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Michael Honey: If I Forget Thee

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Contact Michael Honey:  mhoney "at" 013.net (replace "at" by @ to avoid spam)

Michael Honey: Commemoration of  Valašské Meziříčí

Since 1992 I was every year in Nový Jičín for 3 consecutive years.   In these years I was present in Nový Jičín, the town of my birth, every year.   My brother Shragga instituted a prize at the Nový Jičín gymnasium for pupils who wrote essays every year on any Jewish subjects.  The object was to teach awareness among the Czechs of what occurred during the Shoah.  The 3^rd year 1994, the gymnasium requested that the prize should continue for pupils to write on any subject.  By this time Shragga had died and his widow said that the prize should continue dealing with Jewish subjects as constituted by Shragga in 1992.  The professor who was administering the scheme said that making the essays be written only on Jewish subjects was racist.  My sister in law took offence and the scheme was unfortunately stopped.

I had spent four years from 1938, the occupation of the Sudetenland, till 14^th Sept. 1942 in Valašské Meziříčí and started my Shoah on that fateful date.  Valašské Meziříčí is different from Nový Jičín in that it was always a Czech town and to some extent the relationship to Jews was more relaxed than in Nový Jičín which had a majority of its population German.  The fact that the above site was posted on the internet helped me to persuade the town council in 1998 to consider putting up a memorial to their neighbours who were killed.

I started the work of making the list of the victims in 1994 and by 1998 I took the list to the Mayor to put to him what I thought was the town’s obligation.  I said to him that the Germans killed the people on the list which includes two of my brothers and my mother, but that the town of Valašské Meziříčí killed any memory of these Jews who were neighbours of the townspeople of Valašské Meziříčí.  The circumstances are that during the communist time and the Slansky trial in the 1950s there was more or less official Anti-Semitism although this was actually illegal in communist states.  But during this time Valašské Meziříčí demolished the synagogue to make way for a fire brigade station which, in the event, was never built.  But they also demolished the Jewish cemetery.  Not only that, in 1945 there was a battle for the town and approximately 250 German soldiers, many of them from the SS fell during the attack by the Red Army.  The Red Army had a simple rule about enemy dead.  Each was buried at the site where he fell.  This meant that there were 250 graves scattered throughout the town.

The Russians made a map and a list, based on the tags of the fallen soldiers and gave the data to the new Czech mayor.  The then German Democratic Government came up a few years later and wished that the German fallen should be buried in a military cemetery somewhere on the outskirts of the town.  The good people of Valašské Meziříčí were then represented by a communist town council and they decided to bury the German dead at the site of the demolished Jewish cemetery.  The town council also lost the map so that each individual soldier could not be identified with the details on the Red Army list.  The town council and the GDR decided to make a mass grave for the about 250 skeletons.  A bulldozer dug through the Jewish graves to make a large excavation, but then due to rain the sides of the excavation collapsed.  To solve this problem the town council decided to use the bricks from the surrounding brick wall of the Jewish cemetery to reinforce the excavation made.  The GDR paid the town council 1250 DM for every German skeleton reburied.

By the time I came to the site with the mayor in 1998 there was a very tall wooden cross at the top of the rise of the erstwhile Jewish cemetery site.  The cross overlooked about 250 small individual crosses with the names of the German dead.  In 1994 I discovered 12 Jewish gravestones which were hidden there in a thicket at the site by the protestant pastor, a Mr. Žilinski who was given orders in the 1950s to clear the cemetery.  He did not feel too comfortable about the task but as he said to me in 1994 he had to obey the instruction lest he should find himself in a communist jail.  The 12 gravestones he arranged secretly in the shape of the Star of David to indicate to the Almighty that this was once consecrated ground of a Jewish cemetery.

I already knew the above story from my searches at the archive of Vsetín, but the desecration shook me.  The mayor started explaining to me that the town intend to create on the site of the Jewish cemetery an international park of remembrance which in its midst would have a holocaust memorial to the Jewish victims during World War II.  He told me that Turkey had already agreed to commemorate their dead from world war I who died in a Valašské Meziříčí hospital.  He continued that the town council is in touch with Russia also to build a memorial to the Russian fallen of World War II.  He said that the dead will not feel their differences if they are all together.

We turned back down the hill toward the car park and I was trying to figure what I should say to such a proposal.  When we got to the mayor’s car I said to him:

“You are mistaken if you think that visitors from abroad would come to visit Valašské Meziříčí to see such an international memorial park”.  I continued saying that any Jew who would come to the car park and would see the tall wooden cross over the German monument would get right back into their cars and leave, because I said “monuments are built for the living, not for the dead!”

It took the town council another four years, up to 2002, to decide that they should erect a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust on the site of the demolished synagogue in the middle of town.  This proposal I accepted and by 13^th Sept., 2004, 62 years after our deportation I unveiled a memorial which the town had erected.

