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Else Dormitzer’s Theresienstädter Bilder (1945)

Poetry, Testimony, and the Holocaust
Les Theresienstädter Bilder d’Else Dormitzer (1945) : poésie, témoignage et génocide
Sandra Alfers
p. 139-159

Résumés

L’année 2015 marque le soixante-dixième anniversaire de la publication des Theresenstädter Bilder d’Else Dormitzer, un recueil de poèmes en langue allemande écrit au cours de l’emprisonnement de l’auteur dans le ghetto de Theresienstadt. Cet article analyse les modalités et les enchevêtrements discursifs qui font la nature hybride des textes poétiques produits par des prisonniers à Theresienstadt. Il montre ainsi en quoi la poésie de Dormitzer, issue de ce contexte, peut également être lue comme un témoignage sur l’expérience catastrophique de la Shoah.

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  • 1 According to information on the Boston Secession website, programming had to be suspended for the 2 (...)
  • 2 A. Wlodarski, 2010, p. 99.

1In 2009, the Boston Secession, a professional choral ensemble from Boston, Massachusetts, was scheduled to premiere the oratorio Testimony of Witness by Ruth Lomon, its composer-in-residence at the time. Her composition, a concert-length work, is based on poetry written by victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Scored for chorus, orchestra, and soloists, Lomon’s “provocative and hauntingly beautiful settings, illuminate the personal experience of eighteen writers, whose texts – in seven languages – reflect the truly international impact of the Holocaust and the variety of individuals and communities that were forever changed”.1 Poems by well-known poets of the Holocaust, such as Charlotte Delbo (France), Primo Levi (Italy) and Dan Pagis (Israel), are included and arranged in Testimony of Witness as are poems by lesser-known writers. One of these is Else Dormitzer (1877-1958), a German journalist, writer, and activist, who was deported along with her husband, Dr. Sigmund Dormitzer, to the Theresienstadt ghetto in the spring of 1943. During her imprisonment, she kept a diary and also wrote poetry in her native German. An English quote from Dormitzer’s Theresienstadt poem, “Transport”, opens the tenth movement and the second half of the oratorio. Using five citations from five different writers – all centering on the experience of deportation and transportation to the camps – Lomon weaves these individual texts together to create a new, coherent piece for the movement. She arranges them in such a way as to show the progression of a transport, from deportation announcement to arrival by freight train at the ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The orchestral and choral interpretations both puncture and sustain the coherence of the sequence established by the quotations, intensifying individual moments of confusion, terror, and fear on a melodic and harmonic level. Throughout the movement, the sounds of the female and male voices suggest the possibility of a tonal resolution, which would afford the listener a moment of respite. However, Lomon does not provide her audience with such closure; after all, the movement ends on the ramp of Birkenau. Instead, the piece concludes with a quote from Dan Pagis’ poem “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car”, followed by a brief haunting silence and a final drum blow, which releases the audience to its own unsettling imagination of what is to follow. Similar to Steve Reich’s acclaimed composition Different Trains (1988), which “splices together spoken recollections by three Holocaust survivors to create a narrative of Jewish suffering during World War II”, Lomon relies primarily, even though not exclusively, on victims’ voices.2 However, in contrast to Reich, she turns to literature, in particular to poetry, rather than to recorded testimonies from the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University to render her own post-Holocaust response.

  • 3 While a disregard of German-language poetry from the camps, which has elicited only sporadic attent (...)

2Else Dormitzer’s “Transport” is one of ten poems she published in the fall of 1945 in a small poetry collection entitled Theresienstädter Bilder. In this essay, I would like to introduce this unknown German-Jewish writer and propose a reading of her poetry collection as an example of German-language camp poetry. As such, Theresienstädter Bilder can be read as an instance of victim testimony. My understanding of camp poetry as a genre is both influenced by and distinct from Antony Rowland’s definitions of Holocaust and post-Holocaust poetry in an Anglo-American context. It is also shaped by my background in German Studies. Thus, my use of the term “camp poetry” not only encompasses the particularities of textual production and its writers in different spaces and languages, but it also acknowledges poetry’s various formal realizations, its particular modalities (including the testimonial) and its manifold functions within the camps and ghettos. It is important to recognize that this poetry emerged in a spatial, geographical, and temporal proximity to the Holocaust. Within this framework, I offer an alternative to positions in German Studies that have deemed German-language poetry from the camps and ghettos inadequate representations of the Holocaust because the texts resist straightforward classification along traditional generic lines.3 Before exploring Else Dormitzer’s poetry within the context of writing in Theresienstadt and before situating it within discussions of poetry from the Holocaust in German Studies, I would like to begin by providing some information on this unknown writer.

Else Dormitzer (1877-1958)

  • 4 I would like to thank the relatives of the Dormitzer family, in particular Henk Haas, Thomas Runkel (...)

It seems to be a miracle that we escaped from this witches’ cauldron; I had never thought it possible.4

  • 5 Letter from Richard Haas to Else and Sigmund Dormitzer, November 12, 1938. Ich bitte Vater und Dic (...)

3Else Dormitzer wrote these lines in October 1945 in a letter she composed after her return to the Netherlands, from where she had been deported with her husband on April 21, 1943. The couple had fled their hometown of Nuremberg four months after the November pogrom of 1938. Dr. Sigmund Dormitzer had been a prominent lawyer in Nuremberg, where he had also served as vice chairman of the Nuremberg bar association. The younger of their two daughters, Dr. Hildegard Haas, had already emigrated to the Netherlands with her husband Richard in 1937, and the Dormitzer children (the older daughter, Elisabeth, lived in London with her husband Ernst Rosenfelder and their two children) urged their parents to leave for good after their sixty-nine-year-old father was severely injured and much of their home destroyed in the early morning hours of November 10, 1938.5 In March 1939, the Dormitzers arrived in Hilversum, where they lived until June 1942, when the authorities forced them to relocate to Amsterdam-Zuid.

  • 6 Deportation lists can be accessed electronically at Yad Vashem, the World Center for Holocaust Rese (...)
  • 7 S. Milton, 2000, p. 15-16.

