I’m often struck by the complicated relationship with the Holocaust that reveals itself once one scratches just beneath the surface.
By AKIN AJAYIHolocaust survivor Cartoon 521(photo credit: Courtesy)
What do you think about when you think about the Holocaust? This is a serious question, by the way. In the 30 or so years that I’ve had the opportunity to think about the meaning and the consequences of the Shoah, I’ve always assumed – I’ve always wanted to assume – that Israel is the one place in the world where it has a settled meaning. But apparently it’s not.(By the way, I can pinpoint my initial awareness about the Holocaust almost exactly. End of summer 1981, KLM flight from Amsterdam to Lagos. Film about Anne Frank in hiding. Curious choice of in-flight entertainment, I remember thinking at the time.) Let’s take, for example, that beauty pageant in Haifa the other week. You know, the one with the Holocaust survivors. The oldest 97, the youngest a sprightly 74. Putting aside objections to the business of beauty pageants in general, I’m really curious.What did you guys make of it? I know what I thought. Or, at least, I thought that I did. As is often the case, the problem is that the medium shapes the message. I first read about it on Twitter and Facebook, neither of which are designed for nuanced argument and exposition. How ghoulish, I mused. And the initial sentiments I encountered fell along a similar continuum. The word “tasteless” was used quite a few times. A disrespectful desecration of the memory of the dead and the memories of the living.But moving along from the immediacy of the Internet, one discovers something else altogether.Take this quote from Esther Liber, one of the participants.“When I was a little girl, no one took notice of me, but now everyone is interested,” Liber told a local newspaper. “I’m not in it to win. I’m competing because it puts us all in a good mood and is a pleasant experience.”Over the course of the last half-century, the Holocaust has become shorthand for a great many things. Man’s inhumanity to man; the rationalization for the existence of a Jewish State; an explanation for the deep-rooted, visceral and abiding distrust – at best – of Germany and the German people by some Israelis; an explanation – sometimes, regrettably, a justification – for actions by the State of Israel that in other contexts might be considered inexplicable; and so on. Some of this shorthand is understandable.Others, less so.Shorthand is useful, so long as everyone is reading from the same crib sheet. Given that I have no personal or (immediate) emotional connection to the Holocaust, I don’t really mind being educated about what it means to the Jewish people of Israel (as opposed to the Jewish people in general – simply because I know far more Israeli Jews than Jews in general).There’s no harm in ignorance, after all. The problem comes in when it comes to the question of how this education can be shaped.Most reports about the pageant were, of necessity, rather brief, and presented more for curiosity value than anything else. But a couple of reports went a little further, trying to understand the affair from a contextual perspective. And there are quite a few things to consider, judging from what the participants themselves had to say.All are in their twilight years and, like most senior citizens, are looking for ways to understand physical decrepitude, the gradual degradation of one’s intellectual faculties, the awareness that in today’s world the elderly often become invisible, anonymous, irrelevant.All share very real and powerful memories about a moment in time when their very existence could not be taken for granted – far from it, in fact.That they are still alive, I imagine, is pretty good cause for celebration. For all too short a while, they, and their life experiences, became the center of attention.I doubt – I hope – that I’ll never have experiences that mirror theirs, but I understand this.But maybe it’s something else that prompted the negative reactions to the pageant. Maybe it is the inability to think about the Holocaust in anything other than the most vicious, violent, viscerally debilitating of terms. Quite understandable, no? But then again, as an outsider living mainly among Israeli Jews, I’m often struck by the complicated relationship with the Holocaust in Israel that reveals itself once one scratches just beneath the surface.There’s the complicated matter of humor and the memory of the Holocaust, for instance. Take the famous skit by The Cameri Quintet, written by Etgar Keret quite a few years ago. (If you haven’t seen it, do a search for “Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?” on YouTube.) Humor has the capacity – sometimes – to unpick complicated social constructs, to sweep aside unreflective thinking. The intent to offend quite often exists only when the distinction between laughing at something and laughing with it is breached. And even then, sometimes it is legitimate to laugh at the crassness with which some people try to exploit the Holocaust. All that said, I’m still not sure whether I’m being put to the test when I’m told these little bons mots. Maybe it’s presumed that I’ve been here long enough to have established myself as not being an anti-Semite. Still, I’ll happily confess, I really don’t like being put on the spot – even a spot I’ve created for myself – at moments like these.Then there is the ambivalence that one discovers from time to time regarding the place of the Holocaust in contemporary Israeli civic society. When I first visited Israel years ago, I was chatting in a coffee shop with a couple of nice natives about the places I should visit during my trip. They started to argue about whether Yad Vashem was a must-see in Jerusalem or not. What’s Yad Vashem, I asked. “Oh, it’s the place where we take visiting heads of state to make them feel guilty about the Jewish people,” one replied. Zeh mesubach, as we say in Hebrew. It’s complicated.But complexity isn’t necessary a bad thing, is it? All things considered, I think the beauty pageant sounds like a fascinating attempt to explore complicated memories and a confusing present. I wish all the participants the very best.But this is all about me, isn’t it? I’m still curious. What do you think when you think about the Shoah? Or perhaps I’ll be a bit more provocative. What do you think about when you think about beauty pageants?
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