Hello, welcome back to
Conversations with Stephen Kamugasa. This
is the first of six podcast episodes on
genocide. The
goal is to break the overwhelming silence around
the problem of genocide in our day and age. There
are a lot of reasons why so many of us remain
silent even in the face of mounting evidence
that a new genocide may be occurring somewhere in
the world right now. Today's
guest is Dr. Maria Chamberlain. Dr.
Chamberlain is an honorary fellow at
the University of Edinburgh and the daughter of
two Holocaust survivors. She
was born in Krakow, Poland. and emigrated
to the UK with her parents in 1958 at
the age of 11. The
family settled in Edinburgh where she still lives.
Maria pursued an academic career as
a biologist researching plant and fungal biology
and teaching undergraduates at the University of Edinburgh. Following
her retirement from full-time teaching, Maria
put pen to paper, researching for several years,
and meticulously piecing together the story of her two Jewish
families in Nazi-occupied Poland during
the Holocaust. The result is
a book, Never Tell Anyone You're Jewish, My
Family, the Holocaust, and the Aftermath. The
book is a powerful, compelling and
personal testimony and witness which we
will all do well to read and reflect upon. In
this episode, we discuss the topic, genocide,
why it is important to bear witness. Dr.
Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm honoured and
On page 212 of your book, Never
Tell Anyone You're Jewish, you write, and I
quote, "The other thing that Nela taught
me on our walks in the woods was the joy of
foraging for mushrooms. As a
country girl, she was an expert and
knew not only which ones were good and
which poisonous, but also the best ways to
cook and preserve them. It
was without a doubt this early experience with
her that later inspired me to study fungi professionally
and to continue to consider foraging as one of
my favourite pastimes." Please
talk to us about Nela and
your early childhood experience in Poland. And
how have these childhood experiences with special reference
to your mother and father colored the
I had a really happy childhood in Poland. My
parents both worked and when I was three, they
hired Nela. Nela was a
country girl. I called her Anielcia. And
she looked after me while my parents worked. But
unlike my parents, whose lives were tainted by
trauma, Nela was a breath of
fresh country air. She
cleaned, she baked, she looked after me, and
I loved her. Every
summer, my parents would dispatch Nela
and me to the foothills of the Tatras.
That's the mountains near Krakow. And
it was there that Nela introduced me to mushrooms. Finding
a set, even now, never fails to
bring me joy that's almost visceral. It's
such fun. Nela
also taught me to read the landscape. As a country girl,
she really knew her trees. She knew her mushrooms
and she knew quite a lot of flowers too. And
she taught me to read the landscape. And it's a skill that
I try to now instill in my students because
we townspeople now seem to have lost it. I
also describe in my book an incident which
describes Nela, but it also describes the situation in
Poland at the time. One
summer when we were lodging in
the foothills of the Tatras, in a guest
house with a fiercely antisemitic landlady. The
landlady said to Nela, that child, is she Jewish? And
Nela said, no, of course not. Okay,
so on her walks, on our walks in the
woods, Nela taught me the Polish
Catholic prayers. And
I had to recite them back to her. And as we
walked, looking for mushrooms, I recited the
Catholic prayers. I was good in those days at
learning verse and prose
and poetry, probably not so good at it now, but
I didn't mind. I thought that was a good idea to recite some prayers.
Anyway, at night, when we came back to the landlady's house, Nela
bid me to kneel at the foot of the bed and
recite those prayers that children have to recite on
their way to bed. And she opened the door wide
and I recited them loud. And the
landlady heard them and I never had any
trouble after that. And strangely
enough, of course, she never asked me to recite prayers
when we came back to Krakow. So
In the prologue of Never Tell Anyone You're Jewish,
at page three, you write, and I quote: "At
last, we are finally free, said my
mother. But you must never, ever,
tell anyone you're Jewish. I
leaned over the rail of the cross-channel ferry that
was bringing us to England. In
the churning water, a piece of detached seaweed
danced, turned, and then floated past. I
remember feeling like that seaweed, infinitesimal,
uprooted, adrift." Maria,
please dramatise for us, as best as you can,
the feeling you allude to. And what exactly
did it mean to you in that particular moment as
Well, it's interesting that both you and I were
uprooted at an early age and you'll probably agree
that this has consequences. Anyway,
the injunction, my mother's injunction, never
tell anyone you're Jewish. Never
tell anyone about my past and heritage. It
was very isolating because being
Jewish was what I felt with every cell
in my body. Those
were the first words I learned as a child. I
didn't understand what they meant, but I knew they were very
important. For
us, it seemed that Jewishness was not defined
by Judaism, about which I knew
very little, but by the Holocaust. And
this injunction to never tell anyone, coming
to a new place in a new language, never
tell my peer group, how was I going to
make friends if they didn't know this very important thing about
me? So, I felt uprooted and
adrift, and I anticipated a new
friendless future. Anyway,
I consoled myself as 11-year-olds might.
I consoled myself looking forward to three things in
no apparent order. To eat a banana,
to meet my uncle, and to
see a working television These are three things, three
Again, at page three of your book, you write, and I
quote, "When I read Anne
Frank's diary to my grandchildren, and
they watched the film of the boy in striped pyjamas, they
said, how sad, without
realising the scale of the operation. I
was recently outraged to find out that my granddaughter's GCSE
history curriculum, while concentrating on
the 20th century, seems to have somehow
missed out the Holocaust altogether." How
crucial is it that history be
taught truthfully? And
why do you believe that the world is ready to hear about
I think that history syllabus, at least here
in the UK, is full of kings and queens and military
battles. And even now, the
Scottish history curriculum, both
at National Fives, which is equivalent to GCSEs,
and Highers, which is a sort of pre-A level qualification, misses
out the Holocaust altogether. The Holocaust is
airbrushed out. Why? I don't
know why. Next week, I
am honoured to speak at an awards ceremony at
which awards will be handed out to 12 special
schools that teach the Holocaust. and
they teach it with the help of a special organisation called Vision
Schools Scotland. And what I don't understand is
why these schools have to be singled out. Why is
Holocaust education not mandatory in Scotland and
the world over? It's
a puzzle. Is it Israelophobia? Maybe. Anyway,
since writing my book, I've been repeatedly told
by readers that they really didn't know
about the Holocaust. They knew that six million
Jews died and what happened to Anne Frank, but
not what really happened. Obviously,
they didn't go to any special visual schools. I
think the Holocaust, this one, my
Holocaust, one might say, the one that
happened during the Second World War, the
main one, needs
to be talked about. And maybe because
people don't, that other Holocausts have
Regarding teaching history, truthfully, you
said the following on page 155 of your book, and I quote, "The
name Belzec seems to
be relatively unfamiliar to my friends, hardly
any of whom had ever heard of it. The
few nights my father spent at Auschwitz never
failed to impress. But when I tell
people of my grandmother's death in Belzec, their
eyes glaze over with incomprehension. One
of the reasons for Belzec's obscurity is
because almost no one survived to tell the tale. Another
reason might be because it was never liberated by
the British. Along with
Chelmno, Sobibor, and
Treblinka, Belzec was
liberated by the Soviets in the summer of 1944. But by then, there
was nothing much left to liberate. The
500,000 Jews it had processed were dead and
the killing machinery had already been dismantled." Maria,
please discuss with us Belzec's special status as
a factory for killing. Furthermore, how
crucial is it that we are aware of
Well, Belzec or Belzec,
as it's pronounced in Polish, was a factory and
death was its product. Interestingly,
music played at Belzec as people
were led to their deaths because music or
muzak helps productivity on
a factory floor. And
yes, when I say the name to people, some
think I've made a mistake. Do I mean Belsen? No,
no, I don't mean Belsen. Belsen was another camp
and there were no gas chambers there. But
the reason that nobody's heard of Belzec is
because it was small and highly effective death
factory. It was small because
people didn't go there to sleep. They went there to die. Half
a million. Half a million is roughly like the
population in Edinburgh, where I
live. All murdered in
10 months. If you do this calculation, that's
like three per minute, three per daylight minute.
