The Holocaust's Jewish Calendars

Alan Rosen

Description

Calendars map time, shaping and delineating our experience of it. While the challenges to tracking Jewish conceptions of time during the Holocaust were substantial, Alan Rosen reveals that many took great risks to mark time within that vast upheaval. Rosen inventories and organizes Jewish calendars according to the wartime settings in which they were produced—from Jewish communities to ghettos and concentration camps. The calendars he considers reorient views of Jewish circumstances during the war and show how Jews were committed to fashioning traditional guides to daily life, even in the most extreme conditions. In a separate chapter, moreover, he elucidates how Holocaust-era diaries sometimes served as surrogate Jewish calendars. All in all, Rosen presents a revised idea of time, continuity, the sacred and the mundane, the ordinary and the extraordinary even when death and destruction were the order of the day. Rosen's focus on the Jewish calendar—the ultimate symbol of continuity, as weekday follows weekday and Sabbath follows Sabbath—sheds new light on how Jews maintained connections to their way of conceiving time even within the cauldron of the Holocaust.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Time at the End of a Jewish Century

Part II: Tracking Time in the New Jewish Century: Calendars in Wartime Ghettos

Part III: Concentration Camps, Endless Time, and Jewish Time

Part IV: While in Hiding: Calendar Consciousness on the Edge of Destruction

Part V: At the Top of the Page: Calendar Dates in Holocaust Diaries

Part VI: The Holocaust as a Revolution in Jewish Time: The Lubavitcher Rebbes' Wartime Calendar Book

Epilogue

Appendix 1: Inventory of Wartime Jewish Calendars

Appendix 2: Months of the Jewish Calendar Year, with Their Holidays and Fast Days

Appendix 3: English-Language Rendering of Rabbi Scheiner Calendar

Glossary

Selective Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Lodz
• Religión
• Varsovia
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Alan Rosen
• Sabbath
• The Holocaust
• CLOCK
• Concealment
• Indiana University Press
• Marking Time
• Timekeeper
• IUP
• Armstrongism
• The Edge of Destruction
• Fast Day
• Internment
• Annual cycle
• Eastern Europe
• Year
• Week
• World War II
• Shabbat
• Month
• Judaism
• Calendar
• Auschwitz concentration camp
• Invasión
• Week-end
• Warsaw
• Poland
• Germany
• Camps
• Hidden
• Institut universitaire professionnalisé
• ?ód?
• Ghetto
• Time
• Auschwitz
• Chabbat
• Holocauste
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 28 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253038302
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THE HOLOCAUST S JEWISH CALENDARS
JEWISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor
THE HOLOCAUST S JEWISH CALENDARS
Keeping Time Sacred, Making Time Holy

Alan Rosen
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Alan Rosen
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03826-5 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03827-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03828-9 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
For my teacher, Eliezer ben Shlomo HaLevi Wiesel, of righteous blessed memory.
Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction

I Time at the End of a Jewish Century

II Tracking Time in the New Jewish Century: Calendars in Wartime Ghettos

III Concentration Camps, Endless Time, and Jewish Time

IV While in Hiding: Calendar Consciousness on the Edge of Destruction

V At the Top of the Page: Calendar Dates in Holocaust Diaries

VI The Holocaust as a Revolution in Jewish Time: The Lubavitcher Rebbes Wartime Calendar Book

