Hosenfeld Wilhelm

Hosenfeld, Wilhelm (Wilm) Wilhelm Hosenfeld was born in a village in Hessen, Germany, in 1895. His family was Catholic and he grew up in a pious, conservative and patriotic environment. After serving in World War I, Hosenfeld became a teacher, and found a job at a local school. By the time World War II broke out, Hosenfeld was married with five children. At the end of August 1939, a week before the German attack on Poland, 43-year-old Hosenfeld was drafted into the Wehrmacht (German Army). He was stationed in Poland: first in Pabiance, and then from July 1940 in Warsaw, where he remained until the end of the war. Hosenfeld spent most of the war years as a sports and culture officer, rising from the rank of sergeant to captain. In the summer of 1944, during the Polish uprising when all military forces were engaged in suppressing the revolt, he was involved in the interrogation of prisoners. Although he had joined the Nazi party in 1935, Hosenfeld had grown disillusioned with the regime, and became disgusted by the crimes he witnessed against Poles and Jews. All through his military service, he kept a diary in which he expressed his feelings. The texts survived because he regularly sent the notebooks home. In his writings, Hosenfeld stressed his growing disdain with the regime’s oppression of Poles, the persecution of Polish clergy, the abuse of Jews and, with the implementation of the “Final Solution,” his horror at the extermination of the Jewish people. In 1943, after witnessing the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he wrote in his diary: "With horrible mass murder of the Jews, we have lost this war. We have brought an eternal curse upon ourselves and will be forever covered with shame. We have no right for compassion or mercy; we all have a share in the guilt. I am ashamed to walk in the city…" Hosenfeld not only expressed his deep revulsion in words, but also actively helped the victims, including Leon Warm. Warm had escaped from a train to Treblinka during the 1942 deportations from Warsaw. He made it back into the city, and managed to survive with the help of Hosenfeld, who employed him in the sports stadium, and provided him with a false identity. His aid to another Jew was reenacted in the film The Pianist, based on Władysław Szpilman's life story. After his entire family was killed, Szpilman managed to escape from the ghetto, and survived on the Aryan side with the help of Polish friends Janina Godlewska*, Andrezej Bogucki* and Czeslaw Lewicki*. After the Polish uprising in the summer of 1944, the Polish population was evicted from the city, and Szpilman remained alone, hiding in the ruins of the destroyed city, hungry, frozen, frightened and totally alone. It was there that Hosenfeld found him in mid-November 1944, and helped him survive during the critical final weeks before liberation. In January 1945, Hosenfeld was taken prisoner by the Soviets. Five years later, on May 7, 1950, a military tribunal in Minsk sentenced Hosenfeld to 25 years in prison. The trial, so the one-page verdict stated, was held" in the absence of the defense." The verdict stated that Hosenfeld had personally interrogated prisoners during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and sent them to detention, thereby strengthening Fascism in the struggle against the Soviet Union. Six months after the trial, in November 1950, Leon Warm came to visit Hosenfeld's wife in Thalau. A Polish priest who had met Hosenfeld in the POW camp had found Warm, and told him of his rescuer's predicament. Warm, who was about to emigrate from Europe, also wrote a letter to Szpilman in Warsaw. Sadly, it turned out that little could be achieved by the two survivors, who had lost their families and who were, like others, working hard to pick up the pieces and try to build a life in a world that had little interest in the Jewish tragedy. Hosenfeld died in a Soviet prison in 1952. In 1998, Szpilman wrote to Yad Vashem in an effort to have his rescuer recognized. By that time Warm had died, but his letter to Szpilman survived, and a letter from his sister in Australia confirmed her brother's rescue. Before the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous could award the title however, it had to be verified that Hosenfeld had not been involved in war crimes. Once his diaries and letters were made public, the case was submitted for the Commission's review. Yad Vashem also received confirmation from the Polish Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes that his conduct was, indeed, untarnished. On November 25, 2008, Yad Vashem recognized Wilhelm Hosenfeld as Righteous Among the Nations. ------------------------------------ From Hosenfeld's Writings: Excerpt from Wilhelm Hosenfeld's letter to his wife, 23.7.1942 [the beginning of the deportation from Warsaw to Treblinka death camp]: "…I don't like being here any more. What is being done here, how they kill the Jews – in other cities thousands have already been murdered; now the ghetto with half a million people is to be emptied. Himmler was here, so they say – can a German ever again show his face to the world? Is this what our soldiers at the front are dying for? There are probably no precedents in history for this. Prehistoric men may have eaten each other, but the plain slaughter of an entire people – men, women and children – in the 20th century, by us, who are leading the campaign against Bolshevism – this is a bloody guilt that makes one want to collapse on the ground. The question is whether the people responsible are at all normal. Did the devil take on human form? I do not doubt it. This is not a pleasant end to a letter, but I am so miserable, so depressed, that I cannot fight the hopelessness of our future…" On September 1, 1942, Hosenfeld, a devout Catholic, attempted to deal with the question of how the moral collapse of Germany had been possible: "Because humanity had to be shown where its godlessness was taking it... This denial of God's commandments leads us to all the other immoral manifestations of greed: unjust self-enrichment, hatred, deceit and sexual license resulting in infertility and the downfall of the German people. God allows all this to happen... to show mankind that without him we are only animals in conflict, who believe we have to destroy each other. We will not listen to the divine commandment: 'Love one another'... and must die, guilty and innocent alike." Excerpt from Hosenfeld's diary, June 16, 1943: "Innumerable Jews have been killed, for no reason, senselessly. It is beyond comprehension. Now the last remaining Jewish residents of the ghetto have been annihilated. An SS-Strumfuehrer boasted that he had shot Jews as they jumped out of the burning houses. The entire ghetto is a charred ruin. This is how we want to win the war! These animals. With this horrible mass murder of the Jews, we have lost the war. We have brought an eternal curse upon ourselves and will be forever covered with shame. We have no right for compassion or mercy; we all have a share in the guilt. I am ashamed to walk in the city…" Excerpt from Hosenfeld’s diary, August 13, 1943: "It is impossible to believe all these things, even though they are true. Yesterday, I saw two of these beasts on the tram. They were holding whips in their hands when they came out of the ghetto. I would like to throw those dogs under the tram. What cowards we are, wanting to be better and allowing all this to happen. For this, we too will be punished, and our innocent children after us, because in allowing these evil deeds to occur, we are all partners to the guilt."