Three per daylight minute. We would do well to
remember that when tempted to apply the
word genocide to today's situation. Anyway,
the camp Belzec was dismantled and
its use as a murder factory disguised in
1943. All that was left were the bones, including
those of my grandmother. and her
foster child Romek, a little four-year-old boy
that she had been looking after. It's
unthinkable, but in my research, and
there was so little to research, really, I
repeatedly accompanied my grandmother
and little Romic on that one-way journey.
Turning back to page 150, you
write thus, and I quote: "While
she waited to be propelled onto the train, she
did what she was always good at. She
read the guard's faces. There
were two of them, she thought, who looked more kindly
than the others. She smiled at
them and she thought she detected a flicker of
response. She was almost
on the steps of the train when a cart full of skeleton-like prisoners
drew up. As the guards started
to load this human cargo onto the train, the
attention of the Gestapo men was diverted and
in the commotion that followed the guards, unintentionally
or maybe intentionally, let her slip
through. Unnoticed, past
her of David torn and discarded, she walked
feigning confidence across the platform and slipped
into the station cafeteria. But
she was not entirely unobserved, because standing
at the door was an elderly waitress who
said to her softly in Polish, I
know where you have come from. Discreetly,
she led my mother into a dark corner of the cafe, placed
a cup of coffee before her and
a cigarette between her fingers. Then,
lifting from her own neck a chain with
a medallion of the Virgin Mary and the baby, she
hung it on my mother's neck. Hold
on to her tight, she said. She
will save you. So, when
the Gestapo came in, there she was,
a saved Christian girl, a friend of
the waitress." Please
talk to us about the power of
human love. And
while you are at it, kindly talk to us about your
mother's kindly German boss at
Yes, so this is a really good
news story because my mother survived. My
grandmother didn't, but my mother survived, and this is how she
survived. And this pivotal moment
in my mother's story has stayed in
my mother's mind and also my own as proof
that goodness and humanity do and can exist
even in the midst of hell. The
waitress's act, kindness, humanity,
probably gave her the strength to carry on in the
dreadful days that followed this incident. So,
the waitress was one honourable, good
person to whom my mother owes her life. But
the other person who was instrumental in enabling my
mother's escape was her German boss. Her
German boss was a Volksdeutscher, which
means he was native German but
living in Lwów. He spoke both German and
Polish. His name was Dr.
Bauer. And Dr. Bauer was the director
of the glass factory where my mother worked. And
he had always been very kind to my mother. Once
when the Nazis came to the factory looking for
her, looking for Jews, because very
often Jews that were engaged in
factories were winkled out
on special days to perform some hard labour
like scrubbing floors or something. Anyway,
Dr. Bauer didn't know why
they were looking for her, so he hid her in some packing
cases. So, my mother knew that
Dr. Bauer was a good man. And
when she was rounded up by
the Nazis on 10th of August, 1942, she
thrust a note into the hands of a passing stranger.
And on the note, she had written a message to Dr. Bauer.
Please come and save me. I've been taken. Well,
miraculously, the stranger delivered the
note and Dr. Bauer did turn up at
the railway station looking for her. In
those days, Nazis, and he was meant to be one,
wore their insignia on their uniforms, and
there he was with all his Nazi insignia, parading
up and down the street platform,
looking for her, and he found her. And then he led
her back to live to a safe house. Of
course, both these people, the waitress and
Dr. Bauer, the German boss, could
have paid for their actions with their lives, And,
what this story illustrates is that survival
depended on random acts of kindness as
well as happenstance luck. And of course, one
On page 166 of the book, you
write, and I quote: "The only
story that remains from that particular train
journey is of a child who screamed and
screamed as children do, particularly when
they are hungry. My
mother's blouse had a breast pocket in
which she had hidden a sugar cube. She
took it out and offered it to the hungry child.
I remember that story because that's how
she was. Kind, always
generous, always giving. My
son, Martin, when he read this
bit in draft form, said, yes, of
course. Now I understand. That's
why she always stole a few sugar cubes from cafe sugar
bowls and stole them away for later." Maria,
please tell us about your most treasured memories of
Yes, I pinpointed that memory because
she was always generous and warm and easily
moved to tears by films and books. And
by the way, my son Martin doesn't like that
quote because of the word stole. But
it would have been too long-winded to say she appropriated them
because she had not used any when they were offered. So,
well, she stole a few sugar cubes. But
I suppose my most treasured memories of my mom were
with my children and grandchildren because
On page 216 of your book, you
quote your mother when she wrote the following in her memoir, and
I quote: "It was heartbreaking when
a day came when I suddenly realized that my
country does not want me anymore, that
people look upon me as a foreigner. Ten years
after the defeat of Hitler, ten years after
six million Jews went into the gas chambers, a
new wave of Nazism was sweeping the country. Now,
most Poles, even those who were not anti-Semitic, expected
us to leave. Friends and colleagues watched
me with sympathy, but their eyes asked,
why are you still here? Nobody ever
said, why should you go? You
belong here with us." Now,
I don't mean to minimize the Holocaust, but
if I may, let me play devil's advocate
for a moment. The United
Kingdom is having difficulty understanding immigration, which
many may rightfully refer to as a 'Pandora's box'
following the Brexit referendum result in 2016. Maria,
why shouldn't a proud native Englishman, especially
an Anglo-Saxon Englishman whose ancestry may
be traced back thousands of years into history, exercise
his democratic will to decide the fate of
the unfortunate sojourners, people who
simply don't fit. Why shouldn't
a sojourner be sent back wherever his ancestors came
Oh, devil's advocate indeed. Well,
you know, we're all from Africa. Did you know
that? 150,000 years ago, we
all left Africa. Maybe we should all go back to Africa. Ah,
I forgot, we can't, because it's getting to be too hot there.
And while we're on Africa, what about Rwanda? We're
told it's a nice place, and then in the next sentence we're
told that Rwanda is to act as a deterrent. Well,
if it's a nice place, how can it be a deterrent as well? Seriously,
Of course, I
was welcomed to this country as an immigrant, and
I would like to welcome other immigrants. Human
history is that of migration. Migration
increases the all-important diversity, which
serves as the raw material for adaptation. and
diversity makes us, our communities, stronger. We
don't really want all to bring the same skills to
the party. We want different skills represented in
the community. And
in my experience, migrants are proud, resilient
people with
nous and experience to make the UK a better place.
However, the trouble is, I think, as
you mentioned, that the government, at
least the British government, is sending negative messages about
refugees. So, I fear that
even those who have managed to get here legally will
be treated, as you put it, as unfortunate sojourners
in their new communities. And that's something
The title of our podcast is "Genocide: Why
it is important to bear witness." On
October 7th, 2023, Palestinian
militant groups led by Hamas launched
a coordinated surprise terrorist attack on Israel,
killing more than 1200 Israelis and foreigners.
Many thousands of Palestinians have also
perished since the start of the war between Israel and
Hamas. On
November 11, 2023, Professor
Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy
at Yale University, published an opinion piece
in The Guardian in which he wrote thus, and I quote: "To
my fellow Jewish people, the
actions of the State of Israel are being committed in
the name of our preservation worldwide. It
is incumbent on those of us who are Jewish to
clearly and openly call for
a halt to Israel's assault on Gaza.
If we do not succeed in stopping the bombing, our
children and grandchildren are at risk
of inheriting a double identity, not
just as targets of mass killings of civilians, but
also as those who stood by when
mass killings were committed in their names." Maria,
how important is it to testify to
the truth, in the context of a podcast theme? And
what, in your opinion, will it take to break
the logic of an eye for an eye, that
is, beat swords into ploughshares in
the context of the long-running conflict between Israeli Jews
Well, you can be sure that nobody is committing mass killings
in my name. Like
Professor Stanley, and I have his report here, his
article here, I want an immediate ceasefire
and all the killings to stop. But
I do understand that one person's day of
independence is another person's Nakba day,
and one person's terrorist is another person's freedom
fighter. I get that. It's
an impossible situation, initiated
more than a hundred years ago, when one country
promised another the land of a third. However,
my book is not about Israel, but
about the Holocaust, and the truth of the Holocaust should
not be minimized by what's happening now. If
the Holocaust was once seen to be the raison d'etre
for Israel's existence. Now
tomorrow, the 27th of January, we
celebrate Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain. And
it commemorates this year, the 79th anniversary
of the liberation of Auschwitz. I
first visited Auschwitz when I was nine years old.
