Being A Guardian of A Story
“Two young men in civilian clothes unexpectedly walked in and one of them asked ‘Is Martin Stern here?’ And the teacher immediately shot back ‘No, he hasn’t come in today.’ And there I was. I didn’t understand what was going on. I put my hand up, and I said, ‘But I am here.’ And as these two young men were leading me out of the room, I looked back, and I’ll never forget the ashen face of the young teacher”.
This week it’s the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, which marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, on 27th January 1945. The day encourages remembrance of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust as well as genocides that have followed inCambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
“The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation, and genocide must still be resisted every day. Our world often feels fragile and vulnerable and we cannot be complacent. Even in the UK, prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all…Together we bear witness for those who endured genocide, and honour the survivors and all those whose lives were changed beyond recognition”. (https://www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/)
One of the ways we can bear witness is to listen and know the story of those who survived and those who didn’t, especially our own families. I vaguely knew the story of how my grandfather fled to Sweden in 1943 but it was only when I asked my father to tell the story in detail that I realised how close they came to being caught and deported to Theresienstadt. And now I tell his story; about winter storms, pottery clay, beer, and mined beaches.
We ask the B'nei Mitzvah students to find their own stories, to learn and if possible to be able to retell it, so that they become guardians of a story. If you don’t have a family story or a way to learn about it, we can learn from others. Below you can find the story of Dr. Martin Stern, who grew up in the Netherlands, and was arrested at the tender age of only 5. Do watch the video, and hear his words, and consider becoming a guardian of a story, if not your own, someone’s else’s:
“Well I remember just living like any little boy, with my mum and dad – but two years after I was born, the Nazis just invaded the Netherlands, they didn’t care whether they wanted to be neutral – they flattened the centre of Rotterdam with their bomber fleet and told the Dutch that they would flatten other cities if they didn’t surrender. Very soon after they came to power, they prevented Jews from working in Universities, working for the government, working for local authorities; Jews in professions like my father, an architect, were only allowed to work for Jews. Of course they were only a tiny minority of the Dutch population, and many of them were refugees who wouldn’t be paying for an architect, so a lot of Jewish people were just ruined. Jewish shopkeepers were liable to find uniformed, government-paid Nazi thugs bursting into their shop, smashing the place up, beating the people up and dragging the people away to, nobody knew where. So my father was no longer able to earn his living as an architect.
He started making wooden toys in the basement of the block of flats where we lived, and I remember at the age of three being very upset with him because I wasn’t allowed to play with these beautiful wooden toys he made. Then my father disappeared. And my mum wouldn’t tell me where he was. And pretty soon after that she stopped me from playing with the other children in the street, because it was too dangerous for it to be known that there was a little boy whose father was a Jew living in that flat. So I lived a rather isolated life, although later on I was sent to a little school. I also remember German soldiers around in Amsterdam, sometimes marching down the street, I remember them laying cables in a big park near the centre of Amsterdam, the Vondelpark, and I knew enough to want to sabotage that so I, at the ripe old age of three, was talking with my mum about doing something to those cables, and she told me very sharply not to make any move that might look like that; that that would be very dangerous”.
Watch or listen to his full story here: