Learning about the Holocaust (part two)

Learning about the Holocaust (part two)

Oliver Sears in Dundalk GS library, November 15th 2022

WM

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Mr. Sears spoke about his work with Holocaust Awareness Ireland, referring to questions sent in advance by students. What follows is a transcript of sections, with commentary in places (in bold).

What would you say to your Grandparents if they were still here today?

His paternal grandfather was murdered in 1939, so Mr. Sears never met him. His mother’s parents survived, also his mother and adoptive father. His grandparents met in London having moved there from Poland after the war. Mr. Sears knew his grandfather until he was ten years old because he died in 1979, aged 76. He knew his grandmother until the age of seventeen.

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“They were very difficult people, very dour. It’s so hard to imagine going through life with that kind of loss. They managed to rebuild their lives, but most of their joy had been knocked out of it.”

“I grew up in a house of secrets. We didn’t speak of this wartime history. I had to get the information through different sources. I didn’t know, until the day my grandfather died, he wasn’t my real grandfather. Even that fact was kept from me. Why? Well, there was a lot of wishful thinking that we could forget about what had happened and start a new life in London. The idea was that this family, who had escaped where 90% hadn’t, could start with a new identity.

“We could be Jewish, but kind of quietly Jewish.

Part of that mythology, in order to sustain it, we 3

had to pretend certain things didn’t happen. I’ve been in situations professionally, in London, where I chose not to reveal my identity because I felt I would have put myself in harm’s way physically.

“Secrets in a family are a bad idea; they are destabilizing and they always come out.

However hard the truth is, it is easier to face than living with a lie.

“You need a disproportionate amount of luck to survive as a Jew in the Holocaust. You also need the kind of determination my grandmother had, which was willful. She was a pretty awful woman, she was the most manipulative woman.

She had this motto which still chills me to the bone: ‘It is better to let down 10 people, than to let down yourself’”.

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What would you all feel, as teenagers, if a grandparent who you really didn’t like, came into your orbit at close quarters? It was not a good presence. What I’ve learned since, and it's taken years and years of discovery, is I have endless compassion for these people. They had experienced Hell. My grandfather’s Hell was completely psychological, because he was abandoned in London, not knowing what had happened to his family until he found out in [approx.] 1943. My grandmother was ducking and diving in Nazi-occupied Poland as a Jew trying to keep her young daughter safe.

“The thing I would say to them is forgive them for the accident of fate that lead them to lead such traumatic lives. A trauma so big that it is handed down to the next generation. I forgive 5

them for handing it to me, for having to go through a lifetime of what they couldn’t do, which is confront it. Why am I talking to you today? Because the impact of this event was so big that, even though I was born in 1968, for most second and third generation survivors it’s the single biggest, most influential event in our lives – and we were never there.

Concerning a family’s history being passed down the generations, Mr. Sears not only carries a mental, spiritual impression of his grandparents’ experiences, but physical reminders of it as well, as he talks of two particular objects in his exhibition ‘The Objects of Love’: “The first is a ring given to my grandmother by her father for her 18th birthday in 1930. When 6

war broke out, jewelry became a really valuable commodity, it could buy you a meal or even your freedom. It was sewn into my mother’s coat during the war, and it was never used. It survived, and my mother gave it to me when I was thirty, and it ended up on my wife’s finger as her engagement ring. It really is an object of love.

The other ring, which I wear, was my adoptive grandfather’s wedding ring to my grandfather when they married in 1948.

What does it mean to be Jewish?

“It depends on the Jew you’re asking. I am an atheist, but I feel very close to my Jewish identity from a cultural perspective. Not from a national perspective however, because we are a refugee family. I have nothing in common with the Polish 7

side of my family. As for the national side of things, in spite of my accident, I don’t feel at all English. We did English things, but never felt English. I’ve been in Ireland since I was 18, but can’t say that I feel Irish. I feel it would be ridiculous for me to claim I am Irish. What I do feel is European, that is really clear. That gives you an idea how complicated for outsiders the concept of being Jewish is, because were not a monolithic group of people.

There are essentially two tribes of Jews, those of Eastern-European heritage, and those of largely North African and Spanish heritage. We have nothing in common culturally, but are bound by the same religious texts. Think about those two extremes, and all the nuances in between, and it gives you an idea that when people talk about 8

the Jews in a negative way: Who are you talking about? It's not such a leap to imagine that your identity alone would be criminalized.”

