John Damski: The Holocaust

Great Essays
The holocaust was the mass slaughter of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and Jehovah Witnesses by a German organization called Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi) from 1941 to 1945. The Nazis believed they were a superior race of people, and anyone they thought was inferior or believed something different should be killed. In the time span of four years the Nazis are believed to have killed 11 million people, 6 million are believed to be Jewish. (Rosenberg 1) Many citizens of Germany and the countries the Nazis conquered believed that what the Nazis were doing was wrong; but they were afraid to publically disagree. There was, however, every-day, ordinary people who risked their lives to help Jews escape the Nazis persecution. …show more content…
He was born in Germany but moved to Poland when he was very young because his parents were Polish. He had a lot of friends; one of his friends was Jewish. Every Sunday his Jewish friend would come over to Damski’s house to have Sunday dinner. While growing up, he saw some discrimination against the Jews, but nothing serious. He could speak fluent German which helped him later in life to get out of sticky situations. When John was young he was very good at sports. John Damski played over three sports and some of his team mates were Jewish. The main sports he played were track & field, soccer and gymnastics. He was especially good at track, finishing 2nd in the Polish national championship for the triple jump event. While competing in gymnastics, he witnessed some anti-Semitic comments and quit because, “’We just didn’t like what was happening; we simply did not see any difference between us and the Jews.’”(Land-Weber …show more content…
Since, “Hiding a Jew in Poland was a capital crime.” (Cerami 13) John knew he was risking his life. However, John Damski knew her fate if the Gestapo caught her, “Whenever the Gestapo came everybody was scared; you never knew what they would do. They could take you with them, and that would be that.”(Land-Weber 266) He fell in love with her and later married her. At this time, John had already helped a lot of Jews get false papers; because Sarah was a Jew he got fake papers for her changing her name to Christine Paderewska. In addition, he even had a fake marriage certificate, so she was now his fake wife. They moved to Czestochowa. To hide her mother, he got fake papers for her, too, and she became his widowed Aunt Olszewska who lived in

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Maria Florek Essay

    • 1430 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Holocaust was one of the most devastating periods in the history of the world. Millions of Jews were murdered because the leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jewish financiers for being responsible for sending the World into its first World War. This caused the deaths over one hundred thousand soldiers. The Hitler soldiers believed their race, the Aryan race was the strongest and best race in the world. Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race.…

    • 1430 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, there were many who found this solution immoral and inhumane. Some of these brave souls took it into their own hands to protect the lives of the Jews, even if it cost theirs. This essay will explore the journeys and the stories of Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, and the Bielski Brothers. Oskar Schindler went to Poland as soon as Hitler invaded the country. When he arrived in Krakow, his first intention was to make a profit out of the…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto, Chil Rajchman’s The Last Jew of Treblinka, and Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz are the accounts of three Jewish people who experienced the German’s answer to the Jewish problem from their particular time and place of the “Final Solution”. Sierakowiak’s diary was written while he was living in the Lodz Labor Ghetto with his family and died before he was deported. Rajchman’s and Lengyel’s books are a survivor’s account of their experience at the Treblinka death camp and Auschwitz-Birkenau labor/death camp, respectively. This paper is to compare the experiences between these three people as they suffered much of the same deprivations, yet their experiences ended in different outcomes.…

    • 1551 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Holocaust was an event that created the persecution and murder of six million Jews by Adolf Hitler and his collaborators. There was an addition five million non-Jewish victims, a total of eleven victims killed. About one million who were killed, were Jewish children. The greek root word “Holo” means whole and “caust” means burnt, Holocaust overall means sacrifice by fire. It all took place in Germany.…

    • 1009 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Berlin Boxing Club

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the book “The Berlin Boxing Club” by Robert Sharenow there is a boy named Karl, he is a Jew that lives in Nazi era Berlin. He gets bullied for being a Jew. Karl doesn’t own up to his heritage. In the book Max Schmeling helps Karl out a lot. Nobody knew Karl was a Jew.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Plac Zody Case Study

