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Re: A Human Tragedy
Posted by Maggie (Guest) - Friday, August 18 2006, 0:23:17 (CEST)
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I had heard the word kapo before and saw a movie called kapo but never knew what it really meant. I always thought it might be mispelled or something because I couldn't find a definition for it. I have the old album called Da Capo, by Arthur Lee and Love, but that had a different meaning, (as in to bring up the pitch on a string instrument."

I looked up "kapo" in some of the Jewish virtual libraries yesterday and now I understand the movie kapo much better too:

Kapos


The German concentration camps depended on the cooperation of trustee inmates who supervised the prisoners. Known as Kapos, these trustees carried out the will of the Nazi camp commandants and guards, and were often as brutal as their S.S. counterparts. Some of these Kapos were Jewish, and even they inflicted harsh treatment on their fellow prisoners. For many, failure to perform their duties would have resulted in severe punishment and even death, but many historians view their actions as a form of complicity. After the war, the prosecution of Kapos as war criminals, particularly those who were Jewish, created an ethical dilemma which continues to this day.

Another one writes:

A Kapo is a Jewish prisoner in charge of a group of inmates at a concentration camp. Kapos usually volunteer to guard the other Jewish prisoners so they can save themselves from death. The Kapos were required to take the prisoners in the concentration camps to and from their jobs, and they made sure they actually completed their jobs. The Jewish Kapos received many privileges compared to the Jewish inmates. The Kapos got warmer clothing and enough food to make them full, whereas the prisoners got very little clothing and very little food. Even though it may sound better for the Jews to become a Kapo, in reality it is far from better, instead it is worse. They are required to do things that they do not really want to do, and they lose the respect of all the Jewish prisoners. A man named Vilko Lamian, who was baptized into the Jewish society, thought that if he would become a Kapo he would be better off. Instead, he literally drove himself insane. He first served in Jasenovac and then in Auschwitz, the same concentration camp in which Elie Wiesel stayed. During his time serving as a Kapo, Lamian killed small Jewish children and babies, as well as raping Jewish women. These tragedies traumatized Lamian making him develop a psychosomatic illness. He survived however and is now living in a Bosnian town still trying to recover from his horrific past.

Here's a good one too:
Kapo: A Jewish prisoner in one of the many infamous Nazi
concentration camps who was, for one reason or another,
given "special privileges"--including at first (before the
nature of those camps became clear to outsiders), the
recruiting of new prisoners (or "guests" as they were called),
on a temporary, so-called "trial basis."
--Dictionary of World War II


Thanks Farid, I learend something new. I studied German for four years and I grew up in Skokie, Illinois and thought I had enough Yiddish under my belt to know what a Kapo is linguistically, but I didn't.

I am utterly veklempt!!!!

Maggie

P.S., I also found a poem entitled:

"The Kapos" or "Arnoldt and Lili Morgenstern"

And so the Kapos came to our little town, let out around dinnertime
With some soldiers, from that crazy Nazi camp; & they rounded us up,
promising that we two could be Kapos, too,
In those first "Gray Announcements" which they'd printed to hand out
--If we rendered ourselves up to join them, for even just a
"trial visit," & "At Once, Early, and Without a Fight"


--For otherwise, just as sure as we were born, they said,
late some night, maybe even close to midnight,
The muffled roar of convoy trucks would come
When we weren't dressed, & it was inconvenient


--& My husband, Arnoldt, then took me aside, & told me in a whisper,
that yes, surrendering for a "trial visit" was a damn sight
Better, than being awoken late one night, looking into a muzzle
or a gunsight; or worse yet, maybe being hunted down
when we had both just bedded down
--Hiding terrified, in our basement behind the wine-rack, in that old broken bathtub
Which for so many months now I'd thanked Jahweh yes Jahweh Himself,
that no one else had yet found!


No, not even our next-door neighbor's children who--when we two
weren't around; & they came back from their monastery school,
or their butterfly hunt that fled through the fields,
so close to that camp, every afternoon, every single afternoon--
Used to make a "game" of opening our cellar-door, & then searching
thereabouts with their flashlights, at twilights
With their puppy dog, "Fritze"; & sometimes, too, with our other
dear neighbors' dogs & children...

*

...And so, suddenly, there was a commotion of motorcycles stopping,
& Arnoldt & I laughing, with that poor old broken bathtub
far, ever so far, far behind us
& We two (in two Kapo sidecars) carrying two light packages


Containing two toothbrushes, two combs, & two brand new sets of pajamas,
one hairbrush & also one fine nightgown
Plus one bottle of good Moselle we'd gaily taken, all for our overnight stay
"Experimentally," as we planned it (for truly it just had to be experimentally),
For just as Arnoldt said, to get us to come to Camp that way, & to
give up & go there so easily
Had been given to us so generously...
It was clear that they just had to agree!


--And besides that, there were two gift packets of cigarettes which,
as those two Kapo drivers themselves pointed out,


--& Yet it's also true that just as soon as Arnoldt had marched upstairs
to get that me that very first night, with that very first copy
He said they'd said, of the "Gray Announcements" to be given out
(With Arnoldt holding it in his teeth, & with Arnoldt also holding up
both arms as if in surrender before me, as if for a joke & with
a loud laugh
Then pointing with one hand through a window downstairs to two
other figures crouching beside two racing bicycles--


Two more Nazi solders who had suddenly appeared & who were taking a newspaper
"Propaganda Photograph")


--Oh yes it's also true that even that very first bright sudden
flashbulb hurt my eyes
Like a burning gas explosion; why oh yes why for the sake of Jahweh,
why did those Kapos have to do all that then, for it wasn't yet quite midnight


--Yes it was just after dinnertime I remember & yet our light
was already out.



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