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If I Had Been a Jew in Eishyshok. . .
It’s not often I claim I’ve read a book that has changed my life. But this one did. And I thank @ontheleftcoast for telling me about it. Although I have studied the Holocaust over the years, I had never read a story about life in the shtetl, a small town with primarily Jewish residents in Eastern Europe.
This book, There Once was a World, was written by Yaffa Eliach, whose parents were Moshe and Zipporah Sonenson. This family, prosperous in Eishyshok terms, was also a pillar of the community, generous, compassionate, learned, and devoted to Judaism. The book also provided stories of individuals and families, and descriptions of Jewish life, from Torah study to the requirements of the faith.
The reason I was moved so deeply by the book was that, unlike many stories I have read about the Holocaust, with all its tragedies, human depravity, and horror, I had never read so many stories of individuals in one community: people with names, personalities, duties, and devotion to the Torah. Their lives, unlike the Jews in other urban cities in Europe, were difficult and demanding.
In the more recent years of Eishyshok’s existence, especially in the 19th century, many Jews were drawn to the opportunities of the United States and Israel; emigrating to Israel was, of course, the dream of many Jews. Some of them traveled back and forth to the shtetl; others brought their families to join them.
But in reading the book, there was no escaping the devastation that the town was finally forced to endure. Throughout the book were photographs of men, women, and children whom I’d gotten to know through their stories. I began to realize that most of the photos had descriptions that included, “Murdered in the massacre of Eishyshok.” A part of me wanted to skip over those descriptions, but I simply could not. I realized that these people whom I had gotten to know were going to die in a terrible ordeal; these many years later I was bearing witness to their tragedy.
By 1939, word of the Nazis and their atrocities was arriving in Eishyshok. Some Jews refused to believe they were in danger because during and after World War I, the Germans had treated them decently (from their perspective). Others simply refused to leave friends and family. So, on September 25 and 26, 1941 first men, then women and children, were forced by the Nazis to walk to the Old Cemetery, where deep trenches had been built previously to keep out the cattle. It took two days to kill all of the people, creating massive graves in those trenches, which filled to overflowing. Ultimately, with Jews from other villages, 5,000 people were killed.
Some people did miraculously escape the slaughter, and even survived the war in hiding.
As I meditated on this story, it reminded me of the many other stories I’ve heard of Jews who assumed they would be safe where they were living, who assumed that their neighbors and surrounding villages would not harm them and even provide sanctuary for them.
They were wrong.
* * *
So, two major questions have come up for me: what would I have done if I’d lived in Eishyshok? Would I have left for the US or Israel well before the danger? Would I have lined up with the others who were shot to death? Would I have tried to escape, find a home with a non-Jewish family (many of whom betrayed their friends)? Would I have tried to live in the forest and dodge the pursuing army? Would I have become a partisan?
The second question that I contemplate today is if I thought I was in danger, where I live in these times, what would I do? How imminent would the danger need to be for me to be seriously concerned? Would there need to riots in my town? In my community? Would there need to be shootings? Would I leave? Would I fight back?
I don’t know how imminent and far-ranging the danger will become in the US from riots and violence carried out by nihilists, Marxists, and others. But having led a life of peace and prosperity, only to discover that my life, my family, and friends were in danger, what would I do?
What would you do?
Published in Group Writing
It’s more complicated than that. From 1939 to halfway through 1941, Poland was occupied by the Nazis and the USSR. The Home Army and other Polish resistance organizations fought against both of them. During that time, the NKVD decapitated Poland’s surviving leaders and future leaders in what is known as the Katyn Massacre.
After the Nazis kicked off Operation Barbarossa, there were Communist partisans fighting the Nazis, but they did so with the intention of reoccupying Poland for the USSR, and, particularly in the former Soviet occupied east, many in the Polish resistance continued to fight against both Communists and Nazis and the Poles were under no illusion about what the USSR intended for them.
After war broke out between Germany and the USSR, while there initially were partisans who were Communists, the USSR wasn’t providing much support at that time. To make matters more complicated, some of the Communist partisans and later their Soviet military helpers were Jewish, and though they were fighting the Nazis they were also enemies of Polish independence. To give you an idea,
Relations between Polish gentiles and Jews were complicated, (though in prewar Poland there was a Chief Rabbi for the Polish Army; he was murdered at Katyn.)
Understandably, this led to Polish suspicion of Jews, particularly in the east and matters grew worse as the USSR counterattacked and occupied all of Poland.
If you want to see what a Polish patriot can look like, I give you Witold Pilecki.
One more thing about Pilecki. One of his jailers from his imprisonment and torture by the Communists clandestinely did what he could to support Pilecki’s widow and children. This was out of gratitude; his contact with Pilecki had affected him to the point that he no longer wanted to do violence.