4On April 21, 1943 the couple was deported on the first transport leaving the Netherlands for Theresienstadt, transport XXIV/1, consisting of 295 people.6 The town of Terezín, which functioned as the Theresienstadt ghetto between 1941 and 1945, is located in today’s Czech Republic, approximately 60 kilometers northwest of Prague. During the Nazi occupation, more than 140,000 European Jews were imprisoned in Theresienstadt; approximately 35,000 people died in the ghetto, and about 88,000 were deported on to the killing centers in the East, where most of them were eventually murdered.7 For a number of reasons Theresienstadt has been considered an “anomaly” among the camps and ghettos, one of them being the perceived tolerance and tactical encouragement of cultural activities by the authorities. Such assumptions, however, need to be met with caution as Sibyl H. Milton aptly observes:

  • 8 S. Milton, 2000, p. 18.

The Theresienstadt ghetto was thus, as we now know, a camp designed as a link in the chain that inevitably led to the gas chambers and also an elaborate hoax to deceive international opinion. As part of this depiction, the SS tolerated some cultural activities, including theater, music, lectures, and concerts. Other cultural activities, such as art and teaching the children were not specifically prohibited, but carried risks if discovered. But while we know that Terezín was nothing but a way-station to the killing centers, the posthumous fame of Theresienstadt is based primarily on the myth created by this hoax.8

5Dr. Sigmund Dormitzer died in Theresienstadt on December 9, 1943, only a few months after his older brother Louis and his sister-in-law Sophie had died in the ghetto, too. Else Dormitzer survived along with her sister Marie Ottenstein (née Forchheimer), and both women returned to the Netherlands in July 1945 after an arduous journey and further internment by Dutch authorities. Until her death in 1958, she split her time between her families in the Netherlands and England, residing six months of the year with the Haas family and the other six months with the Rosenfelders.

  • 9 K. Wallach, 2012, p. 425.
  • 10 C. Prestel, 1997, p. 135. According to Prestel, Dormitzer was also the first woman to serve on the (...)
  • 11 German original: “Freizeitgestaltung
  • 12 Family collection, recorded for Wiener Library by H.G. Adler, “Else Dormitzer: Erlebnisse in Nürnbe (...)

6During her imprisonment, Else Dormitzer wrote a number of German-language poems, which the Dutch publishing house De Boekenvriend made available in the fall of 1945. It was not the first time she had published her work; her writing career can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century, and her long list of publications includes children’s books and stories, translations, essays, as well as newspaper articles on various topics in different outlets. She wrote passionately on the role of women in liberal Judaism for newspapers and magazines such as the Jüdisch-Liberale Zeitung and Liberales Judentum and regularly contributed articles to the widely read Berliner Tageblatt. Dormitzer was a member and supporter of the “Association for Liberal Judaism in Germany” and took on an active role in both the regional branch of the “Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith” and on the national level. Along with social worker Henriette May, she “played a key role in rallying women to become active members of the Centralverein”.9 As part of her volunteer work, she gave numerous talks, often geared towards a female audience, and traveled to different cities in Germany. In 1925, the organization published her essay Berühmte jüdische Frauen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, which enjoyed widespread popularity. In 1922, she was the first woman elected to the administrative board of the Jewish community in Nuremberg. 10 While imprisoned in Theresienstadt, Else Dormitzer became actively involved in the “Office of Leisurely Activities” and continued delivering presentations on a range of topics.11 According to her notes, she gave 275 such talks “often for old and sick people. I was one of the few, who did not shy away from presenting in all rooms of the tuberculosis ward, which was met with immense gratitude by the sick”.12 It seems as if she chronicled much of her life during the war on a day-to-day basis, but a diary from 1943, a few pages from the summer of 1945 and her poetry written in Theresienstadt are all that remain with her immediate family.

German-language poetry from Theresienstadt and its reception in German studies after 1945

  • 13 J. Young, 1990, p. 19. “The very figures of witness, testimony, and documentary”, he writes, “thus (...)
  • 14 R. Klüger, 1994, p. 128. German original: “Wer nur erlebt, reim- und gedankenlos, ist in Gefahr den (...)
  • 15 S. Horowitz, 1997, p. 59.
  • 16 J. Young, 1990, p. 18.
  • 17 For a detailed discussion of the uses of poetry, see S. Alfers, 2010b.

7In Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, James E. Young reminds us of the etymological histories of the terms “witness,” “testimony”, and “document” and their interrelationship.13 One literary form for expressing and generating meaning about experience proved to be particularly practical and accessible in the context of the camps and ghettos: poetry. In trying to understand and translate the new conditions and their imminent consequences, many prisoners resorted not only to a condensed form, but also to a language known and familiar to them. Writing poetry, as Ruth Klüger states in her widely acclaimed autobiography weiter leben, kept her from emotional disintegration: “The person who only lives through the events, without rhymes or thoughts, is in danger of losing his or her mind. […] I did not lose my mind, I made rhymes”.14 For Klüger and for others who wrote in the ghettos, camps, and in hiding, the creative act of finding and establishing one’s voice constituted both a poetic and therapeutic act; it “preserved their identity, reminding them that they were thinking, autonomous human beings”.15 Scholars such as Frieda W. Aaron, Alan Mintz, and David Roskies, among others, situate the choice for poetry within a particular tradition of Jewish writing: namely, as a reaction to persecution and destruction. As Torah and Talmud teach, once evil is witnessed it needs to be described and reported so that it can be remembered.16 Just as the camp and ghetto diarists wanted to bear witness to the events unfolding around them, so did many poets.17

  • 18 H.G. Adler, 1955, p. 618.
  • 19 B. Barkow and K. Leist, 2004, p. 94; German original: “Orientierungsdienst”.
  • 20 Gerald Green and Norbert Troller, 1978, relate the fate of several painters, whose realistic depict (...)

8Poetry took on particular importance among cultural activities in the Theresienstadt ghetto. According to H.G. Adler, it was produced in such large quantities that he characterizes this obsession as a “rhyming disease”.18 Philip Manes, a central figure in the “Orientation Office”, reacts more positively to this phenomenon: recognizing the testimonial value of many poems as well as their ability to provide comfort to prisoners and to construct a bond when openly recited, Manes elicited and collected texts, organized poetry evenings and called for two poetry competitions (one in 1942, the other in 1944), each receiving at least two hundred entries.19 The response to these public events shows that prisoners in Theresienstadt valued the opportunity to participate and to recite before an audience, while the organizers could count on an audience that appreciated the performance of fellow prisoners’ creative work. Moreover, such performances created a communal space in which individual experience, as expressed in the poem, could manifest itself collectively, as the shared experience of the audience. Not all poetry, however, was openly recited. Cultural performances were controlled and censored by camp authorities, and the policies regarding permitted artistic expression underwent frequent change. Art that was too realistic and critical in its depiction was considered subversive by the Nazis and, if discovered, the artists and sometimes the community as well were punished, tortured, or killed.20

  • 21 Letters from the Agora Verlag (January 1960) and from editor Manfred Schlösser (March 5, 1960) to E (...)

