Young people caught in the crossfire of history provide fearless accounts of the horrors of war\u2014and shatter our complacency in real time<\/em><\/p>\n(Image:\u00a0In 1944, an anonymous boy detailed the last days of the Lodz Ghetto, writing in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and English in the margins and endpapers of a French novel. (Yad Vashem \/ World Holocaust Remembrance Center)<\/p>\n
The writer of these lines was far from alone in dreaming that he might one day testify to the brutality he endured at the hands of the Nazis. More than 65 diaries written by young people during the Holocaust have surfaced from Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania and the Czech lands. Although their reasons for writing varied, many diarists\u2014like the anonymous writer from Lodz\u2014viewed their words as a denunciation, a way to hold the Germans and their collaborators accountable for the unparalleled crimes they committed. These surviving fragments\u2014created by only a tiny fraction of the millions of Jews murdered\u2014are valuable beyond measure, endlessly surprising and complex accounts written inside the cataclysm itself.<\/p>\n
What does it mean to read them? What do they tell us and why do they matter? First and foremost, nothing collapses the distance between the reader and the historical past quite like a diary. Written in the moment, as events unfold, it captures the details of daily life that inevitably get lost in later accounts by historians and even survivors. What did people eat and how much? Did they bicker with siblings and parents? How did they respond to outside news of the war? What did the ghetto street look like at night? What was the mood of the ghetto from one day to the next? What were the daily hardships and the occasional reprieves? These insights are rarely found in any other source. In addition, some writers had literary ambitions beyond just documenting their days: They challenged, raged, lamented, grieved, reproached, hoped and despaired, grappling with the biggest questions of what it means to be human in a cruel world.<\/p>\n
While adults\u2019 diaries have contributed enormously to our understanding of life during the Holocaust, young diarists offer us something very different but equally valuable. Adolescents are in transition, establishing identity, exploring relationships, discovering what they have inherited and what they will embrace or reject. Teen diarists during the Holocaust faced that developmental challenge against an impossible backdrop, one in which their identities were reduced to their Jewishness, which in turn determined their fate. Young writers in particular struggle with the injustice of this, and with many other things besides: the vulnerability of youth and the loss of parents, the absence of schooling and normal life, the theft of time\u2014the brutal interruption of all that is considered the birthright of the young.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
For 25 years, I\u2019ve studied the diaries of Jewish teens in the Holocaust. Recently, as guest curator for an upcoming exhibition at Holocaust Museum Houston, titled \u201cAnd Still I Write: Young Diarists on War and Genocide,\u201d I\u2019ve read a wider range of young people\u2019s diaries in search of common themes. After the Holocaust, there were solemn promises that the world would \u201cnever again\u201d stand by while innocent civilians were murdered en masse. But in the years since, there have been wars and genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq and Syria, among other places. Diaries written by young people have survived some of these conflicts, too. These writers report on the events of war; they reflect on the way massive forces shape their personal lives; they ask why they must suffer and struggle to survive; and they affirm their humanity while they protest the injustice all around them.<\/p>\n
A number of diaries pose fresh challenges for American readers, maybe even cause discomfort and shame. During the Holocaust, Jewish teen diarists often viewed the Allied forces, including the American Army, as their liberators, the source of their deliverance and hopefully their survival. It\u2019s easy to see ourselves as the heroes of those stories. But not every writer saw events from that vantage point.<\/p>\n
At the height of U.S. involvement in World War II, young Japanese-Americans were writing diaries from inside government-run internment camps. A teenager named Stanley Hayami was imprisoned at Heart Mountain Camp in Wyoming when he voiced his frustration and despair at the impossible bind he faced. \u201cI don\u2019t see why innocent and good guys have to pay for stuff that the Japanese do,\u201d he wrote in his diary. \u201cDarn it anyhow us loyal Jap. [sic] Americans have no chance. When we\u2019re outside, people look at us suspiciously and think we\u2019re spies. Now that we\u2019re in camp, the Japs look at us and say we\u2019re bad because we still love America. And now the people outside want to take our citizenship away from us as if we\u2019re the bad ones.\u201d Hayami endured the humiliation and deprivation of internment for more than two years before he entered the Army in 1944, sent off to fight for the very country that had unjustly imprisoned him. On May 9, 1945\u2014one day after V-E Day\u2014Hayami\u2019s family learned that he had been killed in action in Italy while aiding two wounded soldiers. He was 19 years old. Hayami was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.<\/p>\n
In more recent diaries, writers see America in equally complex roles: as bystander, invader and even oppressor. It is not always comfortable, but it is deeply rewarding to read these diaries and shift our perspective. During the Serbian aggression against Bosnians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, America was among the nations that took years to effectively intervene as genocide unfolded. Nadja Halilbegovich, age 13, was keeping a diary in Sarajevo when she was injured by a bomb on October 18, 1992. More than a year later, she wrote in despair: \u201cSometimes I think that there is no hope and that we are all dying slowly while the whole world watches silently. They send us crumbs of food yet never condemn those who kill us….The aggressors kill children and rape women. The world looks on and perhaps gives us a thought while sitting in their comfortable homes and palaces. Are they unable to see?…WORLD, PLEASE WAKE UP AND HELP US!!!\u201d (In 1995, America finally intervened militarily, along with other NATO forces, and helped coordinate the negotiation of a peace agreement.) Nadja published her diary at 14 and, two years later, escaped to the United States. She now lives in Canada and advocates for children of war.<\/p>\n
