Cultural Life in the Ghetto

The Nazis created ghettos as a type of holding strategy for Jews until a legitimate plan was decided upon. While the Nazis viewed Jews as members of an inferior race, this perspective was not necessarily shared by a majority of Germans, much less Europeans in territory Germans occupied. It is true that anti-semitism was widespread in Europe, as Germans blamed the Jews for the country’s economic struggles, and many Poles saw Jews as an “other” that were, as one man quoted in Lanzmann’s Shoah, “destined to die” (Shoah). That said, such harsh antisemitism was not reflected by the opinions of the entirety of the European population. To gain popular support–or simply acceptance–for their treatment of Jews, the Nazis aimed to prove Jewish inferiority to the surrounding population and to Jews themselves. The abhorrent conditions of the ghetto were meant to convey the filthiness of Jewish life, and the dehumanization of Jews that ghettoization entailed would eventually justify their murder. In the face of such dire living conditions, it was especially important for Jews to maintain some semblance of their cultural life, and thus a sense of normalcy.

Benjamin Bender, who was eleven years old when the war broke out, recounts attending an underground school formed by a handful of teachers for him and twelve other pupils. School allowed Bender to “try to preserve sanity among the insanity that surrounded him.” Bender described himself as a “dreamer,” which made it all the more important to continue learning, so that when the day of awakening came, as he described it, and the war ended, he would be able to fit in with the rest of society. Bender felt that continuing with his education not only allowed him to pick up where he left off with his life, so to speak, but also played an important role in preserving his sense of agency (Bender, VHA Interview). This sense of agency would become a large theme in his survival.

While the Jews of Czestochowa were variously observant, like any religious population, many continued to practice their religion in the ghetto. Jakob Zylberberg, my grandfather, grew up a Hasidic Jew; he recalls praying whenever he was left alone. He laid tefillin every morning during his time in the ghetto, even occasionally davening in the holes he dug at a German barracks camp where he worked. At one point before the ghetto was created, he and his brothers were reported by a non-Jewish neighbor for praying in their front yard. The three boys spent a few weeks in jail, and were told they’d be killed if caught praying again. While Zylberberg found himself questioning his spirituality in the years following the war, prayer, which was a substantial portion of his life prior to Nazi occupation, allowed him to escape the reality of the ghetto (Zylberberg, VHA Interview). He looked back fondly at the time he spent davening at his shtetl with his father and brothers, both during and after the war. Prayer also helped him hold on to a substantial portion of his identity. As a Hasidic Jew, religion played a huge role in Zylberberg’s upbringing, and in praying, he was able to maintain a large part of who he was despite Nazi subjugation tactics.

Religion also continued in celebratory events. Barbara Gerson, a Jew from Lodz, got married in the small ghetto in 1943. Gerson borrowed the wedding ring of a friend’s mother who had been sent to Treblinka and wore her only dress. The wedding took place in her soon-to-be husband’s apartment with their only remaining friends, and a Yeshiva student played the role of rabbi, while others constructed a huppa from a bed sheet held up by brooms (Gerson, VHA Interview). The wedding ceremony was simple but sufficient. Superfluity did not exist in the ghetto. Gerson’s experience reflects a commitment to tradition that persisted through the Holocaust, when many Jews made do with practically nothing. Gerson is one example of countless Holocaust survivors who made the most of their circumstances, resisting Nazi persecution through seemingly trivial observances like weddings. Her wedding was a reminder of her humanity, and by holding onto traditions that existed before Nazi occupation, she, Bender, and Zylberberg, resisted oppression in their own way.