Dan Snow's History Hit - Confronting a Nazi past

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

Derek Niemman and Noemie Lopian work together. Two people from very different backgrounds, they tour the world telling people about their family stories.Author and writer Derek Niemann discovered only a few years ago that the grandfather he never knew had been an SS officer, in charge of slave labourers in the Nazi concentration camps.Dr Noemie Lopian is the daughter of Holocaust survivors: at the age of 10, her mother had a Gestapo pistol pointed at her head. Her father survived four years of slave labour and concentration camps. Noemie translated herfather's gripping and deeply humane memoir of those years - The Long Night.The crimes committed by and against their forebears have drawn Noemie and Derek to form a highly unusual and indeed possibly unique partnership. In 2019, Noemie and Derek began sharing their stories as a warning of the perils of extremism and to inspire greater understanding.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is Dan Snow. Still buzzing, still excited. I don't know if you heard yesterday's episode of the podcast, but I was on the riverbanks of the Thames in the shadow, literally in the shadow, of London Bridge. One of many bridges to span the Thames, that exact spot stretching all the way back to the Romans who first put a bridge across the Thames. It was as far downriver as they could still bridge, and that became the reason for the existence of London. And we found a coin, not just any coin, we found a George II coin from 1752. Now, as everybody knows, the 1750s was the greatest and best decade, and most interesting

decade, I should say, in British history. And so it was a great privilege to find. It's very serendipitous. I found that coin. That's, of course, grotesque. The brilliant Lara Maitland, the famous London mudlarker, found the coin. But I was present. I was there. So some of my juju made that coin surface just when it did. Anyway, this podcast has got nothing to do with any of that stuff. You'll be hearing all that in detail on the podcast coming soon and on the History Hit channel, historyhit.tv, new digital history channel. Please go and check it out. You use the code POD6, exclusive to podcast listeners. You get six weeks for free of charge. So go and sign up, please. You'll also be able to watch this interview that's coming up on this podcast. and sign up please. You'll also be able to watch this interview that's coming up on this podcast.

On the pod today we have a remarkable couple of people. We have Noemi Lopian and we have Derek Nieman. Derek got an unpleasant surprise a few years ago when he discovered that his grandfather was an indicted war criminal, partially responsible for the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people during the Holocaust. He wrote a book about that experience. That brought him together with Naomi Lopian, because she also published a book. She wrote up the experience, the diaries of her father, Ernst, who was a Jew caught up in the Holocaust. Both his siblings perished in Auschwitz.

Only one of his sisters survived, and he was lucky enough to do so as well. The two of them have now been travelling around the country, around the world, talking about what they have both learned from their journeys and what they think the rest of us can learn from the experience of their grandfather and their father. One a Nazi, the other a victim. It was a pretty profound podcast to record this one, very emotional, so I hope you find it as interesting as I did. And remember, the interview will be going up on historyhit.tv along with lots of other Holocaust-related material for this

big anniversary. In the meantime, enjoy. in the meantime enjoy thank you guys so much for for coming on the show let's start you know me what is talk to you about your relationship your connection with the holocaust my connection with the holocaust is very raw and very direct both my parents were children children of the Holocaust. My mum at the age of 10 was questioned at gunpoint by the Gestapo, gun literally to her head asking is she Jewish, is she Jewish. She was imprisoned there in Anmas in France and she was looked after by a young group leader age 22 who looked after my mother and a group of 32 children. She was saved by the Lord Mayor of Anmas and was liberated into Geneva. My father was 17

in 1939 and was taken into seven concentration camps over four and a half years at the age of 19 in 1941 in Poland and then into Germany and was liberated near Munich on the 30th of April 1945 by the Americans. How did he survive that experience? Well he's written it all in the in the long night and he wrote it very soon after the war so it's a very frank fresh immediate account and remarkably he studied after the war medicine and dentistry and devoted himself to helping people in the community and founded the Association of Persecutees and erected a memorial in Dachau and always was looking out and after humanity and continued, above all remarkably, his belief in humanity. Derek, what about you?

Well I discovered relatively recently that the grandfather I've been told was a simple pen pusher was actually an SS captain, a Holocaust perpetrator, and his job was to go around the likes of Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and supply the inmates, the slave labourers, with materials to work themselves to death. So his workforce was the inmates and the factories were the concentration camps. So your grandfather played a significant part in a genocide? Yes, he did. Yes, he did.

