The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public Memory

Shapira, Anita . Jewish Social Studies ; Bloomington  Vol. 4, Iss. 2,  (Jan 31, 1998): 40.

ProQuest document link

ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT)
 
Holocaust rhetoric appeared in the speeches of [David Ben-Gurion] and other leaders even prior to the founding of
the state.(6) The Holocaust became one of the sources of legitimacy for the state, both internally and externally.
Thus, documenting the Holocaust and its memory were important to the official Israel. No attempts were made to
erase or blur the memory of the Holocaust. On the contrary: the instruments of the state were used to promote the
myth of the Holocaust and the myth of Redemption as the two poles of Jewish experience in the twentieth century.
As a result, the Holocaust did not disappear from the collective memory, and there was no repression or silencing.
The Holocaust played a major role in explaining Israel's position in the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, in
presenting Arab antisemitism as one branch of the "Jew-hating Nazi" trunk, the covert message was the memory
of the Holocaust: antisemitism must never be disregarded; we already know where it can lead. This was also the
reason for the swift response each time danger threatened any group of Jews: we must never again make the
mistake of deluding ourselves and underestimating the danger. The Holocaust was constantly present in the
thoughts of Israel's leaders, who lived in the shadow of the trauma of total destruction -- a feasible possibility
based on historical experience. To what extent did the experience of the Holocaust shape their positions at
moments of decision? It is doubtful that historical sources are capable of giving an answer to this question, but
one can speculate.

In the narrative that demonized the state with the assistance of the memory of the Holocaust, Ben-Gurion was
given a key role. An unfortunate remark he made in 1938 was quoted repeatedly -- that he would rather save half
the Jewish children from Germany by bringing them to Palestine than all Jewish children by having them emigrate
to Britain. He made this remark when the perspective was one of hardship and persecution, not of annihilation.
Later, he was accused of being insensitive toward the entire Holocaust issue.(12) Indeed, this particular
accusation has some substance. The meaning of Ben Gurion's relative silence with regard to the survivors and the
Holocaust as a human experience, as opposed to the rhetoric of the Holocaust -- whether this was due to
indifference, or to feelings of guilt -- is unanswerable. Ben-Gurion was accused of nurturing the concept of
statehood at the expense of the memory of the Holocaust,(13) as if these two were necessarily contradictory
issues. In the same context, secular Israeli culture was presented as an antithesis to the culture of the Diaspora,
which was identified with Jewish religious tradition and with the Holocaust. Indeed, Ben-Gurion loathed Diaspora
life and never went back on his acerbic criticism that denigrated Jewish Diaspora existence. He had no feelings of
nostalgia toward the old Jewish world that had been destroyed. Nor did he see the new secular Jewish culture that
had developed in Israel as being inferior in any way to that of the shtetl. But what is the causality between this and
the memory of the Holocaust? The same Ben-Gurion, blamed as he was of suppressing the memory of the
Holocaust and of making cynical political use of the survivors' distress, was also responsible for securing
[Eichmann]'s arrest and subsequent trial in Israel. Making Eichmann stand trial in Israel was meant to reinforce the
memory of the Holocaust among the country's young people and new immigrants from the Islamic countries, who
knew very little about the Holocaust. Now Ben-Gurion was being blamed for trying to overtake the memory of the
Holocaust in order to turn it into a myth to bind the nation together. It so happened, therefore, that he was accused
at once of suppressing the memory of the Holocaust and of turning the Eichmann trial into a show for the purpose
of nurturing the myth of the Holocaust and the state.(14)

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 15

FULL TEXT
 
The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public Memory

Over the past 15 years it has been the penchant among historians-myself among them -- to present the first couple
of decades following World War II as a period during which the Holocaust was suppressed in Israeli national
consciousness. It has been claimed that, throughout this period, the Holocaust played no more than a marginal
role in shaping the Israeli national identity, that it was never at the center of the public discourse, that it was not
internalized by the education system. People did not want to hear about the Holocaust. People did not wish to
discuss the Holocaust. The struggle preceding the founding of the state and, later, the War of Independence
suppressed the shock of the Holocaust and the impact it had. There was no room in the newly formed heroic state
for exhibitions of weakness and humiliation. Some historians have been able to understand this attitude, even
excusing and explaining it away. Others were enraged by it and regarded it as a crude expression of heartlessness
on the part of the veteran Israeli population toward the new immigrants, survivors of the devastation. But as for
actually pushing aside the Holocaust issue to the edges of the Israeli agenda, there was no dispute: this
assumption has been accepted as fact by historians and writers alike, and it has received wide coverage in the
popular press and television. It served as a central factor in a scathing accusation against David Ben-Gurion -- who
is identified as the state's founding father -- and against the first native generation, the Sabras, for ignoring or
erasing deliberately the memory of the Holocaust. On the other hand -- so goes the accusation -- they over-
emphasized the role played by the all-powerful Israeli "macho" in building the nation and the country, and they
nurtured the myth of heroism. This convention was to become one of the battering rams in attacks on the Israeli
entity.(1)

It is now widely agreed that the age of marginalizing the Holocaust in Israeli awareness is past. There is no
agreement, however, as to the exact moment at which it came to an end. Some see the Eichmann trial in 1961 as
the event that brought the Holocaust into Israeli public awareness. Others point to the waiting period that
preceded the Six Day War in 1967 as the turning point on this issue. Still others reckon that this change took place
immediately following the trauma of the Yom Kipur War in 1973. And there are also those who would go so far as
naming the 1977 political takeover by the Likud Party as the time of Israel's revised self-awareness with regard to
the Holocaust. Anchoring the end of the moratorium in each of these events is the direct result of individual points
of view with regard to the factors that brought about the repression of the Holocaust in the first place and is
therefore also connected to the timing of the end of this repression.

Those who saw the Eichmann trial as representing the end of the repression period related this repression simply
to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the significance of the Holocaust from a factual point of view. The
accusations and testimonies presented in the trial brought the Holocaust into every household in the country.
According to this version, it was knowledge that brought about awareness.

Those who considered the change in awareness to have been caused by the waiting period prior to the Six Day War
focused on the collective fear of annihilation that, at the time, was shared by the entire population of Israel. The
sense of helplessness, of there being no way out, that had hitherto been identified only with the Holocaust and life
in exile was seen now as being possible in the free Jewish state as well. The feeling of Jewish solidarity, the ability
to identify with the annihilated Jewish people, was no longer mere rhetoric referring to another reality but had
became part of a collective Israeli experience.

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 15

Another dimension was added by the Yom Kipur War: for the first time, footage was shown on television of Israelis
taken prisoner, of weakness and of degradation. These phenomena, which had so far been considered
characteristic of the Diaspora Jew in the negative sense, received an overnight legitimacy, becoming part of the
Israeli experience. The heroic self-image of the Israeli Sabra, as personified by Moshe Dayan, lost much of its
glamour: the independent, forceful aura that had made the Sabra so attractive turned out to be no more than an
aura, unable to protect its owner against human weakness, defeat, surrender, and humiliation. The downfall of the
Sabra as society's ideal self-image in the wake of the war, together with the shock waves it caused, opened the
door to legitimizing other types of Israeliness and legitimizing an Israeli identity that appropriates experiences of
the Holocaust as its own.

Those who attributed the change in awareness to the 1977 political overthrow saw the key to this process in the
replacement of the country's governing political elite. Until 1977 the Israeli ethos had been shaped by the Labor
culture. A direct line existed between the governing elite of the veteran pre-state Yishuv and that of the young
state. This left its stamp on major aspects of the country's identity, formulating the legitimate images of
"Israeliness," the country's cultural symbols, and the accepted conventions of memory. Anyone who had not been
part of that social-political entity -- the Israeli right-wing circles, known as the "fighting family" of the Irgun (IZL) and
Lehi underground organizations, oriental Jews, and Holocaust survivors -- tended to feel discriminated against and
alienated. The political revolution, then, was also a cultural one in that it brought to power new elites and lent
legitimacy to their cultures and to their claims of representing a different kind of Israeliness. Doors were thus
opened to a new awareness of the Holocaust and its survivors.

These four versions of the point at which the Holocaust penetrated Israeli awareness do not necessarily contradict
one another. The process of creating a new Israeli identity gained strength and achieved depth with each new
experience and change. Common to them all was the assumption that there had been an earlier period of silence, a
suppression -- either passive disregard or active attempts at repression -- of the consciousness of the Holocaust in
Israel's collective history.

The accusation of "silence/silencing" did not appear until after the screen separating the awareness of the
Holocaust and the collective Israeli memory had faded away. In other words, it was only after the Holocaust had
become an integral, central component in the Israeli self-image that the criticism appeared regarding the period
when this important component was not included in the Israeli identity. Accusations against the past are usually
aimed at achieving changes in the present. Thus any debate on this issue should also look at the question of what
and whose interests were to be served by these changes in the national identity and collective memory.

The terms "collective memory" and "national identity" gain significance from within a cultural consensus; both the
speaker and the listener understand the issue at hand for the simple reason that they both have access to a
common world of codes and associations. A debate on such vague terms raises complex problems of definition:
how are we going to define the components of national identity during Period A as opposed to Period B? What
were the experiences that were included or excluded in the collective memory? What signs will prove to us that a
certain component exists or does not exist? What are the characteristics of collective memory at one time versus
another? The method has not yet been found whereby an historian can ascertain that the data at his or her
disposal covered the whole collective experience. This problem should bother all historians, but it should be of
special interest to those involved in researching "national identity" or "collective memory," since they are trying to
reflect the essence of the society in question. The difficulty of encompassing the entire collective experience by
using existing methodological tools casts doubts on the viability of defining a "national identity" or "collective
memory." Each definition is based on the historian's choice of part of the data on the era at the expense of other
aspects. Paradoxically, the richer the material at hand, the more groundless is our pretense at presenting a

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 3 of 15

complete picture. Therefore, it is hard to draw an extensive picture of processes that are close to us in time, not
only because of a lack of perspective but also because of the wealth of material available.

The frequency of public debate on certain issues is held as proof that these issues are central or secondary
components in the collective memory or national identity. Official ceremonies, annually repeated standard texts,
the involvement of the media in various aspects of these issues, all kinds of memorial projects (from headstones
to research projects to the publication of testimonials and memoirs), cooperation with the educational system in
an attempt at "bequeathing" the collective memory -- all of these are seen as evidence of the central role attributed
to the issue in the national identity. Likewise, a dearth of these elements proves the opposite. This evidence is not
based on hard fact but rather on impressions that help the historian to analyze society. There is no quantitative
definition here, stating precisely the boundary between "centrality" and "marginality." Thus, something that may be
considered by one researcher to be evidence of "marginality" may well be seen by another as evidence of
"centrality." Despite this relative arbitrariness, however, determining the "centrality" and "marginality" of
phenomena in the collective memory has to make sense with regard to historical data and common logic.

If until the Eichmann trial the notion of the Holocaust had been pushed back and silenced in the Israeli experience,
then an analysis of the 15-year period between the end of World War II and the capture of Adolph Eichmann should
show that the subject of the Holocaust had been no more than a marginal issue in the public interest and had not
been given its rightful place in the general agenda (although the very term "rightful place" is of course subjective
and given to different and varied assessments). Nevertheless, a check -- be it ever so superficial -- would show that
the Holocaust was constantly at the heart of public debate, right in the eye of the storm. Indeed, there were other
events during this stormy period that competed for attention: the struggle surrounding the founding of the state,
the War of Independence, the social integration of a massive wave of immigrants between the years 1948 and
1951, the economic buildup, and issues of national security. But these concerns did not necessarily overshadow
an awareness of the Holocaust. The young State of Israel imitated models of collective memorial that European
countries had created in the wake of World War I, such as memorial statues, martyrs' forests, remembrance days,
and museums. The Yad Vashem Law, which was initiated even before the founding-of the state and was passed in
1953, aimed at preserving the memory of the Holocaust and ensuring that it remain a central component in Israel's
historical consciousness. The objective of Yad Vashem was to perpetuate all the various aspects and facets of the
Holocaust, whether through documentation or by way of personal testimonies of the survivors. Its purpose was to
ascertain that the factual elements of the Holocaust were fully recorded for the sake of generations to come. "The
Law for the Punishment of Nazis and Their Accomplices" (1950) was based on similar legislation passed by
European countries that had suffered Nazi occupation. Its object was to bring to law Jews who had collaborated
with the Germans. Israel viewed itself as the retroactive representative of the annihilated Jewish nation and was
accepted as such by most of the countries of the Western world. Hence, accusations were lodged throughout the
1950s and trials were conducted of Jews who had served as kapos or bore other positions under the Nazi regime
and were suspected of harming their brethren. The Holocaust Remembrance Day Law (established within the Yad
Vashem Law in 1953 but not implemented until 1959) aimed at emphasizing the importance of the event in the
history of the Jewish people, just as other national and religious disasters had been memorialized.

The Holocaust never left the public agenda throughout the 1950s. In 1952 the issue of reparations from Germany
arose. Ben-Gurion's agreements with West Germany for the payment of reparations for confiscated Jewish
property and personal reparations for survivors of the Holocaust caused an unprecedented public outcry in the
country. The confrontation between those who supported the agreement and those who opposed it revealed the
tendency for politicization of the Holocaust memory, making use of it for attacking the ruling Mapai party (Israeli
Labor Party). This inclination had been evident from the moment news about the Holocaust had become known.
The reparations agreement had the support of those who were in favor of the government, whereas those against

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 4 of 15

the government -- both on the left and on the right -- used the memory of the Holocaust in their rhetoric against the
agreement. The left, both Zionist and non-Zionist, opposed an agreement that lent legitimacy to West Germany
(communist East Germany, on the other hand, was seen as "different"). The surviving ghetto fighters, the most
notable of whom were members of Mapam (the leftist United Workers' Party), joined the Israeli Communist Party in
their sharp opposition to the reparations agreement. On the right of the political arena, Menahem Begin used the
memory of the Holocaust as a lever for renewing the popularity of his Herut party, which had failed dismally in the
second Knesset elections in 1951 (a drop from 14 to 8 representatives), and turned the Knesset courtyard into a
battleground between opposers of the agreement and the police. Israeli public opinion, together with the media,
was held for months by the issue and its slogans: "We shall not agree to sell the blood of our brothers for money,"
on the one hand, vied ruthlessly with "Hast thou killed and also taken possession" for the heart of the people, on
the other. In the 1950s, public opinion polls were uncommon. It is hard, therefore, to determine majority opinion on
this sensitive topic and the position of the Holocaust survivors themselves. Since then, the issue of Israel's
relations with Germany has remained touchy and painful, and each time it has been raised the memory of the
Holocaust has also been in the center of the debate.

In 1953 Yisrael Kastner submitted his complaint against Malchiel Grünwald, and in 1954 this turned into what
became known as the "Kastner trial." The trial made headlines throughout the year and continued to hold the
public's interest for quite some time thereafter, first as a result of Justice Benjamin Halevy's verdict ("Kastner sold
his soul to the devil") and, later, with Kastner's assassination in 1957 by right-wing extremists. The popular press,
Maariv and Haolam Hazeh, gave the affair widespread coverage. This was the first time that the Israeli public had
been exposed to stories of wartime rescue attempts and the moral dilemmas involved in negotiating with the
Nazis.(2) The perception of the Holocaust commonly held at the time by the media, in political rhetoric, and even in
educational messages was one-sided, simplistic, and self-righteous: active resistance, in the form of revolt or
guerrilla fighting, was considered the only kind worthy of commendation. There was criticism, both covert and
overt, toward the large majority of the Jewish people, who went, unresisting, to their death. This criticism reflected
a total misconception of life under Nazi rule and an unrealistic expectation of what could have been done by a
mass of men, women, and children under these circumstances. The idea of passive resistance as a way of
surviving or preserving human dignity did not at the time succeed in gaining respect in the collective memory. For
example, Nathan Alterman's struggle against this simplistic concept was at once the struggle for a different
conception of the Holocaust and an attempt to justify the Mapai policy, which had been identified by its opponents
with the collaborative Judenräte.(3) This identification had begun during World War II, when IZL created the
analogy: Judenräte are to Nazis as the Jewish Agency is to the British. They were presented as two examples of
collaboration with the enemies of the Jews, as opposed to the "heroes of the underground," both "here" and "there."
Expectations of Jewish heroism in the Diaspora were not limited to any particular group, nor did they depend on
any political bent: the fierce attacks on Kastner -- who symbolized "pleading," the traditional Jewish way, as
opposed to the proud stance of the fighting Jew -- came at once from the left and from the right, from the
nationalists and from the socialists. Mapai appeared to represent a traditional, despicable, Jewish reaction,
whereas the political periphery proudly bore the flag of national dignity.

A review of current literature reveals a long and impressive list of Holocaust-related poetry. In addition to A. Z.
Greenberg, A. Shlonsky, and Nathan Alterman, young poets such as Amir Gilboa, Zerubavel Gilad, Haim Guri, B.
Galai, T. Carmi, Abba Kovner, and other Holocaust survivors published work that dealt with experiences connected
with the Holocaust. Avigdor Hameiri, Ka-Tsetnik, Hanoch Bartov, Yehudit Hendel, A. Orlev, and J. and A. Sand
based their stories on subjects connected with the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors as early as the 1950s.(4)
This notwithstanding, most of the cultural activity surrounding the Holocaust at the time was the fruit of public (as
opposed to personal) initiative. An extensive and extremely impressive documentation project began: the
publication of memoirs by the ghetto-revolt leaders; a book of the ghetto battles; the beginning of the "In Memoria"

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 5 of 15

books project and the traditional community books published by the various Landsmannschaft organizations;(5)
establishment of a records and research library at Yad Vashem; and much more. Thus, the claim that the
Holocaust as a mythical-cultural issue found no expression at the time requires certain qualification, as indeed
does the claim that it had disappeared from the public agenda. One might claim that the over-simplified way in
which it was presented did not relate to the vast majority of the Jewish people and emphasized marginal
phenomena, such as the active resistance, while ignoring the central issues. But the statement that the Holocaust
had no presence in Israeli public life is not corroborated by fact.

Even before the founding of Israel, the Yishuv establishment incorporated the Holocaust within the myth of the
state. The question of whether the State of Israel would have come into being were it not for the Holocaust will
remain unanswered, because the Holocaust did take place and the State of Israel did come into being. In my
opinion, the State of Israel would have been established notwithstanding the Holocaust because of the nation-
building processes that were taking place in Palestine and in the Diaspora and that had already come to fruition by
the eve of World War II. However, we must not disregard the significant role played by the Holocaust in galvanizing
American Jewry into a political force that played a central role in the struggle for the Jewish state. Furthermore,
the Holocaust may, to a certain extent, have had some impact on several of the United Nations member states who
voted in favor of founding a Jewish state. In any case, the fact remains that the Holocaust was incorporated in the
myth of the state from its very beginning. As soon as news came of the destruction, the Holocaust was used as
evidence to prove the justice of the Zionist concept: look what happens to a people with no country of its own! Had
the Jewish people had a country of their own, they could have found refuge in it; they would also have been able to
protect themselves.

The discussions that took place between the world wars on the preferred solution to the Jewish question (that is,
Diaspora-oriented solutions to the "Jewish Question"), such as assimilation or national cultural autonomy, on the
one hand, and the Zionist-Palestine-oriented solution, on the other, turned out to be irrelevant in the wake of the
European cataclysm. True, Zionism did not succeed in saving millions of Jews, but then the Diaspora-oriented
solutions ended up in Auschwitz. At the end of World War II, Zionism seemed to be the only path open to the
rehabilitation of Jewish existence, whether on a personal or on a collective level. It gave the survivors of the
Holocaust -- and in this respect, the entire Jewish people could be considered survivors -- a positive objective to
which to set their sights, a focus of belonging and identity that was so vital at a time when all the anchors had
been pulled loose. The state was meant to come as something of a compensation to the Jews for the Holocaust:
the Christian world had a debt to pay to the Jewish people, and it was inconceivable that this debt would go
unacknowledged.

Holocaust rhetoric appeared in the speeches of Ben-Gurion and other leaders even prior to the founding of the
state.(6) The Holocaust became one of the sources of legitimacy for the state, both internally and externally. Thus,
documenting the Holocaust and its memory were important to the official Israel. No attempts were made to erase
or blur the memory of the Holocaust. On the contrary: the instruments of the state were used to promote the myth
of the Holocaust and the myth of Redemption as the two poles of Jewish experience in the twentieth century. As a
result, the Holocaust did not disappear from the collective memory, and there was no repression or silencing. The
Holocaust played a major role in explaining Israel's position in the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, in presenting
Arab antisemitism as one branch of the "Jew-hating Nazi" trunk, the covert message was the memory of the
Holocaust: antisemitism must never be disregarded; we already know where it can lead. This was also the reason
for the swift response each time danger threatened any group of Jews: we must never again make the mistake of
deluding ourselves and underestimating the danger. The Holocaust was constantly present in the thoughts of
Israel's leaders, who lived in the shadow of the trauma of total destruction -- a feasible possibility based on
historical experience. To what extent did the experience of the Holocaust shape their positions at moments of

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 6 of 15

decision? It is doubtful that historical sources are capable of giving an answer to this question, but one can
speculate.

The use of the Holocaust as one of the sources of legitimacy for the state gave birth to the counter claim: the use
of the Holocaust for the sake of de-legitimizing the state's existence. The first claim in the narrative of de-
legitimization was that the Zionists failed to save the people. This claim was first voiced by ultra-Orthodox Jewish
circles, who prior to the Holocaust had refused to hold any kind of dialogue with the Zionists. Their argument at
first was that the Zionists preferred to save their own kind and did nothing to save the ultra-Orthodox. This was a
hidden attempt to contradict the Zionist claim of representing the entire Jewish people. They then explained away
the Holocaust as being the result of the Zionist rebellion against heaven, violating the three oaths that God made
the people of Israel swear as a condition to their survival in the Diaspora.(7)

After several decades of almost total eclipse, with the Holocaust drawing farther away in time, supporters of the
Diaspora existence as the natural and desirable Jewish experience, such as the Bundists, reappeared. Zionism was
now blamed for sweeping aside all alternative solutions to the Jewish problem, or at least for denying them any
part in the national collective memory.(8) Further to this train of thought, which attempted to undermine post-
Holocaust Zionist centrality, Israel was accused of manipulating those who had survived the horrors, reinforcing
its own position in world public opinion by exploiting their suffering. The truth of the matter, claimed the critics,
was that the survivors were not Zionists and did not wish to come to Israel but had been forced to do so; they had
no choice, since no other country was willing to open its gates to them.(9) Between the lines was the contention
that it had been Zionism's duty to help the Holocaust survivors make their way to any place on the face of the
earth, rather than to advance Zionist objectives. And as if this were not sufficient, continued the de-legitimization
argument, when the survivors arrived in Israel they were sent straight off the ships and into heavy fighting, forced
to shed their blood for the motherland. The state did not offer a true solution to the misery of the Holocaust
survivors.(10) While incapable of solving the survivors' human problem, Israel created another one by
dispossessing the Arab population of its homeland. So one injustice caused another.(11)

In the narrative that demonized the state with the assistance of the memory of the Holocaust, Ben-Gurion was
given a key role. An unfortunate remark he made in 1938 was quoted repeatedly -- that he would rather save half
the Jewish children from Germany by bringing them to Palestine than all Jewish children by having them emigrate
to Britain. He made this remark when the perspective was one of hardship and persecution, not of annihilation.
Later, he was accused of being insensitive toward the entire Holocaust issue.(12) Indeed, this particular
accusation has some substance. The meaning of Ben Gurion's relative silence with regard to the survivors and the
Holocaust as a human experience, as opposed to the rhetoric of the Holocaust -- whether this was due to
indifference, or to feelings of guilt -- is unanswerable. Ben-Gurion was accused of nurturing the concept of
statehood at the expense of the memory of the Holocaust,(13) as if these two were necessarily contradictory
issues. In the same context, secular Israeli culture was presented as an antithesis to the culture of the Diaspora,
which was identified with Jewish religious tradition and with the Holocaust. Indeed, Ben-Gurion loathed Diaspora
life and never went back on his acerbic criticism that denigrated Jewish Diaspora existence. He had no feelings of
nostalgia toward the old Jewish world that had been destroyed. Nor did he see the new secular Jewish culture that
had developed in Israel as being inferior in any way to that of the shtetl. But what is the causality between this and
the memory of the Holocaust? The same Ben-Gurion, blamed as he was of suppressing the memory of the
Holocaust and of making cynical political use of the survivors' distress, was also responsible for securing
Eichmann's arrest and subsequent trial in Israel. Making Eichmann stand trial in Israel was meant to reinforce the
memory of the Holocaust among the country's young people and new immigrants from the Islamic countries, who
knew very little about the Holocaust. Now Ben-Gurion was being blamed for trying to overtake the memory of the
Holocaust in order to turn it into a myth to bind the nation together. It so happened, therefore, that he was accused

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 7 of 15

at once of suppressing the memory of the Holocaust and of turning the Eichmann trial into a show for the purpose
of nurturing the myth of the Holocaust and the state.(14)

The memory of the Holocaust, as part of the "foundation myth" of Israel, had been nurtured as early as the 1940s.
How, then, had the image of repression and silencing developed? To understand this, we should differentiate
between private memory and public memory. Within the scope of public rhetoric, the Holocaust served both as a
reason and as a myth, legitimization and explanation -- whether for the sake of internal politics or for the sake of
Israeli foreign policy. This dates back to the time of the pre-state struggle and has been just as true, of course,
since the establishment of the state. The memory of the Holocaust as a key event in Jewish history was raised
over and over again. It was always related in massive terms: six million Jews; Auschwitz; Maidanek; Treblinka. The
private holocausts of the survivors did not serve as a topic for discussion or interest. The collective memory was a
blanket that hid all vestige of private memory, of personal experience.

It was through private memories of the Holocaust that the Holocaust ceased to be huge, anonymous, and, as a
result, inconceivable. It is through private memory that one becomes acquainted with the Holocaust, whether as a
survivor (as someone who has had personal experience of the Holocaust) or as a member of the Jewish people
who gets to know the Holocaust and appropriates it as part of his or her own inner world. The process through
which private memories were seeped into the general consciousness came to a halt during the years of
"silence/silencing." The "big" collective memory was not subject to the process of repression. But the process did
affect the "small" personal memories of the survivors. Several trends combined here. First, the pre-state struggle,
the War of Independence, and the subsequent mass immigration were revolutionary processes that sapped the
emotional energy of veteran Israelis and newcomers alike. Second, the ethic of bereavement accepted at the time
was one of controlled, inhibited behavior. One's personal, private bereavement was considered something that had
to be hidden -- pull yourself together and get on with your life. In many cases, individuals found some consolation
in the knowledge that they were not alone in their tragedy, that many others around them had suffered a similar
fate. The Holocaust survivors were not the only ones who were expected to conceal their pain. Mourning for the six
thousand young men and women who fell in the War of Independence was also subdued. Everyone was busy with
reconstruction. This was considered the proper remedy for loss and pain. Perhaps it was. Life was hard in those
days: people had to take care of basic needs: employment, housing, education, starting a new family. The instinct
for survival and the desire to rehabilitate oneself were predominant.

The result was a conspiracy of silence: the veterans chose not to ask, perhaps in the belief that politeness required
one not to ask embarrassing questions or because it was too hard to listen or to absorb the things survivors had to
tell. The new immigrants preferred not to speak: just a few years separated them from the tragedy. The wounds
had not yet healed, and the slightest touch opened them anew. Immediately following liberation, the survivors had
related over and over again what they had been through, as if obsessed, powerless to stop the fountain of
suffering. But then the big silence set in. All of their mental and emotional faculties were recruited to rehabilitate
their lives and build a future, and they did not have the strength to dwell on the past. The survivors did their best to
integrate into Israeli society as quickly as possible. Memories from "there" seemed more of a hurdle than a bridge
to Israeliness. Those memories were not something to boast about: they projected weakness and helplessness,
they called for pity. On one level the survivors wanted to tell their stories in order to awaken in their listeners
feelings of sympathy and compassion. But on another level they felt that anyone worthy of compassion could not
be seen as an equal, that the survivors would always be in a position of inferiority to the person offering
compassion. Thus they preferred not to awaken the memory, not to talk about those years, not even to their
children. The conspiracy of silence was maintained even within the family.

The messages broadcast by Israeli society were very clear with regard to desirable and normative behavior as well

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 8 of 15

as to the less desirable and inappropriate. To speak Hebrew with the correct accent, to adopt the values and
behavioral norms of the Israeli Labor movement -- these equaled successful social integration. Despite the fact
that Israeli society was undergoing rapid changes and taking on new and different shapes throughout the 1950s, it
was still controlled by the messages and values of the old Yishuv society: youth movements, the Nahal units,
kibbutz settlements on the frontiers. These were the values held in highest esteem. In truth, these norms were
practiced by no more than a small minority. The westernization of Israeli society was gaining ground, and the
values of the Labor movement no longer reflected a dynamic reality but had become an expression of nostalgia,
holding significance only for a small proportion of society. So long as a predominant spiritual culture existed in the
country, the Holocaust survivors wanted to be part of it.