I was with my father. Nine is far too young to
go to Auschwitz, by the way. I went with my
father as a small child and I
was overcome by the scale of it and
by the effect that the visit was having on my father, who's first
since he was a prisoner there. Anyway,
tomorrow we have Holocaust Memorial Day,
but round about the Holocaust Memorial Day, all this week
and next, there've been a number of events connected
with it in Edinburgh. I've been
to a few at the Scottish Parliament and
one at the university and one in the city chambers. And
do you know, both Edinburgh
Council and the university have
vetoed this year any banners or posters about
it. I suppose they're
scared that there'd be graffiti or
defaced or incite
protest, but I'm devastated
to see that the Holocaust, which is so
important to know about, is now losing
What's one piece of advice you can share with
Well, it's a long one. As Primo Levi,
the Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate said, it
happened, therefore it can happen again. So,
I think the take-home message from my family's story and
my book is that both the victims and
the perpetrators were ordinary people. My
mother tended to think about people in a dichotomous
way, good and bad, victim-survivor. I
don't. I adopt this sort of shades-of-grey philosophy.
During the war, when times were hard, Poles denounced
Jews, Ukrainians denounced Jews, even
Jews denounced Jews. Good
people are capable of bad acts when times
are hard. Remember that if you denounced
a Jew, if you denounced a
Jew, you got a reward of money sometimes or
food or both, which would allow you to
feed your own family for another week, another month,
It's worth it. When times are hard, and
unfortunately, I think hard times are coming by
a combination of environmental degradation and
overpopulation and climate change, we're
going to be facing hard times. And
as resources are depleted, there'll be more wars and
bad things happen when human nature is challenged
with difficult times. So,
I don't feel terribly optimistic. I
know that for you, Stephen, faith has
helped you throughout your life. I maybe don't have
that. I don't have what Dawkins would call a gene for
God, or maybe it is that God died
in Auschwitz. I don't know. But what
I've always done is I've always tried to instill in
my children and my students a sense of
awe, a sense of awe and wonder in
the living world. And I also
taught them the golden rule, which is to treat others as
you would want to be treated yourself, and
to abhor discrimination of any sort on
race and religion. Because
as a biologist, as I've already said, I
celebrate diversity within and between species. That
sense of awe is what keeps me going. And
our species, you know, Homo sapiens, you know what it means? It
means the wise guy. Homo sapiens, the wise guy.
Would not have been able to adapt to changing climates, new
diseases, if we had not been diverse. So,
we need to stay wise. Thank you.
And finally, Maria, please advise our listeners where
Well, you can order it from any bookshop. It
might take a while to come. Or you can
order it from Amazon. And if you've got Amazon Prime,
it comes tomorrow. If
all fails, if all else fails, email me. You can
Dr. Maria Chamberlain, thank you very much for
Thank you very much, Stephen. It's been an
This podcast was brought to you by The Kamugasa Challenge
in partnership with Democracy in Africa. Democracy
in Africa is a platform dedicated to building a bridge between
academics, policymakers, practitioners, and
citizens. The second episode
is entitled, Why Genocide is the Responsibility of
the Entire World, an interview with
Dr. Omar McDoom, a comparative political
scientist and associate professor at
the London School of Economics Department of Government. The
podcast will go live on April 8th, 2024. If
you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by
subscribing to Conversations with Stephen Kamugasa through
your favourite podcast app. Thank
you very much for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Until
next time, Goodbye.