The discussion moved to modern antiSemitism, one instance in current events coming from an unexpected sector in the form of rapper Kanye West, and his posts on social media, followed by stating that he “liked Hitler,” before calling for the Jewish people to “Forgive Hitler.”

As arguable as it may be concerning Kanye’s current mental state that possibly underlie his rash behavior, his influence over millions of fans cannot be overstated.

His inciting violence and bringing such views so confidently into the open will no doubt spur on similarly biased people to post, 9

tweet,

encourage

and

normalize

such

attitudes.

OS

This shows how the prejudiced image of Jews as having some sort of holistic control over the world’s banks, governments etc has still not been overcome. Seeing as these are prejudices

that

go

back

centuries

to 10

Medieval times, it can’t but be helped to raise the question ‘Could an event like the Holocaust

happen

again?’

With

views

expressed by personalities like Kanye, it becomes more and more clear that the messages of people like Oliver Sears must be spread so as to become common knowledge: learn of the tragedies in the past in order to empathize and engage with the those affected by atrocities being committed today.

“You have to be really careful about which material you use to inform yourself about the Holocaust. In the hands of a really good writer, sometimes a historical novel can communicate that past better than a poor eyewitness account.

Once you have the facts right, it’s about how you 11

communicate. Possibly my favorite book of all is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, who was a famous Austrian psycho-analyst, who was in a concentration camp, documenting his life in the camp and how he dealt with it afterwards. If you were to read Frankl and Primo Levi alone, it would be a good starting point.”

When finding a fictional source for learning about the Holocaust, numerous questions concerning appropriation arise, or the watering-down of specific details to target a younger audience. Such concerns can be applied to Irish author John Boyne’s 2006 novel “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” aimed largely at a pre-teen audience. It has become an established part of the primary 12

school reading syllabus and has since been adapted into a hit film.

However, a number of critics of the book, including Oliver Sears, have explained why it may cause more harm than good: the book’s plot is oriented entirely around the narrative of a German child of a family in charge of Auschwitz, as he befriends a Jewish boy held prisoner in the camp. This emphasis

of

narrative

creates

more

sympathy for the German boy and his family and filters out much from the Jewish child’s story to the point he becomes disinteresting as a character.

This combined

exploitational with

multiple

storytelling, historical

inaccuracies, such as the fact that a nine-year 13

old child, as the Jewish boy’s age is, was likely to survive no more than two hours upon arrival in Auschwitz, makes the very idea of this novel being so highly regarded as an educational source ludicrous.

Still,

when

in

the

library,

such

established popular novels like this are not one’s only option for an educational source.

Books such as those by Laurence Rees and Gitta Sereny offer both accuracy in their research and empathy in the storytelling that are a good starting point for any and all readers.

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“Most Holocaust survivors can’t talk about the past. They remained silent. It was the case too for my mother until the age of fifty-one. She’s now eighty-one. In the 50’s and 60’s, the idea that you would speak to somebody about your problems was only available for mental illness.

Tomi

Reichental

articulated

a

survivor’s

difficulty in discussing it as: - It’s not that I didn’t want to talk, but that I couldn’t. That you just try to form the words in your mouth, and nothing happens.

“All my grandparents’ friends whom I was surrounded by in my childhood were Holocaust survivors. A lot of these people had lost their own

children

in

the

worst

possible

circumstances, so when they looked at me and my brothers doing childish things that kids do, it 16

was very bittersweet for them. They couldn’t simply engage in the joy of someone else’s young kids. There was also this raw reaction of ‘Why are these kids here when mine didn’t survive?’”

“The first time my mother started opening up was in letters to her first grandchild, my nephew, in 1991. She was able to transmit very clearly her thoughts to a grandchild for when he grew up. There's no pity, no great emotional complexity to it. There was no idea of personal happiness or need. The events are laid out very prosaically.

“Survivor guilt is a huge factor in the silence around events like this, and is almost universal [with survivors]: ‘How is it that I survived when nearly everybody else didn’t? Particularly when there’s no home to go back to. One thinks you 17

should feel great relief that you had the luck to survive, but it’s not so easy because your life from then on is framed by the disaster, so you have to learn to navigate the world differently, because your life is intact, but everything that framed that life has been taken away.

“Let me put courage into perspective: I doubt any of you, including me, will ever be in a situation where we have to show the kind of courage my grandmother showed for five years, and that was the just the beginning of it.

Collectively our experiences wouldn’t match one day of the courage she needed to survive.

With that backdrop, what courage is required for one of you to get up and ask a question. [still a student had to be called upon].

