Whom are you voting for, part I?

Whom are you voting for, part I?

Three weeks now until the presidential election. It seems that every reporter out there has a two-part question for every voter. Whom are you voting for? And why?
I’m no different. In this pre-election series, I’m sitting down with three very different people. Each comes from a different geographical area, a different generation, a different worldview. Yet, each has a very pronounced perspective on the current political climate.
In this first segment I’m sitting down with Chaim Kovaes. Chaim lives in Montreal. This interview took place over the phone.

Q: Chaim, thank you for joining me. I’m just trying to get a sense of what voters are thinking around the country, and in Canada too. Do you have dual citizenship?

Chaim: I do.

Q: So whom will you be voting for in November?

Chaim: Barack Obama.

Q: He’s your guy, definitely?

Chaim: Can I be honest?

Q: I would like that.

Chaim: I wanted to vote for Hillary. I met the Clintons, got to know them a little bit. This was back in the 1990s. He, I didn’t much care for. But she, I found quite formidable.

Q: What were the circumstances that led to your meeting the Clintons?

Chaim: I was doing some work for the Holocaust Museum in Washington. I served on the curriculum committee. Our job was to write a curriculum that the schools could use to teach the Holocaust. Both President Clinton and the First Lady were very interested in our project.

Q: From the sounds of your voice, you sound like you’re in your 50s. What brought you to the Holocaust Museum? Are you the son of a survivor?

Chaim (laughing): In my 50s? What a thing to say. I am 84-years-old. I am a Holocaust survivor.

Q: Incredible, Chaim. You sound very young. Can I ask you a few questions about your history?

Chaim: Of course.

Q: You’re 84-years-old. So you were born in 1924. Where were you born?

Chaim: Lodz.

Q: So you must have gone into the ghetto? 1940, I believe.

Chaim: You are right. The winter of 1940. I survived in the ghetto for four years. In the early spring of 1944, when the Nazis liquidated the ghetto, I went to Auschwitz.

Q: The early spring of 1944? You arrived just before the Hungarian deportation.

Chaim: Yes. I was lucky, I suppose. Had I gone earlier, in 1942 say, I would have gone up the chimney. Same thing had I arrived with the Hungarian Jews in May and June of 1944. But in spring of ’44 the Nazis needed labor. So I was sent to Babitz…

Q: Sorry to interrupt. “Up the chimney?” That means into the crematoria?

Chaim: Yes, that’s Auschwitz slang. There were other terms too.

Q: Such as?

Chaim: "He has gone to the wire" meant when a prisoner committed suicide by running into the electrical wiring surrounding the camp. In Auschwitz, we didn’t steal. We "organized." The SS who sprinkled the Zyklon B into the gas chambers were called "disinfecting operators." There was also such a thing as "Auschwitz fashion." In order to make themselves more like human beings, prisoners imitated their torturers by imitating their way of dress.

Q: Interesting. I guess heroin chic is the more modern version of Auschwitz fashion. What was Babitz?

Chaim: A work farm near the town of Babice, near Auschwitz. It was at Babitz that much of the food that fed the camps was produced.

Q: Was that considered a good job? I mean, I’m assuming you were able to organize some extra rations of food. A potato or a turnip.

Chaim: We were slaves, Brian. He couldn’t eat. We had to steal from the cows, from the dogs. You know, back in the ghetto an order went out. Jews weren’t allowed to have pets. We had to surrender our dogs, our cats. As the years went by, this ended up being a good thing. How could we have fed our family dog? We didn’t have enough bread to feed ourselves. At Babitz, though, we were lower than the dogs.

Q: I’m looking now at my dog, Chaim, who’s sleeping at my feet. I can’t imagine having to surrender him by State decree.

Chaim: It was just the beginning, Brian. Surrendering your dog, wearing the yellow star, that led directly to extermination.

Q: This is supposed to be an interview about the presidential election but let me ask you one more question. You must have been evacuated during the death march of January 1945.

Chaim: Yes, the Russians were coming. I was among the 60,000 Jews who ran back to Germany. I ended up in Buchenwald.

Q: Buchenwald? You were then liberated by the Americans?

Chaim: Yes. They came in on their Jeeps and they handed out Hershey’s chocolate bars. I spent two weeks in the hospital. Imagine eating chocolate after not eating for five years.

Q: Did you go back to Poland after the war?

Chaim: I’ve never been back to Poland. I went to France. Then I found a relative in New York and I went there.

Q: You didn’t like New York?

