From Darkness to Light: Testimonies of Six Holocaust Survivors, edited by Ronald J. Diller. 2020. Brookline, Mass: Cherry Orchard Books. ISBN 9781644695067. 113 pp. Index.
To learn about the Holocaust experience of European Jews we must supplement academic material and keenly listen to survivors, as authenticity, insights, and surprises are uniquely valuable.
From Darkness to Light is a 2020 collection of six short testimonies from four elderly Jewish survivors living in Israel. As its Israeli-based editor, Ronald J. Diller, explains, they “underwent atrocities and injustices that still plague their lives” … [but they also] “never let Hitler kill their dreams to one day live in Israel, and for accomplishing this miracle, they won” (p. x)
Lillian Ronen’s testimony, in “Christianity Saves My Life,” illustrates why a young Jewess under Holocaust stress might veer from Judaism. As a starving terrified sub-teen in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1939 through 1941, she survived by helping to daily throw bodies into mass graves, and working for prostitutes (“decent women who had to become sex workers”). Nights passed fitfully in vermin-infested basements with hidden entrances. Mrs. Ronen, now in her ‘90s, recalls that “harsh circumstance matured me like an adult and that scared me.” (p. 8)
Lillian soon took solace in the rituals and symbols of the Catholic religion. After the Warsaw Ghetto’s revolt resulted in total destruction she spent over three dangerous years “passing” as a devout, work-seeking young Catholic. She roamed alone through rural Polish towns, helped by many caring peasant families. On the war’s end Lillian chose to recuperate in a Prague Convent. Years later in Israel, married and prosperous, she focuses on three adult offspring and five grandchildren (a blessing saluted by many survivors as the best revenge.).
Miriam Wadislavki’s testimony also underlines diversity in the Holocaust experience of Jews. Unlike many survivor memoirists, she does “not remember being hungry in the ghetto. There was mutual help, and the Jews supported each other.” (p. 31) Likewise, at variance with many other survivors, she recalls that “generally, the relationship between ghetto Jews and the Judenrat (governing council, chosen by the SS) and Jewish police officers was one of understanding and cooperation.” (p. 32)
As a sub-teen Miriam and her mother survived doing hard work for Gentile peasants in the countryside, barely escaping from murderous Ukrainian loyalists. The twosome soon took charge of two female orphans who had escaped from a forest execution site. The quartet then narrowly made it through to1945 liberation. Today, still haunted by hair-raising childhood memories, Miriam, in her 90s, enjoys 15 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren who mean everything to her. (p. 46)
Mordechai Mark, in his 90s, recalls that on arrival as a 14-year old teenager at the Auschwitz Death Camp his 39-year old mother “out of compassion for my grandmother[age 65], gave up her life, [knowingly] joined her in the line for the crematorium, to die together.” (p. 53) He also remembers that later in 1945 at the Mauthausen Slave Labor Camp, food rations dropped to about 600 calories a day, far below our 2,000 calorie needs. (p. 55) Fortunately then a kitchen helper, Mordechai secretly aided starving others while declining offers of their gold teeth for food. (p. 56)
The book’s other three testimonies are similarly eye-opening, especially that of Robert Fischermann, now in his ‘90s. He was among 472 captured Danish Jews sent to the Terezin Camp in Czechoslovakia (7,000 other Danish Jews had, with vast Gentile help, escaped to Sweden). Protected by the King of Denmark from being sent to the gas chambers, the imprisoned Danes suffered terribly, though all but 41 survived. (p. 100)
Taken together, the book’s six accounts humanize the Holocaust, and while recall of unforgivable Horror distresses, recall of unforgettable Help inspires.