In Europe 1939–Present

Joanna Beata Michlic, editor Jewish Families IN EUROPE 1939–PRESENT History, Representation, and Memory JEWISH, FAMILIES, IN EUROPE, 1939–, PRESENT, The HBI Series on Jewish Women, created by the HBI SERIES ON, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, publishes a wide range JEWISH WOMEN, of books by and about Jewish women in diverse con- texts and time periods. Of interest to scholars and Shulamit ReinhaRz, the educated public, the HBI Series on Jewish Women GeneRal editoR, fills major gaps in Jewish Studies and in Women and Gender Studies as well as their intersection. Sylvia BaRack FiShman, The HBI Series on Jewish Women is supported by a aSSociate editoR, generous gift from Dr. Laura S. Schor. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com Joanna Beata Michlic, editor, Jewish Families in Europe, 1939–Present: History, Representation, and Memory Sarah M. Ross, A Season of Singing: Creating Feminist Jewish Music in the United States Margalit Shilo, Girls of Liberty: The Struggle for Suffrage in Mandatory Palestine Sylvia Barack Fishman, editor, Love, Marriage, and Jewish Families: Paradoxes of a Social Revolution Cynthia Kaplan Shamash, The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq’s Last Jews Marcia Falk, The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season Inbar Raveh, Feminist Rereadings of Rabbinic Literature Laura Silver, The Book of Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food Sharon R. Siegel, A Jewish Ceremony for Newborn Girls: The Torah’s Covenant Affirmed Laura S. Schor, The Best School in Jerusalem: Annie Landau’s School for Girls, 1900–1960 Federica K. Clementi, Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma Elana Maryles Sztokman and Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman, Educating in the Divine Image: Gender Issues in Orthodox Jewish Day Schools Ilana Szobel, A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch Susan M. Weiss and Netty C. Gross-Horowitz, Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish State: Israel’s Civil War Ronit Irshai, Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature Elana Maryles Sztokman, The Men’s Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World Sharon Faye Koren, Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, editors, Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust Julia R. Lieberman, editor, Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora Derek Rubin, editor, Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging Carol K. Ingall, editor, The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education: 1910–1965 Gaby Brimmer and Elena Poniatowska, Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Three Voices Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education, and Family in Contemporary Life Jewish Families in europe, 1939– present hiStoRy, RepReSentation, and memoRy EditEd by Joanna bEata Michlic brandEis UnivErsity PrEss WalthaM, MassachUsEtts Brandeis University Press An imprint of University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2017 Brandeis University This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com This book was published through the generosity of the Laura S. Schor fund, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, and Mr. Sigmund Rolat. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Michlic, Joanna B., editor. title: Jewish families in Europe, 1939–present: history, representation, and memory / edited by Joanna Beata Michlic. description: Waltham, Massachusetts : Brandeis University Press, [2017] | Series: hbi series on Jewish women | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2016029651 (print) | lccn 2016030060 (ebook) | isbn 9781512600094 (cloth: alk. paper) | isbn 9781512600100 (pbk.: alk. paper) | isbn 9781512600117 (epub, mobi & pdf) subjects: lcsh: Jewish families —Europe, —History —20th century. | Jewish families —Europe, —History —21st century. | Jewish children in the Holocaust. | Holocaust survivors. classification: lcc hq525.j4 j394 2017 (print) | lcc hq525.j4 (ebook) | ddc 306.85/089924–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029651 Contents Foreword Sylvia Barack Fishman ix Preface Joanna Beata Michlic xi Jewish Families in Europe, 1939–Present: History, Representation, and Memory —An Introduction Joanna Beata Michlic xv Part I ■ Parenthood and ChIldhood under sIege, 1939–1945 1 Parenthood in the Shadow of the Holocaust Dalia Ofer 3 2 Clandestine Activities and Concealed Presence: A Case Study of Children in the Kraków Ghetto Joanna Sliwa 26 3 Resistance in Everyday Life: Family Strategies, Role Reversals, and Role Sharing in the Holocaust Lenore J. Weitzman 46 4 The National Institute for the Israelite Deaf-Mute in Budapest, 1938–1948: A Case Study for the Rescue Strategy of Continuously Operating Jewish Communal Institutions Kinga Frojimovics 67 5 Moving Together, Moving Alone: The Story of Boys on a Transport from Auschwitz to Buchenwald Kenneth Waltzer 85 6 Life in Hiding and Beyond Jennifer Marlow 110 Parta II ■ fter the War: rebuIldIng shattered lIves, reColleCtIng WartIme exPerIenCes 7 A Zionist Home: Jewish Youths and the Kibbutz Family after the Holocaust Avinoam Patt 131 8 What Does a Child Remember? Recollections of the War and the Early Postwar Period among Child Survivors from Poland Joanna Beata Michlic 153 9 Memory Imprints: Testimonies as Historical Sources Rita Horváth 173 10 “ I Will Not Be Believed”: Benjamin Tenenbaum and the Representation of the Child Survivor Boaz Cohen and Gabriel N. Finder 196 11 Transcending Memory in Holocaust Survivors’ Families Uta Larkey 209 12 Holocaust Child Survivors, Sixty-Five Years after Liberation: From Mourning to Creativity Eva Fogelman 233 afterword In Defense of Eyewitness Testimonies: Reflections of a Writer and Child Survivor of the Holocaust Henryk Grynberg 249 List of Contributors 261 Index 265 foreWord sylvIa baraCk fIshman This groundbreaking volume, edited and introduced by Joanna Beata Michlic, illuminates the persistent impact of childhood Holocaust experiences from World War II until the present day. Twelve chapters written by Holocaust scholars from a broad range of countries and disciplines discuss the Holocaust not only as a cataclysm that brutally ripped apart families and murdered family members, but also as the generator of pathological environments in which social norms and expectations were inverted and social lacunae festered: husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters were deprived of each other, and they were also deprived of critical familial roles that the other played. Jewish Families in Europe, 1939–Present pow- erfully reveals the ongoing implications of these familial disruptions. Historical Jewish societies considered families to be foundational social institutions, de rigueur for productive adult existence. Jewish law and culture created clear generational and gendered familial norms, norms that were expected to bolster the physical and spiritual Jewish well-being of adult generations as well as protect and nurture Jewish generations to come. Despite historical and geographical disruptions, and changes over time, Jewish families were expected to promote what today would be called Jewish religious “continuity,” and to serve numerous educational, sociopsychological, and sexual functions. Not least, traditionally defined roles within Jewish families often helped to cushion family members in times of difficulty, compensating for personal and societal existential uncertainties. In contrast, the Holocaust violently distorted normative family relation- ships. Several of the essays in this collection emphasize the ways in which new, ad hoc, family-like structures were created: both adults and young people tried to fill in the gaps by playing roles for each other that enhanced the possi- bilities for day-to-day survival. In this environment, children were robbed not only of loving family members but also of necessary developmental episodes. For the youngest children, those who could not remember an environment prior to the Holocaust, their daily living situations may have seemed “normal,” some testimonies reveal. Nevertheless, other testimonies show that child Ho- locaust victims were not necessarily passive in the grip of moral distortions. On the contrary: isolated and without adults capable of playing protective adult roles, some children responded by consciously resisting and by playing quasi-adult roles and protecting each other. Ironically, many victimized ix children were much less passive than children with normal childhoods —they learned to depend on their own agency. During the Holocaust, these adultlike children understood that they must repress aspects of their childhood selves in order to function and survive. Later, in their postwar lives, such adult child survivors realized that their very childhoods had been stripped from them. Even those who succeeded economically and socially during adulthood were often haunted by such bereavements throughout their lives. The testimonies of child survivors of the Holocaust are especially promi- nent sources in this volume. Many general readers will not have previously en- countered testimonies

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