Another Bosnian diarist, Zlata Filipovic, was only 10 in 1991, when she began her diary with entries on piano lessons and birthday parties. Soon she was cataloging food shortages and the deaths of friends during the siege of Sarajevo. By her final entry in October of 1993, she tallied the lethal impact of one day\u2019s bombing: 590 shells, six dead, 56 wounded. \u201cI keep thinking that we\u2019re alone in this hell,\u201d Zlata wrote. She eventually escaped with her family and now works as a documentary filmmaker in Dublin.<\/p>\n
In Syria, a young man using the pseudonym Samer began a diary in Raqqa in 2013 at the suggestion of journalists from the BBC. As ISIS took over and carried out barbaric acts against civilians, he chronicled the airstrike by the Syrian regime that killed his father as well as his own arrest and punishment of 40 lashes for cursing in the street after a neighbor\u2019s beheading by ISIS. Reflecting in his diary, he lamented: \u201cWe didn\u2019t believe the international community would stand with its arms behind its back, watching crimes being committed against unarmed people….Even though [it] could clearly see what was going on, it didn\u2019t act.\u201d Samer worked with the BBC to send his encrypted notes out of Syria; later his diary was translated into English and published as a book in Britain and America in 2017. Samer ultimately escaped Raqqa but remains trapped in Syria, a country, like so many others, in the vise of a civil war.<\/p>\n
Traditional handwritten, bound notebooks have given way to \u201cdiaries\u201d written as blogs, online journals and as entries on Facebook and Twitter. While past diarists often hoped their work might one day be read, today\u2019s writers, steeped in social media, have skipped that step entirely, posting their thoughts for consumption in real time. We may regret that many of these writings aren\u2019t preserved as tangible artifacts with yellowed pages or inky penmanship that bear witness to the authors and the passage of time. Yet how many of those handwritten diaries have been lost forever? For those who write under conditions of uncertainty and danger, technology provides a far greater chance of reaching the audience that will hear and even help them.<\/p>\n
During the Iraq War, 15-year-old \u201cHadiya\u201d wrote from the city of Mosul beginning in 2004. In her IraqiGirl blog, she expressed a fondness for Harry Potter and worried about her grades while documenting the growing conflict. \u201cLast night…I couldn\u2019t sleep because the Americans were bombarding our neighborhood,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhat should I say? I have so many things I want to write. But I can\u2019t. Until when must we follow what America says? Until when should we follow their orders? Who is America? Ha! We have the oldest civilization. We have oil. And we have the capability to rule ourselves.\u201d Excerpts from her blog were published as a book in 2009, but she continues to post on IraqiGirl even today. After she escaped Mosul, Hadiya became a refugee in Jordan and moved to Australia when she was granted a humanitarian visa last year.<\/p>\n
Technology changes not just the physical form, but also the potential, even the purpose, of a diary. Traditionally, we read the words of those who suffered in past atrocities, knowing\u2014perhaps with some secret relief\u2014that we could empathize but not act. Today\u2019s online war diaries, describing unfolding horrors, are fundamentally shifting the burden of moral responsibility to the reader. Hadiya engaged in direct conversation with her audience. \u201cI received many comments and letters saying that I am not Iraqi,\u201d she wrote after reading some public responses to her diary. \u201cAnother one said I don\u2019t deserve the freedom that the Americans are bringing to the Iraqi people. That my view of the war is wrong and I should change it. I\u2019ll tell you what\u2014no one in this world can know what I\u2019m feeling. I respect your view of the American soldiers but it is not you who is prevented from sleeping by the sound of bullets. It is not you who every day is woken up by the sound of bombs. It is not you who hears the rocket falling and doesn\u2019t know if it will be on his house or his aunt\u2019s house or his grandfather\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
These digital missives also raise new questions about credibility and authenticity. In 2016, seven-year-old Bana al-Abed tweeted about her ordeal in the sealed-off city of Aleppo, Syria. \u201cI need peace,\u201d read one tweet on September 24. \u201cI can\u2019t go out because of the bombing please stop bombing us,\u201d pleaded another. The family eventually escaped to Turkey, where Bana\u2019s diary was published last fall. Though Bana amassed more than 350,000 followers on Twitter, some questioned whether it was she or her mother, Fatemah, who was the true author. (Bana\u2019s Twitter bio acknowledges that the account is \u201cmanaged by mom\u201d; Fatemah maintains that the girl is deeply involved in its writing.) There is, of course, no way to know for sure\u2014it is easier than ever to blur the lines of authorship on the internet.<\/p>\n
Yet even in today\u2019s jaded world, these young diarists still have the power to jolt us out of our complacency. In dire circumstances, they become their own historians, documenting the oppression and violence that threatens to silence them forever. The survival of their diaries ensures that, whatever else might have been lost, their voices of outrage and protest endure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World, Wake Up! Boy’s diary,\u00a0Lodz Ghetto, 1944, Smithsonian The cover of the November Smithsonian Magazine is titled, “The New Anne Frank”. Here is the begining of the introduction to a series of articles on the Holocaust and genocides since: “Never forget. That has always been the idea behind teaching the Holocaust in schools and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5409"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5454,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions\/5454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/image-25-300x225.png\")
<\/p>\n