"The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public Memory," by Anita Shapira

[40]

Jewish Social The Holocaust: Private Studies Memories, Public Memory

Anita Shapira

ver the past 15 years it has been the penchant among historians—myself among them—to present the first couple of de- Ocades following World War II as a period during which the Holocaust was suppressed in Israeli national consciousness. It has been claimed that, throughout this period, the Holocaust played no more than a marginal role in shaping the Israeli national identity, that it was never at the center of the public discourse, that it was not internalized by the education system. People did not want to hear about the Holocaust. People did not wish to discuss the Holocaust. The struggle preceding the founding of the state and, later, the War of Independence suppressed the shock of the Holocaust and the impact it had. There was no room in the newly formed heroic state for exhibitions of weakness and humiliation. Some historians have been able to understand this attitude, even excusing and explaining it away. Others were enraged by it and regarded it as a crude expression of heartlessness on the part of the veteran Israeli population toward the new immigrants, survivors of the devastation. But as for actually pushing aside the Holocaust issue to the edges of the Israeli agenda, there was no dispute: this assumption has been accepted as fact by historians and writers alike, and it has received wide coverage in the popular press and television. It served as a central factor in a scathing accusation against David Ben-Gurion—who is identified as the state’s founding father—and against the first native generation, the Sabras, for ignoring or erasing deliberately the memory of the Holo- caust. On the other hand—so goes the accusation—they over-emphasized the role played by the all-powerful Israeli “macho” in building the nation and the country, and they nurtured the myth of heroism. This convention was to become one of the battering rams in attacks on the Israeli entity.1 It is now widely agreed that the age of marginalizing the Holocaust in Israeli awareness is past. There is no agreement, however, as to the exact moment at which it came to an end. Some see the Eichmann trial in 1961 [41] as the event that brought the Holocaust into Israeli public awareness. Others point to the waiting period that preceded the Six Day War in 1967 Anita as the turning point on this issue. Still others reckon that this change Shapira took place immediately following the trauma of the Yom Kipur War in • 1973. And there are also those who would go so far as naming the 1977 The Holocaust political takeover by the Likud Party as the time of Israel’s revised self- awareness with regard to the Holocaust. Anchoring the end of the moratorium in each of these events is the direct result of individual points of view with regard to the factors that brought about the repression of the Holocaust in the first place and is therefore also connected to the timing of the end of this repression. Those who saw the Eichmann trial as representing the end of the repression period related this repression simply to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the significance of the Holocaust from a factual point of view. The accusations and testimonies presented in the trial brought the Holocaust into every household in the country. According to this version, it was knowledge that brought about awareness. Those who considered the change in awareness to have been caused by the waiting period prior to the Six Day War focused on the collective fear of annihilation that, at the time, was shared by the entire population of Israel. The sense of helplessness, of there being no way out, that had hitherto been identified only with the Holocaust and life in exile was seen now as being possible in the free Jewish state as well. The feeling of Jewish solidarity, the ability to identify with the annihilated Jewish people, was no longer mere rhetoric referring to another reality but had became part of a collective Israeli experience. Another dimension was added by the Yom Kipur War: for the first time, footage was shown on television of Israelis taken prisoner, of weakness and of degradation. These phenomena, which had so far been considered characteristic of the Diaspora Jew in the negative sense, received an overnight legitimacy, becoming part of the Israeli experience. The heroic self-image of the Israeli Sabra, as personified by Moshe Dayan, lost much of its glamour: the independent, forceful aura that had made the Sabra so attractive turned out to be no more than an aura, unable to protect its owner against human weakness, defeat, surrender, and humiliation. The downfall of the Sabra as society’s ideal self-image in the wake of the war, together with the shock waves it caused, opened the door to legitimizing other types of Israeliness and legitimizing an Israeli identity that appropriates experiences of the Holocaust as its own. Those who attributed the change in awareness to the 1977 political overthrow saw the key to this process in the replacement of the country’s [42] governing political elite. Until 1977 the Israeli ethos had been shaped by the Labor culture. A direct line existed between the governing elite of Jewish the veteran pre-state Yishuv and that of the young state. This left its stamp Social on major aspects of the country’s identity, formulating the legitimate Studies images of “Israeliness,” the country’s cultural symbols, and the accepted conventions of memory. Anyone who had not been part of that social- political entity—the Israeli right-wing circles, known as the “fighting family” of the Irgun (IZL) and Lehi underground organizations, orien- tal Jews, and Holocaust survivors—tended to feel discriminated against and alienated. The political revolution, then, was also a cultural one in that it brought to power new elites and lent legitimacy to their cultures and to their claims of representing a different kind of Israeliness. Doors were thus opened to a new awareness of the Holocaust and its survivors. These four versions of the point at which the Holocaust penetrated Israeli awareness do not necessarily contradict one another. The process of creating a new Israeli identity gained strength and achieved depth with each new experience and change. Common to them all was the assumption that there had been an earlier period of silence, a suppres- sion—either passive disregard or active attempts at repression—of the consciousness of the Holocaust in Israel’s collective history. The accusation of “silence/silencing” did not appear until after the screen separating the awareness of the Holocaust and the collective Israeli memory had faded away. In other words, it was only after the Holocaust had become an integral, central component in the Israeli self- image that the criticism appeared regarding the period when this important component was not included in the Israeli identity. Accusa- tions against the past are usually aimed at achieving changes in the present. Thus any debate on this issue should also look at the question of what and whose interests were to be served by these changes in the national identity and collective memory. The terms “collective memory” and “national identity” gain significance from within a cultural consensus; both the speaker and the listener understand the issue at hand for the simple reason that they both have access to a common world of codes and associations. A debate on such vague terms raises complex problems of definition: how are we going to define the components of national identity during Period A as opposed to Period B? What were the experiences that were included or excluded in the collective memory? What signs will prove to us that a certain component exists or does not exist? What are the characteristics of collective memory at one time versus another? The method has not yet been found whereby an historian can ascertain that the data at his or her disposal covered the whole collective experience. This problem should bother all historians, but it should be of special interest to those [43] involved in researching “national identity” or “collective memory,” since they are trying to reflect the essence of the society in question. The Anita difficulty of encompassing the entire collective experience by using Shapira existing methodological tools casts doubts on the viability of defining a • “national identity” or “collective memory.” Each definition is based on The Holocaust the historian’s choice of part of the data on the era at the expense of other aspects. Paradoxically, the richer the material at hand, the more groundless is our pretense at presenting a complete picture. Therefore, it is hard to draw an extensive picture of processes that are close to us in time, not only because of a lack of perspective but also because of the wealth of material available. The frequency of public debate on certain issues is held as proof that these issues are central or secondary components in the collective memory or national identity. Official ceremonies, annually repeated standard texts, the involvement of the media in various aspects of these issues, all kinds of memorial projects (from headstones to research projects to the publication of testimonials and memoirs), cooperation with the educational system in an attempt at “bequeathing” the collective memory—all of these are seen as evidence of the central role attributed to the issue in the national identity. Likewise, a dearth of these elements proves the opposite. This evidence is not based on hard fact but rather on impressions that help the historian to analyze society. There is no quantitative definition here, stating precisely the boundary between “centrality” and “marginality.” Thus, something that may be considered by one researcher to be evidence of “marginality” may well be seen by another as evidence of “centrality.” Despite this relative arbitrariness, however, determining the “centrality” and “marginality” of phenomena in the collective memory has to make sense with regard to historical data and common logic. If until the Eichmann trial the notion of the Holocaust had been pushed back and silenced in the Israeli experience, then an analysis of the 15-year period between the end of World War II and the capture of Adolph Eichmann should show that the subject of the Holocaust had been no more than a marginal issue in the public interest and had not been given its rightful place in the general agenda (although the very term “rightful place” is of course subjective and given to different and varied assessments). Nevertheless, a check—be it ever so superficial— would show that the Holocaust was constantly at the heart of public debate, right in the eye of the storm. Indeed, there were other events during this stormy period that competed for attention: the struggle surrounding the founding of the state, the War of Independence, the [44] social integration of a massive wave of immigrants between the years 1948 and 1951, the economic buildup, and issues of national security. Jewish But these concerns did not necessarily overshadow an awareness of the Social Holocaust. The young State of Israel imitated models of collective Studies memorial that European countries had created in the wake of World War I, such as memorial statues, martyrs’ forests, remembrance days, and museums. The Yad Vashem Law, which was initiated even before the founding of the state and was passed in 1953, aimed at preserving the memory of the Holocaust and ensuring that it remain a central component in Israel’s historical consciousness. The objective of Yad Vashem was to perpetuate all the various aspects and facets of the Holocaust, whether through documentation or by way of personal testimonies of the survivors. Its purpose was to ascertain that the factual elements of the Holocaust were fully recorded for the sake of generations to come. “The Law for the Punishment of Nazis and Their Accomplices” (1950) was based on similar legislation passed by European countries that had suffered Nazi occupation. Its object was to bring to law Jews who had collaborated with the Germans. Israel viewed itself as the retroactive representative of the annihilated Jewish nation and was accepted as such by most of the countries of the Western world. Hence, accusations were lodged throughout the 1950s and trials were conducted of Jews who had served as kapos or bore other positions under the Nazi regime and were suspected of harming their brethren. The Holocaust Remembrance Day Law (established within the Yad Vashem Law in 1953 but not imple- mented until 1959) aimed at emphasizing the importance of the event in the history of the Jewish people, just as other national and religious disasters had been memorialized. The Holocaust never left the public agenda throughout the 1950s. In 1952 the issue of reparations from Germany arose. Ben-Gurion’s agree- ments with West Germany for the payment of reparations for confiscated Jewish property and personal reparations for survivors of the Holocaust caused an unprecedented public outcry in the country. The confronta- tion between those who supported the agreement and those who opposed it revealed the tendency for politicization of the Holocaust memory, making use of it for attacking the ruling Mapai party (Israeli Labor Party). This inclination had been evident from the moment news about the Holocaust had become known. The reparations agreement had the support of those who were in favor of