Tag: Holocaust Remembrance Day

“We Are Here”

I have read quite a bit about the Holocaust. Recently I read Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt, which reported on the trial in Israel of the Nazi who was responsible for the transport of Jews to concentration camps. I also read Fugitives of the Forest by Allan Levine which profiled Jewish Partisans who fought and survived in the forests of Poland during World War II. Any reading about the Holocaust is challenging because you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the evil that was perpetrated and these two books are no exception. It is hard to wrap one’s brain around the breadth and depth of cruelty and viciousness.

            This past week offered an opportunity to look at another dimension of the Holocaust, one that reminds me that in the midst of evil, people can express their humanity, they can still be moved to affirm their faith in life by creating beauty. On Thursday evening I attended a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City that included music, song and poetry created in the ghettos and camps during the Holocaust.

            The evening was conceived of and co-produced by a friend of my brother Mark, Ira Antelis. Ira became aware of a series of songbooks published just after the war ended that memorialized music created in the camps and ghettos. He wanted it to be heard, to bring awareness to its existence. It was originally performed in a Chicago synagogue last April, and they brought it to New York to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The evening was appropriately entitled “We Are Here.” Broadway performers, renown cantors and elite musicians contributed their talents. Each piece was introduced by a prominent individual, for example David Gill, German Consul General to the United Nations, another by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of the Diocese of New York. These introductory remarks gave context: who the composer and lyricist were, some information about them was shared and where they were when they wrote the piece.

            I didn’t know what to expect of the music. One might imagine that it would be quite dark, and some of it was. But, most of it wasn’t. The music was beautiful, often hopeful, sometimes even upbeat. The lyrics could be sad, reflecting the reality of the pain and loss they suffered. But, all of the works represented acts of defiance. The Nazis may have wanted to wipe the Jewish people and culture from the face of the earth, but these artists were leaving a legacy. Perhaps it was an expression of their faith, or a need to reclaim their humanity by creating beauty in the face of ugliness.

            One particularly meaningful piece for me was the Partisan Anthem (Zog Nit Keyn Mol), “Never Say You Have Reached the Final Road, We Are Here,” which gave its name to the whole program. When we went through my in-laws’ house several years ago as it was being cleaned out in preparation for sale, I found a notebook with pages of Yiddish writing. On one of our visits with Paula and David, we hoped they could tell us what it was. It looked like it might be poetry, given its structure. They recognized it immediately. The first page were the lyrics to this song. They began to sing it. More than sixty years after they had likely last sung it, they were able to recall it. Paula, whose had lost most of her ability to make conversation because of Alzheimer’s, joined in. At the time, David provided us with a rough English translation.

            These are the lyrics (in English):

Never say you are going on your final road,
Although leadened skies block out blue days,
Our longed-for hour will yet come
Our step will beat out – we are here!

From a land of green palm trees to the white land of snow
We arrive with our pain, with our woe,
Wherever a spurt of our blood fell,
On that spot shall spurt forth our courage and our spirit.

The morning sun will brighten our day
And yesterday will disappear with our foe.
But if the sun delays to rise at dawn,
Then let this song be a password for generations to come.

This song is written with our blood, not with lead,
It is not a song of a free bird flying overhead.
Amid crumbling walls, a people sang this song,
With grenades in their hands.

So, never say the road now ends for you,
Although skies of lead block out days of blue.
Our longed-for hour will yet come –
Our step will beat out – we are here!

Lyrics by: Hirsh Glik  

Music by: Dmitri and Daniel Pokrass

            The performance of the song on Thursday night by a group of talented vocalists was stirring. It was not the only profound moment of the evening. Another song was introduced with the explanation that it originated in a cattle car to Treblinka when a man started singing a known prayer to a new melody. Somehow the melody was passed on and eventually published. Though the composer didn’t survive, the melody did. Cantor Yanky Lemmer sang it so powerfully I got goosebumps.  The prayer, Ani ma’min (Never Shall I Forget), is based on the writing of Maimonides in the 14th Century (in English, it was sung in Hebrew):

I believe with all my heart

In the coming of the Messiah,

And even though he may tarry,

I will wait each and every day

For his arrival.

I believe in the sun

Even when it is not shining.

I believe in love

Even when I do not feel it.

I believe in God

Even when He is silent.

Melody by: Adriel David Fastag

            The evening of music and song was not my only reminder of the strength of the human spirit. Another artifact found when cleaning out the Bakst house was a small spiral notebook. Each page had a separate entry, some in Russian, some in Polish, others in Yiddish. Some of the notes were accompanied by crayon drawings. It wasn’t until I brought it to YIVO a few weeks ago that we learned what it represented. It contained notes to Paula from friends at the displaced persons camp, Ranshofen, in Austria. It was created as a keepsake of the relationships established during the almost three years that Paula was at Ranshofen. I look at that notebook, even without knowing the translation and I see the spirit of teenage girls that I might have grown up with. Paula was 14 when she arrived at the DP camp, after living in the woods for 4 years. After all they had been through, they still could make fanciful, colorful, hopeful drawings. Here are some of the pages from the book:

            In sharing this, I am not minimizing the horror or suffering. It is not to shift attention away from the enormity of the loss. It is essential that we not become numb to the tragedy – or the tragedies that continue to be perpetrated by those who are evil and the many more who are indifferent. But, it is also essential to have hope. These creations, these melodies, lyrics, gestures, and notes are expressions of hope and beauty. They are remarkable.

