My family does not have a Holocaust story. As far as I know, all four sets of grandparents arrived here from Lithuania and Russia by 1910 to 1912. We were safe and had no knowledge of those left behind. The erroneous belief that we were secure allowed me to grow up in the 1950s seeing numbers on the arms of older neighbors and thinking that they belonged to a faraway time and place. It enabled me to watch documentaries of emaciated human beings being liberated and understand nothing about what had happened to them. It freed me to ride my bike, to roam and play on sandlots and railway tracks with nary a care of anyone targeting me. As a teen, I was much more of an “American Jewish Princess” than a young woman growing up with a sense of identity tied to a historical legacy, a legacy I now realize is impossible and callous to deny. Not only do I have to acknowledge my connecting cord to this central Jewish trauma, but I’ve come to realize that my insides reverberate deeply to the experience that others have shouldered for so long in their muscles, bones, and nerve fibers.
* * *
Two
recent “discoveries” opened things up for me. Disappointing life circumstances
put me on the road to mining the meaning and purpose of family connections. I
was frustrated in the here and now, so I turned to the past. I read about my
Lithuanian origins and what may have occurred to my family in the several
hundred years before we emigrated. It seemed like times ranged from moderately
good to just okay to awful. Our livelihoods rose and fell; our religious
practice went from fully insular to more outwardly expressive. The constant was
that we were always “the other.” Our well-being was controlled by kings/prime
ministers/czars/ruthless military men, who divided and annexed geopolitical
areas and assigned us our station in life, subject to change at their momentary
whims.
If
we ever wonder where our endemic anxiety as Jews originated, I have no doubt
that this deficit of security planted enduring seeds. As an expressive arts
therapist, I know that trauma-coping styles involve three main methods – fight,
flight, or freeze – and I began to see where my family’s initial responses may
have morphed into personality characteristics that have passed down through the
generations.
At
the same time, I marvel at the Jewish capacity to soar through trauma,
confronting chaos and horror with determination. This characteristic is
strongly illustrated by Polish Jewish women resistance fighters, whose
unfathomable, beyond-heroic stories are told by Judy Batalion in her 2020 opus,
In the Light of Days (William Morrow), subtitled “The Untold Story of Women
Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.”
Judy,
raised in a survivor family in Toronto, spent her early life pushing away the abject
pain and, to her, shameful mannerisms of those who had lost everything. She was
wary of drowning in their sinkhole. That was until 2007, when she found a
Yiddish volume in London’s British Library, Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in
the Ghettos), an anthology published in New York in 1946. With the
aid of dictionaries and translators, she was able to decipher the daring feats
of scores of young women, many of whom did not live to record their stories.
This sparked further research on several continents tracking down writings in
Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and English by and about these women. Why
these tales did not gain greater press when the films Defiance and Escape from
Sobibor were made, exalting those
resistance efforts, is topic for debate.
* * *
Judy
has done yeoman’s duty in bringing many individuals’ stories back to life. She
frames their lives in a narrative that is dramatic and emotionally vibrant.
Thus, this volume of historical research is presented not as dry research but
as “creative nonfiction.” She may take license with the stark story, assuming
that various conversations took place and that certain personality dynamics
motivated actions, yet the interactions and events she describes sound
plausible. In short, it hangs together and is utterly fascinating – and horrifying.
The
young women discussed were mostly in their teens and early twenties. Many had
known one another from youth groups. Others rose to the occasion at the moments
of need. Their Jewish backgrounds ranged from the most observant to Zionist to
Bundist to secular, from politically motivated to seeing events through a
social work lens.
No
one had any illusions of knocking out the Nazi regime. Some thought they could
continue their attacks with homemade grenades, pistols, and rifles stolen from
German soldiers whom they had killed until they ran out of ammunition. Others
felt they were slightly delaying the Nazis’ strategy of capturing them by
promoting their own offense. Many were determined not succumb to the will of
the enemy, as described in the Jewish Fighting Organization’s Akiva pledge: “I
pledge to engage in active resistance within the framework of the Jewish
Fighting Organization of the Halutz Youth Movement….I swear by everything most
dear to me, and above all by the memory and honor of dying Polish Jewry, that I
will fight with all the weapons available to me until the last moment of my
life to resist the Germans, the National Socialists, and those in league with
them, the mighty enemies of the Jewish people and of all humanity.”
