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We Were Children Just Like You
- GenresHolocaust
121 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1990
About the author
Yaffa Eliach
8 books10 followersYaffa Eliach (b. Yaffa Sonenson, Eišiškės, (Yiddish: אישישוק/Eishyshok) 31 May 1937) is a historian, author, and scholar of Judaic Studies and the Holocaust. She is probably best known for creating the “Tower of Life” made up by 1,500 photographs for permanent display at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Yaffa Eliach was born Yaffa Sonenson to a Jewish family in Eishyshok near Vilna, now Eišiškės, Lithuania, a small town inhabited roughly in equal numbers by Jews and Poles until the Holocaust, where she lived until she was four years old. When the town was occupied by the Germans in June 1941 and most of the Jewish population was murdered by the Germans and Lithuanians, she and her family hid and survived in hiding places in the Eishyshok vicinity. Upon returning to Eishyshok after the arrival of the soviet forces in 1944, her mother and a brother were killed when the village, now occupied by the soviet army and security services (NKVD) was attacked by the Polish Home Army (AK) attempting to liberate Polish soldiers arrested by the soviet occupying forces. The Sonensons were hosting an officer of SMIERSH, soviet counter-intelligence (Yaffa Sonenson's father joined the soviet NKVD forces and helped them fight and arrest the Polish resistance, becoming a levtenant). The Russian officer and several of his soldiers have fired on the arriving Home Army from the Sonensons' house and as a result of a short exchange of fire there were at least three civilian casualties, a Polish woman and two above-mentioned Sonenson's family mambers . Later Yaffa Eliach accused the Polish Home Army of antisemitic motivation of the attack, however, her interpretation was found groundless by Polish historians as well as reputed Israeli scholars, including professor I.Gutman ("Znak", July, 2000).
Eliach emigrated to Palestine in 1946, and later to the United States in 1954. She received her BA in 1967 and her MA in 1969 from Brooklyn College, New York and a Ph.D. in 1973 from City University of New York in Russian intellectual history, studying under Saul Lieberman and Salo Baron.
Since 1969, Eliach was professor of history and literature in the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, and founded and served as director of the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn. She was a member of President Jimmy Carter's Commission on the Holocaust in 1978-79 and accompanied his fact-finding mission to Eastern Europe in 1979. She has been a frequent lecturer at numerous conferences and educational venues and has appeared on television several times in documentaries and interviews. She has written several books and has contributed to Encyclopaedia Judaica, The Women's Studies Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopedia of Hasidism.
Eliach has devoted herself to the preservation of memory of the Holocaust specifically from the perspective of a survivor's vantage point. She has also preserved her memories (via lecture) on video and audiocassettes. Her research has provided much material used in courses on the Holocaust in the United States.
Eliach thinks her generation “is the last link with the Holocaust”, and considers it her responsibility to document the tragedy in terms of life, not death, bringing the Jews back to life. In memory of her native Eishyshok she has written Once There Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (1998), recounting the colorful Jewish life of Eishyshok. Also in memory of the town, Eliach created the “Tower of Life”, a permanent exhibit which contains approximately 1,500 photos of Jews in Eishyshok before the arrival of the Germans for the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C..
In 1953, Eliach married David Eliach, now principal emeritus of the Yeshivah of Flatbush High School. She has a daughter, Smadar Rosensweig, Professor of History at Touro College (NYC), and a son, Yotav Eliach, the principal of Rambam Mesivta High School. She has 14 grandchildren, including Itamar
Yaffa Eliach was born Yaffa Sonenson to a Jewish family in Eishyshok near Vilna, now Eišiškės, Lithuania, a small town inhabited roughly in equal numbers by Jews and Poles until the Holocaust, where she lived until she was four years old. When the town was occupied by the Germans in June 1941 and most of the Jewish population was murdered by the Germans and Lithuanians, she and her family hid and survived in hiding places in the Eishyshok vicinity. Upon returning to Eishyshok after the arrival of the soviet forces in 1944, her mother and a brother were killed when the village, now occupied by the soviet army and security services (NKVD) was attacked by the Polish Home Army (AK) attempting to liberate Polish soldiers arrested by the soviet occupying forces. The Sonensons were hosting an officer of SMIERSH, soviet counter-intelligence (Yaffa Sonenson's father joined the soviet NKVD forces and helped them fight and arrest the Polish resistance, becoming a levtenant). The Russian officer and several of his soldiers have fired on the arriving Home Army from the Sonensons' house and as a result of a short exchange of fire there were at least three civilian casualties, a Polish woman and two above-mentioned Sonenson's family mambers . Later Yaffa Eliach accused the Polish Home Army of antisemitic motivation of the attack, however, her interpretation was found groundless by Polish historians as well as reputed Israeli scholars, including professor I.Gutman ("Znak", July, 2000).
