Trudy Gold
Rescue and Resistance in France, Both Jewish and Non-Jewish, Part 3

The question of knowledge. You know, we live in a world of instant now. The first knowledge, look, the first concentration camp was established in Dachau in 1933, and it was in all the local newspapers. It was the British who invented concentration camps, remember, in the Boer War, I presume you are talking about the death camps? The Russians, after the Nazis broke the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and invaded Russia, the first people to bring, send back knowledge of the killings, the shootings were the Russians, themselves, and the Polish Underground. There was an extraordinary Righteous Pole who smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto and then to the edge Treblinka. There were lots of escapes from Auschwitz. There was a minute silence in the House of Commons. The nine Allied Governments exiled in London, they created the declaration. Yeah, December the 17th, 1942, they talked about the murder of the Jews of Europe. Now, did people believe them? Today, when people talk about atrocities in the Ukraine, you see it. Television was a very new thing. Very few homes had televisions. In England, people have bought televisions for the Coronation in ‘53. My family did. I remember this. One of my earliest memories. So we know that when Belsen was liberated by the British and the films were first shown at the cinema, although people knew, they didn’t know. They didn’t believe. You see, it’s so complicated. You need to be a psychologist to delve into that, Amelie.

No, I didn’t say that Emily. There was knowledge, but was it believed? You don’t find many press articles. It’s interesting, my father was very, very political and he was not an emotional man, but he had actually procured poison for the vulnerable members of my family if they crossed the channel. And he was not an emotional man. And he knew something terrible would’ve happened if the Germans had crossed the channel. Look, you’ve got to remember, all the anti-Semitic moves of the Nazis up until ‘39 were reported in the British press. And there were foreign correspondents. The Americans were in Germany right up until Pearl Harbour. That’s why people like Varian Fry and all those other extraordinary Americans we talked about were able to be in France rescuing, although the State Department didn’t think much of it. You do know, of course, that the PBS documentary by the brilliant Ken Burns has finally been shown on British television. If you haven’t seen it, you can get it on playback. And it’s one of the greatest documentaries. I think he’s brilliant and it’s a wonderful documentary. It’s hard to watch by the way, but it’s a brilliant documentary.

The secret listeners knew about it quite early on. Look, the Final Solution begins with the invasion of Russia. The first killings are in June, July, 1941. Look, following the German Army into battle went the Einsatzgruppen and the hit squads. 3,000 SS, the pillars of SS manhood, most of whom had PhDs from top universities, aided and abetted by fanatics from Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Ukraine, what can I tell you? And Poland, most terrible ravages, the Polish Underground got a lot of information back. Remember, the Polish government in exile was in London. It was actually the Polish government in exile that set the whole chain going. But remember, there’s a minute silence in ‘42, in December the 17th, 1942. But lots of information had come through and the Wannsee document was leaked to Switzerland to the World Jewish Congress. But did people believe it?