Chaim: I loved New York.

Q: Why did you move to Canada?

Chaim: I was drafted into the Army to serve in Korea. I went to the draft board and I explained that I was a Holocaust survivor, an Auschwitz survivor, a Buchenwald survivor. I’d seen enough war. Nobody listened.

Q: You fled America? That’s an incredible story. I’ve never heard that before.

Chaim: I told the draft board that I would even serve in Germany. I speak five languages: Polish, German, French, English and Yiddish. I could have been helpful in Germany. But the Army recruiter just shrugged his shoulders.

Q: Your story’s amazing. You were willing to return to Germany in 1950, only five years after being a prisoner of Nazi Germany?

Chaim: You must understand, Brian. I couldn’t fight in a war. Going to Germany – and they desperately needed interpreters then – seemed tolerable, in comparison to going into battle.

Q: In a way, Chaim, you and John McCain have something in common. You were both prisoners. You were both tortured. I understand that your torturers were intent on genocide and his torture was more a function of war but do you feel any kinship to McCain and his captivity?

Chaim: I think anyone who’s been a prisoner, who’s been tortured… I think we all feel kinship to one another. But that’s no reason to vote for him.

Q: Why wouldn’t you vote for John McCain?

Chaim: In my opinion he’s simply not qualified. He doesn’t have the temperament. He doesn’t have the intelligence. He was raised to believe in the military option first. He has the same training as Westmoreland, the same training as Rumsfeld. He doesn’t believe his side can lose. America needs to show humility in the world and John McCain has never demonstrated any ability to show humility in his own life. He’s just the wrong choice.

Q: Is Obama the right choice?

Chaim: Obama offers the chance for reconciliation. There’s a tremendous division in the world. America vs. nearly everybody else. With Obama, there’s might be some movement toward the center, toward rapprochement… I’ll give you an example. Jimmy Carter, when he was president, pardoned all the Americans who had gone to Canada rather than serve in Vietnam, and Korea too by the way. We were called deserters. President Carter called us exactly what we were: objectors. He humanized us. Can you imagine John McCain pardoning Americans who had gone to Canada instead of fighting in Vietnam? No way. They will always be deserters to McCain. This is his mentality. It permeates his thinking. It transcends every issue. Like I said, he’s a military first man. Now, consider the same issue with Obama. I think he would act like Carter and offer exoneration. That’s why I’m voting for him. He’s a man who understands that, yes, there’s power in force, but there’s also power in mercy. McCain’s like Bush. Mercy to him is a show of weakness, categorically.

Q: Chaim, have you ever written your memoirs? Not only is your history fascinating and important but your way of explanation is lucid, cogent.

Chaim: For many years, Brian, I did not speak about my past. My children, they didn’t even know. How do you tell your children that you had to steal from dogs to survive? You want their pleasure, and their respect, and you know your stories will have the opposite effect. If my children, and now my grandchildren, read my memoirs, they would be disgusted with how I survived.

Q: And yet you’re speaking to me now. You clearly feel comfortable now with telling your story.

Chaim: Yes. Out of necessity. There was a professor up here at the University of Montreal. He was a Holocaust denier and he published a history supposedly proving that there weren’t gas chambers. This was in the early 1990s, maybe the late 1980s. Anyway he published his history and there were those who believed him. A growing number, I thought. So I decided that I had to tell my story. I decided that I had to go into the schools. That’s how I became associated with the Holocaust Museum, and eventually the Clintons. I started to tell my story to schoolchildren.

Q: Have you ever encountered resistance to your story amongst your listeners?

Chaim: There was only once. A boy interrupted my talk. He started to spout off: “There were no gas chambers! There were no gas chambers!” He was screaming. I was so angry. I wanted to strangle him. Instead, I calmly walked over to him. “Do you have a brother?” I asked him. “Yes,” he responded. “Do you have a father?” I asked him. “Yes,” he responded. “What about a mother?” I asked him. “Yes, I have a mother,” he responded. I nodded my head. “All of mine died,” I answered. “All of my friends. All of my neighbors. My parents died in the gas chambers.” I asked this child, “What would you do if your parents died?” I didn’t say “murdered.” I didn’t want to scare him. I just said “died.” He answered, “I would cry.” “Yes,” I answered.

I would like to thank Chaim Kovaes for participating in this interview. Please visit this site next Friday for part II in this series, when I will sit down with a 31-year-old doctor in Tennessee. She’s voting for the McCain/Palin ticket.

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Whom are you voting for, part I?