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Since this is Yom Hashoah I was wondering the following,
Is it appropriate to use the term “Holocaust Survivor” to refer to a child hidden in a Budapest swiss safe house ? Meanwhile, my grandparents went through ghenim in Auschwitz , Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen which is unfathomable (Oct 7 hostages are the closest to that). I get that many are the only eyewitnesses left to tell the story. That’s important and very important. But calling them survivors just cheapens the horrific part of it.
P.S. I get there are poylishars who say any Hungarian never really experienced the gehinim living through 5 years of it plus ghettos nebach. But they were there and suffered too. Its a big leap to say someone never there and just alive then seeing it from afar is a “survivor” . (not to belittle what they went thru)
Yes. Absolutely, someone who hid in Budapest is a Holocaust survivor.
This was never a question and isn’t one now.
I knew someone who was a twelve year old in a safe house under the protection of Wallenberg during the holocaust . He for his part was obsessed with the holocaust and his experiences. None of the Polish survivors I knew, who all went through so much more and worse were obsessed like that.
Anyway, there are different levels of being a holocaust survivor . The secular definition is anyone who went through Nazi persecution. Someone who was a child in Germany and left with his family in 1936 because of the way they winds were blowing is considered a holocaust survivor just like someone who went through six years of torture in Poland. There is an ulterior motive behind why the secular world stretches the definition so much. That way the holocaust is barley unique.
I think it depends on what someone went through. Even being in a safe house was terrible . But being someone who is worthy of giving brochas on par with a Gadol B’Yisroel because they went through the holocaust and remained frum is something I would only say about someone who was in actual concentration camps. Or an extended period in a ghetto. Or years of hiding in a forest . Etc.
If a person was in an area controlled by the Third Reich, they qualify as a “Holocaust survivor”. The same would apply to anyone who escaped. It probably doesn’t count if you were in an area controlled by a German ally, but who did not cooperate with the Germans in killing Jews (e.g. Finland and Japan). Whether you should count those who “almost” ended up under Nazi control but escaped because the Germans lost the war (e.g. British Jews – who were one battle away from doom in 1940, but the British won that battle). Then you can ask about Jews who were living in Eretz Yisrael (remember the Germans controlled Lebanon and Syria, and were probably one battle away from taking Egypt) or even America (the Gestapo was already checking for where to put concentration camps, and at one point the US was working on plans for moving the government further away from the coast). Given the global nature of World War II one can argue that we are all descended from “Holocaust survivors”.
You don’t say how old the child was, but i would imagine he went through emotional trauma. I would certainly consider him a survivor.
My grandmother was one of the lucky ones. She was a German Jew who escaped shortly before the Holocaust to America, and managed to work and get the rest of her family out a few weeks before the borders were sealed. She came here by herself. As an adult, she was a fiercely independent, but very mean and judgmental person who if you were not on her favorites list, was very difficult to get along with. When I said “I love you” she would sometimes respond, but she would never initiate it except for one time in the final year of her life, when I was on the phone with her and she thought I was someone else.
It was only after she passed away a couple of years ago at 101 that I realized that her entire personality and issues I’ve mentioned were likely from the trauma she had to endure as a child to come over to a new country by herself and be responsible for saving the lives of her parents while she still could. While her life was never in danger in America, I would certainly even consider her, in many ways, a victim of Hitler, and a “survivor.”
We also do not pay enough attention to those who were on the Soviet side of that war. Many did not survive, and some did. There is way less written about them than about those who were under Nazis … One reason – territory under Nazis was freed after WW2 and evidence and people were there, while those who were in Siberia were often unaccounted for… There is a book “Children of Teheran” about Polish children who were evacuated from Poland into Russia and Central Asia, and later were sent to Iran and then to Palestine (thanks to Polish government in exile who insisted on getting these children when Soviets allowed Poles to organize their army from those in Soviet exile/labor camps). The book documents their experiences through multiple interviews.
Chaim87,
“Is it appropriate to use the term “Holocaust Survivor” to refer to a child hidden in a Budapest swiss safe house ? Meanwhile, my grandparents went through ghenim in Auschwitz , Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen which is unfathomable (Oct 7 hostages are the closest to that).”
Where do we draw the line on someone’s experience before they get a “title”? Of what benefit to anyone is gatekeeping the term Holocaust Survivor?
“But calling them survivors just cheapens the horrific part of it.”
No it doesn’t. Calling someone who lost just one finger an amputee doesn’t “cheapen” the experience of someone who lost both legs.
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