To Hell and Back

                    by Hasida Buchsveiler, Kibbutz Be'eri

The class' first guest was Dobka, a concentration camp survivor who spoke of fighting women. What, she asked, was real heroism? The fighter with gun in hand or the person who day by day, hour by hour, fights to preserve his or her humanity in spite of everything happening around him? How do you fight the hunger that threatens to destroy all that's good in your soul? How do you live in hell without going crazy or losing your humanity? Dobka spoke fluently, humorously, and, strangely, optimistically.

Other survivors told their stories, their struggle for life and humanity, each in his own personal way, each as an individual in the midst of a collective human nightmare. Survivors talked about the need to hate and the greater need to love. Asher Ben-Gara concluded his talk with an emotional appeal to be humanistic and liberal and democratic, to believe in the equality of man, on openness and love as a way of preventing any future Holocaust, of making sure that what was done to our people should never again be done to any people.

A week before the group left for Poland, they hosted a meeting in the kibbutz club, open to all the members, with a Polish Catholic who had protected and saved a Jewish friend, who was also present. They planted a tree together next to the main gate of the kibbutz, and together told their story. At the tree planting, the class read the following testimonial to the guest:

"Dear Yurik. Today you are planting a tree in our home, Kibbutz Be'eri in the western Negev.

This tree symbolizes our deep admiration for what you and your family did risking your lives to save a Jewish family. We are the second and third generation after the Holocaust and we swear "to remember and not to forget." We remember what the Nazi regime did in killing a third the Jewish people, sometimes with the cooperation of the Polish people, but we know also that there were rays of light amidst that awful darkness. Those rays were the righteous of all nations, the brave few who were willing to risk everything in order to save Jews. Your actions are an example to the world."

The class' trip to Poland took place during the Passover holiday. On the last night of Passover the class returned. Parents waited at the airport not knowing what to expect. Would they be able to talk about the experience?

A few days after the class returned was Holocaust Day; no one doubted that this year we wouldn't follow our traditional memorial service, this year we would listen to our youngsters. And we listened, the whole kibbutz listened to our children. In a darkness lit only by six memorial candles, we sat and watched slides of their trip and listened to the children as they described the experience. Together, the whole kibbutz shared an experience that had started almost a year before.

We weren't used to such meetings. Not to the depth and power of their reactions, not to their openness in describing their feelings, not to their willingness to talk about such personal things (into a microphone, no less!). We discovered children who were no longer children, who suddenly knew how to express things that very few of the adults would have dared to express in public.

Excerpts - Hasida Buchsveiler, Kibbutz Currents, Fall 1990, No. 6

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