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Pages

    He tried to escape while the group passed Wieliczka Street by running into a house, but his plan failed. He was lucky the SS officer who caught him did not kill him right then. To escape the death train, Victor pulled out a hacksaw blade he hid in his boot and began to cut the two steel bars barricading the small window.…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Art Spiegelman’s Maus, is a two-part graphic novel about the journey of his father who is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Throughout the novel, Artie’s father Vladek recounts the events of his life prior to and during the Holocaust. Art also displays his conversations with his father,displaying how the tragedy that he survived has changed his father in many ways most of them negative. Maus emphasizes the lifelong effects that a situation as drastic as the Holocaust has on the family dynamic, the importance of religion, and shows the benefits of visuals in a graphic novel. “Maus recounts the Spiegelman family dynamic in a brutally frank and honest manner.…

    • 1673 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Surviving Through the Holocaust A 14 year old boy who survived through the Holocaust and lived to tell about it died March 31. 2016. He died in his house in Budapest at age 86. Nobel Laureate, Imre Kertesz, was acclaimed for his semi autobiographical books on living through the Holocaust and what happened after (Guardian News and Media Limited). Mr. Kertesz was born into a lower-class family in Budapest on November 9, 1929. Laws had been introduced from 1938 that cut back the freedom of Jews from Hungarian, but everything changed when Hitler invaded the country in March 1944.…

    • 345 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Holocaust Research Paper

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages

    If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. From the American responses during the Holocaust and the Japanese Americans being put in concentration camps to what is currently happening with the Syrian refugees. Now fear and anxiety about whether to admit many refugees or turn them away has put the attention on the many regretful decisions made by U.S. officials before, during and now after World War ll. The Holocaust was one of the most horrific time periods from 1933- 1945 where the mass murder of some 6 million Jews along with homosexuals and gypsies by the order of Adolf Hitler.…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dorotka Goldstein Roth Dorotka Goldstein Roth, was a Jewish girl born in Warsaw, Poland on February 1st, 1932. Miss Roth, the youngest of three children in her family had a very charismatic father. Mr. Roth believed in Zionism, this meant that he reasoned that Jewish people should go back to Palestine because that’s was where the holy land of Israel was, their true home. Dorotka’s father, in addition to be a Zionist, was a very caring man, he even built a soap kitchen for Jewish refugees in Warsaw. He had two jobs to support his family; he worked for a popular Jewish newspaper and was the director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Witold Pilecki today is considered a national hero of Poland; he earned his reputation, from his actions in the Second World War. The story of Pilecki’s suffering under the Nazi party starts nearly as early as his birth on the thirteenth of May in the year 1901. Due to the January uprising, his family was moved by Imperial Russia to the city of Olonets in the republic of Karelia a subsection of Russia. Even though he was born in a district of Russia he was considered a citizen of Poland. Pilecki’s first act of heroism was when he volunteered to infiltrate the German death camp in Auschwitz.…

    • 189 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Therefore, she was perfectly fine and able to take care of the apartment and the personal possin it. Every single day she would get food from local farms and take the food to the ghetto and give them to the Diamantes. She did this until they moved the Jews to concentration camps. Then, sometimes she would got to meet the Diamante's and she would take some to the apartment and hide them.…

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Isak Borenstein was born on May 5th, 1918, in Random Poland. His father was a life-stock dealer. He had three brothers and three sisters, two of his sisters names were Hannah and Lola. One brother’s name was Abe. Isak was a prisoner of war and here is a little imformation about his story.…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Another defining moment came when Beck’s team won the four-man sixty-meter relay. Because he was Jewish, he would not be recognized for his victory. Beck says, “According to his regulations I was really not allowed to be honored since I was Jewish. My world collapsed at that moment. I was the first to cross the finish line and wasn’t allowed to stand there with the rest” (Beck 20).…

    • 1303 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    29/03/2015 Nancy Ashour Revision of the Deep Structure of the rough draft of “Shylock’s Actions in an Effort to Earn Respect” Introductory Paragraph Thesis: “One cannot deny the fact that Shylock and the whole Jewish community are exposed to severe persecution, and so consequently, I believe that Shylock was only what the Christians around him made him to be, however, if he were to find himself in a less hostile environment, he would not have been that cold-blooded, as he would not have had to try as hard to earn respect.” Important Idea: Shylock’s behavior was a result of the way he was previously treated by the Christians. He was ruthless because he was trying way too hard to earn respect. However, is it completely the Christians’ fault?…

    • 1401 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays