Day 2 at Yad Vashem began with an experience which we were
truly privileged to enjoy; listening first hand to the story of Chana Pick, a
survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and a childhood friend of Anne
Frank. Her story was unbelievable, we heard of her luck to remain in her family
home for numerous years of the war thanks to various coincidences as well as
strokes of luck which saw her and her sister both survive the war in extremely
unlikely circumstances. We hung on her every word, recognising how lucky we
were to be hearing the account of someone who endured the horrifying events
which many consider today a faded nightmare. For me, it brought home just how
lucky I am to be undertaking is journey, as well as the recognition that we are
the last generation lucky enough to be hearing from survivors themselves and as
such it is our responsibility to pass on the stories we accrue on our journey.
Our next session was a workshop with our tour guide Jonathan
in which we took a closer look at the ghettos of Eastern Europe, namely Lodz
and Warsaw, and the lives of those who lived there. We heard of the inversion
of traditional bread-winning hierarchy in Warsaw as children were forced to
scavenge and smuggle food in order to feed their starving families. We watched
and heard testimonies of those who had spent time in these shocking places, one
testimony particularly resonated with me personally. One woman stated that she
had gone on dates in which she had passed rotting corpses in the streets and
simply ignored them, for me this represented the an alternate and shocking
normality created in the ghettos and eventually the camps, wherein death and
destruction were simply the norm and people strived to live as normal lives as
they could to little avail. We compared the actions of the leaders of these
ghettos, one of whom committed suicide when the Nazis came for their ghettos
citizens and the other who sacrificed the children in order to save the adults,
eventually saving 8,000 lives. A debate arose as to who had made the correct
decision, an answer which simply cannot be answered as to our inability in 2014
to know the entire background of the decision as well as our incapacity to avoid
the use of hindsight to make an objective deliberation.
Our next workshop delved into the end of the war, the establishment
of displaced persons camps as well as life after the holocaust. We learnt of
ridiculously snap decisions for marriage due to an unwillingness to be alone
following the deaths of entire families. What struck me about this was that our
‘first world problems’ and thoughts of loneliness are simply insignificant and
irrational compared to the situations which these people found themselves, a
lesson which I believe my generation in particular must learn. Next up was a
visit to Yad Vashem’s resource centre where we worked on ceremonies and
presentations which we would present sometime over the next week, much research
was undertaken. Finally, we spent roughly an hour in the visual centre,
afforded some individual time with the enormous video database of testimonials,
films and Nazi propaganda amongst other things, which is only available at Yad
Vashem itself. We were informed that the video library contains over 60,000 individual
testimonials, despite being worked on since 1995, which allowed me to reflect
on the unbelievable amount of individuals whose lives were affected by this
traumatic episode of human history which I hope shall never be repeated.
Jake
