We Must Not Dishonour Our Martyrs
Leivick in the DP Press
The masthead of Unzer Weg, borrowed from the Israel Kaplan Archive at The Ghetto Fighters’ House.
This piece ran in issue 25 of Unzer Veg (Our Way), the largest post-war Yiddish weekly in Germany, which was printed for the Displaced Persons in the American Zone and one of the few DP papers to actually have Yiddish type. Its founder, Levi Shalit, was a fascinating writer and journalist in his own right who reported from the Nuremberg Trials, and the story of how he got the type, involving rumours and an arrest for breaking curfew, is recounted in both Rabbi Abraham Klausner’s memoir, A Letter To My Children: From The Edge Of The Holocaust (2002) and in the introduction to the 2000 reprint of A Survivor’s Haggadah.
This article pre-dates Leivick’s arrival in Germany — and I haven’t yet turned up any earlier publication in American press. He begins (and it is and can only ever be the beginning) an exploration of what happens when victims lose control of their own narrative and what it means to call another Jew a ‘kapo.’ Something which remains astonishingly relevant today.
The story of the delegation to the DP camps continues to fascinate me and I hope some days to be able to present what I’ve learned/translated in a slightly better format. Special thanks today is due to the librarians at the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), who asked me if I wouldn’t like for them to pull some more microfilm for me when I had finished with my original materials…
We Must Not Dishonour Our Martyrs:
The painful fact of the behaviour of certain Jews in the Nazi concentration camps
In the chronicles of the Jewish horrors in the Hitler-years, which are so frequently published in our press of late, there is often interspersed a terrible detail, and that is: the treacherous conduct of some Jews themselves in the ghettos and death camps. The emissary from Bergen-Belsen, Rosensaft,1 has described this to us as well. In the chronicle of Aaron Twersky2 too, published in Tog, the painful fact is mentioned many times.
That Rosensaft and Twersky set it down is understandable to me. It becomes incomprehensible to me, though, when some of our writers here do it.
Rosensaft and Twersky have a right to it, they were there; They, themselves, were, as Twersky correctly writes, the victim and also the witness. They, themselves, were amid the horror. Stood, themselves, more than once on the threshold of the gas-oven, they themselves underwent, not only all the physical tortures, but also all the psychological torments, all the trials and confusion that a victim undergoes. All the while, his body trembling still. All the while, the last hope not yet extinguished.
Alas, what a hope was still able occur in the heart of one who entered into the gas-oven, even more so than the hopes and the salvations to which weak or hidden natures were able to cling in the ghettos and in the death camps.
We read with particular disturbance about the villainy, which certain Jews, themselves, committed in the ghettos and camps, wildly seized by the idea that if they became partners with the Nazi executioners, they would, through this, save themselves and their families from death.
We read about this and we shudder. It does not suit us. We would like for the image of Jewish martyrdom to remain whole, unsullied. We want for it to appear as though there was not a single instance of timidity in the nation, not a single instance of cowardice in the nation, not to speak of — open betrayal, taking on the role of executioner, of torturer, of oven-lighter. Our brains cannot permit the thought that Jews were able, clothed in Nazi uniforms and armed with whips and revolvers, to drag their own brothers out of hiding and into the fires, doing the same to them as the Nazi executioners. Neither our brains, nor our hearts, permit the thought.
And therefore, because the heart and the brain cannot allow it, we must record the facts, as presented by the victim-witnesses themselves, in a separate corner of our dreadful national diary, record it and leave it in the corner, enclosing it with a pronounced stroke of the pen and fencing it off from all our main materials. For God’s sake, not together with the whole picture of martyrdom and kiddush hashem. For God’s sake, not become sadistic to ourselves, as a great portion of the gentile world would like for us to become — that we should, for the few acts of Jewish discouragement and treason, dishonour all of Jewish martyrdom. Belittle all of the Jewish pride and all of the Jewish heroism, which accompanied the the millions of Jewish victims to death. Yes, a great portion of the gentile world would like to infect us with contempt toward Jewish electness. That world would like for us to say to ourselves: There is no sanctity in the deaths of millions of Jews, the millions of dead Jews were no better than others. And — make no fuss at all over a particularly Jewish tragedy, over a particularly Jewish death. They, the Jews, in the face of death and danger, were the same cowards as everyone and perhaps even worse. See, a few — perhaps even many — Jews had, in Hitler’s ghettos, behaved contemptibly, feasted and caroused, celebrated orgiastically, while most of the Jews around them died from hunger, from beatings, in pain and in gas fires. Died before their eyes. See, a few, and perhaps many, themselves took on the roles of guard, of the one who did the whipping, of grave-digger…Yes, yes, yes, a great portion of the gentile world would very much like for Jews to think this way about Jews. This is what the gentile world wants to make it easier to water down the few pangs of conscience which sometimes pull at its heart. This would help it wash its hands and to forget all the faster all the unacceptable ‘episodes’ of the world war. The episodes such as, for example, the slaughter of six million insignificant Jews and other ‘unpleasantness.’
