INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY: BOOKS TO REMEMBER AND TO UNDERSTAND

WHAT DOES  SHOAH MEAN?

SHOAH is a  Hebrew word that means “ devastating storm”, which indicates Jewish people  extermination during Second World War. Hitler used mass extermination to kill nearly six million people during his reign of terror , with the main objective to create a “pure and simple” world.

WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY?

It is the International Memorial Day -  27th January - commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly on 1st November 2005.

WHY DO WE CELEBRATE INTERNATION HOLOCAUST REMEBRANCE DAY ON 27th JANUARY?

Because on 27 January 1945, Auschwitz - Birkenau , the largest Nazi concentration camp, was liberated by the Red Army. The discovery of Auschwitz   was shocking for the entire humanity.

The International Holocaust Remembrance day has two purposes:

(1) to remember, so that nobody forgets the horror of the Holocaust

(2) to tell the new generations about SHOAH so that what happened may never happen again.

We have chosen to remember the victims of the Holocaust through the words of those  who lived in that period. We want to remember all the victims who were oppressed, killed and treated inhumanely. 

Here are some books written by Jewish authors who survived those horrors.

THE LAST JEW OF TREBLINKA- CHIL RAJCHMAN

Chil Rajchaman was one of the few Jew who survived from Treblinka.  Treblinka was an extermination camp, built by Nazi Germany in the east of Poland during world war II. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in its gas chambers. Rajchmn got deported  with his sister who got killed immediately.  Like other Jews, he was  whipped and forced to do heavy liftings. But he managed to escape after one year  . After  fleeing ,  Rajchaman wrote a book in 1945, before the war ended. His book conveys the desperation  of the Jews in those stunning conditios.  Rajchaman’s memories are sharp and detailed.

For example Wiesel, a writer of Jewish origin, thinks that  Rajchaman’s work more than other books about Shoah “ with it is simplicity, it opens new horizons in the imagination of Evil.”

“What the Nazis did to Jews as Jews at these killing centers—exterminate them in millions on arrival—did not easily serve existing agendas at the time”.

RYWKA’S DIARY: THE WRITING OF A JEWISH GIRL FROM THE LODZ GHETTO

Rywka’s Diary is at once a historical document and tribute to the many  people whose lives were forever altered by the Holocaust. At its heart, it is the diary of a girl named Rywka Lipszyc who gives a detailed account of the brutal conditions that Jews in the Lodz ghetto, the second largest in Poland, endured under the Nazis: poverty, hunger and malnutrition, religious oppression, and, in Rywka’s case, the death of her parents. Handwritten in between October 1943 and April 1944, “ What became of Rywka”  is a mystery.  

A Red Army doctor found her notebook in Auschwitz after its liberation in 1945 and took it back with her to Soviet Union.
A moving and sobering book. The aspect that has excited me the most is the story of Rywka’s disappearance.

“The Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a tragedy for all humanity”

  

THE VIOLIN OF AUSCHWITZ – MARIA ANGELS ANGLADA

Daniel is an  apprentice luthier    who lives in Krakow , but he is Jewhis and, unfortunately,  he is taken to Auschwitz. There , he hides his  ability to build violins and he says he is a carpenter so the Nazi put him to work in a factory. In Aushwitz Daniel meets Bronislaw , a Jewish musician who loves playing the violin. One day the Nazi Commander  asks Bronislaw to play something, but Bronislaw’s violin is damaged and its sound is not at all  pleasant. The Nazi commander gets angry and he wants to kill Bronislaw , but Daniel defends his friend telling him it  wasn’t  fault Bronislaw’s  but  it was due to the violin. So the commander  tells him to build a violin like a Stadivari, if Daniel  can’t do it  he will kill both him and his friend. The luthier starts building the violin and he tries to do his best, spending  whole nights to create the musical instrument.

This book teaches us  much. It makes us think how even in the most painful situations a man is able to save himself and making tragedy help him grow and become better.

REUNION- FRED UHLMAN

In Stuttgart a 16-year-old Jewish boy  called Hans attends the “Karl Alexander Gymnasium”. In Feubrary 1932 a new student arrives in the school, Konradin von Honenfels who belongs to an importan and rich German family.  Everyone wants to become Konradin‘s friend but only Hans can.  In fact , the two become close friends and they start talking about everything, especially about art, religion and poetry, they love talking after school. Konradin invites Hans to his home many times, but every time he goes there, Konradin’s parents aren’t at home. Hans will discover why; Konradin’s family hates Jews and they support Hitler.

Konradin himself tells Hans that he agrees with Hitler’s ideas and for this reason their friendship ends, Hans and Konradin take different paths.

This is a short novel filled with pathos, good values and important messages, especially regarding friendship. It is intense and moving. The two boys  are such relatable characters that you can’t but love them, they are so different but respect one another so deeply .  The symbolica reunion of the end of the book is really a great life lesson in friendship, freedom and love for human kind. Nothing is stronger than true friendiship.

THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL-ANNE FRANK

The Diary of a Young Girl is a book  written by Anne Frank while  she was hidden with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The diary was given to Anne’s father, Otto Frank, by Miep Gies at the end of the war, after Anne’s death. She calls her diary “KITTY”. We have some conjectures about the identity of Kitty but we don’t know exactly who it really is... maybe an imaginary friend. Everyone loves this book. Not only because it tells us about the difficult life conditions of the Jews persecuted by the Nazis but because everything is watched through the eyes of a young girl like us (a girl who goes to school, who has friends and a crush and who was just entering life) and the way her life was tragicly changed.

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy”

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” 

These quotes show how the heart and the soul of a young girl can endure horrors and be hopeful even when life forces her and her world to live without any hope. 

LA MEMORIA RENDE LIBERI- ENRICO MENTANE AND LILIANA SEGRE

It’s a that tells the story of Liliana, a 8-year-old girl who was discriminated because she was a Jew. She started living a difficult life. She couldn’t go to school and she couldn’t have any friends. She and her father were forced to hide themselves until their arrest,then, they were brought  to BIRKENAU from  where Liliana came back alone. Liliana was able to accept what she went through because in that way she could accept herself. 

"To choose to tell my story was like accepting the disappointment in my life that I had tried to forget when I was a little girl, eight-year-old and expelled from her world. And with it, my being Jewish".  

IF THIS IS A MAN- PRIMO LEVI

This book is the most important work by the Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi. This book describes his arrest as a member of the Italian Anti- fascist Resistance during the Second World War and his incarceration in Auschwitz concentration camp from February 1944 until the camp was liberated in 1945. When we read this book, we thought it was the saddest book we had ever read. This book describes Primo Levi’s  experience in the camp, a place where people become  number, where they lose their self-respect, where they are considered nothing more than beasts. The prisoners are forced to live in extreme, inhuman hardship, they become numb and they want to die. 

It is truthful account, disturbing , frightening. We suggest to read this book to not forget what human beings are able to commit and fight against intolerance of any kind.

The book starts with a touching poem:

You who live safe

In your warm houses,

You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man

Who works in the mud

Who does not know peace

Who fights for a scrap of bread

Who dies because of a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman,

Without hair and without name

With no more strength to remember,

Her eyes empty and her womb cold

Like a frog in winter.

Meditate that this came about:

I commend these words to you.

Carve them in your hearts

At home, in the street,

Going to bed, rising;

Repeat them to your children,

Or may your house fall apart,

May illness impede you,

May your children turn their faces from you.

Martina, Lucrezia, Angela & Alice