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In Their Words
by Leah Goldstein
Walter Zwi Bacharach,
Last Letters from the Shoah
Yad Vashem, 2004, 400 pp; 104NIS
“Two days ago, two boys escaped so
we were all lined up and every fifth person was shot. I was not
the fifth person, but I know that I will not make it out of here
alive. I leave you dear mother, dear father, and dear siblings and
I cry…”
This extract from a letter, written by a 14-year-old Holocaust
victim, appears in Last Letters from the Shoah, edited by
Professor Walter Zwi Bacharach, the first book to be dedicated
solely to personal correspondences of Holocaust victims.
In compiling the book, Professor Bacharach—himself a Holocaust
survivor—viewed roughly 800-1000 letters from the Yad Vashem
Archives, selecting approximately 180 for publication. He arranged
the letters and structured the publication according to various
recurring ‘themes’ including concern for
children, testimony, wills and last requests, and the Underground.
On his choice of letters, Bacharach says, “I worked with feeling
and intuition, not just rational
tools. Take the letter of the boy [above]; you read a letter like
this and you know it must be included.”
Surprisingly, many of the letters were sent by regular mail. In
1936-1937, letters sent from cities including Berlin and Vienna
reached their destinations safely. Later letters sent from within
the ghettos such as Westerbork and Lodz, although censored, also
arrived by regular post. But as
the Holocaust progressed, the tone of the letters changed: the
later the letters, the more desperate their contents.
“If you read a letter from the camps in the earlier years,”
explains Bacharach, “you don’t get the same horrifying impression
of despair that you do when you read later letters from Birkenau,
for example.”
What makes the letters unique is their personal style. “These
letters were written as very personal texts, although their
motives differed. Some wrote of their concern for their children’s
welfare, others of their final wishes. The letters use
straightforward, down-to-earth language of suffering people. This
makes a very deep impression.”
Bacharach recalls one letter that really made him stop and think.
“It was from a Jewish man who had been sentenced to death, to his
two children: ‘So let me give you some advice for the future,’ he
wrote. ‘If you sweat, don’t drink cold water.’ I put down my
pencil and almost cried. One would have expected this man to give
his children deep, philosophical advice. But, hours before his
death, he wrote something that could have been said by any father.
He wasn’t trying to be a hero, just a human being.”
Bacharach did not want to dictate to readers any lessons that
could be drawn from the letters. Aside from a foreword and an
introduction of the book’s main themes, the book’s content is
confined to the letters. “I think the importance of these letters
is that the Holocaust is presented through the victims’ eyes as
they experienced it. They are authentic, untouched by historians,
psychiatrists, or philosophers. Readers can draw their own moral
conclusions.”
Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust
Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority |
