Greetings again from Yad Vashem!  Today was spent exclusively in the classroom, as we continue with our seminar on The Holocaust, Antisemitism and Israel.

It is so difficult to imagine the atrocities that took place during the Nazi’s drive toward “The Final Solution” (annihilation of the Jews).  Our day began with a look at the resistance to the holocaust.  In this case, don’t think of resistance in a negative sense, but in the sense of the Jewish people resisting what was being perpetrated against them.

In the beginning of the holocaust period, European Jews were gathered from their homes and confined to ghettos.  The unspoken question was, “How do we move forward?”  There were food issues (what if the food given to them was not kosher), religious issues (how do the Jews continue to be faithful to religious requirements such as shabbat), health issues (ghettos were not the cleanest places to perform circumcision), social issues (what about marriage and childbirth), educational issues (how would kids learn), and on and on.  To survive, they had to make life as “normal” as possible, but how could they do that when they were uprooted and allowed to take only two suitcases with them.

What do you take if all you get is two suitcases?  Food? Photos? A warm coat?  Many examples of “resistance” are evident here!  The Jews were determined to live life to the fullest!  Therefore, teachers took books and formed schools within the ghettos.  Musicians took instruments in order to maintain normalcy.  Children took toys.  In a very extreme case of “resistance,” it is documented that a few physicians, aware of their own terminal diseases, used their own bodies for research in order to discover ways that others might live.  Resistance to the idea of giving up identity and joy of life.

We were told of the story of the Blanc family.  It was illegal to become pregnant in the ghetto.  After all, the Nazis wanted fewer Jews, not more.  However, Mrs Blanc became pregnant, yet managed to hide her pregnancy and a baby boy was born.  Within the ghetto, they secretly gathered the required Jewish officials to perform circumcision eight days later.  However, just as they were about to begin, they heard a car drive up to their building.  Jews didn’t have cars, so they knew who it was!  Indeed, when they looked out the window, the Nazis had arrived.

What to do?  Where to hid the child…how to keep him quiet…what story do they tell?  The men who had gathered for the ceremony turned to Mrs Blanc, who promptly said, “If they are going to shoot us all, let my son be a Jew!”  Thus, they proceeded with the circumcision, and for reasons unknown, the Nazi officials never entered, but got back in their car and drove away!

Another brilliant example of resistance is the story of Raphael Schachter, an accomplished pianist and composer.  To the ghetto he had brought a copy of the composition, “Requiem.”  With that one copy, he gathered and taught 150 choir members, musicians, and performers.  When some of them were transported out of the ghetto, he would gather and train others to take their places.

Ironically, “Requiem” was a Catholic mass, written in Latin!  Ironic, first because it was a “Christian” piece…and it was “Christians” leading the persecution.  Secondly, it was written in Latin!  Jews did not speak Latin!  But most ironically, it was a “good over evil,” in a place shrouded in evil.

Interestingly, city people would, at times, attend concerts, plays, and theater productions put on by the Jews in the ghetto.  Their last performance of “Requiem” was performed for the Red Cross and German officials.  Indeed, they sang to their captors what they could never say to them!

Resistance!  The will to live in the face of the most horrific atrocities.  We heard about the gravest atrocities today, but I don’t want to go there.  Instead, I close with this quote from Joza Karas, a Polish-born Jew in the holocaust:

They can break your body but they cannot break your spirit without your cooperation.  After all, the logical way to fight death is to live, isn’t it?