During the start of World War II, Denmark boldly declared neutrality. When the Nazis invaded the country and threatened to bomb Copenhagen, however, the small nation soon acquiesced. As the Germans began to reorganize and control the Danish government, citizens' animosity against the Nazis swelled. A clandestine army, comprised of thousands of ordinary Danes, eventually formed to support the Allies. Meanwhile, in 1943 as the Nazis prepared to expel Danish Jewry, the nation managed to smuggle seven thousand of these Jews to Sweden. Legend has it that Christian X, who served during the war, wore a Star of David on his sleeve in a brave show of solidarity for his countrymen. At a time when most European nations ignored or betrayed the Jewish people who were so enmeshed in their societies, Denmark's government uniquely worked to saved their lives.
The courage of the Danish people continues to inspire hope and pride in humanity. But as a new Jewish year begins, this piece of history—like all stories from the Holocaust—falls farther into the past. I believe that Jews have an obligation to bear witness and never forget the Shoah. So too, though, are we obligated to keep moving, keep living, and enjoy what we have in a time of relative comfort and beauty. But how is it possible to simultaneously create and recall devastation?
This summer, on a Taglit March of the Living trip, I spent five days in Poland visiting Auschwitz labor camp, Birkenau and Madjanek death camps, and the Warsaw and Krakow ghettos with a group of forty American eighteen to twenty-seven year olds. On our first morning, we drove five hours from Krakow to Lublin, where we stopped at Auschwitz. Our tour bus pulled up beside a row of identical coaches, each with tourists spilling down the carpeted stairs, racing toward the public toilets. Polish teenagers in belly shirts crowded beside Chinese men snapping pictures of their wives while we waited for our tour guide. The windows of Auschwitz's gift shop glinted with metallic book jackets and figurines. I had known that it would be impossible to prepare for a trip to a concentration camp, but what I saw was simply the opposite of what I had imagined. The grounds were lush and green. A clear sky illuminated the photographs I took, betraying every feeling I had while pressing the shutter. Just breathing at Auschwitz felt like a contradiction. How could there be light and life, I wondered, inside a place of blackness?
The next four days in Poland did as all days do and went on, each one marching determinedly into the next oblivious to human concern. We drove from Krakow to Lublin to Warsaw, trying to contemplate Poland's role in World War II while staring into the Polish faces we saw on the streets. Each one of the three camps we saw that week revealed new horrors: The train tracks leading to Birkenau. The barbed wire that lined the gravel pathways. The bathhouse. The store of unopened gas canisters. The showerheads. The ovens. The mound of ashes and bone. The houses, still occupied, which lie only a few hundred meters away from Madjanek extermination camp.
As I witnessed each monument of death, however, something strange happened. I began to find light and life not an affront to suffering that had occurred, but as its only possible resolution.
Our tour guide, Zahava, who works at Yad Vashem throughout the year, imparted a tremendous amount of knowledge about what had occurred at the places we visited. Zahava's silences, though, often carried even more powerful than her explanations. On many occasions, she encouraged us to try to "rescue the faces" of those whose belongings or bunks we encountered. I soon began to find not only faces, but the faces of heroes.
Of all of the artifacts we saw, three stand out in my mind: a case of men's hair cream that was seized upon entry to Auschwitz, a tiny, meticulous chess set that a Jewish prisoner had constructed out of newspaper, and Charlotte Salamon's watercolors, a series of panels depicting a musical entitled "Life or Theater?" about her experiences before and during the war. These objects scream with life and autonomy. I came to see their ownership and creation as astounding acts of spirit. After leaving Poland, our group traveled to Israel, where for the first time we processed together what we had seen. One girl expressed disappointment in Jewish people during the Holocaust, arguing that they didn't act bravely enough or fight back against Nazi Germany. But Jews were stripped slowly of their homes, their jobs, their families, their food, their reason, their independence. How could we ask that they had better organized themselves or been physically fit enough to take arms against the SS? Every act of creation, I think, every statement that a person was not dead yet, was something heroic. The next night our group went on a disco boat cruise and after a few much-needed beers, everyone danced wildly—announcing in our way that we had made it, too.
After bearing witness to some of the darkness of the Shoah, I have emerged believing that the past is not to be forgotten but that the present is more important. The present will continue regardless of how often we stop to consider what has come before. Denmark's history, then, is liberating to me as Jewish person, but it does not seem to be central to Jewish life here. Savior is nice, but perseverating on it is only a reminder that the Jewish people needed to be saved. I have only been in Copenhagen a short time but already I have eaten Shabbat dinner with families from six different countries, met an orthodox girl visiting from Melbourne who is one of seventeen children and is busy promoting a movie about their lives, and toured Copenhagen with a Dane who proudly told me that everyone's favorite "ten kroner" store is owned by an Israeli. This is what Jewish life in Denmark feels like to me on this Rosh Hashanah.
I am still trying to figure out what components of the Jewish religion are important to me and how much of my identity is shaped by being a Jew. After all this traveling, what I am convinced of is that Judaism is alive and dynamic. Our complex past, contemporary and ancient, will forever shape religious and cultural Jewishness. But the Jews have survived, and the only possibility now is to continue surviving, to live. We must slick back our hair, play chess, or paint our lives. We must dance.
Happy New Year. Whether you're Jewish or not, September always feels like a fresh start.
