Since the end of World War II, there can be no understanding of the Jewish people, their writings and poetry, without the context of the Holocaust. The title of this post is “Arbeit Mact Frei”, German for work will set you free. This horribly ironic saying was emblazoned above the gates of the Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz-Berkinau, as well as many others. The only freedom afforded by the camps was death. The Holocaust is nearly impossible to grasp; it makes us deeply question what it means to be human. The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored extermination of an entire race of people, enacted with the brutal inhuman efficiency of a massive public works project.
Many of the survivors and their descendants have carved out a new homeland, Israel, surrounded by hostile enemies on every side. Others have settled all around the globe, modern diaspora, making their homes wherever they can find peace and tolerance. Their literature, from the unflinching realism of Taduesz Borowski to the haunting poems of Paul Celan, is the product of vivid memories of a very recent time when their entire people were nearly erased from history.
The Jewish people have experienced a great deal of hardship and persecution during the past two and a half millennia, often due to their religion, but also for any arbitrary prejudice which could be levelled at them. In spite of all of this, or even because of it, the Jewish people have endured. They turn to religion, their faith in God, and their faith in each other, to give them strength. Albert Einstein witnessed the aftermath of the Holocaust, as well as the use of the atomic bomb, which his theories helped to create. And yet, he chose to see everything as a miracle.
“There are two ways to live. You can live as if nothing is a miracle. You can live as if everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein
Jewish history and experiences have an indelible impact on their literature. There is no Jewish people without their collective shared experiences, often passed on through oral traditions as well as through the writings of The Torah. This sense of shared experience threads its way through all Jewish literature to this day.
After reading post-Holocaust Jewish literature, how would you use writing as a tool for dealing with such an event? Would writing about it be cathartic? What message would you want to convey? When we learn about modern-day ethnic cleansing during conflicts in places like Bosnia or Rowanda, how do we stand by and allow it to happen? How might education and literature help prevent such atrocities in the future?
Mokeymark 101 