Beyond the Wall of Names:
Evidence of a Life Lived
I grew up surrounded by grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. I thought that was normal. Once I graduated high school, I realized it was not. Both of my paternal grandparents, my Bobbie Ida and my Zaydie Aaron, survived the Holocaust and remain the most forceful influences in my life. They are the reason I found myself on this Classrooms Without Borders trip. This past month, when our group arrived at the former Mauthausen Concentration Camp, my group didn’t have to buy me a ticket for entry. They identified me as a relative of someone who had been imprisoned there. I could enter for free. Just 30 minutes earlier, I had recounted the story of my Polish grandmother’s survival with an emphasis on the climactic ending- her liberation at Mauthausen by the U.S. Army. Even though my Bobbie Ida was transferred to Mauthausen at the tail end of the war, she would have certainly died of illness or by gas chamber if the U.S. Army hadn’t liberated the camp in May of 1945. Just three days before the end of the war. I wasn’t sure that I was in the right headspace to talk about Ida as the bus inched closer to the top of the mountain where Mauthausen is located, but I knew that this trip of almost all non Jewish educators could use some personalization. It was my opportunity to lift her story out of the thousands of files of survivor testimonies that go unplayed in the Shoah Foundation’s database. Upon entering the camp, my connection to this place- to this history- was easily identified.
As a third generation survivor, I felt an emotional connection to many of the sites we visited in both Vienna and Prague even though my immediate family members did not emigrate from these cities. At Vienna’s Währing cemetery, an 18th C. Jewish cemetery, we observed the history of people who were proud of their Germanic names, markings of families who had joined the nobility, and the incredible work of volunteers to clean up sections of the cemetery that had been destroyed. For each gravestone I took a picture of, I left a stone in return. A Jewish custom to signify that person has not been forgotten and the importance of memory. I was the only one to leave a stone at these sites. I also lingered a little longer in the secret synagogue discovered in the Terezín ghetto. An interior storage room with no windows or air, it became an improvised space decorated with Stars of David on the ceilings, a quickly fading mural of lit Shabbat candles and commonly found phrases I’ve seen in many synagogues or places of worship like “Da Lifnei Mi Attah Omed” or “Know before whom you stand.” I’ve always known each survivor story to have a place, a person, or an object of hope that they could focus on at their lowest points. Bobbie Ida hid her mother’s gold watch in her underwear or in her mouth at certain risk of death and kept it with her throughout the war. I appreciated the effort it took to transform a place of hopelessness into a gathering place for community and living. I stayed behind to take more photos. Perhaps my fellow participants also used taking notes and composing a photo as a way to steady themselves, like I did.
Some of our tour addressed how Jewish Displaced Persons rebuilt their lives after so much loss, or the current revitalization of Jewish life in Vienna and Prague, both areas of personal interest but rarely addressed in traditional Holocaust education. I was keen to see what my fellow travelers might be affected by, just as I often think about what non-Jewish students might connect to when I visit classes to share my grandparents’ Holocaust survival stories. I understand that students will rarely connect with facts and statistics- they need to identify with a story. If they are not Jewish, which stories will they connect to? I used my fellow travelers to try to answer this question. Hartheim Castle, once a care center for the mentally and physically disabled was transformed into a killing center, rebranded as mercy killings, and unfortunately proved to be too efficient. There were no survivors. My fellow educators remarked that they felt like they knew these victims- that they’ve taught them. Some of us even passed by three stumbling stones of individuals deported to Hartheim the day after our visit. All over Europe, stumbling stones mark former residences of deported Jews placed on the ground in front of their former homes. Three neighbors from Salzburg who were all killed on the same day. In a castle that also contained a crematorium. It is shocking to be in a beautiful place and attempt to absorb such cruelty; we had to grapple with that together.
To be both a European tourist and a Holocaust educator on a Classrooms Without Borders trip creates some cognitive dissonance. A walk through the gardens at Schönbrunn Palace. Identifying which Hapsburg Royal signed an edict to evict the Jews and which protected them for economic reasons. Touring sites of synagogues destroyed in a pogrom. Enjoying a view of the Alps and sneaking some selfies at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest getaway. A fancy three course meal in a cave, or under the Charles Bridge in Prague, or in a gorgeous art nouveau dining room. Catching some shade under a tree in Residenzplatz, where Hitler Youth organized a book burning event for all of Salzburg. We were lucky enough to break the unease or tension with lighter fare. On a bridge in Salzburg, with a Medieval fortress and monastery sitting high above, there is a new exhibit about the Displaced Persons Camps that existed in that area after the war. As we walked across the bridge hurriedly to get to our group dinner, I read the placards along the way. Unlike stumbling stones placed in cobblestones at your feet, these are poster sized facts and images attached to the bridge vertically at eye level; a bridge that is a major tourist attraction. As I stopped to take a picture of a sign that pointed out the need for JDC to distribute wedding canopies for the many weddings occurring in the DP camps, a tourist with an ice cream cone had also stopped to have her picture taken on the bridge. Of course, she wanted the fortress in the background of her photo and not a fact about post war Salzburg. Not everyone travels to Europe to study anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Indeed our trip quietly examined the need for Holocaust educators to enjoy some architecture, or a good meal to get through the next devastating story. I’ve heard a well known Professor who teaches Holocaust studies wisely advised his students to take time for themselves to decompress. As a group of educators, we often asked our tour guides at some of the more difficult sites how they get through teaching the the Holocaust everyday. We shared our concerns about becoming desensitized to the realities of the Holocaust, but we always returned to stories which slowed down the rush of information.
Toward the end of our visit to Mauthausen, I had a moment alone with our tour guide. She had four laminated photos of female survivors taken after liberation in the infirmary. According to Bobbie Ida’s testimony, she had been taken to “an infirmary,” where she was put on an IV drip and slowly reintroduced to food. I held my breath as she flipped over the laminated photos. I wasn’t sure that I was prepared to recognize Bobbie’s hollow malnourished face in a black and white photo, and I was almost thankful that after careful scanning, she wasn’t in them. I was given the information to newly digitized archives of the liberation, and I plan to log on and continue to scan each photo for a face that I recognize because I feel a sense of duty to do so. Classrooms Without Borders sees the country-or place-as text in lieu of a novel or textbook. To provide context on how these communities LIVED before the war, without ignoring their death. Yes, Holocaust literature should be taught. The Holocaust should be studied in history. But teachers who teach Holocaust studies shouldn’t simply address this as a story of victims and perpetrators. My fellow travelers were looking for resources or to gain confidence when answering student questions. We were all confirming what we already knew by standing in places we had read about. I already had the personal stories, but I also walk away from this trip knowing that Jewish educators and third generation survivors are not the only ones teaching about what happened when humanity collapsed with urgency and sensitivity. I know the grief we felt on this trip was a collective grief, and for that I feel less alone.