Stutthof survivors like me have never wanted revenge
This week’s sentencing of a former SS guard is a small sign of justice for victims, hears Luke Mintz
As a 14-year-old Jewish prisoner inside Stutthof concentration camp, Manfred Goldberg used to meet his mother every day at the barbed-wire fence that separated the men’s living quarters from the women’s, to check she was still alive. They could not speak or even get too close, in case they were shot by the armed guards in the nearby tower.
Goldberg’s mind returned to this image last week, when he heard news that one of those watchtower guards, SS recruit Bruno Dey, has finally been convicted for his role in the Nazi atrocities.
The two teenagers arrived at the camp in 1944 within just weeks of each other; at 17, Dey was only three years older than Goldberg.
“The memories have been with me ever since,” Goldberg, now 90, tells me over the phone from his north London home, where he has spent the last four months in quarantine with his wife. “They appear to be in a separate compartment of my mind. Many things that have happened much more recently have faded, but these memories have remained quite clear.”
Lockdown has treated Goldberg relatively kindly, he tells me. He still makes a point of taking a daily walk, and he is fortunate to have children nearby who will happily deliver food to his doorstep. He has kept up with world news, for the most part, but tried not to obsess over the 10-month trial of Dey, now 93, who was brought into court in Hamburg each morning in a wheelchair, and heard evidence from a Plexiglas box, to protect him from coronavirus.
In court, Dey admitted that he worked as a guard at Stutthof, but claimed to have no idea of the extent of systematic murder that took place there. But the court heard that on at least one occasion Dey worked in a watchtower stationed directly next to a gas chamber, and would almost certainly have heard inmates screaming and beating at the walls. He was found guilty of accessory to murder of 5,232 people at the camp, most of whom died of a typhus outbreak. He received a two-year suspended sentence, his advanced age helping him to avoid prison.
‘On no account would I wish a 93-yearold to be put in prison. It was a symbolic trial to show that justice has been done’
‘For this man to say he wasn’t aware is a fairy-tale – a practical impossibility’
He is likely to be among the last Nazis who will ever face justice for his role in the Holocaust.
Goldberg says he has no wish to see his former captor put behind bars, but he thinks Dey’s suspended sentence should have been longer, even though he will never serve it, as a symbolic gesture “to reflect the gravity of the crimes”. He adds: “I was never out for revenge – on no account would I wish a 93-year-old to be put in prison. It was a symbolic trial to show that justice has been done.”
Born in the central German city of Kassel as the older of two boys, Goldberg was two when the Nazis came to power. As a child, he was forced to wear a yellow star, which made him the target of violence. His family was allowed into only one shop; if it was out of food, they went hungry. One day, he remembers his mother, Rosa, asking him to hide his star with his satchel so he could buy a loaf of bread from a non-Jewish bakery. “She would not have done that unless she was desperate.”
When he was nine, the Nazis threatened to send his father, Baruch, to a labour camp, but the family secured for him a visa to Britain. He left on the assurance that the rest of the family would receive their own visas and follow him to London. But Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany a fortnight later, dashing the family’s hopes.
Aged 11, Goldberg was loaded on to a train with his mother and younger brother and deported to the Riga Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Latvia, and from there to a labour camp, where Goldberg was put to work laying railway tracks after lying about his age to avoid execution. He was stripped and handed a striped uniform, which eventually became plagued with lice, and branded as prisoner 56478, digits he still struggles to forget. Guards regularly selected weak prisoners to be killed – his mother was picked on one occasion, but she and others ran across to the “safe” side of the hut. Amid the confusion, the Nazis lost track of who they had picked to die and Rosa returned to work.
His brother, Hermann (known by the family as Hermie), was one of four young children who did not have to work. One day, Goldberg and his mother returned from labour and all four had disappeared. Hermie was never seen again.
In 1944, Goldberg and his mother were taken to Stutthof, where they may well have crossed paths with Bruno Dey (although Goldberg does not remember him). He says it is impossible that Dey did not know what was happening inside the camp, as he claimed in court. “For this man to say he wasn’t aware is a fairy tale – a practical impossibility. He’s speaking to people [in court] who do not know. I happen to know. These guards didn’t just do watchtower duties. They were trained to keep an eye on people. If they spotted anyone who was no longer able to work, it was their job to walk or drag them to the execution spot, where they were usually shot in the back of the head, and their body thrown in a mass grave.”
As the Soviet army closed in, they were taken on a death march into Germany. In May 1945, in the port of Neustadt, their captors fled at the sight of British tanks: they were liberated. In 1946, the Goldbergs moved to London and were reunited with Baruch. After learning English, Manfred finally finished his education by getting an electronics degree from London University. He found work in
Manchester, where he thrived. He now volunteers with the Holocaust Educational Trust, and in 2017 returned to Stutthof for the first time, accompanying the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their tour of Poland. In the camp’s museum, he saw the Duchess wiping away tears at the exhibit of 200,000 pairs of shoes.
With four sons and several grandchildren, Goldberg’s life since the Holocaust has been a shining success, but he thinks there is still “plenty to worry about” regarding the rise of anti-Semitism in Britain. He is particularly exercised about the failure of social media companies to remove hate speech from their platforms, speaking just days after the British grime musician Wiley launched an anti-Semitic rant on Twitter. He was dropped by his manager and condemned by the Home Secretary, and eventually banned by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – but only after his posts were left online for several days. Twitter has since apologised for being slow to act.
Some of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories Goldberg sees online remind him of the cartoons he saw in the Nazi newspaper, Der
Stürmer, as a child – except that social media companies are far more powerful than Hitler’s propaganda ministry ever could be, he thinks, because they can “reach an audience of many thousands in seconds”.
“When I came [to Britain] in 1946, every politician went around saying ‘Never Again’. One way to ensure ‘Never Again’ is to stop these websites behaving in the manner they’re behaving now. The British people are extraordinarily tolerant, but even so, if you’re bombarded day after day with propaganda, sooner or later some of it is absorbed.”