9It is unclear if Else Dormitzer participated in the poetry competitions hosted by Manes; however, she did share her poems with other prisoners on several occasions. In 1960, two years after her death, the Darmstadt publishing house Agora contacted Dormitzer for permission to include poems from Theresienstädter Bilder in a planned anthology “with poems written in emigration, in concentration camps and ghettos or as an expression of inner resistance”.21 “The book,” the letter continues,

  • 22 German original: “Das Buch soll Zeugnis ablegen für die Kraft des Geistes, der dem tiefen Chaos das (...)

shall testify to the power of the spirit, which confronted deep chaos with the victorious words of order and freedom, of law and the belief in human dignity. While by no means conclusive, this comprehensive collection will present for the first time lyrical documents of a humanistic front against state-organized crime, as far as the sources allow. In this book, the spiritual face of a people shall arise, a people more real than historical reality, and the collection shall be erected as a memorial to the dead and serve the living to remember. The underlying guidelines shall not be the categories of classical aesthetics, but the document of the spirit; the spirit that itself recognizes its important task in the darkest of times and acts accordingly.22

  • 23 German original: “Der Band erfaßt alle Dichter, die einen gültigen Beitrag zu dem Thema der Verbann (...)

10The editors Manfred Schlösser and Hans-Rudolf Ropertz, university students at the time, also included a general call for submission of poetry, which included the following line: “The edition includes all poets, who have provided a valid contribution to the topics of banishment and endangerment. Apart from more well-known writers, the book will introduce many less well-known authors, who have been unjustly forgotten”.23

  • 24 Family collection, German original: “Die Durchsicht aller und das Lesen vieler einzelner Gedichte h (...)
  • 25 Family collection, letter from Manfred Schlösser to Dr. Hilde Haas, December 6, 1960.

11The call was sent to Elisabeth Rosenfelder in London, who forwarded the letter to her sister in the Netherlands. Dr. Hildegard Haas replied to the publishing house on March 21, 1960 and gave permission to include their mother’s poetry in the anthology. She was, therefore, quite surprised when two copies of An den Wind geschrieben reached her home later the same year and she did not find her mother’s work included. The anthologies arrived on December 9, 1960, the seventeenth anniversary of her father’s death in Theresienstadt. Her letter to the main editor Manfred Schlösser from the same day expresses not only her disappointment about the omission of her mother’s work, but also the emotional upheaval she felt upon reading the anthology. “Looking at all the poems in the collection and reading many of them ripped open again all old wounds. Events and experiences, which have not been forgotten, returned with great clarity”.24 Dr. Haas inquired as to why she had not been contacted about the exclusion of her mother’s poetry prior to receiving the volume, a misunderstanding as it turned out since Manfred Schlösser had indeed sent such a letter, which she had not received by the time the anthologies reached her.25 Their call for poetry, as he points out, had elicited so many submissions that they could not possibly include all texts and, therefore, needed to alter their guidelines.

  • 26 German original: “Im Laufe unserer Arbeit stellte sich nämlich immer mehr heraus, dass es unsere Au (...)

During our work on the edition it became clear that it could not be our task to offer documentary materials, but rather that we needed to keep an eye on how the metaphysical problem of persecution and banishment had been come to terms with. The first question of affirmation – yes, this is how it was – was no longer valid, but rather the artistic question, the “how” of the represented. And here it was particularly important for the prison chapter to say a lot with little. Thus, an undue quantity of contributions from the concentration camps needed to be avoided, unless they are of outstanding significance.26

  • 27 For reactions to Theodor W. Adorno’s essay “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft”, see P. Kiedaisch, 1995.
  • 28 Family collection, letter from Manfred Schlösser, December 6, 1960, German original: “Im Zusammenha (...)
  • 29 For an enlightening discussion of the publications of several German anthologies see A. Nader, 2007 (...)
  • 30 German original: “So haben wir leider auch auf die Beiträge Ihrer verehrten Frau Mutter verzichten (...)

12The courteous exchange of letters between the editors of the volume and Dr. Hildegard Haas illustrates the narrow genre definitions at play after the war, which precluded the inclusion of Else Dormitzer’s poetry from the anthology. Without doubt this constituted a questionable exclusion at the very least as it legitimated one form of expression over the other. Even though the editors had not intended to approach poetic texts via “classical aesthetics”, they ended up do doing precisely that. Reinforced by discussions in the 1950s about the limits of poetry “after Auschwitz” they inscribed generic boundaries further, not unraveling or broadening them.27 Rather than recognizing poetry’s practicality and power, its manifold functions and formal realizations within a camp setting, Schlösser and Ropertz viewed the “documentary” dimensions of texts such as Dormitzer’s as limiting, diminishing in their eyes the quality of the poems they sought. According to the original call, poetry from the camps and ghettos had been a central component of the planned anthology, however, the editors did not attempt to highlight poetry’s particularities in such contexts or to explain what they perceived to be “documentary”. Neither did they provide a range of lyrical documents “testifying to the power of the spirit in dark times”. On the contrary, after receiving an “overabundance of materials”, Schlösser and Ropertz made the decision to discard texts that did not succeed in expressing “a lot with little”, relegating all poetry that did not fit post-Auschwitz German poetics to the sidelines and privileging those texts that did, regardless of who produced what in which context.28 By extension, Dormitzer’s poetry was deemed not of “outstanding significance”, not a “valuable contribution” and, hence, was excluded from the volume.29 “Thus, unfortunately”, they apologized, “we had to forego the contributions of your dear mother. In an edition focusing solely on documentary materials, they would surely be assigned a special place, but her poetry did not quite fit with our volume”.30

  • 31 D. Lamping, 1992, p. 285-286; W. Emmerich, 1976, p. 442.