Need we welcome this wish of the world and help it further to reduce the image of Jewish martyrdom?
Therefore, it is incomprehensible to me when several writers from amongst us, of those who were not themselves in the gas-chambers, in the concentration camps, fall into a sort of pleasurable flogging, when they discover, or even when they see with their own eyes, the abominations which certain Jews committed in the days of great misfortune and great marching toward death. As though they would take a sort of revenge for themselves, or with a sort of rebellion against the victims who, it seems to them, continue to demand an accounting from us, not dead, not murdered.
Let me not be misunderstood, I do not mean to say that we need to conceal from ourselves the scandalous deeds which certain Jews committed in the concentration camps and in the ghettos; That we need to dress up our tragedy in false, holy bells, in order for it to come about that all Jews, down to a man, stood at the heights of Judaism at the hour of danger and death, I certainly do not mean this. We must not avoid a single truth which is yet to be enumerated. We need to know all, everything which happened there, when the Jewish death-march took place, when the Jewish soul struggled in its death-agonies. We need to know about all the ascents and all the descents. But a Jewish descent is our Jewish pain, it is in no manner a happy excuse for them — for the truly guilty. And they are are the truly guilty — the wicked gentiles, the war-bringers, the pogrom-makers. They are also guilty for the villainy of the wicked Jews in the present epoch of Treblinka.
All the hateful things which Jewish policemen did in the ghettos, all the cruelties which the Jewish possessors of power displayed toward their own brothers in the camps, fall upon the heads of the Nazis, on the head of all of bloody Germany, on the head of the entire despicable world.
Therefore, be careful, brothers, when you touch upon that particular wound on the tortured Jewish body. Do not allow yourself caught in the snares of those who only want to prove that Jews are not better, indeed to record all Jewish sins, all Jewish treasons. But do not wind them into together into one knot with all that which the world has done to our people. Fence them off into a separate corner, and let them be fenced off until — until later. Until we feel that the time has come take them out of their isolation — we, the korbn, and not them — the korbn-bringer.3
— H. Leivick, Unzer Weg, March 1946
A photo including the delegation to the DP camps from Emma Schaver’s We Are Here!, 1948. Schaver is the woman in uniform at centre, left of her in trench coat and uniform hat, is rabbi, poet and professor, Israel Efros. To the right of her, coat over his arm, is Leivick. The tall man at far right is Unzer Veg editor Levi Shalit. Tellingly, I feel, Leivick includes only one picture in which he, himself, appears in his own book.
There were contemporary survivor responses to this article, most of which are not widely available (at least not to me) in the original, but which have been summarised by Zeev Mankowitz in Life Between Memory and Hope (CUP, 2002) whose translation of the article’s title I have partly retained.
Mostly, the responses recognise a well-meaning intent behind the article, and note that it was surely intended as admonishment toward non-survivors, but also point out that it isn’t rightly Leivick’s place to say either.
Here is at least one of those responses, which I found this past summer at the USHMM, originally published in the Leipheim camp paper, A Heym.
