[...]... Poles—regular officers, professional men, manufacturers, and officials Their sons were known as the “gilded youth” of Lemberg and supplied most of the students in the Technical High School and in the High School of Agriculture Many of them were rowdies, hooligans, antisemites, and Jews who fell into their hands were often beaten up and left bleeding on the ground They fastened razor blades to the end of their... wanted to work off their frustrations and racial hatreds on defenseless victims Remembrance of time past only made me feel weak, and I badly needed to remain strong, for only the strong in these dire times had a hope of survival I still clung to the belief that the world one day would revenge itself on these brutes—in spite of their victories, their jubilation at the battles they had won, and their boundless... it on us Hesitatingly he passed the camera from right to left hand and then let it go again Perhaps he was afraid of trouble with the SS We came in sight of the church at the end of Janowska Street, a lofty structure of red brick and squared stone Which direction would the askari, at the head of our column, take? To the right, down to the station, or to the left along Sapiehy Street, at the end of. .. passed the gate we began to sing The camps songs were of a special type, a mixture of melancholy, sick humor, and vulgar words, a weird amalgam of Russian, Polish, and German The obscenities suited the mentality of the askaris who constantly demanded one particular song When they heard it broad grins came over their faces and their features lost some of their brutal appearance Once we had passed beyond the. .. under the Germans The term “askari” was used during the First World War to describe the Negro soldier employed by the Germans in East Africa For some reason the SS used the name for the Russian auxiliaries They were employed in concentration camps to assist the guards and they knew only too well what the Germans expected from them And most of them lived up to expectations Their brutality was only mitigated... in exchange Nobody asked what the murdered Jews had to do with the Russian time bombs “In the evening there was a ration of brandy Brandy helps one forget…Over the radio came reports from the front, the numbers of torpedoed ships, of prisoners taken, or planes shot down, and the area of the newly conquered territories…It was getting dark… “Fired by the brandy we sat down and began to sing I too sang... was one of the most important arteries in Lemberg, and violent fighting had taken place there when the Germans had captured the city At the end of the rows of houses we passed once again the military cemetery with its long lines of graves, but somehow the sunflowers looked different now They were facing in another direction The evening sunshine gave them a reddish tinge, and they trembled gently in the. .. camp In the evenings they played works of Bach and Wagner and Grieg One day Rokita brought along a songwriter called Zygmunt Schlechter and ordered him to compose a “death tango.” And whenever the band played this tune, the sadistic monster Rokita had wet eyes In the early mornings, when the prisoners left the camp to go to work, the band played them out, the SS insisting that we march in time to the music... climbed out and sent for our captain Then came a number of trucks which took us to another part of the town There the same miserable picture presented itself “In a large square we got out and looked around us On the other side of the square there was a group of people under close guard I assumed they were civilians who were to be taken out of the town, in which fighting was still going on And then the word... awaiting them… “A truck arrived with cans of petrol which we unloaded and took into a house The strong men among the Jews were ordered to carry the cans to the upper stories They obeyed—apathetically, without a will of their own, like automatons “Then we began to drive the Jews into the house A sergeant with a whip in his hand helped any of the Jews who were not quick enough There was a hail of curses and . them, and reflect on the implications of their decision. In this one isolated case, was forgiveness an option, and what would it mean for the victim as well as the perpetrator of these crimes? The. discussion, The Sunflower soon became one of the most widely used books in teaching settings. Simon Wiesenthal tells a personal story of an incident that occurred in a concentration camp and asks,. reason the SS used the name for the Russian auxiliaries. They were employed in concentration camps to assist the guards and they knew only too well what the Germans expected from them. And most of