‘July 20, 1941 All of us remember the terrible epidemic of last summer – dysentery, typhus, other diseases from which thousands died. We had no way of saving them. Then during the last three months, 3,000 Jews died of hunger and cold. Now we are threatened by a new epidemic. This one could be even more terrible than the last one, for people are weakened. They don’t have the energy left to withstand its ravages. Our yards and streets are filled with refuse and garbage; the toilets overflow with excrement, and most of them are broken.’34
Genocide had one purpose: to kill. Primo Levi writes:
‘Nothing obliged German industrialists to hire famished slaves… . No one forced the Topf Company (flourishing today in Wiesbaden) to build the enormous multiple crematoria in the Lagers; that perhaps the SS did receive orders to kill the Jews, but enrollment in the SS was voluntary; that I myself found in Katowitz, after the liberation, innumerable packages of forms by which the heads of German families were authorized to draw clothes and shoes for adults and for children from the Auschwitz warehouses; did no one ask himself where so many children’s shoes were coming from?’35
In the Maidanek and Auschwitz memorials, there are entire rooms filled with children’s shoes.
But faith promised deliverance; holding out hope even for the body since deliverance might occur before death. Shapira: ‘Who knows how long this will go on? Who knows if we’ll be able to endure it… . The person is overwhelmed with terror, the body is weakened, one’s resolve flags. Therefore, the most basic task is to strengthen one’s faith, to banish probing questions and thoughts, trusting in God that He will be good to us, saving us and delivering us.’36 But what does this ‘choice,’ this surrender to faith, the injunction against ‘probing questions’ of God, mean in the context of imminent peril, in the fetid workshops of Lodz, the tenement buildings housing starving and sick workers? Lawrence Langer writes: ‘The Germans buried people twice, once before their death, and once after, and this is perhaps the most vicious of their many crimes. How is it possible to bury a man while he is still alive? How is it possible to make innocent Jews feel that they are murderers too? The Germans managed to find a way.’37 The teenager in the Lodz ghetto who wrote the following lived not in faith but in despair:
‘May 15, 1944 I have been saying lately that the inhuman state of mind we are in may be best proved by the sad fact that a Ghettoman, when deprived of half a loaf of bread, suffers more terribly than if his own parents had died. Was ever a human being reduced to such tragic callowness, to such a state of mere beastly craving for food? … it is only German artistry in sadism which enables this, which makes it possible… . We are exasperated, despairing, dejected and losing hope. Our hunger grows stronger continually; our suffering is unimaginable, indescribable; to describe what we pass through is a task equal to that of drinking up the ocean or embracing the universe.’38
Disabling will through apathy, confusion, inaction – literal psychological collapse – began, Langer argues, long before physical death. Undressing in a gas chamber signified a final step in a process that had debilitated the will and annihilated the spirit. Parents watched their children die; children witnessed the death of their parents. By the time the victim reached the gas chamber, the Germans had transformed death into an integral part of life.
But even in the midst of this living death, which Shapira witnessed, the meaning of the Jewish commandments appears to the self as revealed truth; it is not necessary, Shapira argued, that such commandments be experienced or ‘explained,’ since no meditation or rational cognition stands between truth and justice. Tragedy, the unexpected, the uncanny, the thousands of dead bodies in the streets of Warsaw are ‘without reason; but faith too is above reason, so that when we bind ourselves with a perfect faith to God [Who is] above reason, then even the hukkah-type calamities are transformed into sweetness.’39 While murder of Jews is incomprehensible, beyond reason, faith guiding the self through suffering and calamity brings consciousness closer to the divine. For Shapira, this provided consolation. More problematic, however, and unknowable, is how much consolation faith provided to the Jewish families waiting for deportation to Treblinka and Sobibor.
Shapira’s strenuous pleas that faith not be shaken; that it is the highest goal of consciousness, indicates that possibly just the opposite was happening in the ghetto. Diaries suggest religious belief declined not because of secular or theological debate; it was not an argument about God and Jewish identity between secularists and rabbis that provoked the decline in faith. The primary physical and psychological attack on religion came from oppression and starvation, causing an emotional collapse that left the self without affective content. Consciousness for many wandered in a numb no-man’s land, outside the orbit of faith and reason. To retain faith in an environment of horror required a super-human leap of faith; an extraordinary act of will. In the face of tragedy the leap drained much of the human will. Shimon Huberband recites the words of a 22-year-old Jewish woman: the devastation in Warsaw ‘was not, regrettably, an empty dream, nor a mad fantasy, or an evil tale, but naked and bitter reality.’40
Theological argument, however, placed the Word of God on a higher level than the world of action. Even though the Germans might assault Jews, if God through his signs and infinite wisdom revealed the word ‘salvation,’ salvation as a concrete historical fact may have arrived. But until that time, salvation remains on the purely spiritual plane. Presumably the ‘Word’ is revealed through the rabbis and their universe of holy utterance; but the arrival of salvation in the temporal world may be ‘delayed.’ To speak the Word of God, to pray, is a mitzvah, a form of action and of protest. To believe in eventual salvation and to continue believing in the face of devastation becomes a theological proposition and a psychological act providing solace and hope for the soul. Speaking prayers, holy observance, brings salvation closer, hence the emphasis on prayer, the repetitive uttering of holy words in Hasidic theology.
The critical theological question for the believer, Shapira maintained, should not be affected by the secular quest of how to deal politically with the real, immediate world, with the organization of workshops, work brigades, death camps, since performance of ritual, observance of prayer and dietary law constitute forms of action – the only route to realizing the Word of God, of Torah. Reason, understanding, explanation, the empirical reality of oppression, have no bearing on faith. What is required, then, of the Jewish community is a ‘radical surrender to the divine will,’ not to politics or the real. In Shapira’s view it is a terrible mistake to think that reason can act as a protection against slaughter. Since all secular thought is sullied and twisted by experience, thought, if it is to be at all pure, unaffected by evil, needs to begin from a foundation in faith and God. It is not the individual who thinks alone, but faith that thinks through the self.
Soul-death and faith
The technology and bureaucracy of annihilation enforced a psychological fragmentation so vicious that ghetto inhabitants accepted the sight of dead and dying bodies in the gutters, streets, on sidewalks, as part of daily normality. Often children as young as five or six would haul the wagons carrying the nightly toll of dead bodies to mass graves, or excrement from makeshift privies to trenches dug in the ghetto. How is one to interpret Shapira’s faith in the midst of all this? Spirit struggled in an infinite variety of sadistic contexts. Because of the omnipresence of death, parents, on occasion, deserted their children or gave them over to German guards or Jewish police making selections. In the Lodz ghetto during the infamous selection where the Germans demanded 10,000 children under ten, elderly over 60 and the sick as the price for sparing 20,000 adults, this twisted mélange of German efficiency, death and sadistic enthusiasm destroyed will. One father left his infant daughter for the Germans:
‘When I came to the hospital … I deserted her. I, her father, did not protect her. I deserted her because I feared for my own life – I killed … I can’t write – I deserve to be punished – I am the o
ne who killed her. What punishment awaits me for killing my own daughter …? I killed the child with my own hands.’
