Another Day's Work for Felix Landau, German Officer at Drohobych, now Ukraine. That nothing be forgotten.

From Landau's diary:

"At 6 a.m., I am suddenly wakened from a deep sleep. Fall in line for an execution. Alright, I'll play the role of the executioner and after that the gravedigger. Why not? It is strange. A man who loves to fight has to shoot up defenseless people. 23 are supposed to be shot. Among them are the two women I already mentioned. They even refuse to drink a glass of water. I'm told to be one of the sharpshooters. I'm supposed to shoot any prisoners who attempt to escape. We drive along the road for a few kilometers. We then go to the right, into the forest. We are only 6 men at the moment, and we are looking for a suitable place to shoot and bury them. After a few minutes, we found a spot. The condemned line up with shovels to dig their own graves. Two of them are crying. The others are amazingly courageous... The condemned are divided into three shifts, since we don't have enough shovels here. It's strange, but I don't feel anything inside me. No sympathy - nothing - that's how it is - so everything's okay for me... The hole slowly gets bigger. Two have collapsed from crying. I always let them dig longer, so they don't think too much. While they're working they are actually calmer. All their valuables, like watches and money, are place in a pile. The two women are taken to the one end of the ditch after everyone has been taken to a clearing nearby. Six men have been chosen to do the shooting.

3 men are to aim at the heart and 3 at the skull. I take the heart. The shots ring out, and brain matter is sprayed everywhere. That's too much: two shots at the skull. The skull is literally ripped away. Almost all of them drop to the ground without a sound. But with two of them it doesn't work. They cry and whine for a long time. The next to the last group has to throw those who have already been shot into the mass grave. Then they have to line up themselves, and they fall in all alone. The last two have to stand right on the edge, so they fall in correctly. Some of the dead bodies are resituated with the rake, and then we begin to do our work as gravediggers. I'm dead tired by the time I get back, and we have to start our work. We have to clean up everything in the building."

Bruno Schulz, one of the millions slaughtered by the master-race within my lifetime.

Everything here is from Wikipedia, and I have left the links intact. 

I am about to start reading Bruno Schulz's extant works. 

Let nothing be forgotten.

Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 – November 19, 1942) was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents.^[1] He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. Several of Schulz's works have been lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. Schulz was shot and killed by a German Nazi in 1942 while walking back home toward Drohobycz Ghetto with a loaf of bread.

In June 1941, Felix Landau volunteered for Einsatzkommando service. He began his diary in July 1941, interspersing sentimental letters to his fiancée with detailed records of his participation in atrocities of what later came to be known as the Holocaust. He describes "shooting exercises" and "wild actions", shooting sprees wherein he and his men would pick off random Jews who worked nearby or passed by on the street. In one such event in November 1942, Landau killed the personal dentist of a fellow officer, Karl Günther. In revenge, Günther caught up with Bruno Schulz, then under the protection of Landau, and shot him twice in the head. According to Schulz's friend Izydor Friedman, who witnessed the death, this happened at the corner of Czacki and Mickiewicz Streets. Later, Günther told Landau: "You killed my Jew - I killed yours."

At the end of 1941, he lived with Gertrude in an aristocratic villa. He divorced his first wife in 1942 and married Gertrude in 1943 (divorced in 1946). Until May 1943, Landau was in charge of organizing Jewish labor.

After World War II

In 1946, a former worker recognized him in Linz. Landau was arrested by the Americans but escaped from Glasenbach prison camp in August 1947. Under the name of Rudolf Jaschke he started an interior decorating company in Bavaria.^[3]

In 1959, Landau was arrested and accused of the massacres. He was condemned to life imprisonment in 1962 at the Stuttgart Assize Court. 

In 1973 he was pardoned. ^[4]

Quotes from this degenerate's diary[edit]

• Lwow - 5 July 1941... There were hundreds of Jews walking along the street with blood pouring down their faces, holes in their heads, their hands broken and their eyes hanging out of their sockets. They were covered in blood. Some were carrying others who had collapsed. We went to the citadel; there we saw things that few people have ever seen. At the entrance to the citadel there were soldiers standing guard. They were holding clubs as thick as a man's wrist and were lashing out and hitting anyone who crossed their path. The Jews were pouring out of the entrance. There were rows of Jews lying one on top of the other like pigs, whimpering horribly. The Jews kept streaming out of the citadel completely covered in blood. We stopped and tried to see who was in charge of the Kommando. Nobody. Someone had let the Jews go. They were just being hit out of rage and hatred...

