating to Israel as part of the Youth Aliyah
Youth Aliyah
Szold was initially skeptical about the merits of Freier's proposal, as she believed that Germany offered better educational opportunities for Jewish children than Palestine. However, Hitler's rise to power convinced her otherwise. The Nuremberg Laws were enacted in 1935 and on 31 March 1936 German...
in November 1945. There he was taken in by members of Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha
Givat HaShlosha
Givat HaShlosha is a kibbutz in central Israel, about 4 km east of Petah Tikva, near the Yarkon river.A member of the Kibbutz Movement, it falls under the jurisdiction of Drom Hasharon Regional Council...
, where he trained for service in the Palmach
Palmach
The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palmach was established on May 15, 1941...
, the military force organized by Jews in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine.
He joined the Palmach in February 1948 and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. During the war he participated in efforts to break the blockade of Jerusalem’s Jewish residents, and later he joined in the battles down in Negev Desert, during which four of his brothers in arms were killed.
After his release from the army, Virtzberg married Rachel Issachar (Bashari), a native of Rehovot of Yemenite
Yemenite Jews
Yemenite Jews are those Jews who live, or whose recent ancestors lived, in Yemen . Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of Yemen's Jewish population was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet...
ancestry who like Vitzberg fought in the Palmach. Virtzberg worked for the Jewish National Fund
Jewish National Fund
The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...
as a forester, and later directed the research department for the Southern region forestry operation. During his tenure there, he developed the Liman irrigation system, a technique inspired by Nabataean
Nabataeans
Thamudi3.jpgThe Nabataeans, also Nabateans , were ancient peoples of southern Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
irrigation methods.
His book, which was published in 1967, did not meet with commercial success and was eclipsed by the flood of books published following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. The book chronicled his experiences and those of nine friends who like him survived the Holocaust, immigrated to Israel, and participated in the War of Independence. He wrote:
“Ten children together left the gates of death, six of us were left, not six orphaned children but six fighters. We fought and will fight when necessary, so that Jewish children, wherever they are,
shall never become orphaned as we were.”
The Israeli historian Avihu Ronen described Virtzberg’s book as follows: “This is a unique book that was ahead of its time, and includes extremely important and authentic personal testimony. Virtzberg’s story is importantly unique and has no parallel among the various testimonials and stories from the Holocaust.”
On August 4, 1968, a little over a week before turning 40 and plagued with depression, Virtzberg took his own life and shot himself in his family home,
leaving behind his wife Rachel, a son, Ilan Virtzberg, who went on to become an acclaimed songwriter and performer, and a daughter, Dahlia. At his funeral, the chief rabbi of Beer-Sheba, Rabbi Eliyahu Kushelevsky, eulogized him by noting: “Eichmann killed him twenty-five years ago. But we only received the body today.”
His Autobiography
Virtzberg’s book was unusual for its time. It was the first eyewitness account by a Holocaust survivor in which the State of IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
played an essential role in the narrative: Virtzberg’s account went beyond his experiences in the camps and described how he immersed himself in his adopted new homeland and how he participated in the armed struggle for its existence. It was one of the few books in Israel at the time to offer harrowing details of life in the concentration camps. Although the Eichmann trial had broken the implicit taboo among Israelis regarding the Holocaust, many survivors, including those who had written for most of their lives, remained uncomfortable committing their experiences to paper for various reasons.
Virtzberg decided to lay bare his past as an uprooted refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
despite having willingly forged a new Israeli identity and all but erased his diaspora
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
identity. By his own admission, writing the book was an emotionally wrenching process. His book describes life in Auschwitz from the vantage point of a minor, and offers a rare perspective on Dr. Mengele and his experiments on human subjects.
On the one hand, Virtzberg’s narrative challenged the conventional view at the time of survivors as “human dust” who passively accepted the generosity of their Israeli saviours. But it also challenged more recent narratives that viewed the absorption process as one that was forced upon immigrants. Virtzberg describes voluntarily choosing to be a “new Jew.” In his book he sought acceptance not just as a fighter and a “new Jew” but also as someone who identified himself as an “old Jew.”
At the time, Israelis had only partial knowledge about the Holocaust, which fed negative stereotypes and hasty judgments towards Holocaust survivors. The Israeli author Rivka Gurfine, writing in 1965, described a partition separating survivors from the Israeli native population: “Fate, which honors the daring and protects the courageous, dictated that those who accepted their deaths and walked towards it thousands of times remained like a flag
Flag
A flag is a piece of fabric with a distinctive design that is usually rectangular and used as a symbol, as a signaling device, or decoration. The term flag is also used to refer to the graphic design employed by a flag, or to its depiction in another medium.The first flags were used to assist...
planted atop ruins
Ruins
Ruins are the remains of human-made architecture: structures that were once complete, as time went by, have fallen into a state of partial or complete disrepair, due to lack of maintenance or deliberate acts of destruction...
, as bearers of a grand legend. How unfortunate it is that even these days, their hard journey has not yet ended, even after being drawn to the source of strength, their lighthouse
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....
, whose light drew them from all depths; their blood is laced with memories and echoes that provide them both a burden and an asset
Asset
In financial accounting, assets are economic resources. Anything tangible or intangible that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset...
. It requires great effort, both ours and theirs, to bring down the partition that the past has erected, their unique past of which we have no part.” Through his book, Virtzberg aimed to change this attitude among Israeli natives and remove this partition, but he was unable to achieve his goal.
The book did not meet with commercial success. This profoundly affected Virtzberg, who descended into the dark past his book had resurrected. His failure to achieve the goals he set out to accomplish in writing the book turned into an existential threat in the form of a deep depression. His case was another example of the dilemma between writing and life described years later by the Spanish writer Jorge Semprún
Jorge Semprún
Jorge Semprún Maura was a Spanish writer and politician who lived in France most of his life and wrote primarily in French. From 1953 to 1962, during the era of Francisco Franco, Semprún lived clandestinely in Spain working as an organizer for the exiled Communist Party of Spain, but was expelled...
, himself a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
, whereby those who wrote about their memories too soon often ended up paying for it with their lives.
In December 2008 the book was reissued in a new edition by Carmel Publishing, including a new Introduction, Afterword, and photographs.
External links
- Mengele's errand boy: an article in the Haaretz Magazine by Dalia Karpel, February 13, 2009
- No help from Elie Wiesel: in the Haaretz Magazine by Dalia Karpel, February 13, 2009