When World War II broke out in September of
1939 in Europe, the Nazis had not yet embarked upon the mass systematic murder of the Jews.
This would come with their invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, where they first
began shooting Jewish men, and then extended it to Jewish women and children as well. Over
the course of the next months this would coalesce into something called “the Final Solution,”
which will be a policy of murdering all Jews everywhere across the face of Europe. In late 1941 the Nazis set up the first extermination
camp. During the course of 1942, they would set up five more extermination camps. Jews from ghettos in Eastern Europe, were sent by train to the extermination camps, as were Jews
from transit camps throughout Western Europe. As the war unfolded they needed labor more and more, and they began selecting Jews to
perform labor for them. The result was they set up a very large network of labor camps,
in which there were Jews and non-Jews, but Jews were treated the worst, with tremendous
brutality, and therefore a great many Jews died in the framework of performing forced
labor for the Nazis. Although the Nazis were willing to exploit some Jews for
labor for a while, ultimately their goal was to murder all of them. The result was that some six
million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. When you teach about the "Final Solution," you
should of course deal with the historical context and the development of the "Final Solution"
as an historical issue. However, we suggest not to alienate our students from the story,
not to distance them from this historical event, and even traumatize them with these
facts and horrifying messages. We choose to focus on the human story. Using multi-
disciplinary sources, we try to understand how people maintained dignity. How they struggled
for life. How they struggled for their identity in a world of dehumanization and of murder. Giving the victims a name, a face, rather
than focusing on numbers, evokes a sense of empathy. They become real people, with emotions,
with feelings, with aspirations. Ellis Lewin was 12 years old when he was deported
from the Lodz ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau, with his father, his mother, and his sister. Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in Poland, was
the largest extermination and concentration camp set up by the Nazis. Historians estimate
that up to 1.3 million people were murdered in the camp, and the vast majority of them
were Jews, perhaps up to 1.2 million. Almost all of the Jews sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau
were murdered immediately upon arrival. A minority of them were taken into the camp
to perform forced labor and become inmates. When we arrived to Auschwitz, the minute they
opened the wagons, there was just total, complete, misery, beatings and screaming and beatings
and barking of dogs and growling of dogs... and we were just holding on to each other,
and, I don’t know, within minutes, my mother and my sister were dragged to one
side, and I was dragged with my dad to go to another side. And my dad hollered to her
“you take care of her, I’ll take care of him”. Ellis focuses on the pace, and on the sounds.
He talks about the shouting, the barking, the yelling. He talks about the pace. Everything
happened fast. There was a rhythm to this whole chaotic process. The purpose behind
this was to confuse them, to make them feel like they don’t know what’s going to happen
next. This was the system. In Ellis’ testimony, he describes the rupture,
the dismantling, the tearing apart of everything. Families are being torn from one another.
At the same time, we see this attempt of continuity, the attempt to cling on to family. So, Ellis’
father says to his mother “you take care of her, I’ll take care of him.” This is
an attempt to continue in a world that is constantly fracturing, rupturing, and falling
apart. The tension and struggle between rupture
and continuity, is something we see reoccurring in so many stories of Jews in the Holocaust
in ghettos and in camps. My dad threw me in front of him. The one
thing you didn’t want is for the Germans to see that you are holding on to your child,
because that was the whole idea, is to break up the family, murder the family. That
was the genocide of the whole thing, so by not identifying that this is your child, there
was a little bit of an edge you had, to possibly survive. Ellis’ testimony evokes empathy with no
need for simulation or role playing. Watching his testimony gives a feeling as if
he’s traveling back in time, as if he’s almost reliving what happened there. It gives a
sense of authenticity and enables us to touch upon times - to touch upon the events that
happened decades ago. The Auschwitz album is the only photographical
evidence left from the camp. Combining this with Ellis’ testimony, allows us a better
understanding, a wider perspective of what happened in the camp. This photo reveals the
chaos Ellis describes. Without his words we would not understand the significance of
the group of people walking along the fence. We would not understand that these are people,
walking on their last journey towards the gas chambers. In this photo, focusing on the last journey, we don’t see faces. Nevertheless, it reveals
the human story. These are the people the Germans saw as their enemies. It’s important to emphasize that we bring
in the voices of the survivors, because we tell the story of the Holocaust through the
human lens, and the human perspective. But we should always remember, that the majority
of Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, their voices will remain forever silent. Abraham Bomba, who survived the Treblinka
death camp, emphasizes the point that the majority of Jews were murdered, during the
Holocaust, saying “that day they took out, from 18,000 people, 5 people.” Ellis brings into the discussion, the human
perspective, the individual experience of the Holocaust. Abraham Bomba offers us a greater
picture, the totality of the "Final Solution." Elie Wiesel, a Nobel prize winner and a famous
author, who wrote many books about the Holocaust, wrote a famous book called “Night" in 1954.
Elie was 15 years old, when he arrived to Auschwitz with his father, and his mother,
and his sister. In his book he describes how his childhood was completely shattered
in moments, and how he became an inmate struggling for life. Many moments he describes are defining
moments that completely changed his life, such as the separation from his mother and
his sister. "An SS came toward us wielding a club. He
commanded: " 'Men to the left! Women to the right!'
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, "without emotion.
Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the "moment when I left my mother." Another defining moment is when someone started
reciting the "Kaddish." In Jewish tradition, when a person dies, a member of the family says
Kaddish, which is the prayer for the dead, after them.
If someone in the community does not have any children, someone takes it upon himself
as a responsibility to say Kaddish for them. "I don’t know whether, during the history
of the Jewish people, "men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.
'Yisgadal veyiskadash shmey raba… May His "name be celebrated and sanctified…'
whispered my father." At this defining moment, at arrival in Auschwitz,
they understand - there might be nobody to say Kaddish after them. This is the end of
the Jewish nation. There are many similarities between Ellis
Lewin’s and Elie Wiesel’s stories. As an author, Elie describes the events, but adds
the meaning behind the events. He raises significant questions of humanity, of the relationship
Between human beings and God, and the significance of family. In these photos we can see the process of
dehumanization described by the survivors. This is what the women look like upon arrival
to the camp. And this is what they look like a few hours later. You can barely recognize
these are women. "The cold and the hunger tormented us more
and more every day. We became moving corpses, "exactly like those we met when we arrived.
Every day there were piles of bodies […] by "the barracks […] from morning till night
the smoke didn’t stop. Autumn arrived and "with it, the rains and the cold. We knew that
we would not be able to withstand the snow "that would come and that we would die of the
frost one by one, like flies." Tzila Lieberman Entering the camp completely changed peoples'
lives. Those who weren’t sent to the gas chambers became inmates. Nothing but a number -
living in constant fear of selection. Many of them could not withstand the unbearable
physical and emotional conditions. Many of them perished in the camp. " […] There was no place to escape the cold.
We slept in our clothes and sometimes in our shoes. "The worst moment, though, was waking.
It demanded the same decision every morning "[…] I had to choose whether to fight or
give in." Roman Frister So what made it possible for some to bear the horrifying emotional and physical conditions?
What made it possible for them to live in the shadow of death? We choose to address this significant question
through artifacts. These objects are the only remnants from a destroyed world. They
take on a symbolic meaning beyond their functionality. The fact that we can see, feel, and touch these
artifacts, makes us feel as if were touching history. While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Janka Breznitz
traded a full day’s ration of bread for this comb. She kept it throughout the war,
and ever since. Janka could not shower. She didn’t have any clean clothes. But she was
clinging to this comb. Clinging to the comb meant she was still a woman. This photo was given to Pawel Fisk form his
wife, Annie. The two were married three days before he was deported to Auschwitz. In some way
they believed that maybe this would help them find each other after the war. Pawel kept
this photo, with an inscription from his beloved wife, throughout the whole war. First he hid
It in his own mouth, and then he hid it in a sock. As part of the process of dehumanization,
all personal belongings were taken away from the inmates. Most of them were left with
nothing. Holding on to anything personal in the camp, meant endangering life. Those who
chose to hold on to a personal artifact, did it because it meant that they were keeping
their dignity, that they were maintaining their identity, that they were hanging on
to who they were. Without a sense of meaning it was very difficult to survive in a world
of chaos. In 1944, Zvi Kopolovich was weak and starving.
Yet he purchased this prayer book from a Russian inmate, trading it for his daily ration
of bread. Zvi kept the book, in his entire journey of suffering, from one camp to another. And so we go to the museum. And what should
we do, weep? No. My good friends, We never try to tell the tale to make people weep.
It’s too easy. We didn’t want pity. If we decided to tell the tale, it is because
we wanted the world to be a better world. Just a better world! And learn, and remember.
What is our role? We must become the messengers' messengers.
