THE HOLOCAUST: WE MUST REMEMBER
Roger Fredinburg – Host
30-Hour Series of Interviews broadcast on the Roger Fredinburg Radio Program
3-18-1998 Twenty-First Program in Series
Guest: Dr. Michael Steinlauf
Book: BONDAGE TO THE DEAD: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
ISBN-10: 0815604033 and ISBN-13: 978- 0815604037
Roger: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Once again, this is our final program in this very long series on the holocaust. It’s been quite a learning experience for me and I know for many of you. We’ve heard some incredible stories and learned some incredible things about man’s inhumanity to man, and beyond that, man’s triumph over that! It’s been a powerful series and I just want to thank all of you who have stayed with us for these 21 weeks. It’s been a real pleasure to do it!
Tonight we take a look at the Polish-Jewish relations in Poland up to, during and beyond World War II and the Holocaust. To help us get a grip on this particular area of interest, ladies and gentlemen, is a wonderful scholar joining us tonight. We have Dr. Michael Steinlauf with us. Michael, welcome to the show!
Dr. Steinlauf: Thank you very much, Roger.
Roger: It’s a pleasure to have you here, sir. I did not receive your book, so I am at a disadvantage this evening, but, I do know basically what your book is about. We’re just going to have to go at it from that angle. If you could first of all tell us a little bit about yourself and what it was that brought you to write on this issue of Poland, I’d be grateful.
Dr. Steinlauf: It all started about 15 years ago. In 1983 I was graduate student in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. I had the opportunity to go to Poland for a year as a Fulbright Scholar. I came to Poland expecting to trace the history of ghosts, you might say, and I discovered that they were in the middle of —- that was the period of “Solidarity” in fact it was in martial law, “Solidarity” had just gotten banned. It was a very exciting time and also a time all kinds of things were happening among living people as well. I slipped into this strange world where the memory of the Jews seemed to be very, very important, not just the stuff of history; but, for living people.
That got me thinking about the issues. Then some years later I had the opportunity to write an article about what it was that witnessing the holocaust had done to Poles. The article became a very long piece. I suddenly realized around six or seven years ago that I had more than an article, I had a book! The article was published in a recently published anthology called, “The World Reacts to the Holocaust” edited by David Wyman, where 21 or so countries are covered in terms of how the memory of the holocaust had been constructed over the last 50 years in those countries. My focus, of course, was on Poland which is a very unique situation in itself.
Roger: You know, in history they say that to the victor go the spoils? And, that he who wins the wars writes the history books for the future generations? Do you find that makes it difficult to go back and research the events of the holocaust?
Dr. Steinlauf: My motto has always been the opposite! There’s a literary critic and philosopher who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, a German-Jewish writer by the name of Walter Benjamin. His motto was “brush history against the grain.” What he meant by that is don’t accept the fact that to the winner go the spoils. Go back into history because precisely what may be most important about history and in history is what has been silenced for one reason or another.
Roger: I think that is really at the pinnacle of the discussion about the holocaust. Has there been anything silenced?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, in many ways. Look, you’re talking about, and I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate at this point if this is your 21st program, even today simply consulting the facts of what happened is well nigh unbelievable! Incredible! It just boggles the imagination! It boggles the mind! It boggles the human spirit that people could have done this, that human beings could have done this to other human beings! Then imagine that we don’t have this 50 years and imagine people all over the world, and of course, all of the Jews themselves experiencing this, the Germans and Nazis and all the various levels of bystanders having to deal with this unbelievable reality that’s just only partially assimilated. 50 years ago we have this kind failure to fully witness this, with everyone involved no matter how close or how distant. Now, 50 years later we know what the facts are; but, what do the facts mean? In that sense, I think, we’re just beginning to deal with the events because they transformed the kind of world we live in.
Roger: I started out on this journey, Michael, because I really wanted to have a deeper understanding of what it must have been like to be a Jew during the time of the holocaust in Europe and in America and other places. It was last week or maybe the week before; but, last week in the 20th week of this series, I finally understood what it was like to be a Jew. I broke down in tears. I really finally got it! It took that much absorption and that many authors and that many stories, of which there’ve been thirty-some, before I finally got it! You can’t explain it. It’s just the most amazing thing to me; but, I understand it! I told my boss I’d rather be anything but a Jew.