the government, whereas those against the government—both on the left and on the right—used the memory of the Holocaust in their rhetoric against the agreement. The left, both Zionist and non-Zionist, opposed an agreement that lent legitimacy to West Germany (communist East Germany, on the other hand, was seen as “different”). The surviving ghetto [45] fighters, the most notable of whom were members of Mapam (the leftist United Workers’ Party), joined the Israeli Communist Party in their Anita sharp opposition to the reparations agreement. On the right of the Shapira political arena, Menahem Begin used the memory of the Holocaust as a • lever for renewing the popularity of his Herut party, which had failed The Holocaust dismally in the second Knesset elections in 1951 (a drop from 14 to 8 representatives), and turned the Knesset courtyard into a battleground between opposers of the agreement and the police. Israeli public opinion, together with the media, was held for months by the issue and its slogans: “We shall not agree to sell the blood of our brothers for money,” on the one hand, vied ruthlessly with “Hast thou killed and also taken possession” for the heart of the people, on the other. In the 1950s, public opinion polls were uncommon. It is hard, therefore, to determine majority opinion on this sensitive topic and the position of the Holo- caust survivors themselves. Since then, the issue of Israel’s relations with Germany has remained touchy and painful, and each time it has been raised the memory of the Holocaust has also been in the center of the debate. In 1953 Yisrael Kastner submitted his complaint against Malchiel Grünwald, and in 1954 this turned into what became known as the “Kastner trial.” The trial made headlines throughout the year and continued to hold the public’s interest for quite some time thereafter, first as a result of Justice Benjamin Halevy’s verdict (“Kastner sold his soul to the devil”) and, later, with Kastner’s assassination in 1957 by right- wing extremists. The popular press, Maariv and Haolam Hazeh, gave the affair widespread coverage. This was the first time that the Israeli public had been exposed to stories of wartime rescue attempts and the moral dilemmas involved in negotiating with the Nazis.2 The perception of the Holocaust commonly held at the time by the media, in political rhetoric, and even in educational messages was one-sided, simplistic, and self- righteous: active resistance, in the form of revolt or guerrilla fighting, was considered the only kind worthy of commendation. There was criticism, both covert and overt, toward the large majority of the Jewish people, who went, unresisting, to their death. This criticism reflected a total misconception of life under Nazi rule and an unrealistic expecta- tion of what could have been done by a mass of men, women, and children under these circumstances. The idea of passive resistance as a way of surviving or preserving human dignity did not at the time succeed in gaining respect in the collective memory. For example, Nathan Alterman’s struggle against this simplistic concept was at once the struggle for a different conception of the Holocaust and an attempt to [46] justify the Mapai policy, which had been identified by its opponents with the collaborative Judenräte.3 This identification had begun during World Jewish War II, when IZL created the analogy: Judenräte are to Nazis as the Jewish Social Agency is to the British. They were presented as two examples of Studies collaboration with the enemies of the Jews, as opposed to the “heroes of the underground,” both “here” and “there.” Expectations of Jewish heroism in the Diaspora were not limited to any particular group, nor did they depend on any political bent: the fierce attacks on Kastner— who symbolized “pleading,” the traditional Jewish way, as opposed to the proud stance of the fighting Jew—came at once from the left and from the right, from the nationalists and from the socialists. Mapai appeared to represent a traditional, despicable, Jewish reaction, whereas the political periphery proudly bore the flag of national dignity. A review of current literature reveals a long and impressive list of Holocaust-related poetry. In addition to A. Z. Greenberg, A. Shlonsky, and Nathan Alterman, young poets such as Amir Gilboa, Zerubavel Gilad, Haim Guri, B. Galai, T. Carmi, Abba Kovner, and other Holocaust survivors published work that dealt with experiences connected with the Holocaust. Avigdor Hameiri, Ka-Tsetnik, Hanoch Bartov, Yehudit Hendel, A. Orlev, and J. and A. Sand based their stories on subjects connected with the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors as early as the 1950s.4 This notwithstanding, most of the cultural activity surrounding the Holocaust at the time was the fruit of public (as opposed to personal) initiative. An extensive and extremely impressive documentation project began: the publication of memoirs by the ghetto-revolt leaders; a book of the ghetto battles; the beginning of the “In Memoria” books project and the traditional community books published by the various Landsmann- schaft organizations;5 establishment of a records and research library at Yad Vashem; and much more. Thus, the claim that the Holocaust as a mythical-cultural issue found no expression at the time requires certain qualification, as indeed does the claim that it had disappeared from the public agenda. One might claim that the over-simplified way in which it was presented did not relate to the vast majority of the Jewish people and emphasized marginal phenomena, such as the active resistance, while ignoring the central issues. But the statement that the Holocaust had no presence in Israeli public life is not corroborated by fact. Even before the founding of Israel, the Yishuv establishment incorporated the Holocaust within the myth of the state. The question of whether the State of Israel would have come into being were it not for the Holocaust will remain unanswered, because the Holocaust did take place and the State of Israel did come into being. In my opinion, the State of Israel would have been established notwithstanding the Holo- caust because of the nation-building processes that were taking place in [47] Palestine and in the Diaspora and that had already come to fruition by the eve of World War II. However, we must not disregard the significant Anita role played by the Holocaust in galvanizing American Jewry into a Shapira political force that played a central role in the struggle for the Jewish • state. Furthermore, the Holocaust may, to a certain extent, have had The Holocaust some impact on several of the United Nations member states who voted in favor of founding a Jewish state. In any case, the fact remains that the Holocaust was incorporated in