I’m not sure if it’s in There Once Was a World, but Yaffa Eliach remembered her father saying that for every Jew who survived, it was because non-Jews helped him or her and that every Jew who died was betrayed by someone.
By the way, on her father’s side of the family, Eliach descended from the first five Jewish families to settle in the town in the 11th century. It wasn’t until the 14th century that the Teutonic Order’s brutal crusades against Lithuania’s paganism finally succeeded; Eliach reports that things were easier for the town’s Jews when Lithuania’s was still pagan.
I edited my commentary such that my nightmare fears are still discussed without any need for further debate on the actual methods to attain the nightmare fears.
In Cambodia, the word “intellectual” was a term applied to a great many people who were not farmers. Young people and farmers were favored by Pol Pot. It was a very atypical type of revolution.
Pilecki’s story is most amazing.
You state: “It wasn’t until the 14th century that the Teutonic Order’s brutal crusades against Lithuania’s paganism finally succeeded; Eliach reports that things were easier for the town’s Jews when Lithuania’s was still pagan.”
Christianity had a way of not being so very Christian, back in the day.
Have you ever read Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz (2014)? I listened to it on audio earlier this year. The village is Nasielsk, north of Warsaw and east of my grandmother’s village. It would be a different kind of Holocaust tourism, but I’m hoping to visit the village next time we go to Poland, just to look at it in terms of the people who had been there before WWII. I don’t know that any Jewish people live there now.
Well, wait a minute. When Kurtz visited Nasielsk he met some people who showed him some of the old places. But I don’t think they were Jewish. I remember the scenes in the book, but exactly who and where is escaping my memory. I need to re-read it already.
After listening to the book, I bought the Kindle version just so I could look things up.
A Jewish friend in Israel tells me that any American Jew who does not have an updated passport is a fool. Israel at least offers an escape from future fascist scenarios. No one less than the Lubavitcher Rebbe, an important Jewish leader not given to pessimistic prognostications, said during an interview (in 1962!) when asked if there could be another Holocaust answered: “Morgen in der fruh” (tomorrow morning). Today, rabid anti-Semites stroll the halls of Congress. BLM — the darling of corporate America — declares that Israel is committing genocide and defaces synagogues with swastikas. My Jewish friend in Israel keeps telling me that the writing is on the wall. I don’t know if I share his degree of pessimism but I have been sharing it with Jews that I know.
Thanks, @joshuafinch, for your concern. I’ve been told on this site that acts against Jews are nothing to be alarmed about. Certainly anti-Semitic acts are fewer here than in other parts of the world. And I try not to be paranoid. But the media tends to downplay these words and actions–since they almost always come from Democrats, they don’t want them to look bad, so I don’t always trust the reports. But I am concerned, and therefore pay close attention to those things.
Yes, it could happen. Is it imminent? I don’t know.
@Stad you hit the solution right on the head: arm, train, hoard ammunition, fortify your home, and have a bug out route.
Right now, I am starting to see more people on the Right who are sick of doing nice things for Israel. Given that modern generations are completely disconnected from the Holocaust, when the ADL gets in a huff about something, it sounds more like woke-scolding. Add in the long-running dedication of secular Jews to leftist causes, and Jews start to sound like rich black liberals to the young anti-PC guy.
Add in the appalling state of history teaching, and you have kids post nazi images for shock value. The best way to deal with them is to use comedy and a teaching approach. Nazi, right now, means bad person who is bad, not anything especially villainous. We can’t take for granted the friendly relationship between Israel and the USA, or Evangelical support for Israel and Jews. (For one, many American Jews are liberal enough to despise evangelical Christians.) It has to be carefully nurtured.
I don’t know if all modern readers are disconnected from the Holocaust, @omegapaladin, although the way the schools have been teaching, that is possible. The ADL has become Leftist, and I’ve pretty much written them off. The secular Jews have been Leftist since Israel became a state.
Maybe we need to connect with the moderate Jews more effectively. And somehow we need to ensure that they are educated. If the Jewish community doesn’t connect with our own, and they don’t know our history, we only have ourselves to blame. The school system is a waste when it comes to US History or even world history.
It might be changing. The number of Jews who reflexively vote for whichever Democrat is running seems to be waning, at least among those of my acquaintance who feel comfortable discussing politics with a conservative goy.
Wow–two strikes against you! ;-) I think the numbers on the Left have been going down slowly for a while, @percival, but it’s been a long slog. My hope is that they’ll see what is going on in their party this time around, but I’m not holding my breath.
It’s an awful feeling to live with, Susan. Wrt antisemitism becoming a dominant force in America I find it really unlikely. America was, and remains, overwhelmingly philosemitic – perhaps equally unbalanced, but if those are the only two options then it’s certainly the better one.
This has been another great month of posts, from light to very heavy. Don’t be shy, step up and join the conversation this month, playing off September’s theme “If I was a —, I would —.”
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
You may find this survey by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs interesting.