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, you see, this is why—the nature of the material is such that it lends itself, you see, and the nature of the truth is such that it lends itself to holocaust deniers also because people say, “yes, it’s unbelievable! It never happened!” That’s such a danger!
Roger: Since you work at the YIVO Institute, I know that you look at issues relative to the Jewish condition. I have had, and I might as well be up front about this, a lot of really strange email and mail and packages I didn’t want to open, if you know what I mean…
Dr. Steinlauf: Yup!
Roger: … as a result of doing this series. I have found a hatred that exists out there that is so powerful, so unbelievable in our modern time that I’m astounded by it, even though I knew it was there when I began! It’s almost impossible to relate to people some of the things that are said to me. The reason, of course, why I asked you this question about history; there are people who honestly believe that history has been revised so that some conspiracy of the Jews can take over the world—or whatever! When I dig into the historic evidence that exists and I look in the past and the current time and I research the books and the stories, I’m compelled to think that it’s quite reverse of what you might call the anti-semites out there think that there’s so much more that hasn’t yet been told, that it’s mind-boggling!
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, this is people who refuse to look at the facts of history, find themselves in cause and effect in history. Some people find that they have to create myths and create conspiracies in history. Let me just tell you that the minute you talk about conspiracy, even if you’re not talking about the Jews, you’re talking something that potentially is going to involve the Jews because the oldest, oldest conspiracy that people have mythologized and created in their minds is that of the Jews, so that conspiracy theories are very tricky, dangerous things.
Roger: We’ve gone into the origins of anti-semitism and talked about this catalyst in the Christian realm that brought forward this concepts, these conspiracies. There are a lot of people out there today who read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they read The Lector Report, they throw these concepts into newsletter, the newsletters begin to circulate in copies that have been watered down to the place you can barely read them. People read that stuff and take it verbatim! They’ll believe that over the Bible! How does that happen?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, it happens because people are not rational creatures, after all. You know, we think we’re rational. As far as I’m concerned, what that means is that despite all the trendy kind of talk about deconstruction and how do we know what’s true, and historical knowledge is relative; there’s all this trendy talk that I’m sure you’ve come across, some things and certainly in relation to the holocaust, here is something that is true!
There are some things in history that are black and white. We have to just state that! We have to state that over and over and over again! The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is fake, as false a book as can possible exist! That has to be stated over and over again, as often as is necessary. It’s a struggle! It’s a struggle because there’s a lot of unbelievable stupidity and bad faith in the world.
Roger: Yes, I interviewed a gentleman, in fact we didn’t even get it on the air yet, his name is Cohn. He’s over in England.
Dr. Steinlauf: Norman Cohn, of course!
Roger: Right! He wrote a book about that (Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of Jewish World Conspiracy and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and dedicated several chapters in the book to the actual origin of the Protocols. I ask people when they call now and start throwing that at me, I ask me to name a couple of those elders for me. Ha, ha!
Dr. Steinlauf: I don’t even argue with dyed-in-the-wool anti-semites. These people who believe in the Jewish world conspiracy are people who have a psychological need to construct a certain image of the world. You’re not going to shake that! I think it’s useless to argue with anti-semites. Of course, you find yourself in that position because you have a talk show and these people call up a lot.
On the other hand, most of the people who listen are open-minded people who simply want to know the truth.
Roger: I think one of things that people are not seemingly able to relate to, and maybe you can help with that, they don’t understand why 50 years after the fact, they still keep hearing about the poor downtrodden Jews —”there are lots of people who’ve been persecuted in the world!” and they go on to talk about Stalin or Mao Tse Tung or whoever. Maybe you could address that for us, why this concept of genocide, set apart from the others is quite different and, more important, why we should pay attention to it.
Dr. Steinlauf: We’re not saying— I don’t think anyone is going to say — at least I certainly won’t and most historians won’t — that what happened to the Jews is somehow incomparable to any other mass murder or horrendous oppression that’s happened in history. There are certain things about what happened to the Jews that makes it worthy of our attention and our knowledge.