the myth of the state from its very beginning. As soon as news came of the destruction, the Holocaust was used as evidence to prove the justice of the Zionist concept: look what happens to a people with no country of its own! Had the Jewish people had a country of their own, they could have found refuge in it; they would also have been able to protect themselves. The discussions that took place between the world wars on the preferred solution to the Jewish question (that is, Diaspora-oriented solutions to the “Jewish Question”), such as assimilation or national cultural autonomy, on the one hand, and the Zionist-Palestine-oriented solution, on the other, turned out to be irrelevant in the wake of the European cataclysm. True, Zionism did not succeed in saving millions of Jews, but then the Diaspora-oriented solutions ended up in Auschwitz. At the end of World War II, Zionism seemed to be the only path open to the rehabilitation of Jewish existence, whether on a personal or on a collective level. It gave the survivors of the Holocaust—and in this respect, the entire Jewish people could be considered survivors—a positive objective to which to set their sights, a focus of belonging and identity that was so vital at a time when all the anchors had been pulled loose. The state was meant to come as something of a compensation to the Jews for the Holocaust: the Christian world had a debt to pay to the Jewish people, and it was inconceivable that this debt would go unac- knowledged. Holocaust rhetoric appeared in the speeches of Ben-Gurion and other leaders even prior to the founding of the state.6 The Holocaust became one of the sources of legitimacy for the state, both internally and externally. Thus, documenting the Holocaust and its memory were important to the official Israel. No attempts were made to erase or blur the memory of the Holocaust. On the contrary: the instruments of the state were used to promote the myth of the Holocaust and the myth of Redemption as the two poles of Jewish experience in the twentieth century. As a result, the Holocaust did not disappear from the collective memory, and there was no repression or silencing. The Holocaust played a major role in explaining Israel’s position in the Arab-Israeli [48] conflict. For example, in presenting Arab antisemitism as one branch of the “Jew-hating Nazi” trunk, the covert message was the memory of the Jewish Holocaust: antisemitism must never be disregarded; we already know Social where it can lead. This was also the reason for the swift response each Studies time danger threatened any group of Jews: we must never again make the mistake of deluding ourselves and underestimating the danger. The Holocaust was constantly present in the thoughts of Israel’s leaders, who lived in the shadow of the trauma of total destruction—a feasible possibility based on historical experience. To what extent did the experience of the Holocaust shape their positions at moments of decision? It is doubtful that historical sources are capable of giving an answer to this question, but one can speculate. The use of the Holocaust as one of the sources of legitimacy for the state gave birth to the counter claim: the use of the Holocaust for the sake of de-legitimizing the state’s existence. The first claim in the narrative of de-legitimization was that the Zionists failed to save the people. This claim was first voiced by ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles, who prior to the Holocaust had refused to hold any kind of dialogue with the Zionists. Their argument at first was that the Zionists preferred to save their own kind and did nothing to save the ultra-Orthodox. This was a hidden attempt to contradict the Zionist claim of representing the entire Jewish people. They then explained away the Holocaust as being the result of the Zionist rebellion against heaven, violating the three oaths that God made the people of Israel swear as a condition to their survival in the Diaspora.7 After several decades of almost total eclipse, with the Holocaust drawing farther away in time, supporters of the Diaspora existence as the natural and desirable Jewish experience, such as the Bundists, reap- peared. Zionism was now blamed for sweeping aside all alternative solutions to the Jewish problem, or at least for denying them any part in the national collective memory.8 Further to this train of thought, which attempted to undermine post-Holocaust Zionist centrality, Israel was accused of manipulating those who had survived the horrors, reinforc- ing its own position in world public opinion by exploiting their suffering. The truth of the matter, claimed the critics, was that the survivors were not Zionists and did not wish to come to Israel but had been forced to do so; they had no choice, since no other country was willing to open its gates to them.9 Between the lines was the contention that it had been Zionism’s duty to help the Holocaust survivors make their way to any place on the face of the earth, rather than to advance Zionist objectives. And as if this were not sufficient, continued the de-legitimization argument, when the survivors arrived in Israel they were sent straight off the ships and into heavy fighting, forced to shed their blood for the mother- [49] land. The state did not offer a true solution to the misery of the Holocaust survivors.10 While incapable of solving the survivors’ human Anita problem, Israel created another one by dispossessing the Arab popula- Shapira tion of its homeland. So one injustice caused another.11 • In the narrative that demonized the state with the assistance of the The Holocaust memory of the Holocaust, Ben-Gurion was given a key role. An unfortunate remark he made in 1938 was quoted repeatedly—that he would rather save half the Jewish children from Germany by bringing them to Palestine than all Jewish children by having them emigrate to Britain. He made this remark when the perspective was one of hardship and perse- cution, not of annihilation. Later, he was accused of being insensitive toward the entire Holocaust issue.12 Indeed, this particular accusation has some substance. The meaning of Ben Gurion’s relative silence with regard to the survivors and the Holocaust as a human experience, as opposed to the rhetoric of the Holocaust—whether this was due to indifference, or to feelings of guilt—is unanswerable. Ben-Gurion was accused of nurturing the concept of statehood at the expense of the memory of the Holocaust,13 as if these two were necessarily contradictory issues. In the same context, secular Israeli culture was presented as an antithesis to the culture of the Diaspora, which was identified with Jewish religious tradition and with the Holocaust. Indeed, Ben-Gurion loathed Diaspora life and never went back on his acerbic criticism that deni- grated Jewish Diaspora existence. He had no feelings of nostalgia toward the old Jewish world that had been destroyed. Nor did he see the new secular Jewish culture that had developed in Israel as being inferior in any way to that of the shtetl. But what is the causality between this and the memory of the Holocaust? The same Ben-Gurion, blamed as he was of suppressing the memory of the Holocaust and of making cynical political use of the survivors’ distress, was also responsible for securing Eichmann’s arrest and subsequent trial in Israel. Making Eichmann stand trial in Israel was meant to reinforce the memory of the Holocaust among the country’s young people and new immigrants from the Islamic countries, who knew very little about the Holocaust. Now Ben- Gurion was being blamed for trying to overtake the memory of the Holocaust in order to turn it into a myth to bind the nation together. It so happened, therefore, that he was accused at once of suppressing the memory of the Holocaust and of turning the Eichmann trial into a show for the purpose of nurturing the myth of the Holocaust and the state.14 The memory of the Holocaust, as part of the “foundation myth” of Israel, had been nurtured as early as the 1940s. How, then, had the image [50] of repression and silencing developed? To understand this, we should differentiate between private memory and public memory. Within the scope Jewish of public rhetoric, the Holocaust served both as a reason and as a myth, Social legitimization and explanation—whether for the sake of internal poli- Studies tics or for the sake of Israeli foreign policy. This dates back to the time of the pre-state struggle and has been just as true, of course, since the establishment of the state. The memory of the Holocaust as a key event in Jewish history was raised over and over again. It was always related in massive terms: six million Jews; Auschwitz; Maidanek; Treblinka. The private holocausts of the survivors did not serve as a topic for discussion or interest. The collective memory was a blanket that hid all vestige of private memory, of personal experience. It was through private memories of the Holocaust that the Holocaust ceased to be huge, anonymous, and, as a result, inconceivable. It is through private memory that one becomes acquainted with the Holo- caust, whether as a survivor (as someone who has had personal experience of the Holocaust) or as a member of the Jewish people who gets to know the Holocaust and appropriates it as part of his or her own inner world. The process through which private memories were seeped into the general consciousness came to a halt during the years of “silence/ silencing.” The “big” collective memory was not subject to the process of repression. But the process did affect the “small” personal memories of the survivors. Several trends combined here. First, the pre-state struggle, the War of Independence, and the subsequent mass immigration were revolutionary processes that sapped the emotional energy of veteran Israelis and newcomers alike. Second, the ethic of bereavement accepted at the time was one of controlled, inhibited behavior. One’s personal, private bereavement was considered something that had to be hidden—pull yourself together and get on with your life. In many cases, individuals found some consolation in the knowledge that they were not alone in their tragedy, that many others around them had suffered a similar fate. The Holocaust survivors were not the only ones who were expected to conceal their pain. Mourning for the six thousand young men and women who fell in the War of Independence was also subdued. Everyone was busy with reconstruction. This was considered the proper remedy for loss and pain. Perhaps it was. Life was hard in those days: people had to take care of basic needs: employment, housing, education, starting a new family. The instinct for survival and the desire to rehabilitate oneself were predominant. The result was a conspiracy of silence: the veterans chose not to ask, perhaps in the belief that politeness required one not to ask embarrassing questions or because it was too hard to listen or to absorb the things survivors had to tell. The new immigrants preferred not to speak: just a [51] few years separated them from the tragedy. The wounds had not yet healed, and the slightest touch opened them anew. Immediately follow- Anita ing liberation, the survivors had related over and over again what they Shapira had been through, as if obsessed, powerless to stop the fountain of • suffering. But then the big silence set in. All of their mental and The Holocaust emotional faculties were recruited to rehabilitate their lives and build a future, and they did not have the strength to dwell on the past. The survivors did their best to integrate into Israeli society as quickly as possible. Memories from “there” seemed more of a hurdle than a bridge to Israeliness. Those memories were not something to boast about: they projected weakness and helplessness, they called for pity. On one level the survivors wanted to tell their stories in order to awaken in their listeners feelings of sympathy and compassion. But on another level they felt that anyone worthy of compassion could not be seen as an equal, that the survivors would always be in a position of inferiority to the person offering compassion. Thus they preferred not to awaken the memory, not to talk about those years, not even to their children. The conspiracy of silence was maintained even within the family. The messages broadcast by Israeli society were very clear with regard to desirable and normative behavior as well as to the less desirable and inappropriate. To speak Hebrew with the correct accent, to adopt the values and behavioral norms of the Israeli Labor movement—these equaled successful social integration. Despite the fact that Israeli society was undergoing rapid changes and taking on new and different shapes throughout the 1950s, it was still controlled by the messages and values of the old Yishuv society: youth movements, the Nahal units, kibbutz settlements on the frontiers. These were the values held in highest esteem. In truth, these norms were practiced by no more than a small minority. The westernization of Israeli society was gaining ground, and the values of the Labor movement no longer reflected a dynamic reality but had become an expression of nostalgia, holding significance only for a small proportion of society. So long as a predominant spiritual culture existed in the country, the Holocaust survivors wanted to be part of it. The Labor movement’s loss of cultural hegemony was a slow and gradual process. Furthermore, even after this hegemony had been lost and the symbols and messages of an individualistic, over-achieving, Western