Who Will Be the Next Jew?

Ralph Knobloch

It was on a Thursday, one day in January. I was sitting in a classroom in Dawson Hall waiting to give my speech on the Holocaust. While we were waiting, one of my classmates leaned over and glanced at some of the pictures that I had on the brutal killings in the ghettos and death camps of Poland. She looked dazed.

"Ralph," she said. "This actually happened? Were they black?"

No, I said, they were Jewish.

That gave me the inspiration to go ahead and write up my speech, and to give everyone some of the knowledge my grandmother gave me when I was growing up, about the horrible events that took place during her adulthood during World War II.

Nazi German dictator Adolph Hitler and the Nazis described the Jews as non-human, a parasitic force that would ultimately destroy Germany. To the Nazis, it was the forces of light -- Germans, or Aryans -- against the forces of dark -- including the Jews. That was the Nazi ideology. It was anti-Semitic, against the Jews.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland without declaration of war. When the Germans occupied Poland, Hitler knew exactly who to go after -- the priests, teachers, technicians and political leaders, and, of course, the Jews. In October 1940, the Germans ordered Jews into the ghettos -- separated from the rest of the city and enclosed by a 10-foot wall with barbed wire on top. Workshops and factories utilized Jewish forced labor, to support the German army. Then came the death camps, Dachau and Auschwitz. My grandmother, Zanetta Knobloch, is a survivor of this horrible time in history.

I learned the meaning of the Holocaust slowly. It took me a long time to understand what it meant.

When I was in my high school years, I was taught in school about the Holocaust being one of the most vicious acts in mankind. But even then as I learned about it with my classmates, it didn't have the impact on my life that it does now. After the classes were over, people would go out and try to find a Jewish kid in school, so they could make fun of the. Let me say I was one of those kids who would make fun of a "Jew boy," not even considering anything my grandmother told me over the years.

When I turned 22, my grandmother's wisdom started to sink into my thick skull. Also, I visited the Holocaust Muesum in Washington, D.C. But most I learned from my grandmother. Her pain was my pain. Her courage gave me the courage to understand the hurt inside of her 86-year-old heart. Now I know that I want to share her story of what she went through this barbaric time.

Let me say this -- till this day Zanetta Knobloch doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. She is very honest, plus smart. She knows four different languages, speaks them fluently. She doesn't believe in "God." Do I blame her? No. Her word is good all over the world. When I say "world," I mean it. She's been interviewed from the Jewish community as far away as the Italian community, that I know of. She has no money, but she can get millions if she needs it. Her life is very structured. Not like mine. Sometimes she cries more than she speaks -- it breaks my heart. Her family was wiped out, All she has left is her three sons and me. Her oldest son is still in Poland. The middle child, my uncle, is doing very well. He gives a hand when he has time. He owns a business, so it is hard for him. My father is youngest of the three. Same thing: He has a business. So he helps when he can. Then there is me. This is my love to her.

Nazis and Anti-Semites belived that Jews sacrificed their kids to Satan ... that they were worse than the beast himself ... that the synagogue was a brothel, a den ... a temple of demons, a place for the meeting of the killers of Christ. Hate can easily be a weapon for a country that is in need of some answers, who need someone to blame for the poverty in Germany. Empty hearts need to be filled. People looking for answers will look in the direction of anyone willing to give them just that. In Germany, people looked to ... Adolph Hitler. He began vandalizing Jewish businesses. Jewish personnel were dismissed from office. Jews lost their citizenship and were forbidden to marry Germans. Every synagogue was burned. Finally the Jewish people were forced to wear the star of David and live in these so-called ghettos. They were closed off, with guards, like a jail but on the outside.

My grandmother is a survivor of the ghettos. She lived in Poland, in a city called Bouczacz, where she was going to college. (The president of Poland, Ignacy Moscicki, was paying tuition.) She also had three side jobs, tutoring children, cleaning and taking care of her beautiful sisters.

In 1939 she had two weeks left in her schooling, but the war broke out before she could finish. So she lived in the ghetto with her family, her brother, two sisters, mom and dad. The Germans used to ride horses down the streets of the ghettos, while having Jewish kids chase the horse like it was a game. Then they would turn around and shoot them dead. They had dogs, and they said the dogs could smell a Jew.

One day when my grandmother was going out to sell bread, she came across a man, who asked her, "Where do you live, young miss?" She told him she lived in the ghetto, and she just wanted to sell him some bread. He said he would buy it from her if she showed him where she lived. His name was Mieczlaw Knobloch. When I went to the Holocaust Museum, I got to see his name on the wall, in big print, showing how many people he saved in the Holocaust. At least 3,000. He was Catholic, 20 years older than my grandmother, who was a beautiful 18-year-old girl at the time.

Knobloch went back to the house that day with my grandmother and told the family not to worry, he would get them out of the ghetto and bring them to a Catholic home where they would be safe. The ghettos were bad -- people would be killed by the minute. Also a lot of people were dying of the disease typhus. My grandfather would go with my grandmother in the night to help save the children in the ghettos, by hiding them in Catholic families.

One day the neighbor next door found out where my grandmother was hiding. He knew they were Jewish, so he called in the Nazi SS police on them. When the SS arrived, everyone was home except for my grandfather. They shot my grandmother's father, shot her mother, shot one of her sisters. My grandmother and her other sister were hiding in the wall. I remember her saying that she didn't believe the dogs could smell a Jew after all. The two of them hid there for two days, until the next German troops came in and found them. One of the SS men said to the other, "You kill her, because I don't want to." My grandmother said she was Catholic, not Jewish. "My name is Zonate," she said. But her real name is Maria. Till this day she is called Zonate, or Zanetta, Maria Knobloch.

The SS men said, "Let's take her in to the commander's base for further evaluation." Understand, she had false documents from a priest saying she was Catholic (from a friend of the family). The commander said, "OK, men, please leave the room while I talk to Miss Knobloch." Right away he said, "I know you a Jew, a Catholic would not have that pain in her eyes. I will let you go, but don't go back where you were because it will be raided. Now leave before I change my mind."

The German's finally caught up to my grandmother's sister and shot her dead in front of everyone. My grandmother's brother warned the family to leave Poland and go with him (in the Polish army) to Iran and then to England. His name was Haim Lev, and he was chief engineer in a battle boat. He survived the war, and died in 1998. My grandfather and grandmother survived -- my grandfather died in her bed, leaving her with three kids and those memories.

We live in an era in which a Holocaust is always possible, though not inevitable. The Holocaust was started by factors that still exist in the world today -- factors such as hatred, brutal dictatorship and war. If this is so, who could say who will be the next Jew?

 

(c) 1999 Sleepy Weasel