September 18th, 2023 to September 24th, 2023
To start this week, we reviewed and reflected over Last Letters of the Holocaust, provided by the Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. If you remember from last week, I chose two letters to annotate, which are linked in my last blog post. I personally found the letter from a woman named Regina to be the most interesting of the two, as there was a lot to read into within her letter due to it being a significantly longer letter, it actually being two letters within one: one addressed to her husband, and one addressed to her son. Several times within the letter, she mentions the Lord and her continued faith and hope for her return to the arms of her beloved family. I think it’s quite interesting that despite the persecution and struggle she had faced all of her life due to her faith, she still believes strongly in the Lord and that she persists because of her faith and, in addition, because of her husband.
Today or tomorrow, I shall be taken to the camp. May God help me to overcome this too. I have suffered greatly, but survived because I believed in the good Lord, and because my great love for you, Mutzek, gave me strength… I’ve hidden some things, so if our kind Lord will give us the good fortune of seeing one another again, not everything will be lost.
Regina Kandt, Last Letter From Belgrade, Yad Vashem
While in hind sight, we know exactly what happened to these people, this woman and her family that she was sent to the camp with, but she never knew what was to happen to her until the moments during or right before. It’s heartbreaking that these people, who were just human, were tortured and systematically killed for who they are. I think Regina knew there was a chance she would not return, hence her writing the letter, and her proclamations of care and love for her family. This is especially apparent in the letter to her husband, where she says,
Mutzek, I greatly loved my mother and my dear boys, but I’ve never loved anybody in the whole world as much as I’ve loved you. Therefore you too must be strong and patient, one day this too will come to an end.
Regina Kandt, Last Letter From Belgrade, Yad Vashem
I think by her saying, “…one day this too will come to an end,” it shows her faith and hope for the future, for her survival, and if not herself, the survival of her beloved family. In stark contrast, the letter to her son is actually quite funny, very much in the vein of Slavic motherhood, as she writes her disdain for her daughter-in-law, her son’s wife:
If you love me even a little bit, do not remarry Eva because you will be eternally unhappy. It may not be her fault, but she has a terrible character. If it had not been for little Sasha, I might not have supported her. I slaved for her and for the child. She exploited me greatly.
Regina Kandt, Last Letter From Belgrade, Yad Vashem
I adore that even in this dark time, days before her death, she is still teasing her son, bullying her daughter-in-law just a little bit. It’s so motherly, and greatly displays her character. In a sense, this quote also shows that she cares for her grandson, Sasha, as she would have essentially abandoned her daughter-in-law if it were not for the child. The letter to her family clearly displays her family-oriented, Slavic values, which I adore that she kept that and her spirit into her final days.
The other letter I read was from a man named Tuvia Grin, and despite its shortness, you truly can gather from it his character. The context leading up to this letter is that he and his family were located in a ghetto in their home country of Lithuania, but Tuvia escaped from the ghetto, joining the partisans to fight off Hitler’s invasion of Lithuania. He writes this letter to his sister who had immigrated to Israel. Tuvia describes his feelings of leaving his family behind in the ghetto:
I fled Lithuania, Panevėžys. I left everyone at home, Mother and Father, in the ghetto, everyone. I feel terrible for leaving them in the thieving hands of Hitler’s robbers, and who knows what is happening to them…I live in hope that we will soon celebrate victory over the enemy of us all.
Tuvia Grin, The Last Postcard From Tuvia Grin, Yad Vashem
I greatly admire his stoicism and bravery in leaving home for the greater good. From his writings, you can tell the guilt he feels leaving his family alone in the ghetto, even as the youngest of the family, especially since he has no way of knowing what will happen to them. Tuvia didn’t do it to get out, to find freedom… he did it because he wanted to reverse the invasion of Lithuania and remove Hitler from their country. While we may never know if he achieved that goal, as he died under unknown circumstances, it is apparent that he had the selfless ability to do so.
Many of us within the class, as we went around and shared about our letters, realized that many of these people were hopeful and still had faith in their religion. Though in a difficult circumstance, even if just for the sake of other people or to “fake-it-till-ya-make-it” in a way, they kept hope. They didn’t know what was coming next, but they had hope and faith and love to carry them to the end.
As we near the period of midterms and end our WWII unit, we started to brainstorm ideas for our essays and presentations. While at first I was unsure of what I wanted to write about, I came to a few conclusions/ideas during our free write period…
- Exploring the effects of World War II on the Soviet Union, particularly through the progression of letters
- Exploring the after-effects of World War II on Berlin, and examining the impact of the erection of the Berlin Wall, splitting the city into East and West sectors, creating vastly different experiences within the same city
- Exploring the Japanese perspective on the war, maybe focusing in on the home front
- Examining the Native American involvement in World War II, and how their code helped America greatly throughout their participation in the war
Many of these topics are very broad, so I’m looking for a way to narrow the focus in more, as there’s only so much you can write about the different aspects of a war’s impact on an entire country in only a maximum of 1,500 words. I’m planning on trying to find more resources and information. Perhaps talking to my Russian Mystique professor about how the Soviet Union was impacted by the war, and seeing if she may know of any letter or diary resources pertaining to my first two ideas, will help narrow my scope and list of ideas. I, however, know for sure that I’d like to explore the non-Western perspectives of the war, as I feel those sides, from the American perspective, are largely ignored. The Native American code was an important facet of our success, and yet, it is not a widely taught fact. Also as Americans, we ignore and/or villianize what other countries, especially Eastern European ones, added to the triumph over the Axis powers. Then, exploring Japan, their deeds during the war are often forgotten and unexplored by the West, excluding Pearl Harbor, as well as the impact these deeds had on its citizens. I’m very interested in diving in deeper to a topic unexplored in class, and I’m excited to see where my research takes me.