The Germans effectively killed this man and his faith without directly assaulting his body. By 1944, if he had not died from hunger, disease or cold, the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the gas vans of Chelmno would have destroyed him. Mooka’s father psychically sustained ‘life,’ but it was living death, not sustained by faith:
‘I walked off with Anya [his elder daughter] but I left Mooka behind. Instead of hiding with her in the cellar or in the toilet, I put her in a clothes basket, and she gave herself away with crying. Naked, barefoot, miserable – my dear child, it’s me, your father, who betrayed you, it’s me, driven by selfishness, who did nothing for your salvation, it’s me who spilled your blood.’41
In Lodz, Oskar Rosenfeld describes a scene of resistance to the Kinder selection:
‘[A] child is torn away from a young woman by a Feldgrau [a German soldier so described by the field-gray of his uniform]. “Let me have my child or shoot me.” Feldgrau pulls out [his] revolver. “I will ask you three times if I should shoot.” He asks three times. The reply is always yes, and he shoots the woman down.’42
But examples like this are rare; ghetto inhabitants sink into catatonia, numbness. Shapira condemned this as a ‘rebellion against God’; but that was not the case. Numbness or dissociation defined the ghetto’s psychological reality. It was the consequence of the German brutalization – all too successful in inducing spiritual death. Even at a time when God’s presence is hidden, Shapira argues, the self must continue to believe in Him: ‘Everything that comes from Him … is good … just. Suffering embodies, in His hidden purposes, God’s love for Israel.’43 Shapira refuses to countenance as legitimate any questioning of God’s intent: ‘Faith is the foundation of everything.’ No one can expect to know God’s intent. ‘How can we expect, with our minds, to understand what He, may He be blessed and exalted, knows and understands?’44 After all, suffering is not unique to the Holocaust, since ‘at the time of the destruction of the Temple, and at the fall of Beitar … there were [sufferings] such as these.’45 When one surrenders ‘his soul,’ when the self merges with God through faith, the consciousness of suffering is transcended; ‘he will believe with perfect faith that everything is [transpiring] with justice and with the love of God for Israel.’46 Oppression should turn consciousness towards the ‘holiness’ within, since holiness is more powerful than mind or reason. Oppression should glorify faith.
Even the Jew who strays from faith retains the possibility of returning to God’s devotion, of submitting once again to the holy presence within. And in an observation clearly directed at the deteriorating spiritual conditions in the ghetto, Shapira writes, even if the self lies ‘prostrate, like a stone, with mind and heart arrested’ by savagery, even if ‘improper thoughts assail’ consciousness, it is essential to find one’s way back to faith.47
The constant reference in sermons to the turning away from faith is powerful evidence suggesting how fragile the hold of religion had become in the community. Shapira time and again in his homilies of 1942 returns to the contrast between the theme of abnegation and purification. He speaks of having to ‘nullify ourselves,’ an extraordinary spiritual demand in Warsaw at that time. To consider oneself ‘a separate being with his own mind’ is to be ‘outside’ of God; but to be devoted to Him is to realize ‘our minds are naught’ and that if ‘God made things happen this way, that’s how it should be.’48 German barbarity may push the self into a place where consciousness does not ‘feel [its] faith’; but even though the Jew may be incapable of experiencing God’s ‘joyous state,’49 faith as a fundamental relation to God never disappears. It is there, like one’s ‘stomach, heart or lungs’; the self may not be aware of the existence of faith, just as we take for granted the operation of the lungs or heart.50 We carry within us as a given of the soul ‘the allotment of love and faith … as our forefathers’ legacy.’ And just as we cannot add more lungs to our body, we cannot possibly add more love and faith.
Faith for Rabbi Shapira, then, possesses an involuntary presence; it is there, whether we are in touch with it or not. It is outside of us but it is also inside, although it may be deeply buried and ‘outside of our field of awareness.’ When the self reaches for it, when consciousness during ‘a state of slackness and weakness’ transcends itself, even though a person may not ‘perceive’ faith, he is nevertheless a ‘believer.’51 Shapira acknowledges that disbelief may arise, it is inevitable; but questioning God should not be taken as a sign that faith has disappeared altogether. There may be momentary lapses, but return to faith always exists even in the face of strong evidence opposing faith. What will assure the community’s salvation is not action in the world, not politics, but the binding power of faith and God’s covenant with His people.
The Silence of Faith Facing the Emptied-out Self
One can admire Rabbi Shapira, but in the force of the German assault, psyches were crushed; and psychological collapse and with it the disintegration of spirit often, but not always, preceded physical death. Terror might erode the boundary between inside and outside, the world of the soul and that of the body. Yet, as some diaries and Jewish law written during this time describe it, in this struggle to survive, the individual could say to himself, ‘Over my soul they have no dominion.’ But equally powerful was the impression of souls dying.