13Schlösser’s explications to Else Dormitzer’s daughter were characteristic of notions in German Studies about poetry from the ghettos and camps in the 1950s and beyond. Before Michael Moll, Katja Klein, Constanze Jaiser, Andrés J. Nader, and the present author expanded the narrow generic view of this diverse, but by no means homogenous body of work, poetic texts had been mostly valued as human documents (Dieter Lamping) or political manifestations (Wolfgang Emmerich), but judged as failed poetry.31 The post-Auschwitz discourse privileged texts that displayed postmodernist qualities such as metatextual, self-referential reflection on the possibility of signification, an emphasis on the in-between of language, and fragmentation of voice and authorship (or “to say much with little” in the words of Schlösser). But poetic texts “from Auschwitz” necessitate readings that reveal poetry’s aptitudes beyond the aesthetic, which cannot be their sole defining feature and critical criterion. Such readings need to illustrate poetry’s modes, its forms and functions, expanding rather than limiting them to a singular assessment.

Else Dormitzer’s Theresienstädter Bilder (1945)

  • 32 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 132: “Whenever I used to read these poems to you the resounding cry was, (...)
  • 33 J. Young, 1990, p. 37.

14Else Dormitzer’s poetry collection opens with a short preface, in which she reveals a performative dimension of her poetry by informing the reader that the texts included in this book had been publically recited in Theresienstadt and that its publication is the result of a promise she had made in captivity.32 From the beginning, she establishes herself as a direct, credible, and reliable witness of the Holocaust. Simultaneously, she discloses the existence of other witnesses, who attest to her having been in Theresienstadt, to her having written these poems and for these poems to have been communally recited. Thus, poems and publication serve as printed proof of the actuality of writer and events, a defining characteristic of the literature of testimony.33

  • 34 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 13. German original, E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 5: Euch, meine Schicksalsgen (...)
  • 35 This direct form of address in the words “meine Schicksalsgenossen” is illustrated by use of case i (...)
  • 36 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 132: “Experiences like these shared together bind more firmly than blood (...)
  • 37 A. Assmann, 2006, p. 269. In regards to video testimony, Aleida Assmann assigns the receiver of tes (...)

15The preface is framed as a dedication to her former fellow inmates, her “companions of fate”, which is illustrated by both the opening and closing sentences. “To you, my companions of fate of Theresienstadt, I dedicate this little book. […] With this relationship in mind I dedicate to you the ‘Pictures of Theresienstadt’.34 She speaks to them directly as an implied group of readers, and the use of the second person plural pronoun “euch” in the German original expresses not only a plurality, but also a strong familiarity with this group.35 A few lines later she defines this familiarity further by alluding to a strong, irrevocable bond because of the shared lived experience of their Theresienstadt past. This bond, she states, is thicker than blood.36 The verb choice in the opening and closing line of the German original is noteworthy since “widmen” (first sentence) and “weihen” (final sentence) denote two slightly different meanings, even though both have been translated as “to dedicate” in Ruth Schwertfeger’s Women of Theresienstadt. The latter, which can also be translated as “to consecrate”, signifies a spiritual dimension of the volume at hand, which not only honors the plight of “her companions of fate”, but also elevates them to a status beyond the ordinary. With this act she venerates all former inmates, those who survived (and who might read this book), but also those who did not. The preface, therefore, serves a threefold function: it establishes her authority as survivor and witness; it honors and remembers her fellow inmates; and it serves as an orientation for a general audience on how to read these primary texts. Else Dormitzer endows her readers with an important message and assigns them a central role in the meaning making process. The written “images” and “pictures” come to live in the interplay between reader and text, and as repositories of individual memory, they extend to empathetic readers outside of Theresienstadt as they become part of a secondary witnessing process.37

  • 38 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 6.

16The opening and closing poems of the collection, “Do not despair!” and “Finale”, form a linear narrative of redemption, providing closure with regards to content and structure. Such an arrangement produces a plausible interpretation shortly after liberation, not only for Dormitzer, both also for the audience who receives all texts within this framework. “Do not despair!”, the first poem, sets the tone of the volume by describing the bleak circumstances of life in Theresienstadt in general, a life filled with sorrow, constant worries, and pain.38 The poetic subject is part of a collective whole, expressing a communal voice through the use of the first person plural possessive pronoun unser (“our”). But the reader learns that hope exists to escape this dreadful existence, even in the darkness that is Theresienstadt. Hope is continuously nourished by an inner voice “But an inner voice repeats: Do not despair, do not despair!” The last stanza focuses entirely on revealing the source of strength, and it becomes apparent that it is the faith in God to provide “peace, freedom and light”. This continued belief and trust will not only be a source of strength and hope, but it will bear real fruit: liberty. Thus, the poetic subject encourages itself and others to remain vigilant in the face of darkness.

Von Sorgen, Kummer, Elend, Not
Ist unser Dasein nun bedroht,
Kein Strahl durchdringt die Dunkelheit,
Schlag folgt auf Schlag und Leid auf Leid;
Doch eine innr’e Stimme spricht:
“Verzage nicht, verzage nicht!”

Der Tage trübes Einerlei
Zieht hoffnungslos an uns vorbei,
Und ohne Schlaf wird Nacht um Nacht
In Angst und Tränen zugebracht;
Doch eine inn’re Stimme spricht:
“Verzage nicht, verzage nicht!”

Auf diese Stimme ich vertrau’,
Auf Gottes Hilfe fest ich bau’!
Er wird beenden Schmerz und Pein,
Uns aus der Feinde Hand befrei’n,
Er schenkt uns Frieden, Freiheit, Licht,
Darum, o Herz, verzage nicht.

17The comforting mode of this poem, which extends to its formal realization, is easily detectable. The precise and clear language, simple rhyme scheme and meter provide comfort and support as the poem provides a general depiction of what the poetic subject experienced. Repetition marks individual stanzas, particularly that of the inner voice, speaking directly and clearly to an anonymous whole, guiding them not to despair. It is easy to see how the simple structure of the poem would lend itself to communal use and how a performance would have the capability to instill hope and strength, to soothe the pain at least temporarily. Thus, the modes of this first poem can be described as lyrical and spiritual, its functions as performance and prayer, all providing communal and individual sustenance.

