Israel’s mistreatment of Holocaust survivors then and now

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Introduction
The postwar contributions of Holocaust survivors within Israeli society cannot be overstated. We have interviewed seven survivors living in Israel, focusing on their thoughts and experiences after the Holocaust.

When meeting Holocaust survivors today, we tend to learn only about their experiences during that period. It is easy to assume that once the Holocaust was over, and survivors began rebuilding their lives, their pain would disappear. However, as echoed in the interviews here, Holocaust survivors had – and still experience – difficulties on a day-to-day basis.

The complexity of the survivors' lives should not and can never be understated. In the years following the Holocaust, they constantly battled with private and painful memories while attempting and mostly succeeding to rebuild their lives in a new and lonely environment.

The experiences of survivors who arrived immediately after the Holocaust were significantly different to those who arrived many years later. In a sense, this latter group had their new identities shaped before they arrived in Israel. Their absorption problems may have been easier – they had already re-built their lives in another country, married there, and started young families – but the pain of their Holocaust experiences remained.

In contrast, survivors who came to Palestine directly after World War II had no family members, few possessions, and had generally come from a different background. Often they came alone and had to cope with the reality of rebuilding their lives and identities yet once again. How was this accomplished in a strange environment, in a new language, and in a society where some survivors felt that people just didn't understand what they had endured? In some cases, it would be many years before they would speak of their experiences.

How would you describe your initial encounter with Israeli society?
Eliezer Ayalon remembers the moment of arrival in Haifa after a four-day sea-voyage from southern Italy:

"It was November 8, 1945. The moment the boat arrived, Haifa and Mount Carmel looked like heaven. [...] Here began my new life in a country with the Jewish people. I felt that I had been saved."

Two-and-a-half years later, Eliezer reached another milestone:
"The day that the State of Israel was established in May, 1948, I felt that I was coming back to normal life."

For Eliezer, and many other survivors, the reality of adjusting to life again in a newly created country wasn't easy. Bursting with the need to share their Holocaust experiences, Eliezer recalls,
"...we were really anxious to tell our stories, but all of a sudden I realized that they really don't believe us. Our stories were so incredible, in addition to the fact that sometimes you could hear a sort of [...] hint that maybe we did something wrong to survive."

Eliezer's reflections have been echoed by many survivors. Eliezer testifies that these reactions forced him into a stance of silence, which he maintained for 37 years before he was able to publicly express himself on the subject of the Holocaust. This silence inevitably extracted a heavy price from survivors, who often found themselves living a double life. He adds,
”It still took me a few years, but by bits and pieces, I began to speak and I felt right away such a relief and release…"

Professor Zwi Bacharach also testifies to an extremely difficult existential gap between Holocaust survivors and the local population. Those who were geographically removed from the actual events had difficulty understanding or believing the reality of the Holocaust. He states,
”They could not understand the nature of someone being released from [Nazi] concentration camps. It's coming from abnormality to normality, so the normal person can't understand you."

Ehud Loeb, unlike the examples of Bacharach and Ayalon, arrived in Israel in 1958, a full thirteen years after the end of the Second World War. Within eighteen months he was married, had a home, and was working – ostensibly a recipe for normality. Describing his early years in Israel, Ehud recalls,
"I became or I tried to become a member of Israeli society... speaking the language at the beginning with mistakes and maybe a bad accent, but here again I went into hiding, because living in Israel and being part of Israeli society, I had had my real life up to then or during the years of the Holocaust hidden purposely because it wasn't fashionable to speak about it, so my past was entirely hidden and again I lived in a new society…with an entirely new identity."

From the testimonies of the three survivors mentioned above, without the subjective problem of human beings dealing with such an unprecedented human tragedy, it appears that even the objective external framework for this human dialogue was studded with difficulties and obstacles that both sides needed to overcome.

Zwi Bacharach, coming from a somewhat assimilated Jewish home in Hamburg, Germany, joined a religious kibbutz after his arrival in the country. He reports that the kibbutz members, many of whom left Germany during the Weimar years in the thirties, were more sympathetic with a common language and a common pre-Holocaust past. As a result, he was able to talk about his experiences.

As somebody who grew up reading Lon Uris, I wonder if among the young Israelis, who were determined to forge their own path in the emerging Israeli settlements, a sense of incredulity that nobody among the millions of their kin thought to fight back but instead chose to go down without a fight?

It is easy to say in hindsight they should have done more. Today every authoritarian move by Trump is viewed as creeping Naziism. As it was getting worse it was easy to say it can’t get any because unlike today nothing on that scale had happened before.

Make me understand why Jewish people chose non-violence as part of their creed in the past 2 millenia despite being subject to constant oppression?

The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, denotes a sense of completion, perfection — shlemut<(“wholeness”). In fact, in the Bible, shalom means “well-being” or “prosperity,” not just “peace.”

Thus, in Judaism, peace is not only the opposite of war, it is an ideal state of affairs. In this sense, peace — perfection — is something that will not be totally achieved until the messianic era. When the Messiah comes, “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4), but this will be part of a general societal harmony and perfection.

The fact that true peace is an eschatological dream, however, does not mean that it is not a Jewish value in the present. In the Talmud, peace is one of the most esteemed values.

According to Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel, three things preserve the world: truth, justice, and peace (Avot 1:18). Peace, however, seems to take precedence even over truth, as the Talmud permits deviation from truth in order to establish peace. In addition, there is a whole category of rabbinic ordinances established mipnei darkhei shalom, in the interest of peace. And there is also a concept of shalom bayit — peace in the home — which refers to the interest of family living together in harmony.

There is even a sense that peace is more important than loyalty to God. In response to Hosea 4:17 (“Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.”), the Midrash says, “even if Israel is tied to idols, leave him, as long as peace prevails within it” (Genesis Rabbah 38:6). Elsewhere the Talmud says, “If in order to establish peace between husband and wife, the name of God, which was written in holiness, may be blotted out, how much more so to bring about peace for the world as a whole.” (Shabbat 116a)

Perhaps nothing exhibits the importance of peace more than the fact that almost every major Jewish prayer — the Amidah, Kaddish , Priestly Blessing, Grace After Meals — concludes with an appeal for peace.

And yet, Judaism is hardly pacifistic. There are clearly times when Judaism permits and even requires war. Jews have on occasion embraced nonviolence, even martyrdom, as a response to conflict, but not out of a sense that violence is categorically inappropriate, rather because in those situations nonviolence was the best tactical option. Nonetheless, the minimization of violence is certainly a Jewish value.

Avoiding Conflict and Violence
Indeed, when war is declared, the Torah requires that peace be offered prior to commencing an attack. “When you come near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim shalom to it” (Deuteronomy 20:10). Admittedly, in this context, shalom means something more like “submission” than “peace.” Nonetheless, biblical morality opposes a violent solution when a nonviolent solution is possible.

In addition, the rabbis of the Talmud established parameters for discretionary wars of aggression that make them virtually impossible to declare today. For one, the Sanhedrin (the traditional Jewish high court) must be consulted. Today there is no Sanhedrin, though some thinkers would extend this ruling to any equivalent body of representation, such as the Israeli Knesset (parliament). In addition, the urim v’tumim, the priestly breastplate and oracle, must be consulted to determine the probability of victory. The urim v’tumim however, no longer exist.

Finally, permitted wars do not trump obligations to fulfill commandments, and thus one is not allowed to begin a non-commanded war (i.e., any war that is not either defensive, or against the seven nations of biblical Israel or the biblical nation of Amalek) unless it is probable that commandments will not need to be transgressed. This is hardly feasible (imagine a war that takes a break every Saturday!).