The Labor movement's loss of cultural hegemony was a slow and gradual process. Furthermore, even after this
hegemony had been lost and the symbols and messages of an individualistic, over-achieving, Western society had
replaced the collective messages (according to which individuals were required to find their satisfaction by
contributing to the society in which they lived), relics of the earlier culture were still so strong as to make it seem to
be still in power. By the 1970s these processes had come to fruition as a result of social, economic, and cultural
changes in Israeli society. The political event that best symbolized the change was the 1977 political overthrow.
That was when private memories of the Holocaust began seeping through. Was it mere chance that Saul
Friedlander called his 1980 book When Memory Comes?(15)

There is interaction between public memory and private memory. As the public memory changed and absorbed the
transformations that occurred in the Israeli self-image -- as a result of the Six Day War and the Yom Kipur War -- so
private memory became more legitimate. It is no coincidence that in the 1970s books began appearing in
evergrowing numbers that aimed at describing not only the fate of the fighting minority among the Jews but also
the existential experiences of ordinary people who had struggled to survive, had contended with moral dilemmas,
and had known pain and degradation.(16) Zvi Dror's series of "Testimony Pages" (96 testimonies of members of
kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot) was one of the first projects to coax the mute to speak.(17) Yet written records of
private memories were not sufficient, because they contain an element of distance and concealment. The
documentation of private memory was extended to visual exposure, on video tapes and film, to reveal the ways in
which survivors were coming to terms with their pasts.

Public memory tended to make use of high-flown rhetoric, to speak on behalf of Jewish history and on behalf of
age-old accounts between the Jewish people and the non-Jews. It evaded embarrassing details, harsh
descriptions, and cruel day-to-day experiences. Private memory spoke in lower tones, touched the points of pain,
and exposed the weakness, the things they had been ashamed of talking about before. The memory of the
Holocaust became composed of thousands of memories and experiences that differed according to gender, age,
cultural and social background, and existential reality. Legitimization of different experiences now replaced the
hidden critical stance that was the common attitude toward the survivors during the years of silence, and it
replaced the demand for a single kind of Israeli identity.

Throughout the years in which private memory was dormant, the Holocaust was not seen as a personal, human
experience. It was larger than life. It was history, destiny, a past that relates to the future. It happened to other
people, in other places. It was not part of our experience except on a declarative, rhetorical level. It did not require
acquaintance, understanding, or internalization. This is why jokes could be told about the "soaps" -- that depiction
of a non-Sabra character, meek and lacking in daring and courage -- alluding to the rumors that the Nazis had used
the fat of Jews in manufacturing soap. It is why Jews from Eastern countries could call out in anger at their
Ashkenazi brethren: "What a shame that Hitler didn't finish off the lot of you."

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 9 of 15

The penetration of the Holocaust into personal awareness was a slow and gradual process in which the exposure
of private memory played a major role. The recognition that the Holocaust was not merely something that
happened to other people in another place but is part of Israeli collective identity -- in the direct and experiential
sense rather than in the distant and abstract one -- is the significant change that has taken place, in the integration
of the Holocaust into the Israeli experience. Now everyone wants to share in the Holocaust experience and to take
part in perpetuating it. A good example of this is the way in which North African Jews now emphasize the fact that
they, too, had been destined to share the fate of the Jews of Europe but that only chance and the fickleness of war
saved them from annihilation.

Private memories of the Holocaust began showing up at a time when the veteran pre-state Israeli identity was in
decline and new elites were taking over. Memories of the Holocaust surged to the surface when it became the
vogue to criticize Israeli society for its role as an integrating society during the 1950s. The immigrants from
Eastern countries came out sharply against the way in which they had been treated. Their protests against
attempts that had been made during the years of mass immigration to make them fit into a new, uniform Israeli
identity were shared by many of the Holocaust survivors. Indeed, at the time, they had adopted the Yishuv identity
without reserve, seeing in this a symbol of their successful integration into Israeli society. But from a perspective
of time, the pain and misery involved in integration now floated up to the surface: the need to give up the culture
and way of life in which they had been brought up, the values and norms they had known in their parents' home,
the language difficulties, the social norms they were now expected to adopt, insults (real or imagined) they were
encountering, and all the expressions rampant at the time against the survivors that cut at their flesh while they
were unable to respond for fear of being identified as "one of them." It was only now, when they had become an
integral part of the country's social and cultural fabric, that they felt sufficiently secure as full-fledged Israelis to
come forth and demand a rehabilitation of their private memory into the collective memory. What they wanted was
recognition of their contribution to the founding of the state, of their struggle in displaced persons' camps and
along illegal immigration routes. They wanted the stories of the trials and tribulations they had encountered on
their way to Israel to be told, not as the heroic tales of the emissaries of the Yishuv and Palmah but as the saga of
survivors from hell who, after all they had been through during the war, served as spearheads in the Zionist
struggle for the State of Israel. They wanted the story of Gahal ("recruits from abroad") in the War of Independence
to be told in all its rightful glory, and they wanted their role in the foundation of Israel to be alloted the place it
deserves in the state's annals. There were those among them who now expressed the pent-up bitterness of bygone
years against Israel's sins as an immigrant-integrating society. But, unlike the criticism that tried to undermine the
very legitimacy of the state, that of the survivors made no attempt to destroy the myth of the state; rather, they
demanded their right to be recognized as part of it. They did not assert that they would have been pleased, at the
time, to have been given the possibility of emigrating to another country. They did not protest the fact that the
Zionists made use of them in the pre-state struggle. They even refrained from complaining about having been sent
straight to battle in the War of Independence. They did express hurt and bitterness at the lack of human warmth, at
the insensitivity of Israeli society toward their pain, at the alienation that was exhibited toward them instead of the
open-armed welcome they had expected. They expected somehow that the state would replace for them the
families they had lost; it did not. But this was the criticism of people who belong to the system and wish only that
the system recognize their rights, absorb their experiences and feelings into its collective memory, and give them
due respect. By exposing the private memory of the Holocaust, the survivors were expressing their sense of being
a part of Israeli society and their conviction that society was mature enough now to absorb their own hidden pain.

