Page 52 - Print 21 Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

Print Values
Written in time
Lives matter. What happens to people is the stuff of history; their experiences fill out our understanding of human existence. Printed books are an enduring means of passing stories from generation to generation. This is especially important when the writers are eyewitnesses and survivors of the Holocaust. Jacqui Wasilewsky is on a mission to preserve their memories in print. Approaching 100 volumes of Community Stories she tells Patrick Howard why her “dream job” is so important.
It was after dark when Eliahu Raziel, 8, and his elder brother Berl, 17, cautiously approached the Polish village where they once lived. From the darkness
two former neighbours loomed to confront them. “What, are you two still alive?” There was a tense pause. “Where are you staying?”
It was 1944; the persecution and decimation of the Jewish people by the Nazis and their collaborators had been underway for years. A shot rang out from the direction of the road, instantly killing Berl. “There is another one there, finish him off!” Terrified, young Eliahu ran blindly into the night, sobbing at losing the final member of his family of eight. So began months of living rough, hiding in outhouses and forests, scavenging food, always in fear
of discovery by the Nazis or their collaborators.
Rescued by the Red Army the following January, he was barefoot in the snow, dressed in rags, skeleton thin, unkempt and infested with
lice. But he had survived to begin another odyssey that three years later saw him arrive at a kibbutz in Israel. His account, Alone in Hiding,
is a frightening tale of survival against the odds as well as a record of how his family were murdered
in the Holocaust. It is one Jacqui Wasilewsky, publisher of Community Stories for the Jewish Museum in Sydney, singles out as having moved her to tears. It is not the only one.
Community Stories is a unique publishing business. It is an internal department of the Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst, Sydney, that records and preserves in book and digital form the stories of Holocaust survivors and other members of the Jewish community. Through a self- publishing model, it enables them to tell their life stories and publish memoirs for their own families
and for the historical record. As
the number of Holocaust survivors
declines – there are between 200 and 300 in Australia – with most now more than 80 years old, there is a sense of urgency in recording their experiences. When they eventually pass on, Wasilewsky is determined there will be the most complete accounting possible of the atrocities that happened under the Nazis, as well as testaments to the resilience of the survivors who forged new lives in Australia.
Although she dismisses Holocaust denial – “There is nothing to deny” –
the rise of anti-Semitism today gives continuing relevance to the work. This year the library of Community Stories will expand to more than 100 titles, most of them self-financed printed books, spanning the gamut from furious denouncements of the past, to scholarly research from PHDs, poetic evocations, painful regrets for families lost, idiosyncratic recollections of vanished ways of life – sad, honest books about one of the blackest events in history.
All are carefully curated and edited to maintain the distinctive voice and tone of the writers, a feature Wasilewsky believes is of significant value.
“We want to have as many of these stories as possible, because there’s only a limited time where people who lived these experiences can talk about them.”
“The last of the survivors is coming close. Soon there will be
no more first-hand accounts. The books are often written for the family and placed in the home. It’s crucial they’re told in the voice of the author. They are by no means literary masterpieces and they’re not trying to be. What we are trying to do is when a family reads the story they can hear the voice, the intonation, the expression of the family member they know and love. It’s so important that the individual’s voice comes through,” she said.
This happened
Community Stories does not produce documented, researched, histories, although the personal accounts
are all fact checked for historical accuracy by Konrad Kwiet, Professor Emeritus, pre-eminent Holocaust authority and resident historian
of the museum. The survivors
are revisiting and often speaking publicly for the first time about horrific events that happened more than half a century ago. It is what happened to them and when told in their own voice, with English often not as a first language, they can be searing emotional experiences.
“Memory is fallacious and over
time people’s memory has shifted,” Wasilewsky said. “The memoirs are the true recollection of the authors, but they are not historical textbooks. There’s a distinct difference between those two things. They are genuine memoirs or autobiographies, as opposed to biographies that have
been researched with a great deal of additional historical material. We want to have as many of these stories as possible, because there’s only a limited time when people who lived these experiences can talk about them.”
It is a matter of pride, only to be expected from the People of the Book, that the volumes are legible and readable, edited and designed to a high standard. Most of the subjects work intensively with a nominated ghost
52 Print21 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020