A Walk to Remember

The responses of Black Americans to the Holocaust, and their coverage of it, are important parts of African American and Holocaust scholarship. Nevertheless, most of the work on this topic either draws largely or solely from two Black newspapers, The Chicago Defender and The Pittsburgh Courier, and fails to examine any regional or sectional differences in coverage and interpretation in these or other Black newspapers found around the country. In doing so, these works fail to acknowledge the significance of regional differences as a contribution to a group’s memory and interpretation of the Holocaust and by extension other genocides. In examining the differences among various Black newspapers, one can attempt to show the ways in which regional differences among African Americans in the U.S. contributed to the Black American coverage and interpretation of the Holocaust. From my analysis, and from the work of previous scholars, it is clear that Black media outlets across the country often made comparisons between Nazi Germany and the United States, particularly regarding racial ideologies and discriminatory processes. Nevertheless, these comparisons were not the same across the board, with Black news outlets from different areas of the country comparatively highlighting different forms of American oppression, whether they be state operated or extra-judicial. These variations seem, to some degree, to reflect different experiences of racism in different corners of the United States.

Perhaps there is no better place to look at how women experienced concentration camp imprisonment than by looking at the lives of the prisoners of Ravensbrück. The Ravensbrück concentration camp was an all-female world of terror, located north of Berlin in a remote region of Germany known as the Mecklenburg lake district. Natural beauty surrounded the camp, which was the intent of its planner Heinrich Himmler who "believed that the cleansing of German blood should begin close to nature." The women imprisoned at Ravensbrück during World War II came from more than thirty different countries and were there for political, religious, and racial reasons. As Hitler implemented the Final Solution and the Third Reich spread its reign of terror across Europe, the women at Ravensbrück felt its grip tighten on their lives. Those who survived portray in their memoirs and letters the strong will and determination necessary to bear the horrors inflicted upon them. These women's stories enrich the Holocaust master narrative, which has been told mainly from a male perspective until recently. Women used their unique qualities as women to survive life at Ravensbrück; they relied on their social instincts, resourcefulness, and nurturing skills to protect their humanity which gave them the strength to persevere.

In a chapter titled “Eugenics in Hitler’s Germany,” Robert N. Proctor opens by writing, “we like to think that medicine is a force for healing in the world, but we should also not forget that, in the wrong political climate, medicine can join with evil to produce monstrosities.  Such was the case in the Nazi era.”  Proctor then goes on to list the sterilization of disabled people as one of the “most horrific crimes of the Nazis,” along with “cruel medical experiments, pernicious racial theories, and industrial-scale murder.”  While Jews are the most notable victims of the Holocaust, there were many others viewed by the Nazis as undesirable, including homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Roma, Poles and other Slavic people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and members of opposing political groups.  The sterilization and/or killing of those with disabilities were “crimes committed in the guise of medicine.”  However well-intentioned these practices may have started out, they clearly became tragic excuses to control the population and help promote the Aryan race.

Gad Beck is widely recognized as one of the most moving and influential survivors of the Holocaust who now speaks on what he has endured. His story details his life as a Jewish man in Berlin, struggling against the rise of the Nazi party and his efforts to resist the wave of fascism that would take a horrifying number of lives. Beck’s story is even more poignant for its intersectionality; as a same-sex desiring, Jewish man, Beck’s narrative highlights the many ways in which Nazis were able to persecute a range of oppressed peoples and the effects that such policies had on these populations.

The lives of young women during the Holocaust are ones that are continuously overlooked. As seen in most societies, even today, the social pressures and constant commentary on how a teenage girl must conduct herself is harmful. Now place these constraints and stresses into the Holocaust. It is almost unimaginable to fathom the stress placed upon these women. Adolescent girls of the Holocaust not only worried about the everyday traumas that teenagers experience, but also survival and doing everything they possibly could to keep themselves safe. As recalled throughout survivor testimonies from women who were in their teenage years during the Holocaust, being a woman and the attributes as well as the stereotypes that fed into this at times could affect rates of survival. Oftentimes, prison guards and other prisoners subjected girls to a range of gendered violence, including sexual abuse. While truly disturbing, the way the Nazi regime viewed young women factored directly into how they were treated. The abuse and sexualization of these young women had the ability to determine whether or not survival was an option. They were forced to adhere to these feminine expectations even during a time where they had absolutely no control in the situation itself.

Despite Cleveland’s status as a fairly standard mid-size midwestern city, the Jewish community in Cleveland remains much larger than nearby cities such as Pittsburgh, Buffalo, or Columbus. Despite Cleveland’s large Jewish community, the role Cleveland played during and after the Holocaust remains largely unexplored compared to the extensive historiography written on Cleveland’s Jewish community in the nineteenth century. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, prominent Cleveland Jews actively participated in anti-Nazi activism, boycotted German goods, and accepted thousands of Jewish refugees. Cleveland’s numerous Jewish organizations worked to rehabilitate young Holocaust survivors, created support groups, and even hosted dances to help survivors integrate into the larger Jewish community. The individual accounts of Holocaust survivors who relocated in Cleveland demonstrate why so many survivors found a new home in the midwestern city, how important Cleveland’s strong Jewish community became to its new residents, and the ways Cleveland continues to remember and memorialize their experiences.

When talking about Holocaust film, gender and sexuality are very important. Within these films women are used as objects, seen as simple characters due to them being women, or are shown in the film fleetingly or not at all. This is because women, Jewish women, weren’t seen as people. They were just an object to be manipulated.

During their reign of terror, the Nazi party utilized many weapons and tatics of war against those who they oppressed. Arguably the most potent method of control was their mass censorship of all types of literature, art, and media that displayed opposing political ideologies, or “anti-German” values. Hitler understood the power of revoking these fundamental rights, as stripping away one’s freedom of expression effectively strips away part of their humanity. This tirade against any opposing agenda took the form of aggressive restrictions on journalism, theatre, and art galleries, and essentially became the antithesis of free speech.