Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Slucki, David

Titel

“A Struggle Unparalleled in Human History”: Survivors Remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Ist Teil von

• American Jewish history, 2019-04, Vol.103 (2), p.203-225

Ort / Verlag

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Project MUSE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Rather, they died as part of a broader struggle for Jewish survival, and for human freedom and dignity. [...]by linking the partisans’ fight to the struggle for human liberty, survivors sought acceptance into American life, likening their cause to that of all Americans. [...]its Yiddish publications were principally concerned with events that had transpired in Poland and Lithuania, and in commemorating figures that loomed large in the Bundist collective memory, such as Warsaw Ghetto fighters Michal (Mikhl) Klepfisz and Abrasha Blum, and particularly the Bundist representative in the Polish Government-in-Exile, Shmuel Artur Zygielboym.11 The centrality of the uprising in the survivors’ collective memory is made clear in a pamphlet published by the Katsetler Farband in 1952 that argued that Jews the world over should unite in establishing April 19 as the annual Holocaust memorial date. To this end, it also made sure that its memorial evenings would take place on Sunday. Because WAGRO was concerned with unity among survivors and Jews, and was nominally non-political, it made sense that it would follow the lead of the Israel memorial authority.45 Moreover, despite its ostensibly apolitical nature, WAGRO inclined toward Zionism, in contrast with the Bundist-leaning Katsetler Farband. The rituals, symbols, and language developed around the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would stick, as American society at large continued to remember the destruction of European Jewry. [...]recently, the general assumption that underpinned historical writing on Holocaust memory in the United States was that survivors overwhelmingly kept quiet about their experiences, as American Jews were not interested in hearing the difficult stories.