Note: If you would like to learn more about the concert, please go to http://www.wearehereconcert.com

A Survivor’s Story: The Beginning

Note: In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, I am revisiting the beginning of my mother-in-law’s story. When most people think of survivors of the Holocaust, they think of concentration camp survivors. But, there are other important stories, of Jews who made it through by hiding and fighting alongside the Partisans in the woods, using guile and courage, and sometimes the kindness of strangers, to sustain themselves. That is the story of my in-laws. Another thing that is important to remember is the quality of life those survivors enjoyed before the wholesale destruction of their shtetl culture. Not only did millions lose their lives, but a whole way of life ended. This story brings some of that to life. The information for this post comes from Paula Bakst’s Shoah testimony. On August 17, 1995, Paula, David, their children (with spouses) and grandchildren, went to the Pines Hotel in the Catskills to be interviewed and taped as part of Steven Spielberg’s project.

Paula Silberfarb was born on February 15, 1931 in Serniki, Poland, a small town in the northwest corner of what today is Ukraine. It was a landscape of forests, meadows, marshes and rivers. The Stubla River ran along the side of the town and provided for her father’s livelihood as a boat-maker. It was a primitive town: there was no electricity or running water in their homes, no cars or trucks, the roads weren’t paved. They didn’t have a movie theater and only one family had a radio (and Paula never heard it).

Serniki was made up of Jews and Gentiles, and though they lived peaceably before the war, they didn’t mingle; they lived clustered on different streets. They spoke different languages: Jews spoke Yiddish, the Gentiles spoke a combination of Polish/Ukranian and Russian, but they were able to communicate. They didn’t socialize, though they did have business connections. The cultural and religious separation became important in the crucible of the war.

Paula was the middle child, with an older brother, Bernard, and a younger sister, Sofia. Though middle children are often attention seeking, Paula was not. She was shy and obedient. If Mother gave her a chore, she did it. If she was told not to do something, she didn’t. She left the troublemaking and risk taking to her older and younger siblings.

The Silberfarbs made a loving home. Their house consisted of three rooms: one large bedroom, where they all slept – her parents (Samuel and Lea) in one bed, Paula and Sofia in another, and Bernie in his own; they had a separate living room and kitchen. They also had a large one room apartment next door that they rented out. A lush, colorful flower garden adorned the front and side of the house; a vegetable garden in the back. Further behind the house, they had a field where they grew potatoes and wheat. They hired someone to help with that field. They brought the grain to the mill and Lea baked her own bread on a daily basis.

Paula was lovingly cared for by her mother and father. Lea was the primary caregiver, providing guidance and nourishment, in all senses, to her children. Her father, Samuel, was a boat builder. The boats were made of wood and powered by oars. Farmers used the boats to get their produce to bigger markets across the Stubla. Samuel purchased parcels of forested land from farmers, logged it and brought the lumber to Serniki to build the boats. When a boat was completed, the children would gather at the riverside to watch it launch. It was a community event. The business took a great deal of Samuel’s time, he wasn’t home much. When he was home, Paula fondly recalls him sitting on the side of the bed she shared with Sofia, before they went to sleep, telling them stories. He told tales based on Jules Verne’s books. Samuel was a learned man, he had gone to university in Kiev. He was in partnership with his father, Gershon, in the boat business.

Gershon, a widower, lived in his own home, bigger than Paula’s family home, near the market in town. He shared the house with one of his sisters. Gershon had an aristocratic bearing, with a square little beard. Other family members, aunts, uncles, cousins, both maternal and paternal, were scattered throughout Serniki.

Paula’s life was made up of family and friends and observance of Jewish rituals. There was one synagogue in town. Samuel went Friday nights, and the whole family joined him Saturday morning. The men sat downstairs, the women upstairs. Paula watched her brother, father and grandfather through small windows. Though some men in Serniki were bearded, Samuel was clean shaven. He was a modern man. After services, family and friends would come by the house. Samuel played chess while the children ran around outside.

Paula played with her friends, who were all Jewish. They played hopscotch and a game with sticks that involved tossing them to see who could throw it further. She also especially liked walking barefoot in the mud and puddles. Paula was particularly fond of one neighbor friend, Chaya. Once Paula stopped by her house and Chaya’s mother was making pancakes. She offered Paula one which she readily accepted. Paula was served the pancake on a fine piece of china, not an everyday dish. It made her feel special and was the kind of thing Paula noticed and appreciated, even 60 years after the fact.

In 1939 the Soviets invaded Serniki. Though she was frightened of the newly arrived Russians, Paula was eight when they took over, her day-to-day life went on largely unchanged. She wasn’t very aware of how it impacted her father’s business. The one major change was to her school life. In addition to attending cheder, to learn Hebrew and Torah, Paula went to public school. The public school had been run by Poles and Paula had already completed first grade when the Soviets took over. Though Paula’s father had taught his children the Russian alphabet and to read, the authorities made everyone repeat their grade, so she had to begin again. Paula resented it. She completed second grade in the Russian school. It was during her third year at school that life as she knew it completely changed.

In early summer of 1941, a father and son arrived in Serniki, on the run. They told the story of their town which was to the west; of being marched to stand at the edge of a ditch only to have the Germans shoot them in the back, causing everyone to fall in, one on top of another. The father and son fell just as the shooting started and were not wounded. They lay, feigning death, amongst the bodies until nightfall when the Nazis left. They climbed out over the corpses and ran.

The Jews of Serniki didn’t believe the story. They thought it was a plea for attention, for sympathy and for help. Paula’s mother, Lea, though, believed it. Lea said, “It is too terrible for a human mind to make up. A normal human wouldn’t make up such a thing.” This was the first Paula had heard about the atrocities – it was possible that the adults had heard things before, but she was shielded from it.

It was a good thing Lea believed it – that belief made all the difference.

Paula just after the war, in her early teens, but no longer a child.