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“My

father,

and

this

shows

the

generational complexities, is not as affected by it as I am. My mother experienced, albeit as a small child, one of the worst examples of history that we’ve ever known. She was in the Warsaw ghetto for two years. It was different from a concentration camp, but nevertheless it was a horrible experience. Walking over dead bodies, people starving, Germans shooting at you for sport. The fear is just inconceivable.

“One of the huge motivations for me to do the work I do, and I do this part time, is to understand the connection between liberal democracy and the kind of societies that prevent the atrocities like the Holocaust and what we’re seeing in Ukraine. People talk about lessons from history, cross that out of your mind. We 19

don’t learn from history, we’re not capable of it.

What we can do is understand that certain social systems protect us from ourselves. Look at what is happening in Ukraine and understand that you are about to get this precious thing called the right to vote. So if you think that it’s a complete fiction that someone might say ‘Ok you four in the front row, I don’t like the look of you, so I’m going to take you outside and shoot you.’

That goes on in Ukraine.

So think very carefully about your futures.

We have no divine right to live in a democracy.

The democracy that gives you all the privileges you have and that you'll never be near the kind of experiences my family went through. But for all the flaws in it, the thing that has kept us safe

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is democracy, and it’s our responsibility to keep it going.”

William Mulligan (4 Green)

In the conclusion to his exhibition guidebook, Oliver Sears refers to Viktor E. Frankl’s memoir Man’s Search for Meaning.

‘He says that to understand your own suffering you need to help someone else understand theirs. He says that no amount of oppression can change your own attitude to the world. But, most importantly, he says that love conquers all.’

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Maus: graphic novels as a source

FF (Maus extracts as posters)

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Maus is a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman. The book tells the story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor. The novel is structured in a series of interviews between the author and his father, and the story is presented in a series of comicstrip panels.

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One of the major pro’s of Maus is that it provides

a

unique

and

highly

personal

perspective on the Holocaust. Because the story is told through the eyes of a survivor, readers are able to gain a deeper understanding of the human experience during this horrific period in history.

Also, the use of comics allows the story to be presented in a way that is accessible to a wider audience of younger readers who may not have been able to engage with the subject matter in a more traditional format.

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Another advantage of Maus is that it addresses the complex relationships between the different groups affected by the Holocaust.

In addition to depicting the experiences of Jews during the Holocaust, the novel also explores the experiences of non-Jewish Poles and Germans.

This helps to provide a more nuanced and balanced perspective on the events of the Holocaust, and allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Holocaust impacted different groups of people.

For example, Art’s father (a complicated man who is difficult to live with) became a hoarder after losing everything in the Holocaust.

However, there are also some potential drawbacks to using Maus as a tool for learning about the Holocaust. One criticism of the novel 26

is that it may not be a historically accurate account of the events of the Holocaust. Because the story is told through the eyes of a survivor, there is a risk that the events depicted in the book may not be entirely factual. The story could be exaggerated or misremembered.

In conclusion, Maus is a powerful and unique depiction of the Holocaust that offers a personal perspective. While it may not be possible to state that it is a completely accurate representation of the events of the Holocaust as there is only one man’s word to back up the story, it is an effective tool for engaging readers and providing a deeper understanding of the human experience during this time.

Freddie Green (3 Green) 27

On Anti-Semitism and whether Art can be Separated from the Artist Kanye ‘Ye’ West: “People they're looking for an explanation and people say well as artists you don’t have to give an explanation but as a leader you do” (concerning what Ye said about “white lives matter”).

Here is an anti-Semitic tweet from Kanye: “when I wake up I'm going death con 3 on Jewish people".

"Funny thing I can't actually be anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew”.

This then sparked more anti-Semitic crimes which have been on the rise since 2021. In L.A., a group of people hung out a banner saying “Kanye is right about the Jews” as they did Nazi 28

salutes on the 405-highway bridge. Is Kanye actually trying to increase hate against the Jews and promote antisemitism?

Influence- The process of getting someone else to want to do, react, think, or believe the way you want them to.

Manipulation- Exerting devious influence over a person for your own advantage or gain.

By advancing the interest of the manipulator, often at another’s expense (Jews/antisemitism) such methods could be considered exploitive and devious.

The Jewish people were often blamed in crises historically (the death of Jesus, the economy of Germany, and the fact they were seen as imperfect by Hitler which he used to justify the

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Holocaust), and even now, Kanye West also blames them for the economic crisis today.

Reasons why Ye could be doing thisstrong believer in God and Christianity and blames Jews for the death of Jesus; his mental health as he is bi-polar; publicity (which ties in with manipulation).

