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Ilse Kleinman

Ilse Kleinman

Where could one find humanity, compassion and understanding?

It became clear to me that when people are fighting for what they term "freedom or survival," the worst is brought out in them. Sadly, brutality and war have been recurring through the history of the world.. Wars have been fought in the name of religion and freedom, but usually it concerns power. Humanity has still to learn that freedom is a state of being and becoming. The only way a people can be "free" is if an individual has reached that state within himself and it is expressed in a group.

In this day and age, people have gone to great lengths to express their individuality. We don't really know ourselves. We are all subject to many unconscious drives and there is no way we can connect and bridge the gap between our two lines of communication--the conscious and the unconscious. We are not coordinated. Body, mind and soul are separate entities for most people. We are not whole, and as many psychologists have shown, we only use an infinitesimal portion of our minds. In this modern world we must come to realize that life is global and everyone has a right to a place on the planet we all share. In this shrinking world, with accelerated communication, we have become an alien presence. We must learn to subdue the forms of aggression and egoism within us and in doing so resurrect our image. "Only in this way will society be reformed. We all have the responsibility and the duty to perform this task, and no-one has ever maintained that it is easy, but we must endeavor to do this, not in the moments of our triumphs, but during the difficult times of trial and in our darkest moments of despair."¹

I emigrated to the United States with my family in December l979 and settled in Santa Monica, California. The situation in South Africa was becoming explosive. From the documentaries we were now able to see on television, we learned many things we had not known because of censorship in South Africa. The Black people were suffering cruelty, torture, indignities and death. They were being victimized and exploited. Once again, history was repeating itself. I felt guilty and depressed for having been part of that corrupt society. As an artist I began to express myself in the way I know best, namely by creative work. Childhood memories came to the fore. Now I could understand my parents' isolation and their periodic despondency.

Claude Lanzmann's documentary on the Holocaust called "Shoah" was shown on Public Television over an extended period. It proved to be a powerful stimulus to release pent-up emotions and memories, resulting in a large body of creative work which poured out of me for several years. Two years ago this collection was exhibited in Vancouver, Canada, in conjunction with a " Holocaust Remembrance Week." The response to the work was overwhelming. Schoolchildren arrived en masse, encouraged by their teachers, who had suppressed awareness of the Holocaust, and now, having seen the exhibition, became conscious of the importance of being exposed to that kind of human suffering, in order to ensure that it does not happen again. Hearing the comments of the children, and seeing the reactions of people of all ages and all denominations, made me feel hopeful that perhaps there was a chance for the future. A survivor from Auschwitz had opened the exhibition by telling his story. He later embraced me and said to me "There will come a time when there will be no more survivors to tell the tale, but your work must endure for posterity." Humble though I felt, I realized that the work had touched a lot of people and I must endeavor to immortalize it by publishing a book.

I came to realize that my work is the symbolic expression of the brutalities people have suffered at the hands of their fellow human beings. In the course of researching this book, I have been fortunate enough to come in contact with people from many walks of life and from various countries, who very willingly gave me their stories, for these atrocities and genocides have happened over and over again. We are constantly being reminded of this by the events taking place in what used to be Yugoslavia. I have explored the states of mind which made some people survive while others perished. Those subjected to the horrors of the concentration camps or gulags gained their strength by taking one day at a time, believing each day that their nightmare would end. Today, having tried all their lives to achieve some semblance of normality, they tell their stories in a very detached and objective manner. Now, when the atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein on his own people have been publicized, the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust are enraged and full of compassion, many a time brought to tears--for in essence they are reliving their own tragedies. Their empathy for the suffering of others knows no bounds and they are incredulous that their own stories, which are known to the world, have as yet not brought a halt to the horrors a human being is capable of. During The Second World War terrible atrocities were committed. Concentration camps and gas chambers were established to exterminate people whose only crime was having been born. Conditions were harsh. There was malnutrition, exhaustion and death. Many saw their loved ones shot and thrown into mass graves. I was told a story by someone who had seen a young pregnant woman wearing a yellow ribbon, signifying that she was Jewish, standing outside a shop window displaying baby clothes, and looking longingly at them. She was, of course, forbidden to go inside. Along came some SS officers.¹ They threw her to the ground and jumped on her distended body, showing no compassion or respect for the new life that was growing within her. This happened in Vienna after the Anschluss.² Many such stories have now come out of other countries too, and through the testimonies that appear in this book we shall learn of the dastardly acts that have been committed all over the world. The Shah of Persia is reputed to have had the hands of children cut off when their parents were dissenters. Stalin is known to have killed millions of people. Now from Iraq and Kuwait similar stories are emerging. Have we learned anything from the past or is it doomed to repeat itself?