• Drohobycz - 12 July 1941... At 6:00 in the morning I was suddenly awoken from a deep sleep. Report for an execution. Fine, so I'll just play executioner and then gravedigger, why not?... Twenty-three had to be shot, amongst them ... two women ... We had to find a suitable spot to shoot and bury them. After a few minutes we found a place. The death candidates assembled with shovels to dig their own graves. Two of them were weeping. The others certainly have incredible courage... Strange, I am completely unmoved. No pity, nothing. That's the way it is and then it's all over... Valuables, watches and money are put into a pile... The two women are lined up at one end of the grave ready to be shot first... As the women walked to the grave they were completely composed. They turned around. Six of us had to shoot them. The job was assigned thus: three at the heart, three at the head. I took the heart. The shots were fired and the brains whizzed through the air. Two in the head is too much. They almost tear it off...
• Jump up

Another 2 Stories Told Only That They May Not Be Lost

Let Nothing Be Lost

The Grandmother of one of my best Liceum students told me this:

She was 12 when the Germans invaded Poland. She, her brother, and her parents were to be sent to Sachenhausen concentation camp. On arrival at the local assembly point, the mother pointed out that the children, when arrested, had left their shoes at home. The German in charge (whatever he was, he was clearly not very clever) allowed the children to walk home to fetch the shoes. They walked away instead to the forest.

The parents died in Sachsenhausen.

Like Jósef, and so many children, she and her brother took to the forest near Lidzbark, dug a shelter, and lived in it intermittently for 4 years while begging food and shelter at isolated houses. The dug-out still exists: my student has seen it.

Another lady I know in her eighties, who was a 14 year-old nurse during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, witnessed the murder of her brother, shot through the head by a passing German soldier, who just felt like it.

I suppose he had had a bad day.

A Story Told Only That It May Not Be Lost

Having been a financial services salesman (heh!), but an honest one, one of my few and minute skills is getting people to talk about themselves. It has helped me a lot, both as a homelessness worker and as a teacher.

A lot of my Polish friends are younger than me, and a lot are older, and so perhaps to me more interesting. An 80 year-old friend named Jósef, a Catholic, told me this:

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Jósef was aged 12 and his brother 14 months. The father had an old army carbine, which he buried in the garden for possible future use against the Germans. A neighbour, uncharacteristically for a Pole (see Norman Davis, passim), saw him bury it, and reported the fact to the Germans, and mother and father were taken to Oświęcim and gassed. (Yes, I know the Germans and the world call it something else, but I will use only its Polish name.)

Jósef, carrying his little brother fled to the forest and nearly starved, creeping at night from house to house for food and shelter. Somehow they survived until 1944, and the Soviet 'liberation'. They are still both alive, well, and happy.

Under the post-war communist stalinist puppet government, as a soldier he could not declare his Catholicism, or marry in Church, so a civil ceremony had to do until times got easier. He and his wife, an ex-policewoman, are still married and as soppily in love as any two newlyweds.

God be praised!

Decency Is Not Enough

A German woman told me, some 40 years ago, that before the war, her parents who were teachers living in Berlin, witnessed a riot during which a policeman had his eye deliberately gouged out by a communist. As soon as it was safe to leave their flat, they went to the local Nazi party offices and enrolled.

As someone said, “No one is more dangerous than a decent person with a sense of outrage”.

I smell danger now. England long ago ceased to be a religious country, but most of its population, until fairly recently, retained ideas of decency. As Harold Macmillan famously said, “Without religion, there is only decency. Decency is good, but it is not enough.”

Decency is vulnerable to the false idea of “fair play”.Think of the noble stupidity of the English allowing the heathen Danes to cross the causeway at Maldon. Think of the legislation since 1967 which has so undermined morals and decency: it has all appealed to that same decency.

Ending “back street” abortions – what decent person wants a woman to die in a botched abortion?

Legalising homosexual acts – what decent person wants otherwise law-abiding people subjected to blackmail, arrest, shame, and so on?

Lowering the age of homosexual consent to 16 – what decent person (well I for one) wants to deny anyone over that age of consent the right to be truly himself/herself? (or deny the right of elderly homosexual roués to enjoy sex with teenagers?)

Outlawing “hate speech” – no decent person would speak hatefully of another.

God forbid!

Err…Who?

So, the appeal to decency has resulted in:

Horrible and painful death for the unborn,

Aggressive homosexualism, and the teaching even in Catholic schools that homosexual acts are “acceptable”,

The corruption of minds and hearts,

The curtailment of free speech, so that religions are barred from stating their conscientious opposition to certain types of behaviour,

A vigorous and lucrative sex industry.

We can either go along with this, as the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales and their Education Service seem to be doing, or we, too, can get aggressive and draw lines in the sand.

Civil disobedience is preferable to outright violence, and certainly preferable to a new Hitler, riding on the backs of the outraged.