  • 39 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 21.

18The volume ends with “Finale”, and it describes the anticipated event of freedom, the day of liberation.39 Here it is, finally: the bright day, with the promise of closure and a new beginning. God has stood by his people and freedom is the reward.

Ein Tag wie alle and’ren, öd und leer,
Im Herzen keinen Funken Hoffnung mehr;
Des Dienstes ewig gleichgestellte Uhr
Durch spärlich Essen unterbrochen nur.
Man geht, wie immer, tief verstimmt zur Ruh’
Und schliesst erschöpft die müden Augen zu.
Am Morgen, ha, ein Wunder ist gescheh’n:
Man kann rings fremde Uniformen seh’n,
Die Russen sind’s, die uns vom Joch befrei’n,
Man höret lachen, weinen, jauchzen, schrei’n,
Reibt sich die Augen – ist’s ein schöner Traum,
Der rasch zerrinnen wird wie Seifenschaum?
Nein, es ist Wirklichkeit! Der Spuk ist aus.
O Glück, o Seligkeit – es geht nach Haus!
Wir steh’n am Anfang einer bess’ren Zeit,
Dir, Ewiger, sei unser Dank geweiht.
Wir preisen Dich mit Herz, Vermögen, Seel’.
Du hast erlöset Dein Volk Israel!

19The tone of this poem transforms from one of despair and disbelief to that of exhilaration and praise. The past is immediately perceived as an uncanny, ghostly episode (“Spuk”) and the poetic subject, again a communal voice (“wir”) instantaneously recognizes the beginning of a new and a better time. There is no room for further reflection as to what this future might look like, but the poem makes clear who is ultimately responsible for freedom and thus praises God, who has “redeemed the people of Israel”. The title of the poem underlines the conclusiveness of the end of suffering on the day of liberation. Written from within the events, the poem highlights freedom itself, and at the time of composition, this concept naturally remains vague. Only later will the full picture emerge, along with it the realization that what has constituted home is lost and that closure will hardly be attained. At the moment, however, the experience is jubilant and represented as such. Similar to the opening poem of the collection, “Finale” displays a spiritual mode by being designed as a poem of praise. While Else Dormitzer employs a rhyme scheme, it is not as regular as in “Do not despair!” and the poem also lacks some of the lyrical characteristics of the first poem (for instance, repetition, organization in stanzas). It might, therefore, lend itself less for performance and is a different realization than the first.

  • 40 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 16-17.
  • 41 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 44.
  • 42 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 89.
  • 43 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 8; R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 89. Ein Wäscheflattern, Betten rollen, Ein Ruc (...)
  • 44 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 89.
  • 45 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 20; R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 53.
  • 46 German original: “Und meine Seele spannte / Weit ihre Flügel aus, / Flog durch die stillen Lande, / (...)
  • 47 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 53.
  • 48 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 11-12. The census was conducted to determine the exact number of prisoners. (...)
  • 49 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 8 and p. 18-19.

20The remaining eight poems are inserted within this narrative of redemption created by the opening and closing poem. The reader learns about six recurring and concrete themes of daily life in Theresienstadt: hunger, work, death, pests, torture, and deportation. While all the poetic texts hold on to meter, rhyme, and versification, they display modes and functions, extending beyond the testimonial, lyrical, and spiritual. The poem “The Night of the Bedbug”, for example, in which the nightly hunt for lice and other pests is depicted, is primarily satirical and as such it functions as a critique of the terrible hygienic conditions in the barracks, rooms, and attics.40 “Another filled with loathing / Pours around his cell exploding; / A third just devours his bread / His neighbor wants to plug himself with lead / The problem makes you swarmy then barmy: / How to wipe out the bedbug army”.41 The poem “Transport”, which served as a source for Ruth Lomon’s post-Holocaust composition, shows the agitation created by rumors of deportations and subsequent deportation announcements, describing the nervous restlessness of those selected lo leave and also of those staying behind: “When will the next ones get off?”42 As in other poems, Dormitzer creates this tension by transforming verbs and stringing them together as nouns in a series.43 Such a grammatical adjustment - to turn verbs into concrete nouns, mostly verbs of motion and action, or to combine verbs and nouns into singular nouns - maximizes expression within short verses. This arrangement also has the added effect of concreteness as the new nouns articulate actions and feelings more effectively and broadly. Additionally, Dormitzer employs the figure of the grim reaper in the same poem to represent death as the constant companion of prisoners, here waiting besides the train tracks. “One is standing with his scythe / He is not waving, he is for the ride / He’ll move from camp bell to camp bell”. 44 She relies on traditional poetic imagery and quotations in other poems as well, and these might catch the reader by surprise. In “Death in Theresienstadt”, for instance, Dormitzer not only depicts the process of dying and bodily decay, but she chronicles what happens to the dead after “Some poor soul ascends for home”.45 While this line evokes Joseph von Eichendorff’s romantic poem “Moonlit Night”, Dormitzer has changed the subjunctive mood of the original to the indicative.46 Eichendorff’s construction has lived on in German culture ever since it was first published in 1837, and to bring it up here seems absurd and out of place. And perhaps this is precisely its function. Whereas Eichendorff’s text exalts the romantic artist’s experience of nature and beauty in the context of death, the construction of death as mass murder serves to distance Dormitzer’s poem from the original. Death is a reality entirely devoid of any romantic connotations, it is a regular occurrence as the following lines indicate: “Not much to be done in requisition / The corpse is quickly placed in position: / A cover pulled over the head, / Whatever valuables left are quickly bled. / After two hours without sound or word-trace / The dead is shoved up to ‘the good place’”.47 The body is quickly prepared for immediate disposal and stripped of whatever personal valuables might remain. The use of a regular rhyme scheme (couplet) in the German original renders the poem even more unsettling. Apart from “Finale”, the poem “Census” also depicts a particular day in the history of Theresienstadt, the infamous census on November 10-11, 1943.48 Here, Else Dormitzer inserts a short prose description before her poem to contextualize the specific event within the history of Theresienstadt. In eight stanzas she chronicles the tortuous events of the day, the endless hours of waiting for young and old, without food and water before being able to return “home” to the ghetto. For two other poems, Dormitzer explains the meaning of particular words in the context of Theresienstadt, the words “Mica” and “Reinforcements” also the titles of the poems.49 The latter focuses on the lines people endured to receive an extra serving of soup, whereas the former depicts work in the mica factory, a job mainly completed by women. Similar to “Reinforcements”, this poem also underlines the strenuous nature of everyday life and how the individual is subjected to abuse on a daily basis.

*

21Dormitzer arranged the poems she had written into a publishable book between the summer and fall of 1945, shortly after she had returned to the Netherlands. She presents the Theresienstadt past as a linear sequence, providing a consoling ending (freedom) and immediate closure (return home). The opening and closing poems create a narrative of redemption, in which Dormitzer inserts the remaining eight poems. These uncover the reality of the barbed wire depicted on the book’s front cover and reveal ordinary life in Theresienstadt. Her images of hunger, work, death, pests, torture, and deportation shed light on everyday life and suffering, describing and commenting on the abuse of the individual and the collective. The texts are characterized by the immediacy of experiencing the Holocaust as it affected the writer and her surroundings and by their conventional parameters, providing structural security in which to situate the experience of persecution, deportation, and annihilation. The preface in Theresienstädter Bilder establishes Dormitzer as a credible and reliable witness, who shares her work with an audience interested in completing the act of secondary witnessing by receiving her poetry. She dedicates her book to her fellow inmates, thus creating a textual memorial, with which she honors the dead and the living alike. At the same time, the collection reaffirms her own position as she now confronts the post-war period. Apart from the Theresienstadt-specific topics these poems depict, all grounded in the experience of the Holocaust, each poem displays regular form, meter, and rhyme as well as concrete and figurative language. In a camp setting, such a traditional formal realization is immensely practical in expressing what needs to be processed immediately. She designs her poems as images – as Bilder – transforming the complexities of the everyday into easily accessible form. This requires concrete and clear language as well as precise description.

  • 50 I would like to thank the editors, Alexandra Garbarini and Boris Adjemian, for including my essay i (...)

22While her poems can indeed be read as testimonial, their modes can also be described as lyrical, spiritual, satirical, and didactic. In addition, they fulfill a range of functions, for instance, serving as criticism, ritual, performance, therapy, and testimony. Else Dormitzer’s poetry serves as a salient and poignant reminder of the range of German-language camp poetry. Contributing to the writing of the Holocaust in general and to the writing of Theresienstadt in particular, poems produced in Theresienstadt are distinct textual representations of that time and place, linguistic and artistic renderings of experience. As such they constitute valuable repositories of individual memory and play an integral part in the collected writing and remembrance of the Holocaust. Recognizing poetry’s potential rather than limiting its modes and determinants can only add to our understanding of victim testimony of the Holocaust.50

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Bibliographie

Aaron Frieda W., Bearing the Unbearable: Yiddish and Polish Poetry in the Ghettos and Concentration Camps, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.

Adler Hans-Günther, Theresienstadt 1941-45. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, Tübingen: Mohr, 1955.

Adorno Theodor W., “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft”, in Rolf Tiedemann (ed.), Gesammelte Schriften 10-1, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996.

Alfers Sandra, Weiter schreiben. Leben und Lyrik der Else Dormitzer, Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2015.

Alfers Sandra, “Writing from Within: Else Dormitzer in Theresienstadt, 1943-1945”, Journal of Teaching and Education, vol. 1 (4), 2012, p. 141-147.

Alfers Sandra, “German-language poetry from the Holocaust”, Oxford German Studies, vol. 39 (3), 2010, p. 271-289.

Alfers Sandra, “Poetry in the Terezín Transit Camp”, Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 64 (1), 2010, p. 47-70.

Assmann Aleida, “History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony”, Poetics Today, vol. 27 (2), 2006, p. 261-273.

Barkow Ben and Klaus Leist (eds.), Philipp Manes Als ob’s ein Leben wär, Berlin: Ullstein, 2004.

Dormitzer Else, Theresienstädter Bilder, Hilversum: De Boekenvriend, 1945.

Dormitzer Else, Berühmte jüdische Frauen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Berlin: Philo-Verlag & Buchhandlung, 1925.

Emmerich Wolfgang, “Die Literatur des antifaschistischen Widerstands,” in Horst Denkler und Karl Prümm (eds.), Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976, p. 427-458.

Friedman Saul (ed.), The Terezín Diary of Gonda Redlich, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Frow John, Genre, New York: Routledge, 2005.

Green Gerald, The Artists of Terezín, New York: Schocken Books, 1978.

Horowitz Sara, Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction, Albany: State University Press of New York, 1997.

Jaiser Constanze, Poetische Zeugnisse. Gedichte aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939-1945, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.

Kiedaisch Petra, Lyrik nach Auschwitz. Adorno und die Dichter, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1995.

Klüger Ruth, Weiter leben. Eine Jugend, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994.

Klein Katja, Kazett-Lyrik. Untersuchungen zu Gedichten und Liedern aus dem Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995.

Lamping Dieter, Dein Aschenes Haar Sulamith: Dichtung über den Holocaust, Munich: Piper, 1992.

Milton Sibyl, “Art in the Context of Theresienstadt,“ in Anne Dutlinger (ed.), Art, Music, Education as Strategies for Survival: Theresienstadt, New York: Herodias, 2000, p. 10-59.

Moll Michael, Lyrik in einer entmenschlichten Welt. Interpretationsversuche zu deutschsprachigen Gedichten aus nationalsozialistischen Gefängnissen, Ghettos und KZs, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1988.

Nader Andrés Jose, Traumatic Verses. On Poetry in German from the Concentration Camps 1933-1945, Rochester: Camden House, 2007.

Prestel Claudia, “Frauenpolitik oder Parteipolitik? Jüdische Frauen in innerjüdischer Politik in der Weimarer Republik”, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, vol. 37, 1997, p. 121-155.

Rowland Antony, Holocaust Poetry: Awkward Poetics in the Work of Sylvia Plath, Geoffrey Hill, Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

Rowland Antony, Poetry as Testimony. Witnessing and Memory in Twentieth-Century Poems, Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2014.

Schlösser Manfred and Ropertz Hans-Rudolf (eds.), An den Wind geschrieben. Lyrik der Freiheit – 1933-1945, Darmstadt: Agora, 1961.

Schwertfeger Ruth, Women of Theresienstadt. Voices from a Concentration Camp, Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1989.