When did you discover this? I discovered seven years ago. Would you believe I found him on the internet? I knew by then, and I only found out shortly before, that my father had actually spent his childhood in Berlin. shortly before that my father had actually spent his childhood in Berlin and I simply got the address from him and googled it and up came a charge sheet from the Nuremberg trials

and it said SS Hauptsturmführer Kahneman crimes against humanity use of slave labor and did he, what was his punishment? Three years, which was quite a lot at that time. By then the Allies wanted Germany strong to act as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, so they were quite keen to get people out of prison. Did you meet him? No he died before I was born. And you grew up in Scotland?

I did, yes I did. So my dad's sister had married a Scottish soldier and moved to Scotland and then in the late 1950s my dad weighing up the economic strength of Scotland and Germany, decided that Scotland was a better bet. Good shout. I think he made a mistake. No, he didn't. So were you able to confront your father and aunt then with what you'd discovered? My father by then was slipping into dementia. My uncle, who's still alive in Germany, accepted

it. He was remarkable. I mean, he and his wife raised two little girls who were orphaned at Chernobyl. So he was the antithesis of a Nazi. So I think to find out more about the father who was quite distant to him was painful but he could accept it as truth. Naomi, you are someone who's known about this history, it's been part of your history ever since you were born. What does it mean to be a descendant of survivors? How has that affected your life? Well yeah you say it's been part of my life since i've been born but consciously it hadn't been part of my life i didn't know about my mum till about eight years ago my mum's story my dad never knew about my mum because my mum thought my dad's uh

history was so much worse than hers so she never felt she needed to share that and in a way my neither my mother or even then my father really in inverted commas burdened me with their history because I feel in a way it is a burden and when I found out about it I had two choices either to ignore it or to live with it but living with it has is what I am doing today that I couldn't ignore it my conscience wouldn't allow me to ignore that so what I try and do is can't be passive about it but decided to go around and educate people particularly our youth we go to schools to universities, and that is like a plaster to the wound, especially in the current political climate and in the

current climate itself where around Europe anti-attacks against Jews are increasing, even in the States are increasing. And interestingly enough, for me it's interesting, even though it's extremely sad and terrifying as different groups are doing the attacks it's not actually just one group it is extreme groups it is groups of extremists left right extremist jihadists but the ones recently in the states are by black people and they themselves have considered themselves a minority and have been persecuted so it fascinates me what drives people to that. At the same time, I recognise that we are all human,

and each human, I say, is capable of good and evil. And each human fears and hates different, when actually people that are hurt, driven by hurt instinct and by liking sameness. So I drive all that passion and concern into education. I've been hearing a lot recently about generational trauma and the effect that even having a grandparent, that even if you've been born and raised, lucky enough to be born and raised into affluence

and in a modern society, your health, your mental health can be affected by being the descendant of a survivor. Is that something you've seen in your family? I fight against that. It really upsets me. And I also don't want to... I believe it's true.

It has to be if it's proven in science. And increasingly so, I read as well. But I think it's dangerous to fall into victimhood as such so I don't want to I would fight depression or victimhood through it and try and surmount it but I'm sure there is something even my whole passion about the subject isn't quite natural if you will I call it passion my family call it an obsession so yes I'm sure we are affected by it undoubtedly. It sounds to me like your dad was a fighter as

well he didn't want to let his past define him can you tell me more about how he lived his life? Yes I can although I was 12 when he died but my direct knowledge of my father first and foremost is that he was a very loving father and a fun father even though he was an older father He talked our talk and he's somebody I'm the eldest of three kids whom we miss desperately till to this day Even though I'm a grandma today I still miss my father very much I still miss my father very much and as loving as he was as a father and I'm not making a hero of him I'm sure he was extremely human he was very kind to in his professional life as a dentist and also in his community for example as a dentist on the chair we adopted a catholic grandmother

so how do we adopt a catholic grandmother she was his patient which isn't strictly very kosher and i'm sure he'd get struck off today made conversation with her found out that she had no husband no family and she became our family and it enriched our family i don't know where she was in the war i don't know where her husband was in the war vaguely they said she said told my mom i was recently he was in russia i don't know where her husband was in the war. Vaguely, they said, she said, told my mom, my husband, he was in Russia. I don't know how true that is or not. But the fact is that my father took her on face value. My father treated the Germans as his patients. And I never, growing up in Munich and Germany, I didn't understand any animosity towards the Germans. That was never expressed by my family, which I think it's remarkable.

The way I was brought up was more that I should not make myself, in German you say, I shouldn't make myself remarkable. I should sort of hide and shrink within, and I've done that in Germany as a child, and I took that over when I came to Manchester at the age of 13 as well. I was hid and I would never really, how do you say, come out with that I'm Jewish if around Christmas whilst I was working in the hospital people say, are you ready for Christmas?

I'd say nearly and I'd say, well, I'm not lying because I'm also buying Christmas presents for people but would never come out that, you know, I'm Jewish and I don't really celebrate Christmas. You were a mature adult when you found out, pretty mature I guess, found out this pretty shocking news. Did it affect your life? Are you a different person? Yeah I think I am. I mean immediately when I discovered it, it would be fair to say I was paranoid. Because at that point I thought, I'm nearly 50 years old, what else is hidden? What are the other family secrets?

What else is being concealed? And then I think I gained a sense of perspective. My wife helped a lot because as I was researching my grandfather's story leading to writing a book she said stay level. It doesn't matter about your emotions try and be as objective as you can in following this story through. And I can see in retrospect just how warped my dad and his siblings were by carrying that kind of knowledge. I mean, my father and his sister, until the day they died, were anti-Semitic. They were driven by resentment. They believed in the end that, and it's impossible for anyone else to imagine that, but they believe in the end that the Jews won. So my dad could say, yeah, six million people died, I accept that, but they got our house in Berlin. And at the same time, my

dad could be friends with a Jewish colleague at work. Is there a little tiny part of you that feels responsible? And I can say this as someone who, my great-grandpa was a general at the Battle of Somme and I've met survivors who suffered appalling casualties, descendants of survivors, people who suffered appalling casualties under his command and part of me wants to apologise. I mean, you'll say it's Noemi now, how do you... because it's not your fault, but is there a part of you that...

I think for several years I did feel responsible, but I think since I've been speaking with Noemi, I don't feel any sense of personal responsibility anymore. In fact, quite the opposite, I feel completely empowered. And all credit to Noemi. It was Noemi that came to me and said, I think we should speak together. And to see the response of people in the audience. Holocaust survivors will come up and they will hug me, they'll shake my hand. It's as if they can see that their light is going out,

but that quest for truth is being carried on, not just by their descendants, but by the descendants of perpetrators. And I think it's a wonderful feeling for me to think that the people who had been so abused feel that little me can do something to give them a legacy of hope. Are you glad that when you found out you didn't just stick it and repress it and instead bathed in it, wrote a whole book, found out everything you could about it. Has that been an important process?

Absolutely. I mean, I'm a writer anyway, so anything I find out, I have to write down. But I did feel like I had the choice to say nothing, but I felt impelled to write it down, to try and understand why it had been hidden and what had been hidden. And then to follow up to see what can I do about this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance

Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Well, let's deal with the biography of your grandfather first.

I mean, did you come away sympathetic? Was he just a young kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, impressionable? Or do you think there was evil there? I don't think he was inherently evil, but I think he was happy to do evil things in the belief or the self-deception that he was doing what was best for his country. It was interesting because this morning we were speaking to the civil servants, civil service, and one of the points I made to them was that he may well have felt that he was a servant of the government. And so everything he did was legitimised by the state.

I don't feel particular sympathy for him. He was 37 years old when he joined the Nazi party. He was 42 when he became a member of the SS. He spent 10 years working for the SS. He went to all the concentration camps on a very regular basis and saw exactly what was going on. And indeed when his trial came in 1947, the judge trial came in 1947 the judge said repeatedly you must have known what was going on but you continued in your job and do we do you hear his voice anywhere is it either via your father or i mean did does he describe what it was like doing that job being in those camps my dad didn't know exactly what his dad was doing and and I suspect didn't want to know. So it's difficult for you to connect with your grandfather in terms of what he was doing? Yes, it is.

All I know from my father is that he said his father was a disappointed man at the end of the war. But I don't think he was disappointed because he felt that he'd misbehaved. I think his disappointment came from the end of a dream. Perhaps he felt that Hitler had done the wrong things, but his was a very, very narrow focus that sidestepped his own personal responsibility. Noemi, what about your investigations into your, well, your father? Can you tell me more about his war, his experiences?

In the war itself, you mean? Well, he was picked up in March 1941 to go to the first labour camp, Grunheide. There he was actually reunited with his father, which helped him a little bit, although they worried about the mother and siblings at home. He managed actually to get his father back home through bribery and being able to write. He wrote love letters for someone, and that was part of the deal and got my grandfather back home. But home by then wasn't home like they'd known. Home was ghetto and, you know, all the rights taken away, living with multiple families, living in sickness, not having food, not having money.

So home wasn't this idealistic home anymore. And then he went to six further camps. He went through death marches. I can read some excerpts because i always say my father says it's so much better than i can say it and when i paraphrase it i kill it cattle wagons and he went on from grünheide to markstadt and to flossenburg and then was liberated near müldorforf at the Tötzinger Lake and that was by the Americans. And you know to us liberation, freedom, we imagine happiness

and boisterousness but there was huge emptiness. They had gone through an unbelievable trauma and even that word isn't strong enough, that term. And they had nothing to go back to or home to. How did his family fare? So one sister survived and she moved to America. He didn't know that immediately after the war. He found her months later. And the other two siblings, a sister whose name I carry, she was 13 and her brother 8,

they were murdered together with his parents in Auschwitz in August 1943, my father found out. Can you read the extracts? Yes, I would like to. I will start by reading an extract from one of the marches my father was on. How does a person feel when he sees his companion being shot the moment he stops walking and realizes he can barely walk himself?

Of course, at first he carries on. He wants to live. He reaches for his companion's hand to support himself. But the companion is at the end of his strength and he pushes the hand away he won't support the laggard the weak one is left behind but that one must see for oneself the lifeless face the flickering eyes of a person about to confront his fate the bullet strikes his neighbor and soon he will also be struck. Who can say what such a person experiences whilst walking the final steps of his life? Who can

describe what he feels and suffers in these moments? And what did I myself experience on this day? As chosen inmate I had to carry the bread sack for the capo and the last one in line I had to march next to him and the SS man. The SS man shot all who stopped and the capo had to record their concentration camp numbers. I looked into the barrel of the gun before the bullet struck the neck of the tottering person, looked at the thin stream of blood that ran slowly as life departed the body. the thin stream of blood that ran slowly as life departed the body. I observed the SS man and saw how he ate with appetite his carefully prepared open sandwich

whilst continuing to walk despite his bloody deed. In the nearby fields there were farmers sowing and at one of the houses at the roadside a woman was watering her flowers. In this moment a bullet pierced the head of a struggler. A small stream of blood ran down the temple. And all that happened in the midst of built-up fields and lovingly tended flower gardens. Are we still living in this world? Or was this all a nasty unending nightmare how was it possible that people within 50 meters were quietly going to work whilst in their midst exhausted defenseless people were being shot

and this is also whilst my father is is marching just after having left also the cattle wagons. We marched on hard-packed snow. The peace and quiet of Sunday lay gently over the little town as we marched through. Our march became more and more arduous because we had to go up an incline. We were wretched, despairing figures as we struggled to drag ourselves along the white covered streets. Suddenly, the loud noise of church bells rang in our ears. Before us lay the church proclaiming Sunday. Although we retained only a pitiful glimmer of life and hope, the chimes of the bells touched something barely alive in each of us. Did this signify anything? Had the priest rung the bells on this peaceful Sunday morning to call together the good citizens of this small town to protest against inhumanity

and indignity in general, and this awful possession of corpses in particular? We really wanted to believe, to hope that the world was at last alerted from its indifference and had eyes to see this dreadful drama as it passed before them the martyrdom torture and death of helpless people could they not see hear and feel that in the face of this unfathomable mass murder they could not and should not remain any longer silent that's very resonant isn't it because that could be all periods in all places. Exactly. We all turn the other, we all look the other way. What's the last quote? The last one was for how they felt upon liberation. 75 years ago, this spring. Yes, exactly. Everything we touched was freezing. The barrel of the guns we embraced, the clear frosty night, even those people we met on the morning of our freedom. Now we were free, but what remained of our past? Our homes had been destroyed, our families annihilated.

