Lohamei Hagetaot: the voice of the Warsaw Ghetto
[tab:Travel]
A few miles from the border with Lebanon, in the Western Galilee overlooking the Mediterranean, Lohamei is HaGetaot, the kibbutz of the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. They had managed to evade Nazi barbarism, But as important as being alive and looking resolutely towards the future was to perpetuate the memory of those who stayed on the road, fight for the Holocaust should not be lost in the labyrinth of oblivion.
"I did not forget. It is important not to, but not in the past enfangarme, but to look to the future ". Who speaks well is Havka Raban, 84 years, apparently a fragile woman defeated by life. But nothing is further from reality. Havka is one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. A woman hard as a flint, a full-fledged heroine with memory intact and accurate word. Born in Warsaw, after the Nazi invasion he joined the resistance groups in the ghetto 1941. He worked as a messenger between the various ghettos. Moved from Warsaw to Krakow with false identity for clandestine newspapers fueled the resistance of Polish Jews.
Havka is one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. A woman hard as a flint, a full-fledged heroine with memory intact and accurate word
And 1942, fellow partisans planted a bomb in the cafeteria Cyganeria, frequented by officers of the SS. She was not allowed to participate, but wait for the attackers in a safe house "hot food". Someone betrayed and arrested all. Condemned as a partner, was transferred to Auschwitz, where he shaved and tattooed the number that still looks to his left arm. She entered two years "in a world that is not the world". "I will never forget the smell of burning flesh or the smoke from the chimneys of the crematoria", confesses with a fortitude that paralyzes. After the war, was exchanged for German prisoners in Sweden through the International Red Cross. Four years later, became one of the founders of the kibbutz. "The idea came from the ghetto, when we start thinking in the insurrection and that we created a community us to survive in Israel ", recalls. Havka be photographed, shows his number tattooed with the pride of one who has looked face to face with death and lived to tell. Still resides in the kibbutz and anyone who comes up there should have the privilege of hearing.
A kibbutz against forgetting
Havka, as another forty partisans and Holocaust survivors (mostly from the Warsaw Ghetto), settled here in April 1949. In an effort to preserve the memory of pain (so necessary for not repeating the ignominy) together built the first museum to be built in the world on this great tragedy. Visit today is an outstanding debt to anyone who thinks that keeping alive the memory is the only antidote to repeat the bleakest pages of our history.
Everything revolves around the House of the Ghetto Fighters (Beit Lohamei Hagetaot). At a glance, first thing that strikes the traveler is an imposing aqueduct that appears to protect the museum. It was built almost 200 years by the Ottomans to supply water to the inhabitants of Acre (Akko) from the springs of Kabri. Beside, an amphitheater with capacity for 15.000 people now empty, where each year marks the Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The museum rooms are crossed with the stomach and heart gripped sad. The visitor has before it, eg, the cubicle where he was tried in the early 60 Adolf Eichman, responsible for the trains that carried Jews to death did not stop. El Mossad, Israeli secret services, steps followed for more than ten years. He had taken refuge in Argentina under the identity of Ricardo Clement, but was finally captured in May and 1960 arrived in Tel Aviv to stand trial. Many of the witnesses who testified against him lived in the Lohamei kibbtuz HaGetaot. For the people of Israel was a kind of exorcism: a quarter of the population was a survivor of the Shoah (the Hebrew term that defines the Holocaust).
Let me remain a child
Lohamei HaGetaot is full of phrases that touch your heart with the cold precision of horrror. The Children's Museum of Yad Layeled speaks to the children of Holocaust. Are our children prepared to understand? The enclosure, an enormous concrete cylinder, is traversed downstream. It is a time travel through the ghetto, of the oppressive atmosphere of Nazism and a tribute, while, a million and half children who succumbed to barbarism. "I never would have wanted to grow. It is a hundred times better to remain a child ", is read into one of the walls. A reflection in a million of those children that the Holocaust did not miss his childhood option.
Psdta.- At the time of writing obituaries in the newspapers report the death, to 97 years, of another Holocaust survivor, Jacques Stroumsa, "The Auschwitz Violinist", whom I had the honor to meet and hear in Jerusalem, Thanks to the kindness of Sepharad of Spain Home, a year ago. Go from here my heartfelt tribute to an extraordinary man, on which VaP. later write the story that deserves.
[tab:the way]
From Tel Aviv have to take Route 6 (linking northern and southern Israel). After Haifa, Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot is among the cities of Akko and Nahariya, two hours by road from the capital.
[tab:a nap]
The traveler can sleep in the nearby Akko, where the hotels is extensive, but VaP. recommended overnight in the guest house of Kibbutz, Bayit and-Register, the welcoming, especially, the opportunity to enjoy a unique experience in one of these agricultural communities that settled on the modern State of Israel.
[tab:a table set]
The restaurant at the kibbutz, Peace, is run by a couple of Argentine Jews, ensuring good roast. Breakfast, hearty and typical products Hebrew, is particularly recommended. The opening of this restaurant a couple of years ago was not without controversy, but it was a source of income for a community to which the crisis has not left unscathed and which is immersed in a mass of contradictions between his loyalty sentimental agrarian socialism in a world ruled by the market economy. As Nora confesses, one of its neighbors, "We had to sell our soul to the devil". A factory for vegetarian products is now their main source of income. A nod to capitalism living with resignation.
[tab:highly recommended]
-It is amazing to admire in the museum one of the 4.000 artworks produced in the Warsaw Ghetto, showing that wit is always stronger than fear and adversity.
–Take a tour of the kibbutz and feel the throb of the changes an experience of community life, where private property did not exist, now shaken by the new times. Chatting with the early pioneers of the kibbutz and feel the suspicion with which some speak of the Arabs (not yet allowed to live in or to the Palestinians who work in the kibbutz).
[tab:END]
Comments (3)
Iris
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Shocking testimony. How nice that these people continue to have strength to bear witness to the barbarism. It is important not to forget. Your site is very interesting, did not know
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Nora
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Should not we do know more about the Holocaust to future generations, for this type of genocide and barbarism of people who think themselves as cults does not happen again?
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ricardo
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For this aim with reports like this. Remember the darkest pages of our history to not repeat. Thank you very much for lean out VaP.
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