Judgment and more
At Nuremberg.
My friends know I have a longstanding obsession with the Second World War, and especially with the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazis. For years I have thought that, if I just kept reading, I would finally understand it. How it happened, what gave rise to such evil, why so many participated in such unspeakable acts.
Well, guess what?
The more I read about it, the less I understand it.
So I carry on, buying every new Holocaust book/memoir/analysis—so many are still emerging! For example, I have just ordered this, which I am very interested to read because a professor I knew at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston features in it, along with her family (I wrote to and received a lovely reply from the author, Rebecca Frankel).
The first time I met Miriam Brysk, she was working on her memoir. I asked her to tell me her story, and I will never forget how she started it as long as I live:
The day I turned eight years old, my parents gave me two birthday presents: a haircut like a boy’s and a pistol. Then we went and lived in the woods in Poland for two years, hiding from the Nazis.
Also, incredibly, her father, who was a surgeon, set up a field hospital in a swamp. There is much more to Miriam’s story, especially her art, some of which commemorates those who perished in the Holocaust.
She describes her work this way:
In addition to Holocaust art, I enjoy creating abstract works, in both color and black and white. These more whimsical and happy pieces express the gratitude and joy I now feel: to have survived the Holocaust, to have been blessed with a loving family (my husband Henry, daughters Judy and Havi, and five grandchildren), and to have had the opportunity to live a full and creative life, on my own terms, as a passionate individualist.
I hope you will read about Miriam on her website and in her books.
Just realized this post is already long enough and I haven’t even gotten to Nuremberg yet! More on that tomorrow.
Great read Faith. I’m like you The Holocaust continues to shock and amaze me. It’s hard to believe but then I look around and see similar circumstances in Syria, Afghanistan, China, Africa and here in the US. It’s like we hear about it, we agree it’s terrible and, I think, we wait or expect someone else to do something!?
This post reminded me of the movie ‘Defiance.’ As someone said about changing the situation , ‘If it is to be then it’s up to me.’
Thank you Faith for this post. As soon as I read it I searched on YouTube and found a short clip in which Miriam Brysk told about her father. What a man!
In the same type, I know an French Armenian man whose grand father owed his survival to a sewing machine. In 1922, with his wife, he fled far away from Istambul with his sewing machine, and sewed clothes for poor turkish people in the countryside. Thus, managed he to leave Turkey.