When I first proposed a doctoral dissertation about survivors many years ago, my would-be graduate committee was cordial but not supportive. The first three professors whom I approached said the same essential two things, almost verbatim. “Hank, all the work on survivors has already been done. Anyway, the survivors are all dying.” This was 1975.
The professors were not alone. A well-known psychiatrist pronounced that, like the Ancient Mariner, “survivors’ tales were told.” It was time to focus on children of survivors. The psychiatrist himself went on to enjoy another thirty years of active professional life. He was a decade older than most of the survivors I had already interviewed. Clearly, his own tale was still unfolding. This was also 1975.
These experiences were the start of my wondering how often we ever imagine survivors as full human beings rather than as artifacts of the Holocaust. In the early months of the pandemic, when The New York Times listed the names and professions of the dead, Holocaust survivors were typically listed – under profession – as “Holocaust survivor.” As though being a survivor was their job.
Horrific as what they endured, survivors have real and complex lives. As real and complex as any of our own.
Survivors, in short, are us. To say so is not to confuse our experiences with theirs. It is, rather, not to confuse survivors with their experiences. Such confusion is the essence of stigma. We do the same with cancer patients, people with obvious disabilities, and others who represent what we dread. As with Holocaust survivors, we may respond with pity or with awe or, most typically, with both. Either way, pedestals quarantine as readily as consulting rooms.
Since the 1980s, survivors have responded variously to their new veneration. After having been known, for years, as a “damaged good” and the “nephew from the concentration camp,” Abe Pasternak exclaimed: “So now I’m such a hero?!!! Stronger than the other guy! Why not? A little nachas. We deserve it!” Agi Rubin, a survivor who was one of the closest people in my life, insisted: “I am not a capital S, quote-unquote, ‘Holocaust Survivor.’ OK, I survived. But I am not ‘The Survivor.’ I am not a category. Not a thing. We have enough experience being categories.” Some survivors embraced their unanticipated celebrity. Others ran the other way.
Most survivors quietly negotiate with our presumptions about who they are and what they have to retell. They recount differently, or not at all, depending on the situation, especially their perceptions of our perceptions of them. Some opportunities to “bear witness” are avoided – not because of “trauma” or the challenge of the “unspeakable” – but because of us.
Also in the 1980s, Sally Grubman reflected: “I see an awakening of consciousness, but also some confusion about the reality. American Jewish teachers invite me into their classes to speak, but they do not want me to make the Holocaust a sad experience. They want to turn us into heroes and to create a heroic experience for all the survivors. There is this book they use, The Holocaust: A History of Courage and Resistance, but the Holocaust was never a history of courage and resistance. It was a destruction by fire of innocent people, and it’s not right to make it something it never was.
“We are not heroes. We survived by some fluke that we do not ourselves understand. And people have said, ‘Sally, tell us about the joy of survival.’ And I see they don’t understand it at all.”
Abraham Kimmelman, an Israeli survivor known for his candor, responded to the wave of psychological studies of survivors’ “resilience,” in which he was asked to participate:
“They write: ‘These people, they were in the Holocaust, and they’ve stayed normal!’ That, of course, is only beneficial to those who need to have a patronizing approach to this issue, though they’re unaware of it. I said: ‘I’ll pass.’ It’s just creating a stigma, yes? Namely, that those who had once been in the Holocaust, at one time, there’s an expectation for them to be different… Half-assed psychology! I’ll pass.”
THE ADVOCATES for Holocaust Survivor Day draw on the same rhetoric that has characterized public celebrations of survivors for the past 35 years. Here is a brief sample from a range of releases, which have all featured images of heroism, hope, and resilience.
“This will be a day… when these heroes can pass on their message of hope and resilience to the next generation.”
“Holocaust survivors represent the best in all of us, the best of the human spirit. They are our treasure and our light.”
“Holocaust Survivor Day aims to focus not on the solemnity of the Holocaust but on the resilience of those who survived.”
“Reflect with family and friends on individual survivors and their stories of heroism, resolve and strength.”
As someone who has spent his life working with Holocaust survivors, I know survivors as brothers and sisters, as teachers and friends, warts and all, like our own. If a “special day” can be useful, so be it. But what really matters is not special days. What matters is that we meet survivors as comrades, partners in the same infinitely wondrous and infinitely terrifying world.
The writer is emeritus at the University of Michigan who has been interviewing, teaching about, and writing about Holocaust survivors since the 1970s.