We’re at the new Yad Vashem redone in 2005. At the beginning while we were waiting for the entourage of the visiting German President to go past, the guide asked who was connected to the Holocaust. I shared that my grandmother, Nana Frida is a survivor and that even after recording her testimony and going with her to her birth village and to Auschwitz, after all that I only found out in the last few years that in fact it wasn’t only four of them who miraculously survived, nothing will take that away. But that there were 4 younger children, aged 2, 4, 6 and 8 who were killed in Auschwitz along with her parents soon after the arrival of the transport. I would like to record their names on the Yad Vashem register. I went in to the archives room and met a woman from Switzerland and her village had been next to Balassagyrmat, the town where Nana’s family was deported from in Hungary. I went in to the shule (synagogue) and recited in my own mind the mourner’s prayer (Kaddish) with these children in mind.
As you may know the mourner’s kaddish doesn’t have anything about death in it. Rather it is about the acknowledgment and sanctification of God, blessing the Divine in her/his/its greatness. This is another thing that stood out for me, the honouring of God and of Torah amid the ruins and the devastation. I saw burnt fragments of a Sefer Torah (Torah Scroll) and I noticed yesterday’s Torah portion on it, the story of Joseph. I was moved by the testimony of a man who told his story of learning Torah in the ghetto. For those two hours in the day, and two hours in the night, there was no Germans, there was no war, there was just the Holy Torah. Another man was crying and crying as his dad was teaching him the blessings over the Torah for his barmitzvah. The dad didn’t want to risk the boy’s life but him and his brother insisted on learning it. The barmitzvah boy cried and cried and cried. He was embarrassed. Another man, appeared to him, Like Elijah the prophet and said to him ‘My child, my child, God loves you’. He took great comfort in that tenderness. This attention of distress that this man practised shows the strength and power of the human mind in choosing where we put our attention at the height of external trouble. Even though there was so much unspeakable cruelty, devastation and destruction, we can’t project how people experienced things. Imre Kertesz says in Fateless:
Even back there, in the shadow of the chimneys, in the breaks between pain, there was something resembling happiness…for me the happiness there will always be the most memorable experience, perhaps.
It is actually overwhelming and impossible to fully connect to the magnitude of the destruction let alone the killing of one person unless we can allow ourselves to feel. I’ve learnt from my involvement in a co-counselling community (I’m not saying anything to represent them) that it is really important to give space to non-Jews to talk about their connections and feelings to this material. To inquire of them how they feel connected to Jews, what information they carry with them about Jews and give them a chance to be relieved of the antisemitism they carry just from being part of society. All people are good people. The fact that we have internalised these oppressor recordings is not to be taken personally. I’ve also learnt the importance of acknowledging our oppressor material. The idea is that every victim carries with them internal recordings of that victim experience but also of the oppressor experience as well. I noticed in some of our sharings that it is easier for people to share their experience from a position of victim as opposed to owning up and claiming our position as oppressor. We need to be compassionate enough with ourselves in order to find the space to have the courage to see our own darkness and move through it. The more we can bring it to our conscious attention and release some of the hurt associated with it and early experiences, the less likelihood that we will act on it in the world.
I didn’t think there was much attention in the museum to the gendered nature of the narrative. Most of the people who were quoted on the writing on the wall were men, in fact I didn’t see any woman’s voice quoted on the wall. I found that personally alienating. It introduces an interesting dynamic whereby even amid a sense of solidarity with the Jewish people, I found myself simultaneously feeling alienated as a woman.
The new Yad Vashem has stone arches as you enter. Inscribed on it is the biblical quote from Ezekiel 37:14. There it says:
I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil.
There is a direct link between the renewal and revival of the dead and the establishment of the State of Israel and Zionism. As you enter the new building, there is footage of life in pre-war Europe. The place of the Holocaust in the Zionist narrative was reflected by all the footage I saw that was from the Zionist Conference and showed European Jews singing Hatikvah (the Israeli national Anthem).
Is there a way to honour the specificity of our tribal experience and to simultaneously use that opening to honour all humans?
Aziz shared that the Holocaust wasn’t taught at school with WW2 and also that Palestinians just felt that Israel used it to legitimise themselves. He also mentioned that in a mixed Jewish –Palestinian forum his dad asked if the Holocaust happened. As a flow-on from that he organised for 70 Palestinians to come to Yad Vashem and learn about the Holocaust.
We went to Ein Kerem for lunch.
Back at the YMCA we met with Mark Regev, spokesperson for the Israeli government. We had just been through checkpoints, visited an Unrecognised Bedouin village, and met with many activists involved in person to person peacebuilding, and I found it difficult when he answered questions about these topics which what seemed to me like a lack of substance. His main two messages were about security and recognition of the right of Israel to exist. Israel does need to look after the security of its citizens but the problem with the security argument, is that it is used to trump everything. Mark Regev himself says life itself (the security argument) always takes precedence of quality of life (the impediments caused to the Palestinians through checkpoints and the permit system and general lack of freedom of movement). I found it difficult to hear him speaking from such a defensive position. I encouraged the group to ask their questions from a position of curiosity as opposed to a stance of attack, and suggested that may free Mark Regev from needing to act defensively. But I think that may be a familiar stance for him.
After a short break when I ran to the post office, we met with Professor, Politician, and Civil Activist, Naomi Chazan, President of the New Israel Fund - www.nif.org/. She explained how she sees domestic and conflict-realted issues as integrally connected to each other. She believes very strongly that Israel was created for two reasons: 1. As collective expression of self-determination for Jews and 2. To create a just and equal society for all citizens. She believes that the Occupation is immoral, illegal, unJewish and bad for Palestinians and awful for Israelis. She acknowledged the intangible dimension to the intractability of the conflict like the fear and paranoia of the other- Israel is the strongest power in the Middle East but has a siege mentality as if the world is out to destroy us. We conceive ourselves first and foremost as victim. And the Palestinians are the same and every single day of the occupation they are victims and a climate of mistrust is perpetuated. She argued that a political settlement will not resolve these issues. Every Israeli historian says that Israel holds some responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. Let’s apologise and find a just solution to the problem.
She describes the internal reverberations of the occupation and the way in which dissent is being curbed in a ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us’ type attitude. She understood the recent targeting of her, including posting of billboards of a caricature of her with a horn (playing on the Hebrew word for Fund- keren- which also means horn), as part of a broader campaign of de-democratisation that includes targeting of groups involved in human rights, social justice and peacebuilding and the representation of them as somehow traitors to the Zionist cause. This incident was also significant in that she was going to come to Australia and her visit subsequently was cancelled.
In coming to a peaceful solution she acknowledged that you don’t negotiate narratives, you need to bridge between them and sometimes you have to get used to hearing the most awful things about how you are viewed by the other. We share this land, we are destined to live together, and use history as a way to understand the other.
We were in Talpiot so I went to visit Merav and Nachman and also had a great play with Lev. Wonderful and surreal.
---------
No comments:
Post a Comment