Eliach emigrated to Palestine in 1946, and later to the United States in 1954. She received her BA in 1967 and her MA in 1969 from Brooklyn College, New York and a Ph.D. in 1973 from City University of New York in Russian intellectual history, studying under Saul Lieberman and Salo Baron.
Since 1969, Eliach was professor of history and literature in the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, and founded and served as director of the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn. She was a member of President Jimmy Carter's Commission on the Holocaust in 1978-79 and accompanied his fact-finding mission to Eastern Europe in 1979. She has been a frequent lecturer at numerous conferences and educational venues and has appeared on television several times in documentaries and interviews. She has written several books and has contributed to Encyclopaedia Judaica, The Women's Studies Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopedia of Hasidism.
Eliach has devoted herself to the preservation of memory of the Holocaust specifically from the perspective of a survivor's vantage point. She has also preserved her memories (via lecture) on video and audiocassettes. Her research has provided much material used in courses on the Holocaust in the United States.
Eliach thinks her generation “is the last link with the Holocaust”, and considers it her responsibility to document the tragedy in terms of life, not death, bringing the Jews back to life. In memory of her native Eishyshok she has written Once There Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (1998), recounting the colorful Jewish life of Eishyshok. Also in memory of the town, Eliach created the “Tower of Life”, a permanent exhibit which contains approximately 1,500 photos of Jews in Eishyshok before the arrival of the Germans for the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C..
In 1953, Eliach married David Eliach, now principal emeritus of the Yeshivah of Flatbush High School. She has a daughter, Smadar Rosensweig, Professor of History at Touro College (NYC), and a son, Yotav Eliach, the principal of Rambam Mesivta High School. She has 14 grandchildren, including Itamar
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May 8, 2013
Keeping Alive the Names of Children Who Perished in the Holocaust
Of all the atrocities and cruelties the Nazis inflicted during the Holocaust, the campaigns targeting civilian children directly must rank the most savage and cowardly; such a deliberate policy was unprecedented in the course of human history. One of every four Jewish victims, a million and a half souls, was a child. The important exhibit this book documents brings together photographs of individual children, often with the name of the subject. The philosophy of Yad Vashem is that everybody had a name and that every individual must be remembered.
By nature, a photograph is complex. First, being a snapshot in time, a photograph tells what happened at precisely the moment it was taken. What was to happen in the future, be it a few moments or several years, might be entirely different. The photographs in the first section of this book, On the Eve of Destruction, are testimony to this fact; these are personal family photographs taken before the war and the deliberate campaigns of the Holocaust. The contrast of the everyday, normal life context of these photographs against what is to follow is stark indeed. Most heart-rending is a photograph of a beautiful little girl in a plaid dress and a large bow in her hair. She stands next to a prized doll, wide-eyed and smiling. She had a name: it was Mala Silberberg. What the photo does not convey is that little Mala would soon be deported to Auschwitz. When she arrived, Josef Mengele was informed of her angelic singing voice, so he asked her to sing. At the end of her song, Mengele smiled, took out his revolver, and shot her in the head at close range. Yet, little Mala's story remains.
