Diaries

   You can call me a party pooper; it is a conflict I have!  Should I go out when we are done with our heavy work at about 7, or should I take this quiet time to process all the thoughts I have experienced? On one level, I'm only here once and I should experience everything.  On another level, I can't overdo things with my health, and as an introvert living an extrovert's lifestyle, I need the downtime.  It's 8:30 now, and rather than head out to the Shuk, I know I need this time to review my thoughts and experiences of the day.

Me, pausing from a diary entry while waiting for the tidal bore in Canada, the summer after 12th grade. It was here that my sister, Jessica, urged me to live life more and record it less.  I hope she understand why I need to record all this now!

    For most of my childhood, I did this as a diary writer. I have tomes and tomes of journals-- some filled, some started and then fickly ended.  From my first grade post of "I kissed Amin who I love" (poor Amin!) to my woe-is-me posts of early adolescence, these memories are there for me.    My diary writing was private; sometimes I even switched languages to avoid a snoopy sister. However, they served the same purpose of reflection as this blog serves for me now: writing helps me pull my experiences together so that I don't belabor anxieties or sorrow.  Writing is an outlet for joys and pains, and it helps me record and remember my days.


    When you think about diaries and the Holocaust, most people will automatically think of Anne Frank.  Unless you're a Holocaust scholar or have had experience with the (fantastic) Echoes and Reflections curriculum, you might not have encountered The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak.  He was an active diarist in the textile factory town of Lodz, Poland.  When he was 15, Germany invaded his country, and before long, he ended up in the sealed ghetto, where he eventually died of a mix of tuberculosis, starvation and exhaustion.

    I'd like to share some excerpts of his diary with you, because he is so vivacious and because his words really make an experience come to life.  Mixing his words and my comments, maybe we can together create a memory.

"Lodz.  An alarm at half past twelve at night. I curse as much as I can. In the street it's cold, dark, nasty. In the shelter we want to amuse ourselves a little, but as usual the females raise an uproar, shrieking that it's no joke, this is war.  We leave for the street. Bombs and cold are better than old women. This should always be kept in mind. Long live humor; down with hysteria!"  (September 3, 1939)

      Dawid wrote this entry just two days after the Nazis invade Poland.  Can you hear his invincibility and his completely teenage energy?  When we look back on this and know everything that was going to happen, it is hard to understand that this was exciting for the kids.  Nowadays, we cringe at any kind of humor linked to the Holocaust.  However, I have heard my grandmother's dramatic wailing, perhaps to similar to the uproar he describes.  Sometimes it was hard to know the degree of her woes.  I can understand his desire to rush outside and adventure with his friends.  He didn't know what we know now.

"A neighbor, Grodzenski, is sitting there with his crying wife, telling us to leave.  Where? Go where? Why? Nobody knows. To flee, flee farther and farther, trek, wade, cry, forget, run away...just run away as far as possible from the danger....Father loses his head; he doesn't know what to do....finally the decision: stay put. Whatever will be will be."  (September 6, 1939)

      One of the questions I come back to again and again in my life is Turning Points.  What moments made me the person I am today?  What moments led to my good fortune?  It's odd; having a swastika painted on my house  was a major turning point that was a nightmare at the time.  Somehow, that led me to become a Holocaust Scholar and a Peace Activist (not just a pacifist).  It also brought me to switch homes, and I absolutely love where I live now. 

     Yesterday, we spoke with a survivor, Daniel Gold, and he told us of a turning point in his life.  He was in a ghetto with his family when there was a strong knock on the door.  Somehow, his mother had a strong instinct: stay silent, perfectly silent. Do not open the door.  The knock came again and again, and it was so hard for this little kid to be still and silent, but somehow he managed.  The knocks stopped.  Some time later, it was quiet again and the family emerged from the house.  They saw their neighbor's door wide open and the neighbors were gone, never to be seen again.  Opening the door would have ended his life.  Instead, he is an 80 year old man who rides a motorcycle.

      Dawid's post is a watershed moment, too.  Reading from the vantage point of over seven decades, I yearn to shake his father and say "Go! Go now, while you can! Hurry!"  In the decision to stay put, the decision of death was made.  We sometimes make the most important decisions without enough information. In a world of propaganda and hatred, this was even more true.  In this diary entry, we see  what Dawid cannot; his life will be forever altered before he knows it.

"I am finally going to school tomorrow.  Coeducational classes!  There are great girls there, they say.  Only let our education be normal.  We are supposed to receive certificates of "immunity" so we won't be seized for work."  (September 18, 1939)

     Did you smile at his unadulterated adolescent hormones?  When I wrote in my diary at his age, sometimes I was so embarrassed about my crushes, or my absence of crushes.  I pondered in writing about all that fun stuff, but I knew it wouldn't be read.  In fact, somewhere in the middle of that era, I burned some of those journals!  I wonder how Dawid would feel that this entry is now a part of reading passages for students!  (He also spoke many languages: Hebrew, English, German, French and his native Polish...along with studying Latin.)  If he knew, would he have linguistically coded this entry as I did some of mine?

"The work at the square was supervised by a single soldier, also with a big stick. Using rude words, he told me to fill puddles with sand. I have never been so humiliated in my life as when I looked through the gate to the square and saw the happy, smiling mugs of passerbys laughing at our misfortune.  Oh, you stupid, abysmally stupid, foolish blockheads! It's our oppressors who should be ashamed, not us!"  (September 24, 1939)

   I have to re-write that sentence:  "Oh, you stupid, abysmally stupid, foolish blockheads!"  Now, now. I'm not one to ever insult one for their intellect because there will always be someone wiser than me, and we all have strengths and weaknesses.  HOWEVER, I don't think he was using the word "stupid" as a statement about intelligence.  He was using it in outrage.  Have you ever wanted to diss someone completely and entirely?  Dawid couldn't do it in person, of course, but in writing, he had the perfect sentence for venting.

  I've been reading the less-edited version of his journals, and I won't spoil anything for you.  But  I'm hoping that through some of his words, you'll gain the insights of a boy long gone.  Six million, or 11 million, or 35 million (including civilian deaths) are numbers far too huge to understand.  But taking individual after individual....this way we understand the atrocity of genocide.