* * *
Where
did such verve and determination come from at such a young age? They emanated
from a solid connection of heart, mind, and body. These women demonstrated great
cunning in such dramatic deeds as transporting weapons in bread, hiding
messages in their hair, flirting with Gestapo guards, and for those who looked
less Jewish, posing as Polish Christian women, being careful to speak Polish
not Yiddish, and even working as nannies and maids in Polish households.
Where
in their various upbringings did this chutzpa extraordinaire originate? Was it
the outcome of whatever Jewish education they had? Was it a normal expression
of community identity during those evil times? Or was it the most basic biological
surge of adrenaline that caused them to rise to the occasion of meeting an
aggressor by fighting rather than fleeing or freezing?
Trying
to grapple with this dynamic from 80 years later, these are the verities I
gleaned: These young women saw that survival was at stake; it was eat or be
eaten, strike or wait for the hammer to hit them. Still, not everyone chose
their course; why did they? We are compelled to fill in the missing spaces.
Perhaps each of these young women found her own singular reason.
It
could have been the murder of her parents or a sibling or the fear of her own impending
death, and this act of resistance was her sole chance to take vengeance. Or perhaps
her barely two decades of life lacked structure or was laden with a sense of
emptiness, and was now lit with a unifying purpose. It could have been the clear
vision, muscular strength, and impulsivity of youth. Without adult fears or
self-imposed limits, they perceived the threat and took swift action. This was
good over evil and the purity and passion of youth over the passivity and decrepitude
of the aged.
Whatever
their motivation, each of these young women, in her own way, exemplified the
essence of Jewish womanhood with such traits as chesed (kindness), chochma (wisdom), gevura (courage), bina (understanding), and
vision.
* * *
Vladka
Meed rescued
children in the ghetto and found risky ways to transport them to homes of
Christians willing to take them in. She continued to put her life on the line
by bringing them needed items.
Ruzka
Korczak, when
stationed at partisans’ huts in the forest, assessed frostbite and divided
bread rations.
Zivia
Lubetkin set up
soup kitchens and organized youth groups.
Bela Hazan learned to use weapons as well as
sticks and stones and became a defense instructor at Freedom Kibbutz in Poland.
She worked in a Gestapo office translating Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian
documents into German. Crafting her own documents allowed her free movement for
a while.
Lonka Kozibrodska was Bela’s good friend. Tall, very
Christian looking, she was from a cultured family and spoke eight languages.
She blended into the Polish Christian world as she transported weapons and
documents. She got sick in Auschwitz and died with Bela at her side.
Tosia Altman showed strength as a leader in the
Young Guard before the war. She was a Zionist – passionate and energetic as she
dealt with dangers and her own fears. She espoused the need for resistance when
others were still in denial about Nazi plans.
Ruzka Korczak hiked 40 miles to blow up a
munitions train. She fell into an ice-cold river yet persevered. As result of
the team’s efforts, 50 Nazi soldiers were killed, and a storehouse of German
weapons destroyed. She survived, made it to Israel, and used her experiences to
create a center for Holocaust studies.
Vitka Kempner channeled her wartime experiences
into creating a better life for others. Settled, later, in Israel, she became a
clinical psychologist, working with young, emotionally disturbed children,
navigating their pre-linguistic minds just as she had navigated in the forest
without a map.
Hantze Plotnicka, was beautiful and feminine yet
focused and determined, able to learn languages, and a stirring speaker. On the
second day of fighting, she snuck out of the ghetto but was caught. Nazis killed her with machine guns.
Frumka Plotnick was analytical and serious; her “values
included straightforwardness and the pursuit of perfection.”
Gusta Davidson put out a 10-page weekly
underground newspaper, Fighting Pioneer, which included a list of Jewish
collaborators. Violence was alien to her, but
after her father and sister were killed, she wrote: “Hands now caked with
fertile loam will soon be soaked by blood.”
Tema Schneiderman spoke Polish at home and became a
nurse. She disguised herself and appeared at a Nazi Christmas party with two
other Jewish girls.
Niuta Teitelbaum used her blond hair and good looks
to walk into the office of a Gestapo official and shoot him in cold blood. Disguised
as a doctor, she went to a hospital and killed another officer. She smuggled
explosives and people. “Little Wanda with the Braids,” her Gestapo nickname,
survived the Warsaw uprising but was then hunted down, tortured, and executed
at age 25.
Hela Schupper, a beauty from a chasidic family,
transported guns on a train dressed as a fashionable Polish woman.
* * *
The
central woman in Batalion’s book is Renia
Kukiela. Her memoir, Underground Wanderings, written in 1945, was a
beginning source of information. She survived, moved to Israel, and thrived.
