Wednesday 27th January is Holocaust Memorial Day. On this day we remember the murder of six million Jews, and 11 million innocent people overall. As a Jew, I have had the privilege growing up to hear many heroic stories of survival from those who were there to witness the atrocities, including my very own grandparents, who had to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Whilst my blog might be focused on Eating Disorders, I wanted to write on a slightly different topic that means a lot to me.
I find it simultaneously fascinating and shocking to learn about the horrors that occurred during the Holocaust, especially how peoples' minds were manipulated by the Nazis in a way that allowed them to commit the abominable crimes that they did. Since visiting Poland aged 16 and visiting numerous concentration camps, including Auschwitz, I have walked away confused. I am still dumb founded how humans, however deep their hatred of other groups may be, can be led to commit genocide, whilst having a deep-seated aim to annihilate an entire religion, and nearly succeed.
When I visited Poland, I remember not feeling particularly affected by what I saw at the time. I had to keep telling myself that what I was looking at was awful, but it just felt like history. I didn’t feel any intense emotions seeing gas chambers or mass graves. If I’m honest, my mind was somewhere else; I was starving all week. In all the places to be starving…
I remember being so weak that I had to sit down on the ground at Treblinka, a concentration camp that exterminated 800,000 Jews. I felt so embarrassed feeling so hungry in a place where many had starved to death, that I actually felt guilty eating for quite a while afterwards. After the trip, I went on holiday with my family. In many ways, I felt guilty at the fact that I could leave those camps alive and go on to live life unimpeded, especially now knowing what my own community had suffered.
Whilst the holocaust might not have a correlation with my own eating, disorder, there have been numerous studies into the trauma left in second and third-generation survivors of the Holocaust. The studies have found evidence that grandchildren of survivors have experienced clinical depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders, which could have originated from the impact of their families retelling stories of the horrific events their immediate ancestors and others endured. My Grandparents thankfully survived, but I am constantly reminded of the fact that my grandmother, having arrived on the Kindertransport in London, narrowly avoided being sent somewhere else. At the time of her departure, her father gave her the instruction to catch the first train. He had set her up with somewhere to stay in 3 locations. They would be sent to one of The Netherlands, Belgium, or England. At that time in 1939, Holland and Belgium had yet to be invaded by the Nazis. Sheer luck meant that she made her way to England. If the first train she had boarded was to Holland, she would have stayed with her first cousins, who later got taken to Auschwitz. I often remind myself how lucky she was to catch that train, as no doubt her story could have turned out drastically different if she hadn’t.
My Dad regularly reminds me that I am ‘morbidly interested’ in the Holocaust. He is right, and while I am not entirely sure of the reason, I do know that a key aspect of my fascination is the lack of understanding and pure confusion about how the Germans and others could have even thought up these war crimes in the first place. I have no doubt that Adolf Hitler was a cruel man, but I often wonder how he managed to brainwash an entire nation of otherwise innocent civilians into carrying out these mass murders. I am a deep thinker, often too deep, and I can get caught up in the ‘whys’ a lot. I resign myself to the fact that I will never have an answer as what went on in these peoples' minds, and I doubt anyone will ever reach a substantial conclusion.
I often ask myself if I would like to return to Poland one day. I am not sure, but I do believe one can learn something different from each visit made. One trip I want to make is to Frankfurt, where my grandmother came from. It upsets me so much knowing how Jews from Germany, as well as all over Europe, were sent to meet to their fate in such horrible circumstances, all the while eliminating communities of great culture from the face of the earth. I would love to be able to see more of where she came from originally.
The only thing left for us to do, is to remember. To remember who we are as a religion, a nation, and most importantly, humans. We have the free will to be who we want to be. It is vital that we as a population never forget what happened. Each of us must be proud of the Jew we are, as I am, aiming to leave a legacy that continues the Jewish line of descent.
We can’t change the past, but we can ensure it never happens again.
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