Abraham Biderman
Title: The World of My Past
Author: Abraham Biderman
Publisher: AHB Publications
Place of publication: New South Wales
Year of Publication: 1995
Location of Book: Rare Books Collection, Sir Louis Matheson Library, Monash University Clayton Campus
Cities/town/camps: Poland: Lodz, Warsaw, Concentration Camps: Althammer, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dora, Gleiwitz 111, Chelmno, Treblinka
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Abraham Biderman wrote his memoirs late in life and were first published in 1995. He presents an extremely detailed and well documented account of his personal experiences during the war years in Poland. The book, totalling 359 pages, is divided into three parts. The first section consists of 196 pages and deals extensibly with his life in the Lodz ghetto. Part Two has 147 pages in which he discusses the concentration camps and part three, which is titled Reflections, has 12 pages.
When Germany invaded Poland, Abraham Biderman was fifteen years old, having been born in Lodz in 1924. The book begins by giving an overview of the history of the city of Lodz and also provides comprehensive demographic data regarding its inhabitants. Biderman quotes his sources and combines this with his own acute observations. Using his own intimate knowledge, together with archival evidence, Biderman describes how the ghetto administration was set up and discusses the various departments and their leaders, in particular Chaim Rumkowski, the Elder of the Jews in the Lodz ghetto.
Section one is divided into the chapters denoting the four years that the Lodz ghetto was operational. Some of the topics that are discussed in great detail are: the work assignments, family and friends, deportations, illness, the cruelty of the guards, hunger and famine, food rations, ghetto administration, debilitating effects of the weather and the cultural activities that continued regardless of all the pain and suffering. Biderman’s family was very close knit and managed to protect each other from deportation until March 1944, when Biderman’s brother Lipek was deported. In August 1944, as the ghetto was being liquidated, the family went into hiding. However, they were subsequently found and deported to Auschwitz on one of the last trains to leave the Lodz ghetto on the 31st August 1944.
The second section of the book deals with the concentration camps. After they arrived at Auschwitz on 2nd September 1944, Biderman’s parents did not survive the selections and were sent directly to the gas chambers. Over the next eight months, Biderman spent time in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Althammer, Dora and finally Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from which he was liberated in April 1945. During his time in the camps he was subjected to unbelievable acts of cruelty and torture. At one point he was sent on a death march for four days after which he was loaded onto a railway wagon with another 168 prisoners. They were given no food and very little water for fifteen days. When they arrived at Dora concentration camp he was one of only 14 or 15 people still alive on his wagon.
Throughout the book Biderman condemns the world for standing by and watching the Nazis systematically kill the Jews of Europe. This is particularly emphasised in the third part of the book titled “Reflections”. In this section, Biderman also discusses his fear that Nazism has never really died and may re-emerge one day if the world is not educated as to the truth about what happened during the Holocaust. Throughout the book, Biderman carefully and accurately uses documented evidence to place his personal experiences into historical context. His story is therefore told with precision and attention to detail, making this memoir a timely addition to the body of Holocaust literature. Biderman’s use of language is skilful and his background information and recollections are both vivid and powerful.