Batalion got to meet her grandchildren.
Renia
was 18 when she joined the resistance movement. She had already lost her
parents and six siblings. Renia bolted from a moving train, disguised herself
as a Polish peasant girl, and took a job as a maid in a German family. She was
smuggled into Bedzin, where she lived in the Kamionka ghetto packed in with
others, watching Jews being sent off to Auschwitz, and heard their cries “like
the wails of jackals.”
Renia
was a courier. These young women were lifelines, “human radios,” delivering
messages and fostering inspiration. Renia was energetic and willing to risk her
life repeatedly. She got forged documents and posed as a Polish woman. Yet the
Gestapo captured her for interrogation. She was whipped, kicked, and strangled
for hours, blacked out several times, left for dead, then revived. Still, she
refused to admit she was a Jew. They threatened to shoot her but did not. They
took her to Myslowice prison for political prisoners. She was left to lie by
herself in a dark cell for a week with little food and no care. She was
eventually able to trade places with another prisoner who went on a work detail
outside. She met some of her Freedom comrades, who bribed the guards with
whiskey and cigarettes. When the guard was intoxicated, she was able to escape,
jumping over barbed wire, running in the streets, despite being weak and in
pain. She and her friends made it to Slovakia, then Hungary, and finally to
Israel. She lived on a kibbutz near Haifa and became administrator of a health
clinic and active in Holocaust education.
“Overall, more than 100 Jewish women fought
with their units in the Warsaw ghetto uprising,” writes Batalion. “In a Nazi
inner circle meeting, it was reported that the battle was surprisingly tough
and that the devilish, armed Jewish girls, in particular, fought to the bitter
end. Several women committed suicide at Mila 18 and other locations; many died
with weapons in their hands.”
* * *
How
can any of us even begin to relate to the stories of these heroic women? We
gape, wonder, and exalt, but how do we relate? For the families directly
involved, the Shoah remains an endemic trauma. Many are still processing the
fear and abuse entrenched in their systems, two and three generations later.
Multiple routes have been taken to reckon with this trauma, yet for many
persons, distrust and frozenness lie at their core. They have survived, even
thrived, outwardly, yet the price is not fully gauged.
And
what about me? Despite no known biological connection to these young women, I
keep coming face to face with the fragments of some unknown trauma that have
been handed to me by personal family lore. Known trauma has a face, a weight, and
a roster of symptoms. It is usually acknowledged that “something went wrong” in
a person’s life, and the toll is being exacted. Many times there is resignation
to a modus operandi of “that’s just how life is.” But what about trauma
symptoms that do not form a constellation around a known entity – where low
energy, depressive episodes, a generalized sense of dread, and a propensity to
close down whenever emotions start boiling over – seem like life’s norm?
There’s nothing to fix because “it” has not been identified. Is this syndrome
particular to only my family? Does it come out of nowhere?
I’m
thinking this may be a picture of intergenerational trauma now coming into
focus. What physically happened to some of us has emotionally and spiritually
affected all of us. As paradoxical as it may sound, this thought actually gives
me hope because it provides a connecting link. My family, in its mode of frozen
hiding, of refusing to touch the elephants in our midst, may have found its way
of coping with the legacy from eons of Jewish trauma. Outwardly we have thrived
as educated, responsible citizens and good neighbors. Inwardly, we pray that
interpersonal conflict will go away and that we will not be coerced into having
to delve into murky, revealing emotions.
A
different path has been thrust on me. As an expressive arts therapist, I am
incapable of not turning over stones and slinking into caves to find the source
of behaviors, no matter how harrowing the search. As I’ve come to my limited
understanding of these young women – despite all the years, geography, and
social-political differences between us – I swell with immense gratitude for
their legacy of valor and commitment to the highest vision of life and
community. I can only hope my journey will in some way merit their inheritance.
At
the same time, I have a deepening view of how my own family dynamic has
evolved. We do not “fit” with the Holocaust stories, yet I believe we are far
more influenced than any of us admit. Estelle Frankel, psychotherapist, writes:
“When we go beyond our personal predicaments and locate ourselves within the
larger story, we come to experience our lives as resonant with a much greater
matrix of meaning.”
For me, In the Light of Days has been ripe in revealing the essence and
mandated tasks for living as a Jew. Sparks flew everywhere when I came to see
their Jewish souls encountering history. I recommend this book – best read in
small doses – so that you, too, may find and follow the thread connected to the
center of your precious life.
