Excluded. “The Shoah began with words and the poisoning of minds”: the essential testimony of Herbert Traube, one of the last resistance fighters and liberators of Nazi-occupied Europe

In parallel with the broadcast on Arte, this Tuesday, April 25, 2023 at 8:55 p.m., of the documentary series Resistors, by Patrick Rotman (and visible on arte.tv), Tele-Leisure collected an exceptional testimony. Born in 1924, Austrian and Jewish having had to flee Vienna in 1938, Herbert Traube is one of the last witnesses and active participants of the Second World War. Refugee, internee, escapee, resistance fighter, legionnaire, liberator, having seen his parents die or leave for deportation never to return, Herbert, assured voice and infallible memory, returns at almost 99 years to what was one of the worst moments in the history of mankind.

Télé Loisirs: What do you think of Patrick Rotman’s evocation of the history of the various Resistance movements in France during the Occupation?

Herbert Traube: I would like to point out that at the time, I knew practically nothing about the various resistance movements. The one I belonged to between June 1941 and August 1942 in Marseilles didn’t even have a name. It was an embryo that was beginning to grow, inspired by General de Gaulle’s appeal. The history of the Resistance presented in this documentary reveals above all individuals, people who threw themselves body and soul into action against the invader, with often different motivations; out of pure patriotism, out of hatred for the occupier, out of anti-fascism, out of anti-totalitarian republican idealism, out of a desire to continue the fight, etc.

Austrian and Jewish, you had to flee Vienna at the age of 14, in 1938, after Kristallnacht. Do you have answers to the question that still haunts us: how was Nazism able to rally entire populations to its deadly ideology?

There was in Austria an anti-Semitism implanted in all strata of the population to varying degrees. With, of course, the theme of the Jews responsible for the death of Christ conveyed by the teaching of the catechism, the imaginary wealth of all the Jews and the jealousy in front of the success of the Jews in the intellectual, artistic, commercial activities. When Nazi propaganda also blamed the Jews for the misfortunes that the country had known since 1918, it was easy to exacerbate this resentment and transform it into hatred through false accusations. It was all the fault of the Jews! For things to get better, it was necessary to get rid of them, especially since they were not of the “race” of the natives. How can we be surprised then if a certain number of men, poisoned by these speeches, stimulated by a feeling of superiority and impunity, ended up losing all notion of humanity and behaving like wild beasts vis-à-vis other human beings?

“I never wanted to suffer”

Refugee in France, you are interned in the Rivesaltes camp, where your mother dies, then your father is deported to Auschwitz, in 1942. Orphan at 17 years old, do you know a moment of despair, or the instinct of survival prevails immediately ?

During my first internment in Gurs in October 1940, I was just 16 years old and my feeling was a mixture of incomprehension – why are we being treated like this? – and rage at being deprived of my freedom. Escape? My mother was interned like me and I had to watch over her. After our transfer to Camp de Rivesaltes, his state of health declined more and more. No care, no medicine; she died at just 49 years old. I felt the immense sadness of having lost my mother whom I adored, but I don’t have the slightest memory of despair. A survival instinct? I don’t know. A desire to live, yes! My innate optimism has always pushed me forward. I never wanted to suffer if I could do otherwise.

It is at this moment that you enter the Resistance, in Marseilles. How?

After my escape from Camp de Rivesaltes, I was received in Marseilles by a branch of American Quakers which housed women and children who could not return to their homes in the North. The director of this branch, M. Champenois, was a former colonel. With another young man, Jean, we were “handymen”; maintenance, shopping, small jobs. One day we have to pick up a very heavy wicker trunk from Marseille station. Barely out of the station, we are stopped by two policemen who want to check the contents. My comrade explains that he doesn’t have the key, that there are blankets for the refugees in the trunk. The police do not insist. But on the badly paved road, the lid of the trunk suddenly opens, letting out sheets of paper. My comrade whispers to me: “pick it up quickly!” I had time to see that the papers were Gaullist leaflets with the letterhead of Combat. I start pestering Jean with questions. He ends up admitting to me that M. Champenois directs a network of resistance, charged mainly with Gaullist propaganda, and that he, Jean, distributes tracts and clandestine newspapers. When I told him that I wanted to work with him, we made a pact: I could accompany him in his activities, and I would say nothing to Mr. Champenois. Which still ended up learning that I was part of his network.

