Remembering the Holocaust Survivors with D/deaf and Disabilities
Today is the day of remembrance to many Holocaust survivors, including survivors with disabilities.
We must not forget a few Deaf survivours around the world for they talked (signed) about their pasts during the Holocaust. Of course, there are people with disabilities who have lost their families as children of the Holocaust.
How did they manage to survive between the 1930s and 1950s? Many stayed at the camps where they forced to use different skills in a foreign occupation such as bootmaker, musicians or dressmakers. Here is one of the clip – The Five Needles where Deaf women were sewing without breaking needle up to needles. every day. https://www.bslzone.co.uk/watch/zoom-2011-five-needles
A couple of websites are useful for researching disabled survivors by reading their stories, looking at their artworks, and interviewing Deaf survivors via sign language.
I know and met one parent who is not D/deaf and has a son born with disabilities in New Zealand. This son’s parent came from Europe – Germany-Poland and they survived throughout the war and living in the ghetto estate. The son does not understand that the parent had been living through terrible times because he is 70 years old today.
Here is a good website – Renee Hartman and her Deaf parents and a Deaf sister. https://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/podcast/renee/
Another website along with a video about one Deaf survivor – Charlotte Friedman – https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1413746/jewish/A-Deaf-Survivors-Story-Part-1.htm
In the past where I used to be a deaf health carer for one lovely Hard of Hearing later became Deaf lady in Hamilton. Her name was Mary, and her husband was an ex-POW prisoner/airforce officer. Mary often talked to me about her experience living in London and Kent through the war times, air raids, food rationing, and many other things like bombing many homes. When the air-raid siren goes off, Mary laid down along the road kerbside quietly, went down to the underground bunker, to the Victoria Train Station bunker along with many people. Every house painted in black windows, taped white X around the window panel, and a large, heavy wool blanket covered the windows. Mary can not hear the voice from the radio or over the telephone, but she found a way to get someone to help her. Mary found Kent was better to live there than in London because of fewer air raids and bombing in the city. But her husband was bitter and angry, overhearing more news about wars and fighting with other enemies through the story. The husband said to me that it is time to stop having conflicts because war destroys people’s lives worldwide. He had enough, and his life moves forward.
Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind
Today, the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin Mitte are mentioned in every travel guide. They are a backyard labyrinth in which many Jewish people lived and worked — for example in the brush factory of the German entrepreneur Otto Weidt. During the Nazi era he employed many blind and deaf Jews and saved them from deportation and death. The workshop of the blind is now a museum.
A poem from IIya Kaminsky
The Voice We cannot Hear
They shove Sonya into the police
car —
one morning, one morning, one morning in March, one dime-bright morning —
they shove her
and she zigzags and turns and trips in silence—
which is a soul’s noise—
Sonya, who once said,“On the day of my arrest I will be playing piano.”
We watch four men shove her—
and we think we see hundreds of old pianos form a bridge from Arlemovsk to Tedna Street – and she
waits at each piano— what remains of her is
a puppet
that speaks with its fingers,
what remains of a puppet is this woman, what remains
of her (they took you, Sonya) is the voice we cannot hear — https://www.massreview.org/sites/default/files/06_59.1Kaminsky.pdf