Because he is using it for his gain.

Reasons on why people stick with Ye and listen to himmy personal reason: I don’t agree with his statements, but that won't make me deny how great an artist he is; some people idolise him for various reasons, like O.G. fans, who are now emotionally connected to 30

him; some people like the fact that he’s openly Christian and spreads the word of God, so they view the good things he has done and ignore the bad (kind’ve me); his legacy is great, and some people see him as a top 5 artist of all time, and therefore will idolise him. He has practically created such a wellrespected legacy which lets him get away with anything he says or does.

That is what I've learned and gathered, and this is my unbiased opinion. I do not agree with what he says but I will continue to listen to his music because I do not link his personal affairs with his music.

Olisa Eriobu (4 Blue) 31

September 16th 1935 Yesterday a characteristic scene: traffic jam on Prager Strasse. Crowd of people, cars. A young man, pale, rigid, mad in appearance shouts without stopping at someone whom I could not see: “Whoever buys from the Jew is a traitor to the nation! … I said…” and so on ad infinitum.

Everyone

is

disturbed,

embarrassed and no one interferes. No police in sight, the traffic is building up and the man keeps on shouting: “I said…I can say that: whoever buys from the Jew, is a traitor to the nation, a traitor to the nation, I said…” after a while, I walked on.

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Diaries from the 1930’s show ordinary German citizens describing the way antisemitism in everyday life became something more than a rant. Words of hatred lead to acts of murder.

There are thoughtful, kind students who respond to melody and aren’t upset by the historical significance of lyrics or comments made by the artist.

Rather than berate them, encouraging students to read Victor Klemperer, Hélène Barr, Sebastian Haffner and Ruth Maier may tap into the empathy of teenagers for anyone finding themselves hated for bewildering nonsense.

FF

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How to learn about Ann Frank – a graphic novel, the museum guide, her diary or a podcast ie.

Warfare, 4/7/22 The Life of Ann Frank

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Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 789 days in prison - ANNÉE 1945 (Seras-tu celle de ma libération?)

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‘Following the successful use of Terezin as a supposed model internment camp during the Red Cross visit, the Nazis decided to make a propaganda film there. It was directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron, an experienced director and actor.

Shooting took eleven days, starting September 1, 1944. After the film was completed, most of the cast and the director were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron was murdered by gas chamber on October 28, 1944.’

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For a broad take on Germany in the 20th century.

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Crocuses and empathy

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I am writing about the Crocus Project that my CSPE class took part in today (8th of December 2022) by planting yellow crocuses down by the boarders’ common room. We did this to remember the 1.5 million Jewish kids who were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust and the thousands of other kids who were also killed.

The reason we plant only yellow crocuses for this project is because the yellow represents the star of David which the Nazis forced all Jewish people (also those in countries the Nazis had invaded) to always wear on their sleeves so people could see who were Jewish and who were not. Holocaust Education Ireland set up the Crocus project in 2005. Now twelve other European countries have decided to do the same and remember everyone who died.

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Given the fact that Russia has invaded Ukraine, it is extra important to do these kinds of things.

These kinds of invasions have happened plenty of times in the past. The invaded country (in the case Ukraine) is left in terrible condition economically and takes years to re-build. The country that invaded (in this case Russia) leaves the country with whatever natural resources or gas etc. They then are hated on and get ruined economically as well.

After we had planted the bulbs in the bitter cold, we could go inside and warm up. This evening we can take hot showers, wash our clothes and know that we do not have to worry for our safety. That is not something people in Ukraine can say right now.

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We have electricity, heating, shelter. A large percent of people in eastern Ukraine and other parts as well, do not have any of that and won’t throughout this winter.

We chose near the common room as my whole form went out a few weeks ago and picked a spot they thought would fit the flowers’ needs (constant sun, water, shelter, a peaceful home) and we decided on there. Everyone in the form planted at least one bulb with a trowel.

January

27th

is

International

Holocaust

Memorial Day and it’s around then when the crocuses bloom to show the beautiful yellow flower inside. If we haven’t left it too late, they’ll bloom by the 27th.

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Planting the bulbs symbolises how people young and old all can agree on one quite simple thing; nothing can take away from the fact we are all the same. Not skin colour, religion, sexuality, gender, nationality. I personally feel like this could not be a better time to do something as symbolic and meaningful as right now with current happenings. I hope you understand a little bit more about why we planted yellow crocuses.

Rosie Tyrell (1 White)

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