society had replaced the collective messages (according to which individuals were required to find their satisfaction by contributing to the society in which they lived), relics of the earlier culture were still so strong as to make it seem to be still in power. By the 1970s these [52] processes had come to fruition as a result of social, economic, and cultural changes in Israeli society. The political event that best symbol- Jewish ized the change was the 1977 political overthrow. That was when private Social memories of the Holocaust began seeping through. Was it mere chance Studies that Saul Friedlander called his 1980 book When Memory Comes?15 There is interaction between public memory and private memory. As the public memory changed and absorbed the transformations that occurred in the Israeli self-image—as a result of the Six Day War and the Yom Kipur War—so private memory became more legitimate. It is no coincidence that in the 1970s books began appearing in evergrowing numbers that aimed at describing not only the fate of the fighting minority among the Jews but also the existential experiences of ordinary people who had struggled to survive, had contended with moral dilemmas, and had known pain and degradation.16 Zvi Dror’s series of “Testi- mony Pages” (96 testimonies of members of kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot) was one of the first projects to coax the mute to speak.17 Yet written records of private memories were not sufficient, because they contain an element of distance and concealment. The documentation of private memory was extended to visual exposure, on video tapes and film, to reveal the ways in which survivors were coming to terms with their pasts. Public memory tended to make use of high-flown rhetoric, to speak on behalf of Jewish history and on behalf of age-old accounts between the Jewish people and the non-Jews. It evaded embarrassing details, harsh descriptions, and cruel day-to-day experiences. Private memory spoke in lower tones, touched the points of pain, and exposed the weakness, the things they had been ashamed of talking about before. The memory of the Holocaust became composed of thousands of memories and experiences that differed according to gender, age, cultural and social background, and existential reality. Legitimization of different experiences now replaced the hidden critical stance that was the common attitude toward the survivors during the years of silence, and it replaced the demand for a single kind of Israeli identity. Throughout the years in which private memory was dormant, the Holocaust was not seen as a personal, human experience. It was larger than life. It was history, destiny, a past that relates to the future. It happened to other people, in other places. It was not part of our experience except on a declarative, rhetorical level. It did not require acquaintance, understanding, or internalization. This is why jokes could be told about the “soaps”—that depiction of a non-Sabra character, meek and lacking in daring and courage—alluding to the rumors that the Nazis had used the fat of Jews in manufacturing soap. It is why Jews from Eastern countries could call out in anger at their Ashkenazi brethren: “What a shame that Hitler didn’t finish off the lot of you.” [53] The penetration of the Holocaust into personal awareness was a slow and gradual process in which the exposure of private memory played a Anita major role. The recognition that the Holocaust was not merely some- Shapira thing that happened to other people in another place but is part of • Israeli collective identity—in the direct and experiential sense rather The Holocaust than in the distant and abstract one—is the significant change that has taken place in the integration of the Holocaust into the Israeli experience. Now everyone wants to share in the Holocaust experience and to take part in perpetuating it. A good example of this is the way in which North African Jews now emphasize the fact that they, too, had been destined to share the fate of the Jews of Europe but that only chance and the fickleness of war saved them from annihilation. Private memories of the Holocaust began showing up at a time when the veteran pre-state Israeli identity was in decline and new elites were taking over. Memories of the Holocaust surged to the surface when it became the vogue to criticize Israeli society for its role as an integrating society during the 1950s. The immigrants from Eastern countries came out sharply against the way in which they had been treated. Their protests against attempts that had been made during the years of mass immigration to make them fit into a new, uniform Israeli identity were shared by many of the Holocaust survivors. Indeed, at the time, they had adopted the Yishuv identity without reserve, seeing in this a symbol of their successful integration into Israeli society. But from a perspective of time, the pain and misery involved in integration now floated up to the surface: the need to give up the culture and way of life in which they had been brought up, the values and norms they had known in their parents’ home, the language difficulties, the social norms they were now expected to adopt, insults (real or imagined) they were encountering, and all the expressions rampant at the time against the survivors that cut at their flesh while they were unable to respond for fear of being identified as “one of them.” It was only now, when they had become an integral part of the country’s social and cultural fabric, that they felt sufficiently secure as full-fledged Israelis to come forth and demand a rehabilitation of their private memory into the collective memory. What they wanted was recognition of their contribution to the founding of the state, of their struggle in displaced persons’ camps and along illegal immigration routes. They wanted the stories of the trials and tribulations they had encountered on their way to Israel to be told, not as the heroic tales of the emissaries of the Yishuv and Palmah but as the saga of survivors from hell who, after all they had been through during the war, served as spearheads in the Zionist struggle for the State of Israel. They wanted the [54] story of Gahal (“recruits from abroad”) in the War of Independence to be told in all its rightful glory, and they wanted their role in the Jewish foundation of Israel to be alloted the place it deserves in the state’s Social annals. There were those among them who now expressed the pent-up Studies bitterness of bygone years against Israel’s sins as an immigrant-integrating society. But, unlike the criticism that tried to undermine the very legitimacy of the state, that of the survivors made no attempt to destroy the myth of the state; rather, they demanded their right to be