Troller Norbert, Theresienstadt: Hitler’s Gift to the Jews, Chapel Hill: Schocken Books, 1978.

Walk Joseph, Kurzbiographien zur Geschichte der Juden 1918-1945, Munich: K.G. Saur, 1988.

Wallach Kerry, “Paths of Modernity. Jewish Women in Central Europe”, in Alan T. Levenson (ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism, West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing, 2012, p. 422-440.

Wlodarski Amy, “The Testimonial Aesthetics of Different Trains,” Journal of the American Musicology Society, vol. 63 (1), 2010, p. 99-141.

Young James E., Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

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Notes

1 According to information on the Boston Secession website, programming had to be suspended for the 2009-2010 season because of fundraising challenges incurred by the economic downturn. Thus, the oratorio never premiered: http://bostonsecession.org/ftp/press/2008-09/ToWPostponed.pdf. However, Lomon’s tenth movement “Transport” is included in an audio recording by the Boston Secession entitled “Surprised by Beauty: Minimalism in Choral Music” (Jane Ring Frank Artistic Director, 2008). The quote is from the Boston Secession website and can be found here: www.bostonsecession.org/page.cfm?pageid=5611, accessed on January 13, 2015.

2 A. Wlodarski, 2010, p. 99.

3 While a disregard of German-language poetry from the camps, which has elicited only sporadic attention since the late 1980s, can be largely ascribed to aesthetically focused discourses in “Germanistik” in post-war West Germany, the political climate of the post-war years, particularly in the West German academy, also contributed to this development. For a detailed analysis of the issues raised in this introduction, see S. Alfers, 2010a. Some of the pioneers of camp poetry in German Studies are, in alphabetical order, Constanze Jaiser, Katja Klein, Michael Moll, and Andres José Nader. Frieda W. Aaron’s study on Yiddish and Polish poetry from the ghettos and camps still informs discussion in Anglo-American literature and Holocaust Studies and is also a seminal work to most of the researchers mentioned above.

4 I would like to thank the relatives of the Dormitzer family, in particular Henk Haas, Thomas Runkel, and Irene Stofkoper for allowing me to use materials from their family collection. The quote is from a letter dated October 2, 1945, and it is part of an exchange between Else Dormitzer and her nephew Fred Lessing. Lessing became chairman of the board of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York and served as its treasurer for more than 25 years. German original: “Es kommt mir selbst wie ein Wunder vor, dass wir diesem Hexenkessel entkommen sind; ich hatte nie damit gerechnet”. All English translations are mine, unless otherwise noted; to ensure easier transitions and a smoother reading of the two languages, I am integrating English translations into the main text, with German originals in footnotes. In regards to Dormitzer’s poetry, I am also including published English translations when available. However, I am citing two poems in full in their original German to better illustrate their richness and complexity.

5 Letter from Richard Haas to Else and Sigmund Dormitzer, November 12, 1938. Ich bitte Vater und Dich nun doch zu uns nach Hilversum zu kommen. Wir haben die vorbereitenden Schritte für eure Einreise nach Holland bereits getan und es wäre uns eine grosse Beruhigung, wenn ihr unserem Wunsch, zu uns zu kommen stattgeben werdet und es uns gelingt, Euch die Aufenthaltsbewilligung für Holland zu beschaffen”. Translation: “I now ask you and father to come to Hilversum after all. We have already started preparing for your arrival, and it would be greatly comforting to us if you could grant us our wish, and, of course, if we managed to obtain the permit for Holland”.

6 Deportation lists can be accessed electronically at Yad Vashem, the World Center for Holocaust Research, Documentation, Education, and Commemoration in Israel: http://www.yadvashem.org.il/yv/en/about/institute/deportations_catalog_details.asp?country=THE%20NETHERLANDS, accessed on January 15, 2015.

7 S. Milton, 2000, p. 15-16.

8 S. Milton, 2000, p. 18.

9 K. Wallach, 2012, p. 425.

10 C. Prestel, 1997, p. 135. According to Prestel, Dormitzer was also the first woman to serve on the national board of the “Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith”.

11 German original: “Freizeitgestaltung

12 Family collection, recorded for Wiener Library by H.G. Adler, “Else Dormitzer: Erlebnisse in Nürnberg, Holland, Theresienstadt und beim Rücktransport nach Holland”, German original: “[...] darunter auch oft für alte und kranke Menschen. Ich gehörte zu den wenigen, die sich nicht scheuten, in allen Stuben der Tuberkoloseabteilung vorzutragen, was mir den grossen Dank der Kranken eintrug”.

13 J. Young, 1990, p. 19. “The very figures of witness, testimony, and documentary”, he writes, “thus point respectively to having seen events, having been part of events, finding significance in events, and then teaching about and finding meaning through the transmission of events”.

14 R. Klüger, 1994, p. 128. German original: “Wer nur erlebt, reim- und gedankenlos, ist in Gefahr den Verstand zu verlieren […] Ich hab den Verstand nicht verloren, ich hab Reine gemacht”.

15 S. Horowitz, 1997, p. 59.

16 J. Young, 1990, p. 18.

17 For a detailed discussion of the uses of poetry, see S. Alfers, 2010b.

18 H.G. Adler, 1955, p. 618.

19 B. Barkow and K. Leist, 2004, p. 94; German original: “Orientierungsdienst”.

20 Gerald Green and Norbert Troller, 1978, relate the fate of several painters, whose realistic depictions of camp life were discovered by authorities, leading in some cases to either immediate death or re-deportation.

21 Letters from the Agora Verlag (January 1960) and from editor Manfred Schlösser (March 5, 1960) to Else Dormitzer, family collection. German original: “[…] mit Gedichten, die in der Emigration, in Konzentrationslagern und Ghettos oder als Ausdruck des inneren Widerstands entstanden sind”.

22 German original: “Das Buch soll Zeugnis ablegen für die Kraft des Geistes, der dem tiefen Chaos das besiegende Wort der Ordnung und Freiheit, des Gesetzes und des Glaubens an die Menschenwürde entgegenhielt. Erstmalig werden hier die lyrischen Dokumente einer humanistischen Front gegen das organisierte Verbrechen eines Staates in einer zwar nicht abschließenden, so jedoch – soweit in den Quellen erreichbar – umfassenden Sammlung vorgelegt. In diesem Buch soll das geistige Antlitz eines Volkes entstehen, das wirklicher war als die geschichtliche Wirklichkeit und das als der Toten Ehrenmal den Lebenden zum Gedenken errichtet wurde […] Nicht die Kategorien einer klassischen Ästhetik sollen Richtschnur sein, sondern das Dokument des Geistes, der in den dunkelsten Zeiten die hohe Aufgabe seiner selbst erkennt und danach handelt”.

