Points of Departure- Survivors of the Holocaust

It was a strange mixture of people who crowded into the Tel Aviv Cinemathèque late one afternoon in early summer, 1999. Alongside cinéastes arriving for the evening screenings or spending time in the film centre's chic café, a group of elderly people in the foyer were inspecting photographs set up on large display boards in the foyer, viewing one of two video machines, or listening to one of several short speeches given to the assembled crowd by various speakers in numerous languages, among them Hebrew, English, French and German. The slightly surreal aura of the occasion was increased by the fact that many of the subjects of the displayed photographs were present in the foyer. The scene, which itself could have come from any number of cinema verité films, suggested the title of the exhibition, "Survivors of the Holocaust Now."

The creator of this travelling exhibit, Jean-Pierre Boesch, seemed no less awed by the enthusiastic response. It was a far cry from the project's genesis some three or four years before. "When a Swiss bank scandal broke out over Holocaust victims' savings in 1996," recalls Boesch, "I was shocked. I was born and educated in Switzerland. I had no idea of this dark shadow in my country's history. Along with many of my fellow Swiss, I was truly astonished at the revelations."

Boesch, a teacher of ancient languages before turning to photography and writing, felt challenged to respond to these revelations. His problem was how to go about it. "I was drawn to the idea of the survivors without knowing who they were. Even during the heated discussions about the banks, they were simply a word, an abstraction. What did they look like, where were they to be found? During the war, we had, it seems, permitted 30,000 Jews to enter neutral Switzerland, while denying entry to another 28,000. Even those allowed to enter were treated pretty shabbily. With the accounts of what the banks did with Jewish money, a whole new side of those times was revealed to me. On the other hand, I didn't like the way some lawyers were turning the event into a business - how much money they could claim out of the Swiss, irrespective of the wishes of the survivors themselves. I was far more interested in listening to the survivors and to find out if and how they had adjusted to the world after their appalling experiences."

At this juncture in Boesch's search, fate intervened. In 1997, his wife, Natalie, was appointed to a senior position in the Swiss Embassy in Tel Aviv. Jean-Pierre found himself living in one of the world's major centres of Holocaust survivors. But even this encounter made him apprehensive. "On the one hand I realized I had received a golden opportunity to pursue my project. On the other hand, precisely because of all the bad publicity surrounding the Swiss banks, I was sure we were going to be stoned as soon as we arrived in Israel!"

To his surprise the photographer found himself not only not rejected by Israelis, but positively, even enthusiastically, received. "The situation of survivors in Israel is different from what I had encountered abroad. There, you feel you are dealing with ghosts, with people who, to some degree, are not real. Only in Israel, where 300,000 survivors sought refuge, did these people not only not disappear but they also participated in the building of a state. Moreover, unlike in the Diaspora, where the Holocaust is still something of a taboo subject, in Israel I found that it was quite normal to talk of the event. In fact, as I progressed in my work, I found people willing to talk at great length about it. Initially, some people were suspicious; after all, I'm not Jewish, why would I be interested in their stories? Was I an objective reporter, or just a voyeur? I could well understand their apprehensions."

In approaching his subject, Boesch had discovered some models for presenting the Holocaust to a contemporary generation. "In particular, I admired the work of Claude Lanzman, whose film Shoah was irresistible viewing. Similarly, I was impressed by the comic format of Art Spiegelman's Maus, which used a symbolic and graphic style to portray the Holocaust and post-Holocaust period in a way that can be meaningful for a generation which did not experience the war years. I, too, wished to show the Holocaust symbolically, through the portraits and memories of the survivors."

Having set up the parameters of his project, Boesch began looking for material to record in film and word. Sensitive to the nature of his quest he first turned to a psychologist and therapist, Rachel Israel, who in turn introduced him to two survivors, Ruth Elias and Yossi Offer, who were both articulate and helpful. They immediately warmed to the project and supplied Boesch with ten more addresses. Thus the project grew until he reached his aim of 50 interviewees.

"Initially, I thought of the project as taking about three months. Ultimately, I travelled 10,000 kilometres around Israel, and spent over 2,000 hours in interviews." Early on in the project, Boesch had decided on the format by which he wanted to present his work: two portraits in black and white, one against the background of a desert representing the absence of life, the other in a contemporary situation at home or work. "I thought of the poet who wrote: 'We were alone, desolated...but human beings.' I wanted to show these people as living human beings, in defiance of the Nazis' desire to erase their personalities."

"Michael Gilead, for example, survived a forced labour camp, following which he was sent to Auschwitz, where he was one of 16 out of 4,000 prisoners to survive the death march of January 1945. Later, in Israel, he participated in the Eichmann trial as part of the Israeli police detachment, and as assistant to Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor."