It is possible to differentiate between three main attitudes toward the memory of the Holocaust. The first is the
official attitude, that which sees in the Holocaust one of the sources of legitimization for the State of Israel and
which is generally expressed in the fact that all visiting heads of state are taken to visit Yad Vashem. It views the
Holocaust as one of the main factors of Jewish and Israeli identity, the thread that unites Israel with the Jews of

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 10 of 15

the Diaspora. These issues are given expression in the tours made by groups of young Israelis to the death camps
in Poland, which include meetings with Jewish youth from the Diaspora who have also gone through the same
educational experience.

The second attitude is the private one that expresses itself in the tireless efforts of Holocaust survivors to instill in
the younger generation a sense of the Holocaust by relating and recording memories and by emphasizing their role
in the foundation myth of the State of Israel. Here the second and third generations of Holocaust survivors play an
important role in adopting and appropriating the memory. It is in them, probably, that the connecting link exists
between official and private memory, since they are products of both memory systems.

The third attitude is the one that tries to present the Holocaust as a myth against the state, as an anti-narrative of
the state. This attitude attempts to deny the state the right to represent the Jewish nation in general and the
survivors of the Holocaust in particular. It aims at presenting the Holocaust not as part of Israeli identity but as the
source of an alternative identity, unlinked to territory, whose dominion is the memory of the Jewish diasporic past,
non- and supra-national, which focuses on and is symbolized by the Holocaust. Attempts at presenting the Jewish
diasporic past as superior in the moral sense, vis-à-vis the current national-sovereign existence, aim at stressing
the transcendence of universal values over particular values, of citizenship of the world over citizenship of the
state.

Under Nazi rule, the category that decided between life and death was a deterministic one, that of ethnic origin,
regardless of religion, outlook, country of origin, and education. Today the Holocaust is used as the historic
substantiation for ignoring the ethnic category, serving as a basis for a substitute universal ideology. Holocaust
narrative disassociates itself from Jews and from the concrete historical events; it turns into a metaphor for the
suffering of the universally oppressed.

The discussion regarding private memory and its integration into the collective memory of the Holocaust in Israel
cannot be complete unless we compare developments in Israel to those in other countries. An analysis of the way
European countries have coped with memories of World War II and of the Holocaust reveals that the move from
the level of high rhetoric to that of human experience in these countries has taken place only over the past few
decades, if at all. This is true on a policy-making level and, even more so, on a social and cultural level. Holland,
France, Italy, and even Germany have only recently begun to study the Holocaust as part of their own internal
social history and no longer as an aspect of society under foreign occupation.(18) It is doubtful that this process
has yet begun in the countries of Eastern Europe. And even the Jewish community in the United States has been
late in coping with the Holocaust memory; the survivors were in no hurry to open their hearts to the Jewish
community integrating them, and only during the past 20 years did a wave of memoirs and recorded testimonies
begin sweeping the community. It would seem that the "years of silence" were not exclusive to Israel but universal,
a fact that requires renewed analysis of the various theories accepted in historical research with regard to this
phenomenon. Did the myth of the State of Israel indeed repress the memory of the Holocaust -- at the same time
as this was repressed in other countries? Was Ben-Gurion's "statehood" concept responsible, when it appears to
exist in Jewish communities in which the Jewish identity has nothing to do with Jewish statehood? Is Zionism
indeed responsible for suppressing alternative memories, when these were suppressed in non-Zionist
communities as well? And, alternatively, why was private memory awakened at about the same time throughout
the Jewish world? We should look for answers to these questions not only in local psychological, political, and
social processes but also in the changes that have taken place in the status of the Holocaust survivors within their
society, their own advancing age and the age of their offspring, and their ability to cope with their past. We should
also look at the changes that have taken place in the political climate and the Zeitgeist of Western society.

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 11 of 15

The tendency to burden ourselves with guilt about the Holocaust and its survivors is natural and not baseless.
From our current perspective, there is no doubt that during and after the Holocaust we could have acted more
decisively, shown greater sympathy, sacrificed more of ourselves, and been more patient, understanding, and
loving. If these feelings of guilt are now helping us to open ourselves up to the private memories of the Holocaust
survivors and to better understand the Holocaust as our own experience, then that is all to the good. But we must
not let these feelings distort historical perspective. Guilt feelings are no less a bad historical adviser than are
feelings of nostalgia, blind admiration, or any other kind of apologetics.

Notes

(1) See Tom Segev, The Seventh Million (New York, 1993); Idith Zartal, Zehavam shel ha-yehudim (Tel Aviv, 1996);
and Zartal, "Hameunim veha-kedoshim: Kinunah shel martirologyah leumit," Zmanim 48 (1994): 26-45. See also
Zartal, "Haroshet hazikaron," Haaretz, April 12, 1996, and Zartal's interview with Dalia Karpel, "Al gabam shel
hanitsolim," Haaretz supplement, May 31, 1996, and responses in the Haaretz supplement, June 7, 1996; Avi
Katsman "Mul ha-dan ha-shotek," Efes shtayim 2 (Winter 1993) and the response by Dan Miron, "Mul dimot ha-
tanin," Efes shtayim 2 (Winter 1993); Anita Shapira, Land and Power (New York, 1992), 319-52; Shabtai Tevet, "Ha-
hor ha-shahor-Ben Gurion ben shoah li-tekumah," Alpayim 10 (1994): 111-95; Tuvyah Friling, "Ha-milyon hashevii
ke-mitsad ha-ivelet veharishut shel ha-tenuah ha-tsiyonit," Iyunim bi-tekumat Yisrael 2 (1992): 317-67; and Hanokh
Bartov, Ani lo ha-tsabar ha-mitologi (Tel Aviv, 1995). It is worth pointing out the film "Ha-makah ha-81" (released in
1974) and the television film by Ornah Ben Dov, "Shever anan" (broadcast on Israeli television, June 1989).

(2) See Yehiam Weirs, Ha-ish shenirtsah paamayim, hayav, mishpato, u-moto shel Dr. Yisrael Kastner (Jerusalem,
1995).

(3) Nathan Alterman, Al shtei haderakhim, dapim meha-yoman, ed. Dan Laor (Tel Aviv, 1989).

(4) See Hannah Yaoz Kest, Ha-nigun veha-zeakah: Mehkar be-shirat hashoah shel meshorerei shnot ha-40 (Tel
Aviv, 1985), as well as her Sifrut ha-shoah be-ivrit (Tel Aviv; 1980) and Ha-shoah be-shirat dor ha-medinah (Tel Aviv,
1984). The following are some examples of poets and writers who were not Holocaust survivors but were quick to
publish work on the Holocaust: Uri Zvi Greenberg, Rehovot ha-nahar, sefer ha-eyaliyut veha-koah (Jerusalem,
1951); Avraham Shlonsky, Shirim, vol. 2 (Merhavyah, 1954); Nathan Alterman, Ha-tur ha-shevii, shirei ha-et veha-
iton, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1950), Ha-tur ha-shevii, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1954), and Ir ha-yonah (Tel Aviv, 1957); and Amir
Gilboa, Sheva rashuyot (Merhavyah, 1949), and Shirim ba-boker ba-boker (Tel Aviv, 1953). For prose, see Avigdor
Hameiri, Ha-mashiah halavan (Tel Aviv, 1948); Yehudit Hendel, Anashim aherim hem (Merhavyah, 1950); Uri
Orlovsky, Hayalei oferet (Merhavyah, 1956); and Hanokh Bartov, Shesh knafayim la-ehad (Merhavyah, 1954).

(5) On the matter of In Memoria books and community registers, see Judy Tidor Baumel, "Lezikhron olam:
Hantsahat hashoah bi-yedei ha-prat veha-kehilah bi-medinat Yisrael," Iyunim bi-tekumat Israel 5 (1995).

(6) See Shapira, Land and Power. A characteristic example of Ben-Gurion's rhetoric at the time is his speech at the
Zionist World Conference in London on August 2, 1945: "We have no future, without a state" (in Bamaarakhah, 4
vols. [Tel Aviv, 1949], 1: 206-21).

(7) Menachem Friedman, "The Haredim and the Holocaust," The Jerusalem Quarterly 53 (Winter 1990): 86-114;
Dina Porat, "Amalek's Accomplices: Blaming Zionism for the Holocaust; Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel
During the 1980's," Journal of Contemporary History 27 (1992): 695-729. See also David Assaf's article "Shodedei
ha-zikaron," Haaretz, February 17, 1995.

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 12 of 15

(8) See, for example, Yosi Grodzenski's articles in the Haaretz Literature and Culture supplements, April 8, April 15,
and July 15, 1994.

(9) See, for example, Segev, Seventh Million, 116, 164; Zartal, "Al gabam shel hanitzolim"; and Zartal, "Ha-meunim
veha-kedoshim." This is the central thesis of Zartal's book Zehavam shel ha-yehudim.

(10) See Mati Meged in an interview with Tamar Maroz, "Sheon hahol," Haaretz, January 9, 1987, and in "Reayon ve-
shivro," Haaretz, February 4, 1987; see also Gabi Daniel [Benjamin Harshav], "Peter ha-gadol," Agra 2 (1985/86).

(11) See Amnon Raz-Krakotskin, "Galut be-tokh ribonut: Levikoret `shlilat ha-galut ba-tarbut ha-yisrelit,'" Teoryah u-
vikoret 4 (Fall 1993); Ilan Pappe, "Shiur be-historyah hadashah," Haaretz June 24, 1994; and Dany Rabinovitz, "Ha-
het ha-kadmon shel Yisrael," Haaretz, April 10, 1994.

(12) Segev, Seventh Million, 78, 85, 86, 175. Segev also made this accusation in a television program following his
book. See also Zartal, "Ha-meunim vehakedoshim."

(13) See Eliezer Don Yehiya's interesting paper that offers this explanation ("Memory and Political Culture: Israeli
Society and the Holocaust," Studies in Contemporary Jewry 9 [1993]:13962).

(14) Segev, Seventh Million, 311, 312, 320, 327, 335. Eliezer Don Yehiya ("Memory and Political Culture") presents
Harold Fisch's concept, whereby the trial was intended to show Israel's strength and to atone for the helplessness
of the Jews of the Diaspora. This analysis is not supported by current sources, and it seems to me to be one of the
weaker points in the paper. The paper does not refer to Ben-Gurion's own words with respect to the aims of the
trial, which is unfortunate.

(15) Saul Friedlander, Im bo ha-zikaron (Jerusalem, 1980).

(16) Baumel, "Lezichron olam," connects this turn of events with the advanced age of the survivors and with their
economic advancement. I concur with this assessment but would also stress the importance of the changes that
have taken place in the Israeli ethos.

(17) Zvi Dror, Dapei edut (Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-getaot, 1984).

(18) As for France, see Henri Rousso, Vichy Syndrome: History. and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge,
Mass., 1994). As for American Jewry, see Peter Novick, "Holocaust Memory in America," in The Art of Memory:
Holocaust Memorials in History, James Young, ed. (New York, 1994).

DETAILS

Subject: Crime; Culture; Holocaust; International; Jews; Minority &ethnic groups; Politics;
Traditions

Location: Israel

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 13 of 15

People: Kastner, Yisrael

Ethnicity: Jewish

Publication title: Jewish Social Studies; Bloomington

Volume: 4

Issue: 2

Pages: 40

Number of pages: 0

Publication year: 1998

Publication date: Jan 31, 1998

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Place of publication: Bloomington

Country of publication: United States, Bloomington

Publication subject: Social Sciences: Comprehensive Works, Religions And Theology--Judaic, Jewish,
Ethnic Interests

ISSN: 00216704

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

Accession number: SFLNSJSST0998JSLR184000002

ProQuest document ID: 195506070

Document URL: https://ezproxy.ivc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/195506070

?accountid=39837

Copyright: Copyright Indiana University Press Jan 31, 1998

Last updated: 2017-11-10

Database: Research Library

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 14 of 15

Database copyright  2018 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.

Terms and Conditions Contact ProQuest

PDF GENERATED BY SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 15 of 15