Second, a photograph represents something the photographer wanted to convey. Most of the time, the person behind the camera was a Nazi persecutor, on orders to document the accomplishments of his comrades as a form of propaganda, which also sought to portray the Jews as helpless victims, worthy of the name Untermenschen, or sub-humans. Such photographs form the core of the work, the section titled "Under the Heel of the Oppressor." With perhaps some poetic justice, these same photographs have become an irrefutable indictment, evidence of the unspeakable crimes the Nazis committed. However, sometimes the person operating the shutter was a Jew, often a former professional photographer who, at the risk of death, sought to bear witness to the crimes of the Nazis. The photographs in this section are grouped by themes: "Seeking Refuge in a Hostile World," "Children of the Ghetto," "Open-Air Killings," "Deportation," "Concentration Camps." "Partisans," and "In Hiding." Both types of photographs appear in this section; the caption identifies those taken by Jewish photographers and, in one case, a German who was sympathetic to the Jewish plight.
The final section, "Liberation," comprises photographs taken as a means of identification, in a desperate effort to reunite children with their parents, in those rare cases that both survived. These were the photographs most likely to "survive" the war. All are of individual people. Says the curator and book's editor, Yaffa Eliach, "It is when the shutter closes that the ages, mind, and heart of the viewer must open in an attempt to comprehend what is missing from the image. Only we can see beyond the shattered fragments of the Holocaust period to the larger whole. Thus, the final step on the journey of understanding must be ours."
Of all the atrocities and cruelties the Nazis inflicted during the Holocaust, the campaigns targeting civilian children directly must rank the most savage and cowardly; such a deliberate policy was unprecedented in the course of human history. One of every four Jewish victims, a million and a half souls, was a child. The important exhibit this book documents brings together photographs of individual children, often with the name of the subject. The philosophy of Yad Vashem is that everybody had a name and that every individual must be remembered.
By nature, a photograph is complex. First, being a snapshot in time, a photograph tells what happened at precisely the moment it was taken. What was to happen in the future, be it a few moments or several years, might be entirely different. The photographs in the first section of this book, On the Eve of Destruction, are testimony to this fact; these are personal family photographs taken before the war and the deliberate campaigns of the Holocaust. The contrast of the everyday, normal life context of these photographs against what is to follow is stark indeed. Most heart-rending is a photograph of a beautiful little girl in a plaid dress and a large bow in her hair. She stands next to a prized doll, wide-eyed and smiling. She had a name: it was Mala Silberberg. What the photo does not convey is that little Mala would soon be deported to Auschwitz. When she arrived, Josef Mengele was informed of her angelic singing voice, so he asked her to sing. At the end of her song, Mengele smiled, took out his revolver, and shot her in the head at close range. Yet, little Mala's story remains.
Second, a photograph represents something the photographer wanted to convey. Most of the time, the person behind the camera was a Nazi persecutor, on orders to document the accomplishments of his comrades as a form of propaganda, which also sought to portray the Jews as helpless victims, worthy of the name Untermenschen, or sub-humans. Such photographs form the core of the work, the section titled "Under the Heel of the Oppressor." With perhaps some poetic justice, these same photographs have become an irrefutable indictment, evidence of the unspeakable crimes the Nazis committed. However, sometimes the person operating the shutter was a Jew, often a former professional photographer who, at the risk of death, sought to bear witness to the crimes of the Nazis. The photographs in this section are grouped by themes: "Seeking Refuge in a Hostile World," "Children of the Ghetto," "Open-Air Killings," "Deportation," "Concentration Camps." "Partisans," and "In Hiding." Both types of photographs appear in this section; the caption identifies those taken by Jewish photographers and, in one case, a German who was sympathetic to the Jewish plight.
The final section, "Liberation," comprises photographs taken as a means of identification, in a desperate effort to reunite children with their parents, in those rare cases that both survived. These were the photographs most likely to "survive" the war. All are of individual people. Says the curator and book's editor, Yaffa Eliach, "It is when the shutter closes that the ages, mind, and heart of the viewer must open in an attempt to comprehend what is missing from the image. Only we can see beyond the shattered fragments of the Holocaust period to the larger whole. Thus, the final step on the journey of understanding must be ours."
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