Black Milk of Dawn
A ~ 10 points to you if you recognize this post's title. 10 points, 100 cookies and the internet, because you RULE.
B ~ So, Israel's yearly Holocaust Memorial Day has come to an end several hours ago and there are a few things I NEED to write down. I'm disabling comments so you can feel free to ignore this post and not feel obligated to either read or respond. If you do want to, though, I would love to hear your thoughts, so I hope here is okay.
Okay, so the thing about me is that I'm a 'third generation', meaning all my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. I've grown up with this subject and sometimes it feels like Holocaust Memorial Day can't possibly bring new thoughts with it, since I've heard and read and seen so much about this subject.
Apparently, at 28 I'm still very apt at making mistakes. :)
So here are three things I'm taking from this particular HMD:
~ I don't think I got to tell you this, but this passing year took from us both my maternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather, as well as my maternal grandfather's brother. Beyond the personal grief, it feels like watching this entire generation disappear right in front of my eyes, this generation that I grew up with, this generation that was THERE, that told us the events they LIVED through... that carried the marks on their skin and in who they became. So while I always knew this would one day be the reality we'd face and that the memory will be passed on to us as a responsibility, to make sure it will not be lost and that the next generation will also know what has happened, it's always harder when you realize something terrible is about to happen. Because much as I've accepted this responsibility at an early age and have always tried to learn and remember as much as I can, I recognize that it will never be like first hand testimonies. Despite everything, I can still barely grasp what has happened, so what are the odds the next generation will be able to? Not to mention, if people can find a way to deny the Holocaust while these people - who were all children during that time - are still around, what's going to stop this type of denial when they're gone?
~ ~ I never realized to what a degree my country is an open wound. I mean, of course I knew that the State of Israel is a direct result of the Holocaust, and that many of the people who fought for its independence and then struggled to build and develop it were Holocaust survivors. So it wasn't a big secret that many people here are survivors, as well as second and third generation. But somehow you keep this knowledge separated from the people you know every day. Then this HMD comes around and suddenly, I'm noticing how many people start their personal stories with 'my mother was a Holocaust survivor' or 'my grandparents were there' or 'my father survived the Holocaust, but only physically' or 'I never admitted to myself that I was the daughter of survivors. I knew it, but I never said it'. It's like for years we've been talking about the silence of the survivors, but it's only now that I'm really beginning to hear the second and third generation starting to speak - quite possibly because many are realizing, just like me, that the last survivors will soon be gone - and it's making me suddenly understand that even though I knew there are many of us - people whose lives and personalities have been deeply transformed by the Holocaust - there are actually more, here in Israel, than I ever realized.
~ ~ ~ I watched a lot of movies on HMD. I always do. I should probably say a few words about more than one, but I have to admit that I only wanna comment on one which caught my attention. It's a new docu about the mass murders carried out by special SS units, whose sole job was to eliminate enemies of the Reich. They killed in total about a million Jews, were the first form of systematic killings (before the gas chambers were built) and kept going until mid 1943. Then the same task force was in charge of digging up the bodies and burning all evidence of war crimes. It was a very well made film, not easy but incredibly informative and more importantly, it contained some rare testimonies, not only from survivors, but also from some Nazi officers the director managed to track down and secretly tape.
But I'm not writing about the movie. I may not have known all the details, but I was very aware of the mass murders and what they meant in the timeline of Hitler's 'Final Solution'. What caught my attention was the interview with the movie's director, who's a French Jew, conducted by an Israeli journalist. As it turns out, the director decided to make the movie because he, despite being the son of Holocaust survivors, was actually not aware of the mass murders. This surprised me, I didn't know that this part of the Holocaust is not common knowledge (or as common as any knowledge about the Holocaust is). I really hope that this isn't the case for most people out there.
The second, more important thing that got to me was what he said when he was asked about regrets regarding the movie. He said that during the filming in a forest were some of the biggest mass murders occurred there was no sound (you know, forest sounds, birds and such). The sound technician suggested that they add some forest sounds to the film's soundtrack and he said that without thinking about it too much, he agreed. Then he thought about it and realized that no, that silence was important. That the fact that there are no birds, no animals in that forest, 65 years after the massacres, that all living creatures left and never came, that silence is nature's testimony about the horrors that took place there. And it is kind of... eerily exceptional, isn't it? If this silence had lasted a few years after the fact, I could understand that, find it natural that the birds and animals avoid the place. But 65 years after? It makes me feel like the evil of what has happened there was so great that it contaminated the place and no, some wounds just don't heal.
B ~ So, Israel's yearly Holocaust Memorial Day has come to an end several hours ago and there are a few things I NEED to write down. I'm disabling comments so you can feel free to ignore this post and not feel obligated to either read or respond. If you do want to, though, I would love to hear your thoughts, so I hope here is okay.
Okay, so the thing about me is that I'm a 'third generation', meaning all my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. I've grown up with this subject and sometimes it feels like Holocaust Memorial Day can't possibly bring new thoughts with it, since I've heard and read and seen so much about this subject.
Apparently, at 28 I'm still very apt at making mistakes. :)
So here are three things I'm taking from this particular HMD:
~ I don't think I got to tell you this, but this passing year took from us both my maternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather, as well as my maternal grandfather's brother. Beyond the personal grief, it feels like watching this entire generation disappear right in front of my eyes, this generation that I grew up with, this generation that was THERE, that told us the events they LIVED through... that carried the marks on their skin and in who they became. So while I always knew this would one day be the reality we'd face and that the memory will be passed on to us as a responsibility, to make sure it will not be lost and that the next generation will also know what has happened, it's always harder when you realize something terrible is about to happen. Because much as I've accepted this responsibility at an early age and have always tried to learn and remember as much as I can, I recognize that it will never be like first hand testimonies. Despite everything, I can still barely grasp what has happened, so what are the odds the next generation will be able to? Not to mention, if people can find a way to deny the Holocaust while these people - who were all children during that time - are still around, what's going to stop this type of denial when they're gone?
~ ~ I never realized to what a degree my country is an open wound. I mean, of course I knew that the State of Israel is a direct result of the Holocaust, and that many of the people who fought for its independence and then struggled to build and develop it were Holocaust survivors. So it wasn't a big secret that many people here are survivors, as well as second and third generation. But somehow you keep this knowledge separated from the people you know every day. Then this HMD comes around and suddenly, I'm noticing how many people start their personal stories with 'my mother was a Holocaust survivor' or 'my grandparents were there' or 'my father survived the Holocaust, but only physically' or 'I never admitted to myself that I was the daughter of survivors. I knew it, but I never said it'. It's like for years we've been talking about the silence of the survivors, but it's only now that I'm really beginning to hear the second and third generation starting to speak - quite possibly because many are realizing, just like me, that the last survivors will soon be gone - and it's making me suddenly understand that even though I knew there are many of us - people whose lives and personalities have been deeply transformed by the Holocaust - there are actually more, here in Israel, than I ever realized.
~ ~ ~ I watched a lot of movies on HMD. I always do. I should probably say a few words about more than one, but I have to admit that I only wanna comment on one which caught my attention. It's a new docu about the mass murders carried out by special SS units, whose sole job was to eliminate enemies of the Reich. They killed in total about a million Jews, were the first form of systematic killings (before the gas chambers were built) and kept going until mid 1943. Then the same task force was in charge of digging up the bodies and burning all evidence of war crimes. It was a very well made film, not easy but incredibly informative and more importantly, it contained some rare testimonies, not only from survivors, but also from some Nazi officers the director managed to track down and secretly tape.
But I'm not writing about the movie. I may not have known all the details, but I was very aware of the mass murders and what they meant in the timeline of Hitler's 'Final Solution'. What caught my attention was the interview with the movie's director, who's a French Jew, conducted by an Israeli journalist. As it turns out, the director decided to make the movie because he, despite being the son of Holocaust survivors, was actually not aware of the mass murders. This surprised me, I didn't know that this part of the Holocaust is not common knowledge (or as common as any knowledge about the Holocaust is). I really hope that this isn't the case for most people out there.
The second, more important thing that got to me was what he said when he was asked about regrets regarding the movie. He said that during the filming in a forest were some of the biggest mass murders occurred there was no sound (you know, forest sounds, birds and such). The sound technician suggested that they add some forest sounds to the film's soundtrack and he said that without thinking about it too much, he agreed. Then he thought about it and realized that no, that silence was important. That the fact that there are no birds, no animals in that forest, 65 years after the massacres, that all living creatures left and never came, that silence is nature's testimony about the horrors that took place there. And it is kind of... eerily exceptional, isn't it? If this silence had lasted a few years after the fact, I could understand that, find it natural that the birds and animals avoid the place. But 65 years after? It makes me feel like the evil of what has happened there was so great that it contaminated the place and no, some wounds just don't heal.