Remembering the Holocaust – some personal reflections

JVL Introduction

On Thursday we published David Rosenberg’s talk titled “Time To Decolonise The Holocaust” – a wise and thoughtful contribution to a Holocaust Memorial Day panel organised by Stand Up To Racism.

Here we offer a personal reflection from Diana Neslen, recalling memorial events that were a feature of her life long before HMD was established officially (amid some controversy) on January 27, 2001.

Diana reminds us that there is another anniversary that should demand our attention – April 19, the day that the German Wehrmacht set out to liquidate the Jews of Warsaw Ghetto. “This is the day of Jewish remembrance – the day when the Warsaw ghetto uprising began. The resistance fighters were ultimately defeated but their doomed stand resonates down the years.”

Mourning a lost culture

By Diana Neslen

Holocaust Memorial Day is upon us again. Many events have been organised. The dignitaries will gather, the few survivors still living will tell their stories. Children will be encouraged to respond to the horrors with their own thoughts either in words, in music or in art. Perhaps this will leave an everlasting impression on them but maybe not. Who can say.

January 27 marks the date of the victorious entry of The Red Army into Auschwitz. This had a devastating impact on those who witnessed the full nature of the inhumanity exposed –  a day of liberation chosen to remember the dead and reflect on the ease with which humans can sink into bestiality. It is a day for dignitaries to express pious words, which often seem to play fleetingly on the wind, before they return to business as usual.

But this is never a day I relate to. Holocaust Memorials were a feature of my calendar long before the day was consecrated by the elite. I remember and hold on to a different day. It will always be my Churban Memorial Day – a day to remember as the source of unspeakable acts, April 19, coinciding in the Jewish calendar with the second night of Passover. April 19 is the anniversary of the day that the German Wehrmacht tried to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto. It is also when the remnants of the Jewish people of Poland finally realised that they were destined for the gas chambers and resolved that rather than go passively they would, in the words of Marek Edelman, the late ghetto commander, die with dignity. This is the day of Jewish remembrance – the day when the Warsaw ghetto uprising began. The resistance fighters were ultimately defeated but their doomed stand resonates down the years.

In sparse back rooms we gathered, originally under the stern eye of the Voorzitter, the Chair, usually Majer Bogdanski, a Bundist from Poland who survived the war by escaping to Russia, joining the Pioneer corps and seeing action with the Eighth army. First we would light the memorial candle. Then the event would begin. It had a formality and unbending structure. Majer would give a straightforward account of the events in Yiddish, the language of the ghettos of Eastern Europe, translating into English for those who could not understand the tongue of the martyrs. Then others would contribute poetry, songs, prose written by those who perished or occasionally survived. There was an urgency about the survivors. They had witnessed the most terrible things human beings could do to each other. They knew where demonisation of humans could lead and wanted others to hear and recognise the signs. They gave witness and gave warnings.

What moved me most profoundly were the stories of humanity even under the cloud of death. Esther Brunstein, survivor of Lodz ghetto, spoke of the way the Bund organised children’s education, sporting activities, youth groups to massage the spirit and maintain a sense of hope. Others spoke of how recycled old roneo machines would churn out bulletins to tell these isolated residents the truth of events happening beyond the ghetto walls. We heard about concerts for mass audiences and scouts who braved death to venture beyond the walls to report the news.

Whatever oppression was visited upon the Jews of the ghetto, they would rise above it. The culture of the ghetto continued even as the people starved and were daily confronted by death squads. This was a profound testimony to humanity at a time of barbarity. I was awestruck at the courage of people who could remain human under those conditions.

Our event would end with the Partisans’ anthem sung in Yiddish – Mamaloshen – the mother tongue. With our fists in the air, we would stand solemnly and sing the song the Jewish partisans marched to. In that unprepossessing back room in Toynbee Hall (since refurbished) we, the Bundistim, remembered, with an authenticity I have yet to find in the more elaborate contemporary proceedings.

The Israeli state also retains April 19 as their Holocaust Memorial Day. But the mourning is rapidly superseded by the triumphalism of the Day of ‘Independence’. The whole point of the day is lost in this glorification of conquest.

The Bundist Culture that gave so much succour and support to the Jewish people during the war did not last. The leaders of the movement strove for universalism, for socialism and for doichkeit, for Jews to change the societies where they live rather than move somewhere else to rule over another people. A narrow nationalism which, perhaps understandably, took hold post war works to privilege Jews at the expense of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants.

This view may superficially have been very attractive post war but it has not worn well. The tragedy is that a culture that could have helped Jews to be an example of what oppression can do and which could have allowed us to join as equals in all struggles against oppression with that knowledge, has been superseded by a narrow nationalism that treats those over whom the Israeli state holds dominion as lesser beings.

Not only did the Jews of much of Europe die, but so too did the culture they represented and, on this day in April, in the year of the eightieth anniversary of their doomed struggle, I will mourn both the dead and what they represented, as well as what could have been.