23 German original: “Der Band erfaßt alle Dichter, die einen gültigen Beitrag zu dem Thema der Verbannung und der Bedrohung geleistet haben und wird neben den bekannteren Autoren eine Menge zu Unrecht Vergessener vorstellen”.

24 Family collection, German original: “Die Durchsicht aller und das Lesen vieler einzelner Gedichte haben alle alten Wunden wieder aufgerissen und die unvergessenen Ereignisse mit großer Deutlichkeit wieder auferstehen lassen”.

25 Family collection, letter from Manfred Schlösser to Dr. Hilde Haas, December 6, 1960.

26 German original: “Im Laufe unserer Arbeit stellte sich nämlich immer mehr heraus, dass es unsere Aufgabe nicht sein kann, dokumentarisches Material bereitzustellen, sondern dass wir vor allen Dingen darauf sehen müssen, wie das metaphysische Problem der Verfolgung und Verbannung bewältigt wurde. So galt auch nicht mehr die erste Frage der Bestätigung: ja, so ist es gewesen, sondern mehr der künstlerischen Frage nach dem Wie der Aussage, und da kam es vor allen Dingen darauf an, vor allem für das Kerkerkapitel mit wenigem viel zu sagen. So musste aus diesen Überlegungen auf eine übermässige Anzahl von Beiträgen aus dem KZ verzichtet werden, falls sie nicht von überragender Bedeutung sind”.

27 For reactions to Theodor W. Adorno’s essay “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft”, see P. Kiedaisch, 1995.

28 Family collection, letter from Manfred Schlösser, December 6, 1960, German original: “Im Zusammenhang mit der Sammlung zu unserem Buch hat sich eine solche Unmenge und fast schon kaum übersehende Anzahl von Manuskripten hier eingefunden, dass wir um die Ausgabe überhaupt noch bewerkstelligen zu können, eine radikale Streichung der Autoren vornehmen mussten, die dann doch nicht ganz den nun anders gesetzten Grenzen entsprechen”. Translation: “Regarding the collection for our book, an overabundance of manuscripts has arrived. It is almost impossible to assess them all. In order to manage the edition, we had to carry out a radical deletion of those authors, who did not quite fit the newly established set of guidelines”.

29 For an enlightening discussion of the publications of several German anthologies see A. Nader, 2007, p. 1-33.

30 German original: “So haben wir leider auch auf die Beiträge Ihrer verehrten Frau Mutter verzichten müssen, denen in einem reinen Dokumentationsband ein wirklicher Ehrenplatz gebührt, die aber in unserem Rahmen nicht so ganz gepasst hätten”.

31 D. Lamping, 1992, p. 285-286; W. Emmerich, 1976, p. 442.

32 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 132: “Whenever I used to read these poems to you the resounding cry was, ‘You must publish these poems as soon as we are free again’. I promised! Now we are free and I am keeping my word”.

33 J. Young, 1990, p. 37.

34 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 13. German original, E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 5: Euch, meine Schicksalsgenossen von Theresienstadt, sei dies Büchlein gewidmet! […] Im Sinne dieser Verbundenheit weihe ich Euch die ‘Theresienstädter Bilder’”.

35 This direct form of address in the words “meine Schicksalsgenossen” is illustrated by use of case in the German original. Dormitzer employs the nominative (“meine Schicksalsgenossen”), not the dative (“meinen Schicksalsgenossen”), hence indicating that she is talking to this group not about them.

36 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 132: “Experiences like these shared together bind more firmly than blood relationships and life-long friendships”.

37 A. Assmann, 2006, p. 269. In regards to video testimony, Aleida Assmann assigns the receiver of testimony (secondary witness) particular importance in the witnessing process, “one who listens to the testimony with empathy and helps record, store, and transmit it […] The Holocaust witness, like the religious martyr, depends on this secondary witness who understands the historical significance of the testimony and makes it public”.

38 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 6.

39 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 21.

40 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 16-17.

41 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 44.

42 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 89.

43 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 8; R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 89. Ein Wäscheflattern, Betten rollen, Ein Rucksackpacken, Helfenwollen”; Translation: “Flapping of washing, rolling up of beds / Grasping of rucksacks, then a moment’s truce”.

44 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 89.

45 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 20; R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 53.

46 German original: “Und meine Seele spannte / Weit ihre Flügel aus, / Flog durch die stillen Lande, / Als flöge sie nach Haus”. http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/joseph-von-eichendorff-gedichte-4294/46, accessed on October 4, 2014. Translation: “And my soul spread / far its wings / And sailed o’er the hushed lands / As if gliding home”. http://www.henleusa.com/en/schumann-anniversary-2010/schumann-forum/mondnacht.html, accessed on February 7, 2015.

47 R. Schwertfeger, 1988, p. 53.

48 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 11-12. The census was conducted to determine the exact number of prisoners. Gonda Redlich describes this event in his diary: November 14, 1943: “An order was issued forcing all the inhabitants of the ghetto outside the city into a large, open field. Only the sick who are unable to move remain in the ghetto. It is written (Exodus 10:9): „We will all go, young and old.“ This verse has been fully realized, verbatim. Children two years old went with old people of seventy. They went and stood all day, from 7 A.M. till 11 P.M. They went and were counted. As if we were cattle or sheep. Darkness came, and the Jews planned to spend the night in the open field. Thirty-six thousand people, as docile as little children or sheep – lambs, standing and waiting. And when we were permitted to return, we went timidly, women, children at the front, going with great patience, awfully”. S. Friedman, 1992, p. 135.

49 E. Dormitzer, 1945, p. 8 and p. 18-19.

50 I would like to thank the editors, Alexandra Garbarini and Boris Adjemian, for including my essay in this special issue of Études arméniennes contemporaines. I would also like to express my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers and to Alexandra Garbarini for their insightful comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this article.

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