Benjamin Murmelstein

Benjamin Murmelstein
Born June 9, 1905
Lemberg, Galicia, Austria Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine)
Died October 27, 1989
Rome, Italy
Title Chief Rabbi of Vienna

Benjamin Murmelstein (9 June 1905 – 27 October 1989), one of 17 Community Rabbis at Vienna in 1938, and the only one remaining in Vienna by late 1939, was the last "Ältester" (council elder) of the Judenrat in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He was the only "Judenältester" to survive the Holocaust.[1] Because of this, he was interviewed by Claude Lanzman in 1975.[2] In 2013, Lanzman released the Last of the Unjust, a three-and-a-half-hour documentary based on the interviews.[3]

Life

He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Lemberg, Galicia. His religious studies took him eventually to Vienna, where he was rabbi to the congregation at a small synagogue.[1] He also occasionally lectured at Vienna University, was known for his phenomenal memory, and wrote on Josephus Flavius,[4] a figure still widely regarded as a Jewish traitor and pariah, whose works he anthologized, and whose life fascinated him.[1] He came to notice after making a speech on the "unknown Jewish soldiers" of World War 1, whose names had been effaced from memorials. The local Israelitische Kultusgemeide subsequently asked him to supply them with reports in the wake of the Anschluss. During this period, he encountered Adolf Eichmann who was in Vienna to organize the expulsion of Jews and the expropriation of their property. In conversations with Lanzmann in 1975 he revealed that he was present when Eichmann, armed with a crowbar, organized the destruction of Vienna's Seitenstrettengasse synagogue during the Kristallnacht pogrom. For the next three years he was active in assisting Eichmann with the logistics of forcing Jews to emigrate and by 1941 had managed to help some 125,000 Jews get out of Austria.[1] In 1943 he was interned in Theresienstadt, a unique concentration camp built from an old Czechoslovakian fortress which served to promote Nazi propaganda that Jews were been provided with a "model ghetto" for notable or aged Jews, who were induced to reside there, when old they would be able to enjoy the blessings of a comfortable spa, in exchange for handing over their savings.

They were then sent off in second-class train compartments well stocked with food and medicine, only to disembark at the other end and be attacked by guards and dogs.'[1]

On his arrival, he was appointed to the Judenrat, then under the general direction of Jakob Edelstein, who was deported a year later to Auschwitz after being forced to stand by and witness the gunning down of his wife and son. After Edelstein's successor to the office, Paul Eppstein, was executed, Murmelstein, as third member of the elderlies' council,[5] took over the office of camp elder, a position he held until Theresienstadt was liberated on 8 May 1945, by which time some 120,000 Jews had passed through the camp.[6]

In survivors' memories, Murmelstein was widely hated for the rigorous efficiency and inflexibility he displayed in carrying out Nazi orders. He expeditiously beautified the castle's infrastructure when it was chosen for Nazi propaganda films like Theresienstadt.[1]

After the liberation of the camp, Murmelstein was arrested by Czech government and detained for one and a half years pending the results of an investigation into his role as a collaborator. When prosecutors closed the case without an indictment, Murmelstein emigrated to Italy, and took up residence in Rome, where he worked as a salesman and, desultorily, for the Vatican.[1] In 1961 he published a memoir of his wartime experiences, Terezin: Il ghetto-modello di Eichmann.[7]The Roman Jewish community refused to enrol him in their registers, and on his death, he was refused interment next to his wife, and relegated to a plot on the margins. His son was denied to right to recite the Kaddish over his grave.[1]

In his anthology of the works of Josephus, written on the eve of WW2, Murmelstein wrote:

'His divided and ambiguous nature turned him into a symbol of the Jewish tragedy.[1]

The impression given by Murmelstein to several scholars is that of a tragic figure who identified his personal and historical predicament with that of the classical Roman-Jewish historian.[8]

Controversy, criticism and life after the Holocaust

Like all Jews who had worked with Eichmann, he was accused of collaboration with the Nazi government. Due to being accused of such, he lived in exile in Rome for the rest of his life. He also never set foot in Israel and was not even called as a witness in the Eichmann trial.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Mark Lilla,'The Defense of a Jewish Collaborator,' New York Review of Books, 5 December 2013 pp.55-57.
  2. ↑ The transcript of his interview
  3. ↑ Rob Nelson (25 May 2013). "Cannes Film Review: 'The Last of the Unjust'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
  4. ↑ Nava Shean, To Be an Actress, Hamilton Books, 2010 p.38.
  5. ↑ Beate Meyer, A Fatal Balancing Act: The Dilemma of the Reich Association of Jews in ... , Berghahn Books, 2013 p.175.
  6. ↑ Gonda Redlich, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, ed. Saul S. Friedman, University Press of Kentucky, 2015 p.163.
  7. ↑ Benjamin Murmelstein, Terezin: Il ghetto-modello di Eichmann, Cappelli Milan, 1961.
  8. ↑ Anton Pelinka, Politics of the Lesser Evil: Leadership, Democracy, and Jaruzelski's Poland, Transaction Publishers 1999 p.101.

Bibliography