Epilogue

Appendix 1: Inventory of Wartime Jewish Calendars
Appendix 2: Months of the Jewish Calendar Year, with Their Holidays and Fast Days
Appendix 3: English-Language Rendering of Rabbi Scheiner Calendar
Glossary
Selective Bibliography
Index
Preface
P ROSAIC DURING TIMES of peace and tranquility, calendars take on many new dimensions in times of war and crisis. Thus did calendars and calendar making assume a special role during the Holocaust. Holocaust-era calendars were produced in ghettos (both by individuals and, in some cases, by the ghetto authorities), fashioned in labor and concentration camps, crafted in hiding, and, in the case of France, dauntingly circulated while under Nazi occupation. I have reviewed approximately forty examples, obtained largely from diverse archives (including those at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Ghetto Fighters Museum) as well as from personal holdings. I have been alerted to other wartime calendars by references in diaries, oral and written memoirs, or historical accounts. A handful of short articles (three authored by one researcher in the 1960s) have sporadically dealt with World War II-era Jewish calendars, though each one in a specialized rather than a general way. 1 Otherwise, the field is wide open.
The three dozen or so wartime calendars that I refer to in my book may seem like a mere ripple in an ocean of inchoate time. Does such a small sample actually document a general effort to track Jewish time during the Holocaust? Doesn t it actually show how rare it was to pursue such a course in times fraught with danger and travail? I will deal with these questions in my remarks that introduce the relevant chapters. But there are several considerations in response to these questions (versions of which have been earnestly asked in forums where I have lectured on the topic).
First, the calendars that survive are only a portion of those produced in the caldron of the Holocaust, a statement that can be made about any of the artifacts that remain from that period. Exactly what portion is, of course, unknown. Yet the very fact that what survived is a remnant of some greater number means that we cannot infer how narrow or wide the phenomenon was. Second, my study includes diaries in order to show that giving attention to the Jewish calendar came through other vehicles than the calendars themselves. 2 Third, in contrast to these diaries, which were generally private compositions not intended to be circulated, calendars were fashioned in order to serve a smaller or larger community. This was obviously true for calendars of which multiple copies were produced. But it was true as well for handwritten calendars of which a single copy was made. So the population of those who benefitted by the wartime calendars was greater than the number of calendars per se.
With no inventory of calendars and almost no reference to them in Holocaust scholarship, I set about combing archives in search of wartime calendars. In a modest way, this book has assembled a collection of calendars where previously there was a spattering here and there (a list appears in appendix 1 ). A few archives yielded a trove, some museums added to it, books contained leads, and several individuals were kind enough to make connections with family, friends, or teachers who had authored wartime calendars. As often as possible, I have met (or spoken by phone) with the authors, or, if they were no longer alive, with family members. These conversations were precious and informative.
Study of wartime calendars (and diaries that served a calendrical purpose), I believe, can steer the issue of time and the Holocaust in a new direction. Previous study has focused on the disruption of time; since the calendar is associated with normal time-time methodically mapped by day, week, month, and year-calendars have generally received minimal attention. This approach has been so pervasive that even attempts to broaden the analysis of time s diverse roles have still neglected the calendar.
Such neglect, moreover, excludes the important role of the Jewish calendar , thereby leaving out almost entirely the multicalendar dimension of European Jewish culture-which means that Europe s Jews experienced the Holocaust by way of the Jewish calendar as well as the Gregorian or Julian (the latter of which was still in use in some countries). Wartime calendars and diaries that served as surrogate calendars help us reclaim the way Jews saw the world that imploded before their eyes.
This book aims to fill a gap in the study of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It describes the multifaceted calendar consciousness of these communities, analyzes the significance of the disruption of that consciousness, and recounts the attempt to overcome it. Because calendar consciousness was a basic element of Jewish life, especially in eastern Europe, this inquiry will benefit any study of the Holocaust s Jewish victims. It will extend the recent focus on time and the calendar in Jewish studies to a period that has not been examined in this light. It also offers a case study to those who wish to examine more broadly the relation between persecution and the calendar, particularly in connection to genocide or slavery, where the struggle over control of chronology is always a vital issue.
I come to this project from many years of interdisciplinary research on victim response to the Holocaust. Two of my book projects-one on the problem of English in Holocaust writing ( Sounds of Defiance , 2005), the other on early postwar victim testimony ( The Wonder of Their Voices , 2010)-have particularly nurtured my current focus on the calendar. In the first case, I noted that the evolution of English-language Holocaust writing contains many narratives that brood over the calendar s commemorative role. In the second case, I was struck by how the displaced persons interviewed by psychologist David Boder in 1946, having endured the war largely on the margins of civilization, often groped for time coordinates as they recounted their grim wartime tales. In different ways, each project alerted me to the importance of calendar consciousness as a factor in Holocaust-related events and stories. What was a side issue in those books becomes a central one here.
Notes

1 . Rabbi Tovia Preschel, The French Jewish Calendar during the Shoah, HaDoar (5723/1962) [Hebrew]; Rabbi Tovia Preschel, The Jewish Calendar in Belgium during the Shoah, HaDoar (5724/1963) [Hebrew]; an English-language article dealing with the wartime Belgium calendar appeared almost four decades later: Pearl Herzog, Purim Vinz, Mishpacha (Kolmus) (March 16, 2011); Rabbi Tovia Preschel, Calendars in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, HaDoar (5726/1966) [Hebrew]; Jacquot Grunewald, Calendriers de la Resistance, l Arche 498-99 (Sept. 1999); Rabbi Isaac Avigdor, The Camp Calendar of Buchenwald, in Faith after the Flames, New Haven, 2005, pp. 95-106; Bracha Stein, My Father s Secret Sanctuary, Mishpacha: Jewish Family Weekly 313 (5770/2010), pp. 32-40. The latter considers the life and artistry of Rabbi Asher Berlinger, who continued his artistic endeavors-including the crafting of two Jewish calendars-while imprisoned in the Theresienstadt ghetto.
2 . I make occasional reference to other forms of writing that use multiple calendars-particularly scholarly chronologies of the Holocaust-but do not consider them systematically. In this respect, the multicalendrical dating of letters written during the Holocaust deserves its own study.
Acknowledgments
F RIENDS HAVE BEEN more than generous: Yisrael Cohen, Martin and Joann Farren, Rabbi Joseph and Reizel Polak, Dr. Jeff Shapiro, Rabbi Avraham Zalman and the late Rochel Weiner, a h, Rabbi Moshe Weiner, Rabbi Dov Teitz, Rabbi Yeshoshua Looks, Rabbi Moshe Leiner, Rabbi Nehemia Polen, Gershon Greenberg, Adele Reinharz and Barry Walfish, Judy Wilkenfeld, Konrad Kwiet, Herb Levine, Franny Schnall, Don and Dr. Yehudis Mishell, Rabbi