We were solitary islands in a freezing, foreign world. These first days were strange. Our minds were numb, as if we had been intoxicated by our freedom. We could go wherever we wanted, could do whatever we wanted, but we always encountered dismissive, uncomprehending faces. The world could not, or did not want to understand our pain. Had these people been so hardened by their own suffering that the tragedies of others was an unbearable burden, a burden they were unwilling to bear, regardless of circumstances?

Naomi, why tour the country with Derek? Why do the double act? Why not just talk about your father's experiences on your own because I think it gives people a much broader understanding of humanity that ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things we might think of Hitler as somebody extraordinary but we're all human we are basically all the same with different abilities and inabilities. We have very much in common. And of course our uniqueness is our difference. But we really belong to one race and that's the human race.

And coming from two different perspectives and joining together is an extremely powerful experience both for Derek and myself and equally for the audience. When you meet people like Derek, do you ever think, you know, I blame you for what your forebears have done? Is it easy to separate the two? Yes, it is easy, particularly because Derek didn't meet his grandfather. And Derek came to it by accident of birth. Like I'm Jewish by accident of birth. But actually, I find it extremely easy. It's not my fault that I'm Jewish.

I was born to it, you know. And you're lucky. And to whatever you're born to, that's part of the stars or God or whatever you believe in. So totally not. On the contrary, I applaud Derek. And it makes my talk much more powerful. When Derek actually says, and that's his family, it must hurt Derek. It's not easy to say what his ancestors have done is actually wrong.

That's courage. You two are both willing and keen to talk about this history this very personal history what how do you want your how do you want how should generations the next generations the ones after the ones after that you mentioned your grandchildren do you want them to be as engaged with this history or do you want them somehow to be able just to move beyond it and not feel there's this giant tragedy uh evil lurking in their past. I'd like, of course, I'd want them to move way beyond it. I just want them to be what in Yiddish you call good mensh,

a good mensh, be a good person, be a decent person. And that's what I want for all of humanity. I certainly don't want them to be burdened with that. Nor do I believe I can tell, let alone grandchildren, children what to do. I wasn't told what to do. I think it's really unhealthy to do that. So no, I don't. And, you know, don't do as I say, do as I do.

So if they can learn from me, by example, the good things that I do, because I'm very human, that would be great. What about you? I think for me I see this as as one of a number of genocides but one that I think British people can relate to more than say for example Rwanda or Srebrenica. This is one where there was a so-called stable, strong country that was corrupted. And so I feel that there are very useful and pertinent lessons for younger generations from this. And I think particularly my grandfather was probably not exceptional. He was mediocre, he was unimaginative, and he led himself to believe that what he was doing was the right thing. So he's not an ogre. He is, if you like, every man.

And I want younger people to appreciate that it's important to challenge things, small things, while it's still safe to do so, and not to take against people just because they come from a different background or a different religion. But, I mean, Noemi talks about the Nazis killing kindness, and that's really fundamental to what we do together. We want people to look at us and recognise that two people from different backgrounds have come together in the interests of kindness and understanding. Well thank you both very much indeed. We've got your two books, An Artsy and the Family by you Derek and The Long Night, a true story by you, Nomi. It's 75 years

since the liberation of Auschwitz since is this this must be a really important year for you guys You'll be talking to a lot of people I guess a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah, we are Both here and then in June we have a big conference in Toronto called liberation 75 and that's drawing people from North America, from Israel, from who knows where. Naomi, do you worry that after the 75th anniversary there's a danger that people will move on and forget? I think beyond the 75th anniversary, as our survivors are getting older and fewer and the first-hand witnesses actually dying then I think people will forget and I think people have already forgotten the current climate shows that people have

forgotten what it was like in the second world war and before this behavior and things are revving up I mean it's a simplistic view I'm sure it's always multi-dimensional economy and all sorts but yeah we have to be vigilant. And like Derek says, I'll end with Derek's words, if I may. While we can make choices, make good, safe and wise choices. Well, thank you.

I'm glad you made the choice to come on the podcast. Thank you very much indeed. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.

But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and

i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the chance it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you