Do you arm yourself with courage, is there unconsciousness, or do you feel you have no choice, like when you escape through the window of a train that leads you to death?

What does it mean to “show courage”? It is to overcome, to overcome one’s fear in order to move forward. At some point in their life, everyone may have been called upon to show courage; courage, is it unconsciousness? I believe that when one must be courageous, the problem of unconsciousness cannot arise. We must act without thinking, at the moment T. When I escaped from the train – whose destination we do not know, I remind you – the “courage” was to jump from a moving train, to seize the chance showing up, not to let her pass. Because at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to regain my freedom and find my comrades from the resistance in Marseille…

“We all have the same blood”

You will enlist, under a false name, in the Foreign Legion and participate in the liberation of North Africa, then of Europe… Until you celebrate the Nazi surrender in Austria on May 8, 1945. you when you find your country that chased you away?

I have to make an effort to try to find my feelings of the time. My unit was at the head of the Allied forces entering Austria. Did I return to my homeland? Absolutely not ! I had lost my homeland in 1938. On that date the country of my childhood, of my childhood memories, no longer existed. The days of fighting preceding the Victory of May 8, 1945, I had no time to ask myself existential questions. We were exhausted. After the cessation of fighting, we lived in the euphoria of victory, the joy of having annihilated the Nazi hydra, of having survived deadly battles. We spent a few days of rest in a village in Vorarlberg, in contact with the population. These initially fearful people, fearing abuses, have shown themselves to be confident and helpful. And that’s when I started to wonder. Passing by a woman who was avoiding me with her gaze: wasn’t she the mother, the sister, the fiancée of a torturer, of an SS, of a Gestapo agent? We were unaware of the existence of the extermination camps, but I knew of the concentration camps where my father had been interned after Kristallnacht. It was enough to also remind me of the abuses and humiliations suffered in Austria after the Anschluss. By stirring these thoughts, I ended up understanding that my homeland was the Foreign Legion, whose motto Statutory our homeland is explicit. Today, nearly eight decades have passed. I have no animosity towards this country where I have many friends, where I often go. My resentment is against those who did the monstrous tasks, not against their descendants. But vigilance is essential, here as elsewhere.

A documentary film is dedicated to you*, you continue to intervene in schools… But after you, there will only be archives to bear witness to what was the unspeakable. Are you optimistic, or do you think history teaches us nothing?

It is our role, those of us who lived through these events, not only to pass on this experience, but also to make young people – and less young people – understand how we arrived at these monstrosities. It is said that the Shoah “began with words”, with the poisoning of minds. We try to make people understand that this poisoning is a daily fact through social networks whose content has become uncontrollable, and where conspiracy and negationist intrigues are rampant. It means looking for the truth, verifying the accuracy of a statement, not barking at the wolves. We explain to young people what tolerance is, respect for others, that there is only one race: homo sapiens. That we all have the same blood, regardless of the color of our skin. By trying to convey this message, we hope that some will become aware of it and that they will become the future transmitters of memory. This is the goal of our interventions in schools. Am I optimistic? At the end of the war, we thought we had defeated militant anti-Semitism, identity-based extremism, totalitarianism. We had the hope of a universal peace. With the birth of the European Union, I thought that hope had come true. If the latest events disappoint me, I remain confident in the resources of a Humanity that it is important to try to improve as a whole. My optimism, if chipped, has not left me yet.

*Herbert Traube, the French destiny of an undesirablea film by Clara Laurent.