A survivor described to me ghetto life in Warsaw:
‘You have no idea what it was like, the filth, hunger, dead bodies all over the streets, thousands of children, many covered head to foot with lice, begging or wandering aimlessly. I remember one woman, walking down a street, stumbling over bodies, murmuring something like, “Mendel, Mendel,” her arms stretched out in front of her, her eyes crazed; she had no shoes, her clothes hung off her body in tatters.’
In the camps and ghettos, ‘the only thing that you can think of is that you’re hungry.’1 A survivor in Krakow told me that his father had been fortunate enough to be placed on Oscar Schindler’s list, thereby assuring protection against the Germans. But this man, a respected doctor in the Krakow Jewish community, left behind in the Plazow labor camp his wife, son and two daughters. It would have been insensitive of me to ask what he thought of his father for
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doing this; but evidence of his bitterness appeared in the fact that he changed his name to a Polish name, married a Polish Catholic woman and refused to bring his children up as Jews, thoroughly rejecting his father’s name and religion. Yet, he visits Auschwitz every year and goes out of his way to take foreign visitors to Auschwitz where he, as a survivor, has the dubious privilege of being able to drive his car onto Auschwitz-Birkenau grounds. One can only imagine what this ten-year-old boy felt when he watched his father leave him in the labor camp, to find safety in Schindler’s factory.
Surviving was brutal for the person lucky enough to survive, but the process of survival could mean abandoning entire families. Miraculously, Dr. B.’s entire family survived the war. Dr. B.’s parents emigrated to Israel; Dr. B. stayed in Poland. I asked him if he had visited his parents: ‘Once or twice I went to Israel.’ One wonders how the terrified child would respond to Rabbi Shapira’s concept of faith and devotion, and the eternal presence of God’s care and concern.
Lawrence Langer recounts Anna G.’s description of an event on the ramp at Auschwitz. A ten-year-old girl refused to go to the ‘left’ (which meant death) after the initial selections. The child, seized by three guards who held her down, screamed to her mother to help her, to stop the guards from killing her. One of the guards approached the mother and asked if she wanted to go with her daughter; the mother said no. The eye-witness describing this scene said to the interviewer: ‘Who am I to blame her? What would be my decision in a case like this?’2 Sidney L. witnessed the death of his parents and several siblings. Against this kind of assault, to maintain an inner world of faith impervious to the outer world of body
or event would be psychologically impossible. The power of the assault and the attack on his will and faith appear in Sidney L.’s description of how he survived: ‘In all these things that happened – I played a very small part in everything that happened. There were very few things that I initiated, or planned out on this. This is how it happened; it took me from here and put me there … . It was not my plan, it was not my doing.’3
For many survivors, chance takes the place of God. A 17-year-old boy, with working papers, believes that the Germans will let his brother accompany him to a labor camp. But instead, the SS insist his brother go to the ‘left.’ ‘I know it’s not my fault, but my conscience is bothering me. I have nightmares, and I think all the time that the young man, maybe he wouldn’t go with me, maybe he would survive. It’s a terrible thing; it’s almost forty years, and it’s still bothering me.’4 Or Sally H.: ‘I’m thinking of it now … how I split myself. That it wasn’t me there. It just wasn’t me. I was somebody else.’5
The impact of such a psychological assault transformed the self, emptied it out. For example, Bessie K., a young wife in the Kovno ghetto in 1942, tried to smuggle her baby into a work camp; the Germans seized the infant. ‘And this was the last time I had the bundle with me.’ Part of ‘her,’ her self, identity and being, died. ‘I wasn’t even alive; I wasn’t even alive. I don’t know if it was by my own doing, or it was done, or how, but I wasn’t there. But yet I survived.’ To survive, she says, she had to kill feeling inside herself; part of her had to die. In the boxcar to Auschwitz: ‘I was born on that train and I died on that train … but in order to survive, I think I had to die first.’6 In Irene H.’s words, ‘The truth is harsh and impossible to really accept, and yet you have to go on and function.’ What life showed was ‘a complete lack of faith in human beings.’7 Another survivor even rejects luck as the agent for her survival: ‘I had determined already to survive – and you know what? It wasn’t luck, it was stupidity.’8
Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust Page 17