The Jewish people are conscious of the need to keep their stories alive. Museums are springing up all over the world. Monuments are being erected. In Washington an important museum is being built and officials are busy documenting whatever they can find. There appears to be a feverish desire to make everything known, the driving power being that by so doing, this kind of thing will no longer re-occur. We want to end this madness.

Jean Paul Sartre, in his book "Anti-Semitism and the Jew," published in l946, wrote:

"Everybody understands emotions of hate or anger. But ordinarily hate and anger have a provocation. Any anti-Semitic (or racist ¹ )passion, does not have such a character. "A man, who finds it entirely natural to denounce other men, cannot have our conception of humanity." Sartre contends "that such a man is afraid. Not of the Jews, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberties, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of his solitariness, of change, of society and of the world. He is a coward who does not want to admit his cowardice to himself, a murderer who represses and censures his tendency to murder. The object of his dislike serves him only as a pretext. Anti-Semitism (or racism¹ ) in short, is fear of the human condition. Such a man is a man who wishes to be a pitiless stone, a furious torrent, a devastating thunderbolt--in fact anything except a man. " I believe this applies to all bigots and despots.

It has always been said that all art forms can initiate changes in attitudes and individual behavior. Works of art can be vehicles for helping us face ourselves and see things we would rather not see. The strength of the artistic medium is such that it can make one turn inward to look at oneself, and in this way it has the power to heal. The human being has always expressed himself artistically by making images and music, or telling stories in order to find his place in the world and harmonize his life. The first stories were told by the hunting cultures. Bushman cave paintings and those in Eastern Spain are remarkable for their expression and beauty which have endured for generations. By symbolical representation of an event primitive man thought he could ensure the actual occurrence of that event.

Storytelling was important during medieval times for the myth of the Gospel was found in paintings and carvings in the great churches and cathedrals. Gothic and Baroque churches were not only places of worship, but became learning centers, theaters and halls for singing for the masses. The role of storytelling was important in learning about our world and its people. Whether it was in a visual form, through song, or orally transmitted and passed on from generation to generation as in the Native American culture--it was a vital aspect of life. Myths and ritual, which express a spiritual reality and have the power to evoke that potential in our lives, are painfully absent in our modern culture. It remains for the artist to fulfill that role and provide nourishment and enrichment, for it has been said that a society without art is a decadent society. So it follows that more than ever today we need an art that will identify the individual not only with his local environment, but with the whole planet. We are involved with technologies and we are bombarded with a great deal of information. We are concerned with outer values and not inner ones, and we are seeking the meaning of life and not experiencing the joy of living it.

In the main we do not hear stories of beauty and wisdom, and even the stories told in this book are of an entirely different caliber. They are not joyous but the very act of telling them must certainly serve as a release of the dark images held captive in the soul. The inter-action with people from all over the world who have endured such pain has been an experience for me of inestimable value as I hope it has been for them, and as I hope it will be for anyone into whose hands this book this book falls. It has awakened a global consciousness in me. We have little in our lives today which can be called harmonious, but we know that art has the power to re-create what has been so painfully endured, and to awaken the consciousness of all people. I hope that together with my oral historians I have done that.

The works of art reproduced in this book were done intuitively and emotionally--they were not planned. Although they portray the darker side of life, they also have a hope factor signifying the positive aspects of living. I hope that the people who have survived their traumatic experiences enough to be able to talk about them, and make this valuable contribution to the book, will feel that my work has in some measure been able to express their pain.

We have almost come to the end of our journey. We have seen the expressionless faces stare at us in horror and disbelief. We have also seen bodies stripped bare, huddled together for a little warmth and comfort. They have been deprived of everything decent and human. Their lives have become barren and senseless. Only the fact that they have all been subjected to the same degradation, gives them a measure of strength--strength to fight for their own survival. Their faces show the shock and numbness and the questioning. It is as if they are asking you, the viewer, to tell them the reason why. Together with the artwork, which tells its own story in a silent and powerful way, we have the testimonies from survivors from all over the world, who have come forward to tell their stories courageously and in a graphic manner. We have all done so, so that you can bear witness.