recognized as part of it. They did not assert that they would have been pleased, at the time, to have been given the possibility of emigrating to another country. They did not protest the fact that the Zionists made use of them in the pre-state struggle. They even refrained from complaining about having been sent straight to battle in the War of Independence. They did express hurt and bitterness at the lack of human warmth, at the insensi- tivity of Israeli society toward their pain, at the alienation that was exhibited toward them instead of the open-armed welcome they had expected. They expected somehow that the state would replace for them the families they had lost; it did not. But this was the criticism of people who belong to the system and wish only that the system recognize their rights, absorb their experiences and feelings into its collective memory, and give them due respect. By exposing the private memory of the Holocaust, the survivors were expressing their sense of being a part of Israeli society and their conviction that society was mature enough now to absorb their own hidden pain. It is possible to differentiate between three main attitudes toward the memory of the Holocaust. The first is the official attitude, that which sees in the Holocaust one of the sources of legitimization for the State of Israel and which is generally expressed in the fact that all visiting heads of state are taken to visit Yad Vashem. It views the Holocaust as one of the main factors of Jewish and Israeli identity, the thread that unites Israel with the Jews of the Diaspora. These issues are given expression in the tours made by groups of young Israelis to the death camps in Poland, which include meetings with Jewish youth from the Diaspora who have also gone through the same educational experience. The second attitude is the private one that expresses itself in the tireless efforts of Holocaust survivors to instill in the younger generation a sense of the Holocaust by relating and recording memories and by emphasizing their role in the foundation myth of the State of Israel. Here the second and third generations of Holocaust survivors play an important role in adopting and appropriating the memory. It is in them, probably, that the connecting link exists between official and private memory, since they are products of both memory systems. The third attitude is the one that tries to present the Holocaust as a [55] myth against the state, as an anti-narrative of the state. This attitude attempts to deny the state the right to represent the Jewish nation in Anita general and the survivors of the Holocaust in particular. It aims at Shapira presenting the Holocaust not as part of Israeli identity but as the source • of an alternative identity, unlinked to territory, whose dominion is the The Holocaust memory of the Jewish diasporic past, non- and supra-national, which focuses on and is symbolized by the Holocaust. Attempts at presenting the Jewish diasporic past as superior in the moral sense, vis-à-vis the current national-sovereign existence, aim at stressing the transcendence of universal values over particular values, of citizenship of the world over citizenship of the state. Under Nazi rule, the category that decided between life and death was a deterministic one, that of ethnic origin, regardless of religion, outlook, country of origin, and education. Today the Holocaust is used as the historic substantiation for ignoring the ethnic category, serving as a basis for a substitute universal ideology. Holocaust narrative disassoci- ates itself from Jews and from the concrete historical events; it turns into a metaphor for the suffering of the universally oppressed. The discussion regarding private memory and its integration into the collective memory of the Holocaust in Israel cannot be complete unless we compare developments in Israel to those in other countries. An analysis of the way European countries have coped with memories of World War II and of the Holocaust reveals that the move from the level of high rhetoric to that of human experience in these countries has taken place only over the past few decades, if at all. This is true on a policy-making level and, even more so, on a social and cultural level. Holland, France, Italy, and even Germany have only recently begun to study the Holocaust as part of their own internal social history and no longer as an aspect of society under foreign occupation.18 It is doubtful that this process has yet begun in the countries of Eastern Europe. And even the Jewish community in the United States has been late in coping with the Holocaust memory; the survivors were in no hurry to open their hearts to the Jewish community integrating them, and only during the past 20 years did a wave of memoirs and recorded testimonies begin sweeping the community. It would seem that the “years of silence” were not exclusive to Israel but universal, a fact that requires renewed analysis of the various theories accepted in historical research with regard to this phenomenon. Did the myth of the State of Israel indeed repress the memory of the Holocaust—at the same time as this was repressed in other countries? Was Ben-Gurion’s “statehood” concept responsible, when it appears to exist in Jewish communities in which the Jewish [56] identity has nothing to do with Jewish statehood? Is Zionism indeed responsible for suppressing alternative memories, when these were Jewish suppressed in non-Zionist communities as well? And, alternatively, why Social was private memory awakened at about the same time throughout the Studies Jewish world? We should look for answers to these questions not only in local psychological, political, and social processes but also in the changes that have taken place in the status of the Holocaust survivors within their society, their own advancing age and the age of their offspring, and their ability to cope with their past. We should also look at the changes that have taken place in the political climate and the Zeitgeist of Western society. The tendency to burden ourselves with guilt about the Holocaust and its survivors is natural and not baseless. From our current perspective, there is no doubt that during and after the Holocaust we could have acted more decisively, shown greater sympathy, sacrificed more of ourselves, and been more patient, understanding, and loving. If these feelings of guilt are now helping us to open ourselves up to the private memories of the Holocaust survivors and to better understand the Holocaust as our own experience, then that is all to the good. But we must not let these feelings distort historical perspective. Guilt feelings are no less a bad historical adviser than are feelings of nostalgia, blind admiration, or any other kind of apologetics.