"I also came to realize why it is so important to distinguish the Holocaust from other disasters. In Kosovo, for example, the refugees were supported by the allied forces. No one supported the Jews during the Holocaust, and that was the crucial difference. Neither did the church come out of the war years with a clean record. The role of the church in neutral Switzerland is very questionable. While researching the project I read Daniel Goldhagen: 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' on the non-Jewish population's lack of resistance to, and even support for, the Nazis. How else could you explain the ease with which the Nazis executed their antisemitic policies with such thoroughness, hunting Jews down to the last man, woman and child? Those years highlighted the depth of prejudice that had been harboured within Christian European civilization for generations; for centuries."

"By interviewing these people, I started to make sense of those years, even though what I heard was often excruciating. The most difficult interviews were with those who had never really recovered from their traumas, yet somehow managed to live coherent lives. This came out in different ways. In addition to photographing my subjects, I asked them to record two short statements, one about then and one about their life today. Often this was the first time they had been asked to record such a response, and, several of them broke down when I asked them to talk. I also requested a few written sentences from each of them; some of them took up to two hours to write something. I was shocked many times by what I heard. One of the most difficult interviews I had was with Jenny Rozenstain."

"I felt terribly guilty for the murders committed in my family by the SS. They took me by surprise when I was playing outside the Mogilov Podolsk ghetto. This sadist took my little sister, who was only four months old, out of my grandmother's arms, placed her on a stone, and split her in two with an axe. Then he killed my grandmother, my aunt, and five of my cousins. I felt so guilty because until 1997 I never dared tell my story. I was afraid that no one would believe me. Now I have broken my silence and I weep, and so I release myself from this terrible burden of suffering which has weighed on my conscience all my life.'"

It was hardly surprising that as he progressed in his research, the photographer/reporter could not rid himself of his subject. Many times he would wake up at night from nightmares about being incarcerated in Auschwitz.

Boesch was amazed by the way in which none of the survivors had begun their testimony by accusing their persecutors, or asking for financial recompense. There was no sense of revenge. Their main concern was to set the record straight, a record which, if it had been heard, had often been distorted by the media.

Many of the survivors made successful careers in the newly-established State of Israel. Yossi Offer's story is characteristic of many of them:

"Exactly six years after my liberation from Buchenwald, on 12 April, 1951, the chief of staff pinned on my chest the Israeli Air Force pilot's emblem. On the same spot where, just a short while before, I was forced to wear the yellow star of David that symbolized disgrace and humiliation. I was so proud to wear now the blue star of David."

Others, too, succeeded in re-establishing themselves in their new environment, in kibbutz, industry, commerce or education. Nevertheless it was difficult if not impossible for them to shake off their past. Rina Feinmesser, for example, experienced a peculiar double-edged memory: "I have never managed to put a face to the names of my parents or my sister, because we were separated when I was only two or three years old. Later, I put my past together on the basis of fragments of memory which others were able to give me... The first ten years of my life did not really belong to the woman I am today. They belong to some other person who was tossed to and fro as if she had no real existence of her own."

"Like many of the children who were kept in hiding, I had never really been held lovingly in a mother's arms...later during my first years in the kibbutz when I in my turn had become a mother, I was very unhappy because children and parents were separated. I had an almost obsessive need to feel my children, to touch them, see them, and hold them close to me."

Many of the survivors owed their survival to discovering some deep reservoir of strength within themselves that sustained them through even the worst of times. Ruth Elias observes how "our tormentors tried to dehumanize us, to kill every part of our personality. They had not reckoned with our spiritual and intellectual resistance. And the Germans could not reduce that to nothing...it was hope that enabled me to survive and then presented me with the most precious of all gifts: a family, children, grandchildren, all in a new homeland."

Boesch discovered that many of the survivors experienced a peculiar sense of disconnectedness from their immediate surroundings, despite the passage of time. Rachel Rubin typified this sense when she recalled being liberated by British soldiers from Bergen-Belsen, weighing 26 kilos. "I was sent to Sweden for rehabilitation," she writes, "so that I could lead a normal existence. To this day I have kept in contact with my adoptive mother because she is the only real link with my past. With her affection, she reconciled me to life and to humanity. We appear normal, but no one can see our inner suffering."

Ultimately, Boesch saw his role as a recorder and witness to the events of those horrendous times. In this endeavour, he found support among the survivors themselves, some of whom devoted their lives to the memory of those who lost their lives. Benjamin Anolik, for example, was saved twice from certain death in Estonia. Immediately after the war he worked helping surviving children and orphans, continuing his work as a member of the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz in northern Israel. He returned to Germany several times to give evidence against Nazi criminals and is today a member of the International Commission of Justice.

In encountering such people, Boesch found himself being drawn deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of the Holocaust. He had undertaken this project independently with no outside funds. He was running out of personal finances fast, when he received help from the Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities, the Swiss-based Doron Fund and the Swiss embassy in Tel Aviv. All the photographs in the exhibition have been published in an impressive album, "Survivors of the Holocaust... Today" by Editions In Folio, Gollion, Switzerland, with texts in English, French and German.