 
Michael Honey placing a stone on the place on the memorial where his mother and two brothers are inscribed

The demolition and subsequent desecration of the Jewish cemetery now cannot be undone.  In 1990 I first visited Valašské Meziříčí during the velvet revolution when the communist government in Czechoslovakia fell.  I was shocked to see that we had completely disappeared.  There was no sign anywhere that we ever lived there.  Four years later I was searching for data to make a list of the Jewish people who were killed during the German occupation.   The archive of Valašské Meziříčí is actually in Vsetín, the district town some 10 Km south of Valašské Meziříčí.  The director of the archive a Dr. Ladislav Baletka was very supportive of my work, he is also a member of the town council and by 1998 when I finished the list he introduced me to the then mayor Ing. Bohdán Mikušek.

In Sept., 2002 the town council instituted the project and called for proposals from architects for a design of an appropriate memorial.  I was invited to be present and initiate the project for the town.  By this time there had been new elections and the mayor became a Mr. Jiří Kubeša, the previous mayor was still on the town council as was Dr. Baletka.  I was assured by the new mayor that the project would continue.  By 13^th Sept., 2004 I unveiled on behalf of the town the Holocaust Memorial.  There were two days of ceremonies to which were invited other guests including;

The Ambassador of Israel Artur Agmon and his wife

JUDr. Tomáš Kraus representing the Federation of Jewish Communities

Rabbi Chaim Koller – Brno who recited Kaddish

The Charge dÁffairs of the German Embassy

Representatives of the Jewish Community of Ostrava.

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Photographs from the Memorial Monument Dedication Ceremony

13^th Sept., 2004

(Click to Enlarge)

Speech by the Mayor of Valašské Meziříčí, pán Jiří Kubeša

      Behind and to his left Charge d’afaire – German Embassy

      Behind and to his right Ing. Bohdán Mikušek, previous Mayor of Valašské Meziříčí

      To the right Michael Honey, The interpreter for the Isr, Ambassador,

His Excellency the Israel Ambassador Artur Agmon and his wife,

JUDr. Tomáš Kraus, representing Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic,

Rabbi Chaim Koller of Brno and interpreter for the Rabbi

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The Valašské Meziříčí Yizkor Book

Dr. Ladislav Baletka, The Valašské Meziříčí Yizkor Book,

 published on 14^th Sept., 2004, the 62nd anniversary of the departure of the transport for Theresienstadt

The Book

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So They Know למען ידעו

Michael Honey:                                                                                                                 July 23^rd, 2004

On 14.9.04 it will be the 62nd anniversary of the transport of the last of the Jews who left Val. Mezirici to the ghetto Theresienstadt.  JUDr. Karel Heller, president of this community, his wife Ani, their two little girls Jana and Mira together with their grandmother on the mother’s side Rosa Flach née Hoffman, Gen.5 from Karvina were specially kept back for one month.  One evening the road of their house was sealed off and all people were advised to stay indoors.  The family was loaded onto a truck and taken to Ostrava.  The family without Ani was included in the next transport to Theresienstadt.  Ani was taken separately straight to Auschwitz and killed.  It is not known what trespass Ani committed to deserve such special treatment.  We can only assume that it was some important act of resistance.

I prepared a listing already in 1994 of all victims of Valasske Mezirici and asked the town council to commemorate these neighbors from this small town in Moravia, Czech Republic where all of them disappeared.  The communist authorities of the town demolished the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery in the 50s during the Stalinist anti-Semitism at the time of the infamous Slansky process.  Thus communism completed the Shoah which the Germans started.  The Germans killed the people and the Czech Communists obliterated all traces of them.  But the town council decided to try and make good the wrong which they committed.  On 14th Sept., next I will be unveiling a memorial to the victims of the Shoah on the site of the demolished synagogue.  The memorial will bear the names of the victims and the inscription used at Yad Vashem for the Valley of the communities; Psalm 78, verse 6 first in Hebrew and then in Czech: למען ידעו דור אחרון בנים יולדו יקומו ויספרו לבניהם "In order that the last generation will bear children, arise and tell their sons."

THE NAMES

Hereunder is a list of the Jewish victims who perished in the Shoah from the Community of Valasske Mezirici. It was prepared by Michael Honey (formerly Misa Honigwachs), a survivor.

The research of data showed how the Germans organized the Shoah in the Protectorate. Mr. Honey writes that he is sure that Valasske Mezirici is a typical example of how they did it.

In the list you see how in the period March 1939 to Sept., 1942 the Germans removed young and capable people, all professionals, teachers and the like, also many of the rich. These were a phase 1 elimination at the early time when the mass gassings were not yet in full swing.

The people died individually in various concentration camps and urns of ashes would arrive back with the sad news that the individual died.

From May 1942 to Sept. 1942 all young people were billeted at the Zemsky Statek Branky (District Farm of Branky) for agricultural work. Branky is a village about 4 Km west of Valasske Mezirici. We only know one survivor of a group of about 40 people, all the others perished.

On 12^th Sept., 1942 the rest of the community were shipped to Terezin. Most were the aged and children.

When I first arrived in England in 1945 and started to learn English I was 16. I read the question posed by Hannah Arend; "How could 6 million people go to the gas chambers without resistance?" At that time I could not begin to answer this question, but now I begin to understand partly through the research on the list enclosed.

Michael Honey (formerly Misa Honigwachs): If I Forget Thee