Notes

1 See Tom Segev, The Seventh 1996; Avi Katsman “Mul ha-dan Million (New York, 1993); Idith ha-shotek,” Efes shtayim 2 (Winter Zartal, Zehavam shel ha-yehudim 1993) and the response by Dan (Tel Aviv, 1996); and Zartal, “Ha- Miron, “Mul dimot ha-tanin,” Efes meunim veha-kedoshim: shtayim 2 (Winter 1993); Anita Kinunah shel martirologyah Shapira, Land and Power (New leumit,” Zmanim 48 (1994): 26– York, 1992), 319–52; Shabtai 45. See also Zartal, “Haroshet ha- Tevet, “Ha-hor ha-shahor--Ben zikaron,” Haaretz, April 12, 1996, Gurion ben shoah li-tekumah,” and Zartal’s interview with Dalia Alpayim 10 (1994): 111–95; Karpel, “Al gabam shel ha- Tuvyah Friling, “Ha-milyon ha- nitsolim,” Haaretz supplement, shevii ke-mitsad ha-ivelet veha- May 31, 1996, and responses in rishut shel ha-tenuah ha-tsiyonit,” the Haaretz supplement, June 7, Iyunim bi-tekumat Yisrael 2 (1992): 317–67; and Hanokh Bartov, Ani knafayim la-ehad (Merhavyah, lo ha-tsabar ha-mitologi (Tel Aviv, 1954). 1995). It is worth pointing out 5 On the matter of In Memoria [57] the ﬁlm “Ha-makah ha-81” books and community registers, (released in 1974) and the see Judy Tidor Baumel, “Le- Anita television ﬁlm by Ornah Ben Dov, zikhron olam: Hantsahat ha- Shapira “Shever anan” (broadcast on shoah bi-yedei ha-prat veha- • Israeli television, June 1989). kehilah bi-medinat Yisrael,” The 2 See Yehiam Weits, Ha-ish she- Iyunim bi-tekumat Israel 5 (1995). Holocaust nirtsah paamayim, hayav, mishpato, 6 See Shapira, Land and Power. A u-moto shel Dr. Yisrael Kastner characteristic example of Ben- ( Jerusalem, 1995). Gurion’s rhetoric at the time is 3 Nathan Alterman, Al shtei ha- his speech at the Zionist World derakhim, dapim meha-yoman, ed. Conference in London on Dan Laor (Tel Aviv, 1989). August 2, 1945: “We have no 4 See Hannah Yaoz Kest, Ha-nigun future, without a state” (in Ba- veha-zeakah: Mehkar be-shirat ha- maarakhah, 4 vols. [Tel Aviv, shoah shel meshorerei shnot ha-40 1949], 1: 206–21). (Tel Aviv, 1985), as well as her 7 Menachem Friedman, “The Sifrut ha-shoah be-ivrit (Tel Aviv, Haredim and the Holocaust,” The 1980) and Ha-shoah be-shirat dor Jerusalem Quarterly 53 (Winter ha-medinah (Tel Aviv, 1984). The 1990): 86–114; Dina Porat, following are some examples of “Amalek’s Accomplices: Blaming poets and writers who were not Zionism for the Holocaust; Anti- Holocaust survivors but were Zionist Ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel quick to publish work on the During the 1980’s,” Journal of Holocaust: Uri Zvi Greenberg, Contemporary History 27 (1992): Rehovot ha-nahar, sefer ha-eyaliyut 695–729. See also David Assaf’s veha-koah ( Jerusalem, 1951); article “Shodedei ha-zikaron,” Avraham Shlonsky, Shirim, vol. 2 Haaretz, February 17, 1995. (Merhavyah, 1954); Nathan 8 See, for example, Yosi Grod- Alterman, Ha-tur ha-shevii, shirei zenski’s articles in the Haaretz ha-et veha-iton, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, Literature and Culture supple- 1950), Ha-tur ha-shevii, vol. 2 (Tel ments, April 8, April 15, and July Aviv, 1954), and Ir ha-yonah (Tel 15, 1994. Aviv, 1957); and Amir Gilboa, 9 See, for example, Segev, Seventh Sheva rashuyot (Merhavyah, 1949), Million, 116, 164; Zartal, “Al and Shirim ba-boker ba-boker (Tel gabam shel hanitzolim”; and Aviv, 1953). For prose, see Zartal, “Ha-meunim veha- Avigdor Hameiri, Ha-mashiah ha- kedoshim.” This is the central lavan (Tel Aviv, 1948); Yehudit thesis of Zartal’s book Zehavam Hendel, Anashim aherim hem shel ha-yehudim. (Merhavyah, 1950); Uri Orlovsky, 10 See Mati Meged in an interview Hayalei oferet (Merhavyah, 1956); with Tamar Maroz, “Sheon ha- and Hanokh Bartov, Shesh hol,” Haaretz, January 9, 1987, and in “Reayon ve-shivro,” atone for the helplessness of the Haaretz, February 4, 1987; see Jews of the Diaspora. This [58] also Gabi Daniel [Benjamin analysis is not supported by Harshav], “Peter ha-gadol,” Agra current sources, and it seems to Jewish 2 (1985/86). me to be one of the weaker 11 See Amnon Raz-Krakotskin, points in the paper. The paper Social “Galut be-tokh ribonut: Le- does not refer to Ben-Gurion’s Studies vikoret ‘shlilat ha-galut ba-tarbut own words with respect to the ha-yisrelit,’” Teoryah u-vikoret 4 aims of the trial, which is (Fall 1993); Ilan Pappe, “Shiur unfortunate. be-historyah hadashah,” Haaretz 15 Saul Friedlander, Im bo ha-zikaron June 24, 1994; and Dany Rabino- ( Jerusalem, 1980). vitz, “Ha-het ha-kadmon shel 16 Baumel, “Lezichron olam,” Yisrael,” Haaretz, April 10, 1994. connects this turn of events with 12 Segev, Seventh Million, 78, 85, 86, the advanced age of the survivors 175. Segev also made this and with their economic ad- accusation in a television vancement. I concur with this program following his book. See assessment but would also stress also Zartal, “Ha-meunim veha- the importance of the changes kedoshim.” that have taken place in the 13 See Eliezer Don Yehiya’s interest- Israeli ethos. ing paper that offers this 17 Zvi Dror, Dapei edut (Kibbutz explanation (“Memory and Lohamei Ha-getaot, 1984). Political Culture: Israeli Society 18 As for France, see Henri Rousso, and the Holocaust,” Studies in Vichy Syndrome: History and Contemporary Jewry 9 [1993]: 139– Memory in France since 1944 62). (Cambridge, Mass., 1994). As for 14 Segev, Seventh Million, 311, 312, American Jewry, see Peter 320, 327, 335. Eliezer Don Yehiya Novick, “Holocaust Memory in (“Memory and Political Culture”) America,” in The Art of Memory: presents Harold Fisch’s concept, Holocaust Memorials in History, whereby the trial was intended to James Young, ed. (New York, show Israel’s strength and to 1994).