Eliezer Grynbaum or Eliezer Gruenbaum (; 27 November 1908 – 22 May 1948) was a Polish Jewish communist activist. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, he was a ''

kapo A kapo was a type of prisoner functionary () at a Nazi concentration or extermination camp. They were, whether voluntary or coerced, collaborators who worked under the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) to carry out administrative tasks or supervise th ...

'' in the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

. After the war, he wrote memoirs about his experiences.

Biography

Eliezer Gruenbaum was born in Warsaw in 1908, the second son of a prominent Polish-Jewish politician

Yitzhak Gruenbaum Yitzhak Gruenbaum (, Hebrew language, Hebrew and Yiddish: ; 1879–1970) was a Polish and later Israeli politician. He was a leader of the Bloc of National Minorities and one of the top Zionist leaders in Second Polish Republic, interwar Poland. ...

. With his father's help, Eliezer arrived in

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

in 1946, where he started writing memoirs. He was subjected to "attacks by right-wing and religious groups eager, among other things, to discredit his father." Due to his past, the

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

refused to draft him, however following a plea from his father to

David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...

he was enlisted. He died in

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

during the Battle of

Ramat Rachel Ramat Rachel () is a kibbutz located in central Israel. An enclave within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, near the neighborhoods Arnona and Talpiot, and overlooking Bethlehem and Rachel's Tomb (for which the kibbutz is named), it falls unde ...

on 22 May 1948. After his death rumors spread that he committed suicide or might have been murdered in revenge for his kapo past.History Lesson , The Tragic Story of Eliezer Gruenbaum (Hebrew

Tom Segev Tom Segev (; born March 1, 1945) is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group critical of many of the country's traditional narratives. Biography Segev was born on March 1, 1945 in Jeru ...

, 28 August 2009 (updated 2011), ''Ha'aretz''

Political activism

Aged 16, he joined the

Communist Party of Poland The interwar Communist Party of Poland (, KPP) was a communist party active in Poland during the Second Polish Republic. It resulted from a December 1918 merger of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) and the ...

and, in 1929, was imprisoned by Polish authorities for four and half years for his communism-related activism (the Communist Party was at that time illegal in Poland). He escaped or was released early from prison (after serving two or two and a half years, sources vary) and then moved to Paris, where he was an editor of a Polish worker's newsletter. He fought in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

on the Republican side, and after returning to France, was once again arrested, this time by the French authorities, on charges of sedition (here, the accounts vary again, according to another source, he was arrested in Spain, but escaped safely back to France). After the German invasion of France, he volunteered for the

French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (, , ), is the principal Army, land warfare force of France, and the largest component of the French Armed Forces; it is responsible to the Government of France, alongside the French Navy, Fren ...

, eventually joining the Polish Army in France, and later joined the

French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...

Deportation to Auschwitz

In 1942 he was arrested (as a communist, not as a Jew) and sent to

. In Auschwitz, he became a

, a title given to prisoners supervising

forced labor Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...

or carrying out administrative tasks. He survived the camp, and after the war he was accused of

collaboration with Nazi Germany In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion". Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops they believed would liberate their ...

, and of "mercilessly beating inmates". He was also accused of murdering "tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners". He defended himself claiming that he only accepted the position at the request of other Jews, who wanted one of their own in the position, which was otherwise often filled by antisemitic non-Jewish people, including German criminals. Research based on analysis of his memoirs, however, concluded that he became a kapo due to "intervention by communists". At the end of 1943 Gruenbaum was moved from the concentration camps to work in coal mines in Jawiszowice, and finally ended in the

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 ...

. After the war, in 1945, he was tried by a communist tribunal on charges of participating in violent beatings, but was shortly acquitted. He resumed his political activities, advocating for the communist takeover of Poland, but he was soon arrested again, in France, accused by fellow Jews of having been the “head of the Birkenau death camp.” In a trial that lasted eight months, he was acquitted again, because the French court concluded that "neither the accused nor the victims were French". As noted by Galia Glasner-Heled and Dan Bar-On, "Eliezer Gruenbaum was never formally convicted, but nor was he actually acquitted of these accusations". He was not welcomed in France, nor in Poland, where the communist party expelled him from his ranks.

Published works

His memoirs has been called "an extraordinary piece of testimony", since it is the only document of its type written by a concentration camp kapo. They were partially published in 1952 in the ''Scrolls of Fire'' album, and their inclusion in this memorial book is attributed to his father's political pressure (at that time he was Israel's Minister of the Interior). The excerpt published in the ''Scrolls''... album is titled In the Courtyards of Death'''.

Biography

Political activism

Deportation to Auschwitz

Published works

References

Further reading