There is a uniformity running through the testimonies, whether the drama was enacted in Lithuania or Kazakhstan, in Nazi Germany or in Tibet, In South Africa or in the Middle East, in Romania or El Salvador. The methods used to crush and subdue a human spirit were always the same. Death became commonplace and predictable. Bodies were broken, tortured and exposed to extreme weather conditions. Food was almost non-existent--and the madness induced by thirst, with water deliberately withheld was probably experienced by all at one time or another. There was no difference in the treatment meted out to men, women or children, and preferential treatment or deference to physical health was never a consideration. The courage to "be" was simply denied them. We have been through experiences with the survivors that defy the imagination and escape one's comprehension. It makes one wonder were we born to live or to die, to love or to hate?

At the end of World War II, when the horrors of the Nazi death camps were revealed to the world, when the British Tommies and the GI's had actually seen hundreds of corpses in communal pits, and emaciated and confused prisoners crying out for help, many resolved that this should never happen again and that violence generated by a lust for power, political fanaticism or any other pretext should immediately be stopped. It is alarming to realize that now it is happening again. It seems to be remarkably easy to regard those of us who are different in some way, to be of an inferior group and thus disposable. The genocidal mentality talks about "them" and "us." Hence the philosophy of "ethnic cleansing." It has also to be realized that when economic chaos hits as it has with the break-up of the Soviet Union, and poverty, unemployment and lack of health care has become widespread, then rival clans and political groups turn the skirmishes into all-out warfare.

Many questions have to be confronted and answered. Some will never be conclusively resolved but a start will have to be made. Why does the human being do such terrible things to his own kind? How do some people survive when others succumb? How do we recognize a reign of terror and forever stop it? At the outset, instead of asking what life is all about and what our purpose in it is, let us realize that we must act responsibly and handle the tasks which are set before us with as much equanimity as is possible. Only in this way can we hope to reach a measure of fulfillment.. Paul Tillich, one of the leading Christian theologians of our generation, in his book "Love, Power and Justice" said : "The more centred a being is, the more power of being is embodied in it. The more completely centred, self-related and self-aware he is, this being has the greatest power of being. He has a world, not an environment, and with it infinite potentialities of self-realization. The nearer to the centre an element is, the more it participates in the power of the whole. The centre of power is the only centre of the whole as long as it does not degrade its own centrality by using it for particular purposes, such as self-gratification. Then they cease to be the actual centre and the whole being will disintegrate." It is well that we should take heed of this prophetic warning, for history has only too often proven this fact.

In going through the testimonies of the horrific and dastardly acts the human being is capable of committing, let us not forget that there is another side to be considered. People are, in fact, also capable of great acts of compassion. During the Nazi occupation of France, a whole community in a small village in the south, Le Chambon, risked their lives in order to hide and protect Jewish fugitives from the Nazis. This story was told in Pierre Sauvage's beautiful and moving film, "Weapons of the Spirit." There were always those special guards in the camps and gulags who tried to obtain that extra piece of bread to smuggle to the inmates. In all countries you would always find a compassionate soul who would be willing to make the sacrifice and help and protect another fellow human being. Professor Shtromas said he has never really been disillusioned with the human spirit, for he had found so much help and kindness when he escaped from the Lithuanian ghetto as a boy and went in search of his parents. There is really not only obedience, there is independence too, and this we have seen in the heroic feats and many miraculous discoveries of creative people in our century. In this world of global communication, there is some internationalism. We are aware that if one nation suffers, we all do, and acts of compassion such as the feeding of the starving millions in Somalia show that people do care. However, even there the situation has deteriorated, and what began as a humanitarian aid effort is now being turned into a peace-keeping operation. We know people are capable of loving and caring, and that is what we must focus on. Looking once again at the Dalai Lama's doctrine of spiritual democracy, compassion for one's fellow human being should make us realize the utter futility of hatred, greed and power. It is a cancer which spreads and constantly repeats itself. Through the advent of global communication and education we are becoming more aware--but awareness is just the beginning. We have to think how we, each one of us, can make a difference in the urgent problems facing our world. There is so much information--in fact there is an information explosion--about food, energy, human rights, breakdown of family and community, guns and nuclear weapons. Everyone will have to face these problems. Education has a vital role to play, but it must go beyond teaching learning skills. Students will have to be guided to confront the complicated social, economic and political issues, but most importantly they will have to recognize their own weaknesses and the confusions and dichotomies within them. We have to learn from history and face ourselves. We have to identify with the victims and their pain, but we also have to identify with the victimizer and ask ourselves how would we have acted in similar circumstances. These are complex questions and there are no simple answers, but it is the only way. Otherwise history will continue to repeat itself.

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