Never forgotten: Ryerson remembers Holocaust victims through education week

“Maybe it was the little things that gave them hope.”

This was an observation from a participant in one of Hillel Ryerson’s (external link)  Holocaust Education Week events that took place at the end of January. The annual education week, in partnership with the Ryerson Student Union, happens in conjunction with the international Holocaust remembrance day on January 27.

Ryerson Today attended the final event of the week, titled Never Forgotten: The Enduring Spirit of Holocaust Victims' Poetry, Art, and Music. It was led by Rabbi Ariella Rosen, a senior Jewish educator who works with post-secondary institutions through Hillel Ontario (external link) .

“It is in Jewish tradition that there are many ways in which we honour those that have passed,” said Ryerson student, Michal Aizikov, who helped organize the event. “We light candles, we pray and we dedicate sessions of learning much like this.”

Many of the six million victims of the Holocaust created powerful works of poetry, art and music during their time in ghettos, in hiding and in concentration camps.

In reflecting on these works, Rabbi Rosen points out their importance. “In many ways, I'd say these artists are heroes, because they created and preserved their take on what was happening in a way that others could experience it as well,” she said.

While music, art and poetry shed light on the unimaginable hardships that were endured by Holocaust victims, themes of strength, hope and resilience were also clear. 

Music

For example, the song Yisrolik, written about life in the ghetto from a child’s perspective, initially sounds like a tongue and cheek humorous song but goes on to invoke a sense of resourcefulness, said Rabbi Rosen.

While Song of the Partisans, with lyrics like:

So never say that you're going your last way
Although the skies filled with lead cover blue days
Our promised hour will soon come
Our marching steps ring out: 'We are here'!”

This song comes from a place of resistance, of people wanting to fight back, of the Jewish community reminding the rest of the world, “we are here.”

“There is no uniform response here to the Holocaust,” Rabbi Rosen said.  “All the different ways of coping really are more a sign of strength than anything else.”

Art

The art discussed during the event had an important distinction, Rabbi Rosen noted. Every single one of the paintings was created during the time of the Holocaust by somebody who perished in the Holocaust.

“We're really intentional about choosing art that was produced during the Holocaust, rather than art that was produced about the Holocaust,” Rabbi Rosen said. “We really wanted to make sure that the spirit of those who actually produced art during the Holocaust who were victims themselves, that they got to be seen and heard.”

Felix Nussbaum painted The Refugee in 1939. He was later killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. The painting invokes the sense of helplessness that the Jewish community was feeling at the time. As Rabbi Rosen put it, “there was this sense of, ‘we are too late to find someone else who would take us in’, and that’s a very scary sentiment.”

Alternatively, One Spring (above), is a well-known piece of Holocaust art that depicts a butterfly on the barbed wire of a concentration camp. One participant remarked, “all of a sudden, you see this yellow, specifically yellow butterfly, it's kind of like a real ray of sunshine, a ray of hope. I think that colour choice was definitely intentional.”

Poetry

The butterfly theme is also seen in poetry by Holocaust victims. The Butterfly was written by 17-year-old Pavel Friedman before he, too, was killed in Auschwitz. According to his bio, the poem was found amongst a hidden cache of children’s work recovered at the end of the Second World War.

The poem reads:

The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone. . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
in the ghetto.

It was mentioned in the discussion that butterflies were common in Holocaust art because they represent the lack of freedom Jewish people were feeling. But it was Friedman’s appreciation for little details that impressed the group.

One attendee said, “there's a lot of pain and grief and sorrow there. But it also kind of communicates to me that he's really appreciative, appreciative of the little things that he sees whether it's the butterfly, or the flowers.”