One thing that won’t be immediately obvious from the English is the fact that while Axelrod calls Leivick ‘renowned’ and ‘esteemed’ — he doesn’t use the formal ‘you’ when he shifts into direct address. There’s a message in that, too…
‘We Must Not Dishonour Our Martyrs’:
A Reply to H. Leivick
In the jubilee issue of Undzer Veg, there was printed an article from the renowned Yiddish writer H. Leivick, who is found in America, under the title of ‘We Must Not Dishonour Our Martyrs.’ This is a theme which we, former concentration camp inmates, have long wanted to touch upon, but for certain reasons, it has not been publicly.
We understand very well the admirable and profound sentiment which our great poet has for our fallen brothers, when he comes and asks that the sanctity around our martyrs is untouched…and, at the same time, not to give our enemies any material against our Jews.
We understand this very well and are in agreement with the author of the article. All the betrayers of the Jewish people are a product of the Nazi system which reassures a certain type of person who are far from national feeling and also from martyrdom.
We can, though, by no means agree with the suggestion which Leivick makes in his proposal to create a ‘corner’ which will have the task of collecting all the sin, treason, filth, murder, which were committed by those who, for a bit of food, tortured their own brothers.
We cannot agree with the idea that all the sins or, better said, murder, which the traitors to the Jewish people have on their consciences, will be condemned then, when we feel it is their time to be taken out of their isolation!!
And what must we do now? What sort of position must we take regarding all who directly or indirectly assisted in spilling Jewish blood, and thus took part in the great tragedy. What sort of societal attitude must we have toward those elements who have much more on their consciences than we can count, much more than what the esteemed Leivick has been informed of.
How should one begin to raise up our Jewish society, which is drawn primarily from concentration camp prisoners who wander around with wounds still unhealed, and with the sorrowful sun in their hearts of the family which was killed because of this or that person in our ranks?…
What must a concentration camp prisoner do when he enters a Jewish institution and recognises his former ‘kapo,’ who beat him murderously simply because he had the gall to warm his swollen, frozen feet, on the other side of the desk?…
Why should we put away in a corner all the sins of the persons who, in the ghettos and concentration camps, not only lived on our account, not only lived it up with our enemies, the Germans, but systematically tormented and tortured their own brothers in order to find favour from an Unterscharführer or other German master?
On what sort of foundation should we build our new Jewish society when our ranks are, to this day, full of these dangerous elements, betrayers of the Jewish people. What sort of message must we send into a society which is, to this day, influenced by the various ‘kapos,’ ‘cowards,’ ‘informers,’ and other prophets…
We stand today before large events and important problems, which are of relevance to the whole Jewish people; the whole while we do not free our ranks from the above-mentioned elements, which profane our societal life — we dishonour our martyrs still more!
Not we former concentration camp inmates, invalids, orphans, Jewish partisans that such an article needed to be dedicated to — but to them, the criminals, that you needed, great Yiddish poet, to write your appeal, that they should depart societal work, and not stick their sinful, bloody hands in Jewish unions, to make pure the ranks of Jewish society so that no more Jewish work should be carried out by the elements who assisted Hitlerism in annihilating millions of Jews…
Institute in life the resolutions which were adopted at the Jewish Congress in Munich. We must not dishonour ourselves, and it must be no shame for us before the gentile world if we start a campaign against the betrayers of the Jewish people — on the contrary —we must show with pride that we build our new life on fine, healthy, national and cultural foundations for the glory of the Jewish people as well as for the glory of our martyrs!
— A. Axelrod, St Ottilien
Leivick himself would later have encountered the phenomenon of the ‘honour court,’ by which a person could effectively be expelled from the Jewish community for crimes against it — such as being a kapo — upon his arrival in the DP camps and cases were often reported in the DP papers.
But Leivick largely obeys his own advice, particularly in the writing of his series of initial articles. At least until the idea of survivors accepting monetary reparations rears its head…which you can get a glimpse of in his comments about the Jews who had accepted reparations who were leaving Israel in 1957.
Son of the Chernobyl-Loiev Rebbe, contributor of a series to Tog, ‘I am the Witness and I am the Victim,’ in 1945.
I have left the term korbn because of the complexity and depth of meaning — korbn can be rendered as merely ‘victim’ but can also be translated as a sacrifice or ‘burnt offering’ and Leivick, with the Akeydah being such a key image for him and his work, is drawing on the full range and power that the word invokes here, and this part of what fuels post-Khurbn works like In the Days of Job.