Dedication

The Second World War was a great laboratory for human and social studies. We have yet to finish reviewing each and every fragment involved. It is not an easy topic to approach. It touches upon one of our most prized possessions, one which we are not very prepared to do without: the idea that we are good, noble, generous and unified beings. No one likes to see himself on the dark side, behind all of the rest. The Shoah[1] – the Holocaust – or the experience of the Jews in the occupied Nazi territories, also confronts us with that side of human beings that, under normal conditions, is found on the pages of police blotters. The survivors of the Shoah demonstrate human complexity from both perspectives: on one hand, humiliation and shame, together with pain, inequity and abjection, and on the other hand, strength, dignity, the supreme decision to live and the incredible capacity for recovery. We are presented with a more complete framework of human nature, albeit difficult to digest owing to its complex and contradictory nature.

I would like to explain to you how I wrote this book and why. I would also like to give you a warning and, finally, to make a request.

How? I wrote on a portable computer. The software I used was Word Perfect 6.1 but the energy was my own blood. I wrote with my fingers and my guts. I tell you this without euphemisms. Words no longer frighten me. Certain human behaviors do. And that is what this book, which you might be about to read, is concerned with.

Why? I wrote this book because I could not do otherwise. It was burning within me. I could contain it no longer. It was hurting me. Once I discovered that I am, among other things, a daughter of survivors/appeared persons of the Shoah, I set out on a path of search and discovery, as many of us have done. First, a personal search of my parents´past, the history of their survival, of how and why. My father had already died. I only had my mother, who did not wish to speak about it. In fact, she spoke about it, but in fragments, sometimes without making sense, a narration plagued by silences and abrupt changes of subject. Mama was already tired of living and of keeping silent. Today, she´s no longer here anymore. At that time, I did not wish to disturb her. I found out a great deal, but not enough. Which led me to search for other sources. First, the other survivors that had been my family in this new life. Then, I turned to books. Later, a trip with my brother to our roots, Poland, Ukraine... Even later, the Holocaust Memorial Foundation in Buenos Aires and our Second Generation Group. And then Spielberg’s Foundation with its project for recording testimonies, and the group of child survivors. What began as a personal search, ended up confronting me with what would determine my need to write. I found that victim-survivors did not have a clear and recognized place in society. I discovered that, given the possibility that someone wished to listen – someone with a friendly, non-critical ear – they were ready to speak. I wondered why no one had wanted to listen before. What had determined this fifty-year silence? What was it they had to say that was better kept in silence? If they were the privileged witnesses of the horror to which human beings can descend, why not learn from that difficult experience in order to extract lessons that might make us better persons, to help us live in a better world? These are the questions that would not let me rest. I do not believe that I have been able to answer them. I have only been able to draw close to some of the issues and to begin to think about them.

I sat down to write in order to organize my ideas, so overwhelming were the things I had been discovering, so troubling, so familiarly unfamiliar. I transcribed quotes from authors who referred to those aspects that interested me, the most painfully shattering aspects in our collective memory, which, though happened in the past are still alive today and exercising a tremendously powerful and toxic effect. When I shared some of these writings with other children of victim-survivors, I was surprised by their reactions. I discovered that, for many of them, these were valid questions, that they too had been assailed by them, that the ideas being suggested relieved their burdens somewhat and offered them new interpretations and meanings for many of their family vicissitudes.

I never thought that what I was writing would become a book. I am indebted to Raquel Hodara who, when she read something of what I had written, warmly encouraged me to publish.

Warning. I do not address pleasant things in this book. Although I have made a special effort not to get carried away with unnecessary scatologies, with a dangerous fascination for evil and death, I have not held back on the true life experiences of the survivors. There are some things here that are not pleasant to read (and, much less, to live).

If you prefer to remain with a mystified version of the Shoah and of human nature, do not read this book.

If you prefer to go on seeing reality as a simplified binary system of good and evil, of black and white, of north and south, take heed, do not read this book.

If you prefer to glorify death, to raise monuments and pronounce discourses loaded with declarative “never mores,” full of statistics and vast numbers, but removed from crude human experience, do not read this book.

If you prefer not to dirty your hands or muddy your shoes, definitely do not read this book.

Request. If you have decided to heed my warning and not to read this book, rest assured that I understand; I understand and I accept. If, despite my warning, you have decided to forge ahead, welcome. When you have finished, or when you are half-way through and feel the urge, I would be interested to know your thoughts, your feelings, wether you have reservations, memories, things to add, or things to rectify. Write to me. Help me give meaning to the Shoah, a prospective meaning. Even though I may count myself as one of the band of skeptics and pessimists, I cannot control myself (a survivor’s strategy, perhaps) and I persist in nurturing a small element of hope.

(You may write to me through the publisher or, if you have e-mail, to: diana@dianawang.net).

Florida, Buenos Aires, June 1998

[1] The word, Shoah, means devastation, disaster, in Hebrew. Researchers have preferred to use this term when referring to the murder of six million Jews in Europe in the Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. The word, “Holocaust,” is frequently used, having been chosen by North Americans and disseminated through the mass media and film; it is not easy to replace it with the other term.

The word, Holocaust: in Hebrew, the term is korban ola, which was the animal that was offered on the altar as a religious sacrifice; the term is inappropriate because it alludes to a religious sacrifice, a rite of purification by fire, a divine punishment; these meanings, obviously, cloud our vision and understanding of the situation given that the experience was neither a sacrifice nor a purification of anything, a divine punishment, or a religious act. Some theories, with respect to the Nazis and their current followers, as well as with respect to some utra-religious sectors (on the side of the Jews), may coincide with the idea of sacrifice. The idea implies the notion of guilt, that is, it attributes responsibility for what happened to the Jewish people themselves (misers and conspirators according to the Nazi perspective, punishment imposed by God according to the religious perspective). On the other hand, many holocausts may take place, similar to acts of genocide. Modern thinkers sustain that the events of the Shoah are and were unique in human history; thus, its terminology should reflect that singularity.

The Shoah: devastation, summarizes the specificity of the Jewish people as victim and describes what happened without the need for appendices. It does have the drawback of alluding to a “natural” phenomenon, whereas the systematic murder of the Jewish people by the Nazis was carried out by human beings, driven by human impulse.