For me, one of those things is that it is not something that happened centuries ago in some out of the way and supposedly barbaric corner of the world, that’s one thing. Above all, you might say that it not only happened in the modern world, in a certain way it’s the result of the harnessing of all those wonderful technological powers that seemed to have made our world so good in a lot of ways, so to me that seems a rather important issue.
Think of this! 150 years ago we had a factory system and all of that technology transformed our world. Come the Nazis who create factories—factories of what — not factories to produce things that people could use; but, factories to create death, to create death as effectively and expeditiously as possible! And to process, literally that’s how they said it, to “process” human beings from something alive into something dead, something that just gets plowed into the soil! To do this in such a way that millions and millions of people are “processed” (that horrible word!) in this way, within months, is something that talks about the potential in our modern civilization, I think. It suggests that we have to be on our guard because we have this potential even though we also have the potential of transforming for good. So, that’s one way I look at it.
The Jews, for better or for worse, found themselves at the center of this, at the center of this attempt in the modern world to take a group of people, simply because they were a group of people, and wipe them off the face of the earth! Now, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to talk about other genocides and attempted genocides. It doesn’t mean that one cannot talk about the millions and millions of people who were murdered in the course of being brought over to this country and other countries as slaves.
Roger: Yes, but, it is different because of the genocide effect, isn’t it?
Dr. Steinlauf: It’s different because it somehow ties in with our modern world in a really, really scary way.
Roger: Now, in Poland, I’ve heard some stories about Poland during the holocaust. What were the relationships like between Jews and Poles up to the point of the holocaust?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, it’s very complex, first of all, because regardless of what’s out there. Let’s talk about the situation before the war. We have to remember that Jews lived in this huge area that was Poland. We’re not just talking about the area of this Polish nation-state today. Historically, for hundreds of years in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, Poland was a huge area that included what is today the Ukraine and Belarus and Lithuania as well as Poland and even more than that! In those territories Jews have lived for centuries and centuries. In comparison — in fact, they’d immigrated from Germany when there incredible persecutions that you’ve no doubt heard about in the Middle Ages. Compared to the kinds of persecutions that were going on in Germany, there was relative tolerance in these Polish lands.
Jews lived there and other peoples lived there. It was a kind of loose, decentralized world, an old-fashioned kind of feudal world where there were landowners and peasants, and there were Jews who performed things that people needed; making things, crafts, artisanry and commerce in the small towns. They were very economically important given that kind of economy. Now, things went on, it’s not to say that people loved each other; there were great differences between the local Polish peasants and the landowners and the Jews; but, they kind of accepted each other in the differences because they were able to live in a decent way for centuries and centuries.
The problem starts, what we call political anti-semitism, begins at the end of the 19th Century, that’s about 100 years ago when you start getting nationalists movements. You get various kinds of nationalist movements in Poland. One of those nationalist movements is very hostile, not just to Jews but to all minorities. Their idea was that you have to have a Poland that’s ethnically Polish and Roman Catholic. These people were called the National Democrats in Poland, called the “ND”. They don’t actually ever come to power. There was not Poland in the 19th Century. There was no Polish nation-state. It was part of the Russian Empire and part of the Austrian Empire; but, after World War 1 you do get a Polish state. In that state, these nationalists, these very anti-minority and anti-semitic nationalists become increasingly more popular. So, one could say that the worst moment in Polish-Jewish relations in hundreds and hundreds of years happens—this is a tragedy— in the period just before the holocaust.
I have to say, it doesn’t necessarily follow that because a whole lot of Poles weren’t crazy about Jews and would have like to have them out of Poland because most of the Polish political parties had platforms that said Jews should leave. Not forcibly; but, that there were too many Jews in Poland. This doesn’t mean that these people wished to see these Jews murdered! That’s very important to say. Just because you don’t like someone, even if you hate someone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you would have them murdered in some horribly brutal way! We need to say that because now that the holocaust has happened, we also kind of tend to think the minute there’s any kind of hatred that it could escalate. It can, but, it also can’t. Every situation is different. That’s important to realize.
On the other hand, there was a great deal of anti-Jewish feeling in Poland. There was the sense that there were too many Jews, a lot of Poles felt. A lot of Poles felt that too much economic power was in Jewish hands so these Polish nationalists said that what they had to do was free the country of the Jews by pushing them out of the economy and eventually out of Poland. This led to some violence as well.
