[REPOST] "I’m lucky — at age of 98, I’m still able to do what I promised to do"

Abram Goldberg turns 99 in a couple of weeks. He gave an eyewitness account of an infamous Lodz ghetto speech by Chief Elder Chaim Rumkowski, delivered 4 September 1942.

I’m reposting this one because it’s 79 years to the day since Rumkowski’s speech. The fact that Holocaust survivor Abram Goldberg was there in the Lodz square and able to recount ‘Give me your children’ for the podcast was just incredible, and harrowing, and moving.

The speech at the heart of the episode was acted out by English actor Tobias Menzies, and it concludes the podcast episode.

Thanks to Fiona Harris for co-writing Abram’s autobiography, and for allowing me this opportunity.

I’ve just finished watching The USA and the Holocaust by Ken Burns on Docplay, and can highly recommend.

Here is the post from when podcast episode released:

Chaim Rumkowski’s ‘Give me your children’ speech is the most disturbing speech I’ve ever read. I came across it in the Penguin Book of Twentieth Century speeches about five years ago, and it’s horrifying — an anguished plea by Chaim Rumkowski, the Nazi appointed Chief Elder of the Łódź ghetto in Poland, for parents to hand over children under ten to the Nazis for deportation. The elderly and the sick were also to be in the 20,000 who must be ‘transported’ — and by 4th of September 1942, the imprisoned and impoverished inhabitants of the ghetto had a fair idea of what that meant.