The Roman Catholic church in Poland during this time basically supported the nationalist position with the proviso of “no violence.” Violence was not okay; but, everything else in terms of pushing the Jews out of the economy was a fine thing. Again, this has to be seen in the context of what was happening in Europe, throughout eastern Europe, throughout Europe as a whole, throughout the world! As you know, there was an upsurge of Jew-hatred and anti-semitism of all kinds, most obviously in Germany; but, everywhere in Europe. That’s how I might characterize the situation.
Roger: Well, it’s a perfect place of transition. I need to take a break, so just hang on for a minute. Dr. Michael Steinlauf is our guest, ladies and gentlemen. His work, his book is about the relationship between the Polish folks, the Germans and as it trends through the holocaust. We’ll continue our discussion right after this.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Roger: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Our guest this evening is Dr. Michael Steinlauf, senior research fellow at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, a Fulbright Fellow in 1983-1984, one of the first students ever allowed to study Jewish history in Poland. He’s taught at the University of Michigan, Brandeis University and Franklin and Marshall College. He joins us this evening to talk about his incredible book, “Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust.” We’ll tell you how to get that in a few minutes, folks.
Michael, we’re back! I just wanted to take an aside here. You talked about the Catholic Church and how they didn’t necessarily give an endorsement of violence; but, they certainly didn’t mind picking on the Jews.
Dr. Steinlauf: Right.
Roger: Today’s church is trying to remedy that, reconcile with their past, so to speak. Are they going to be successful?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, they’re certainly making efforts in that direction. Certainly I can speak that the Polish church has changed quite a bit, not entirely — this is a very slow process— but, certainly the initiatives that I’ve seen of John Paul are certainly moving in the right direction.
Roger: Why can’t the Catholic church just come forward and say, “We’re sorry! We really blew it! We screwed up! We were wrong! We shouldn’t have been on the other side!” Why?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, the most recent thing that just came out the other day tries to say something like that. The problem, I think, is that one of the stickiest points of papal infallibility. The issue that they really find tricky to address is what the pope back then was and was not doing because the pope is supposed to be infallible. You cannot question what the pope does and does not do. On the other hand, the fact that a lot of Catholics should have helped or should have protested and did not has been addressed. I would like to hope that this issue will be addressed as well. On the other hand, they will have to confront some of their own doctrine, I think.
Roger: Alright. I know it was an aside from where we’re going; but, I just was curious given this recent….. Going back to the Poles, I have interviewed folks who were on those trucks driving down the Polish roadways as thousands of Poles stood by the roadside applauding, “Kill the Jews! Kill the Jews!”
Dr. Steinlauf: Yes.
Roger: That clearly wasn’t part of their nature prior to Hitler’s Nazi Germany, was it?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, you see, we have a situation. Let’s try to put ourselves—- you were talking about trying to put yourself in the situation of a Jew. Let’s try to put ourselves in the situation of a Pole now. You have a situation where the Germans have created an environment where it is okay to have the most vile, the most awful feelings towards these people who used to be your neighbors come out. On the other hand, it’s not okay to manifest publicly any feelings of sympathy. Furthermore, and this is an important thing to remember, Poland was just about the only country in occupied Europe where helping Jews was punishable by death, not just your own death; but, there were cases that involved the death of your family as well.
So, we have a situation where only the most bestial kinds of responses are what are going to be encouraged in public. Okay? The reality was that there were Poles who did more than clapped when Jews were put on those trucks. There were Poles who helped kill Jews, who denounced them, who blackmailed them. There were also, and I think given the situation this is totally extraordinary, there were thousands of Poles who risked their lives to save Jews! That’s a fact, too!
Now, it’s a very complicated situation because here we have to try to grasp because in the most general situation, the most average Pole probably didn’t applaud and certainly didn’t help kill Jews—not the average Pole! The average Pole certainly didn’t help save Jews; but, watched this whole thing happening!
It creates a very, very problematic feeling inside one. Imagine that you have these neighbors. You don’t like them very much and that’s a fact. In fact, you wish there were gone! Then what happens? Somebody comes from outside, from far outside and before your eyes — you’re not even involved in this — before your eyes, murders these people in the most awful, bestial, horrendous possible way! Then what happens? You don’t even have to do this — then what happens is these people leave, they’re gone and you, because you live in that country, inherit all the property, all the things that were once Jewish; the buildings, everything from the homes and offices down to the bed linens and clothing!
Now, this is going to create, I would submit, a real problem! A real problem that has to do with guilt, that has to do with things that are not resolved. In a sense it’s easier for a German because in Germany you can punish a handful of guilty people, as in fact happened after the war, and say, “Okay,we’ve dealt with it!” But, the Poles didn’t do the holocaust! And yet, it was a kind of wish fulfillment in terms of getting rid of the Jews and then they’re kind of rewarded with all this property! This whole world that used to have Jews in it is now in their hands.
So, that creates a very, very complex problem that works itself out in various ways over the past 50 years. That’s just summing up, a kind of looking at a subjective experience of witnessing for the Poles who watched the whole thing from beginning to end. They watched the ghetto wallss going up and their Jewish neighbors put behind them, they watched the deportations and they watched and were close to the death camps. Of course, they smelled the smoke of the crematoriums! So, they were witnesses of the whole thing. That’s what makes their experience so unique.
So, the question is, how does the experience — that’s what my book tries to look at — how does this experience then affect the subsequent course of Polish history and consciousness?
Roger: Well, tell me, Dr. Steinlauf, how did it affect them?
Dr. Steinlauf: In many ways. There were periods here that can be looked at.
Roger: Let’s look at the 20 years beyond the war. What happened there?
Dr. Steinlauf: Right after the war there were some really horrendous things that happened in Poland and this time it’s not somebody else doing the violence, it’s the Poles themselves. In the years immediately after World War II — and again, this has to be put in context too — there was what amounts to nearly a Civil War between the communists who were taking over and the people resisting them, generally the nationalists and democrats of various kinds. There was a lot of violence going on, a lot of random violence, too! Within this over-all violence there were attacks on survivors; surviving Jews who appeared and the worst of these were actual progroms, in other words mass attacks! The worst civil one on July 4, 1946 in the City of Kielce in Poland, 42 holocaust survivors who lived in one particular building where they were preparing to emigrate, are murdered and several hundred were wounded by an attack that began—- I’m sure in one of your programs where you studied the history of anti-semitism you discussed the blood libel, the accusation that arose in the Middle Ages, that absurd nonsense that Jews used the blood of Christian children to bake matzos! In 1946 such an accusation was made when a child disappeared, a child that turned up the day after the pogrom. That kind of accusation led to a mob murdering 42 Jews! That was the worst! There were other attacks and about 1,500 to 2,000 Jews were killed because they were Jews.
Roger: Dr. Michael Steinlauf is with us this evening, ladies and gentlemen. Remind me, Michael, to tell people how to get your book, “Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust.” We’ll entertain a call or two after the break, ladies and gentlemen. Please stay tuned.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Roger: Dr. Michael Steinlauf, senior research fellow at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York joins us. His book is, “Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust.”
This is our last program in our Holocaust Series, ladies and gentlemen, although we’ll continue to dabble the subject from time to time. Michael, really quickly, how do people get your book?
Dr. Steinlauf: You can order it from Syracuse University Press 1-800-365-8929.
Roger: Alright, really quickly and then I want to take a couple of phone calls, just bring us up-to-date. How did Poland turn out after all of this?
Dr. Steinlauf: Well, crucial was this new way of defining who they are. That had to do with the Solidarity Movement that, of course, helped overthrow Communism; but, also started talking about a new way of thinking about being Polish. What that meant was including differences, that it was okay not to be Roman Catholic, that it was okay to be something else. So the memory of the Jew started being thought of in a different way. What happened, interestingly enough, anti-semitism still exists in many corners of the society, but, beginning in the 1980s there was also a renewed kind of interest, especially by young people in universities, in the Jewish past and who these Jews were, these millions of Jews who once lived in Poland. So, there’s both this fascination with the past in certain corners of the society and holdovers of this antipathy to Jews. It’s a very complex situation; but, again, I happen to be optimistic. I believe that gradually more and more of this past of dislike and enmity will be left behind and more Poles will appreciate and value this part of their history.
Roger: So, time and education….
Dr. Steinlauf: Yes! And there’s also a very small emerging Jewish community in Poland now, too! Not three and a half million which was the community before the holocaust. It’s vastly smaller, 20,000 to 30,000 at most; but, it’s there and it’s making it’s presence felt.
Roger: Alright! We’re taking a couple of phone calls. Bob in St. Louis, Missouri, you’re on.
Caller-Bob: Hi, Roger and Dr. Steinlauf! I’m part Jewish from my Hungarian ancestry; but, I’m concerned that almost like a second holocaust is occurring. You were talking about the impact of modern Jews, what the thinking is in terms of Jewry today. Since World War II, I heard a report about six months ago from Jerusalem saying that the Israeli military had scoured the entire world, looking to find every Jew they could, hoping to find more young Jews for soldiers. All they could find was a maximum of 12.5 million Jews and most of those were elderly, above age 50. So, they’re too old to be soldiers.
They were saying that at least theoretically, before World War II there were 25 million Jews which was the most of any time. Right after the holocaust in 1945 there were 19 million Jews. The problem is, with abortion and contraception, the Jewish population has plunged from 19 million down to 12.5 million. They’re predicting that in another 25 years there will be only 2 or 3 million Jews left in the whole world! Meanwhile, the world’s population has gone up about 200 %! It seems like the Jews are almost causing a second holocaust by not having babies. I’m wondering, especially with such constant focusing on the holocaust, why aren’t Jews having babies?
Dr. Steinlauf: First of all, the problem you refer to is hardly a problem, only among Jews. I mean, most advanced industrial societies, and Jews mainly live in such societies, the birthrate has either been maintaining or declining. Indeed, the injunction to have many children is still followed by certain Jews, Orthodox Jews! They have very large families. I think the demographics of the Jewish community in future decades is definitely going to shift to a larger proportion of Orthodox Jews. That’s clear! On the other hand, secular Jews are hardly going to die out, certainly not in the next hundred years, that’s about as long as I can predict!
Caller-Bob: Are there going to be massive conversions? What they were saying is they couldn’t find any Jewish women of child-bearing age left. Most Jewish women are post-menopausal and that means you’d have to have a massive conversion of gentiles if you’re going to have an increase in the Jewish population.
Dr. Steinlauf: I doubt there’ll be a massive conversion of gentiles! But, on the other hand, statistics show that fully one third of the mixed marriages in the United States, marriages between gentiles and Jews, in fully one third of those the gentile partner converts to Judaism.
Caller-Bob: So, pro-abortion liberal Jews marrying pro-abortion liberal gentiles….
Roger: Bob, you’re really messing things up for me because there won’t be enough Jews to run the world when they take over if it’s true what you’re saying! Ha, ha, ha!
Dr. Steinlauf: Ha, ha, ha!
Caller-Bob: Seriously, what the Israeli government was saying is there won’t be any Jews left at all by the year 2023 because there are almost no Jewish women of child-bearing age. All the old Jews are dropping like flies.
Dr. Steinlauf: That’s a little extreme! I’ve never come across the idea that there won’t be anymore Jews after 2023. I think that certainly, compared to figure before the holocaust, we’re looking at a greatly diminished proportion of Jews in the world. On the other hand, for thousands and thousands of year the proportion of Jews in the world was very, very small. Somehow Jews have gone on. I personally am not worried about the survival of the Jewish people, given to fact that we survived the holocaust and many parts of the world seem to be undergoing a renewal.
Roger: Dr. Michael Steinlauf, ladies and gentlemen! “Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust.” Michael, real quick, give us your number before you go.
Dr. Steinlauf: My number to order the book is Syracuse University Press 1-800-365-8929.
Roger: Michael, thank you! God bless! Absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance!
Dr. Steinlauf: Same to you, Roger! And God Bless for this series!
Roger: Alright, folks! That’s the end of the Holocaust Series. I know for some it means applause and for others it means tears. For me it means a rest for my mind.
Transcription is from MP3 file converted from original cassette with minimal editing by Chey Simonton.
Errors, if any, may be due to unintelligible sections of original 1997 audio technology. Unknown/unintelligible words are spelled phonetically.)