Echoes of History: A Holocaust Scholar Confronts October 7

She spent decades of her career studying Nazi atrocities and testimonies from death camp survivors, all with the belief that "it can’t happen to us." But the events of October 7, 2023, forced Prof. Hanna Yablonka, an emeritus Holocaust scholar from BGU’s Department of Jewish History, to reevaluate that belief.

The crimes against humanity committed by Hamas terrorists now remind her of the atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units that systematically exterminated Jews in the wake of Nazi army advances in the early years of World War II.

"The communities near Gaza experienced a pogrom carried out by despicable murderers," she says. "The testimonies about babies and children shot in the back of their necks, the desecration of soldiers' bodies, the rape of women – all these brought me back to testimonies from the Holocaust period; In Babi Yar, the Germans rounded up tens of thousands of Jews, stood them on the edge of a ravine near Kiev and mowed them down into killing pits; and here they massacred hundreds of participants in the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Reim. The Nazis did not behead Jews. In that sense, they were more coldly methodical than the Hamas murderers!"

As the scale of the massacre became evident, Yablonka was overwhelmed with emotions. The desperate cries for help of women and children hiding in safe rooms, some in whispers recorded on cell phones, and the descriptions of the horrors revealed during and after the fighting, broke her heart. Based on what she heard from her students and colleagues at the University, residents of the region who survived the onslaught, it is clear to her that this is an unprecedented chapter in the history of the Jewish people.
"I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors. My parents are among the country’s founders, humanists. Throughout my childhood I knew that they carried a gaping wound in their hearts from the days of World War II, and only now have I begun to understand this burden they carried all their lives. Jews found themselves totally powerless during the Holocaust. But the Holocaust survivors who came to Israel rebuilt their homes here. They were certain that this was the bedrock of their existence. And then that bedrock was shattered. I’ve read letters in which my mother wrote about wanting to commit suicide after she lost hope in Auschwitz, and now I see similar content appearing in posts by young and old, men and women, who upon hearing the Hamas murderers breaking into their homes, said goodbye to their loved ones in heartbreaking words. Then and now, entire families were wiped out."

The flashbacks surfaced on the morning of October 7. The atrocities in Be’eri, Netiv Ha'asara, Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, and other towns and communities in the area awakened the hidden trauma of Holocaust survivors. Yablonka says, "The feeling that you are alone in the world and that no one is coming to save you was the experience of the residents of the kibbutzim and communities under attack, just as it was for the Jews in the ghettoes and the death camps before they were executed. There is nothing that can shatter the foundations of the house we have built here more definitively."

She draws additional parallels with the darkness of the Holocaust. "The Holocaust is etched into our DNA. When I heard about mothers in the kibbutzim who silenced their babies so they wouldn't cry and give away the family's hiding place, it reminded me of Natan Alterman’s famous poem ‘Mother, is it okay now to cry?’, inspired by Abba Kovner’s recollections of his time as a partisan."

The heart-wrenching descriptions of residents who fell into the arms of the soldiers and police when they were rescued, took her back 78 years, to the moments when survivors of the death camps first encountered fighters from the Jewish Brigade – a combat brigade attached to the British army. "The camp inmates recognized the Star of David symbols on the uniforms of the Jewish Brigade soldiers who came to liberate them – and fell at their feet."

Since retiring from her formal academic duties, Prof. Yablonka has carried on with her research. Her most recent and bestselling book, ‘Yeladim Beseder Gamur’ (Perfectly Fine Children, 2018), is a collective biography of the first generation of Israelis, those born in the fledgling nation-state in 1948-1955. The book is a fascinating bittersweet account of an extraordinary groundbreaking generation. Many of its members are sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors and immigrants from Asia and Africa. Seventy pages of the book are devoted to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, an event that shook this generation to its core. Ironically, "I was invited to speak about the book at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War," Yablonka recalled, "and now another disaster has befallen us, even worse."

Perfectly Fine Children draws on documentation produced by a military unit called the Soldiers' Mail Censorship. Women soldiers in the unit were tasked with reading through soldiers' letters and copying and censoring them all to ensure they did not break security regulations. Once a month, the censors compiled reports on the prevailing mood in the Israeli army. A reading through these letters from the Yom Kippur War reflects the process that soldiers went through as the war progressed – from the confidence that it will repeat the resounding victory of the Six-Day War to the realization that this was a completely different story. The Yom Kippur War marked the death and burial of that generation, says Yablonka. "I poured my heart and soul into writing this book. About 400 soldiers who fell in the Yom Kippur War were the children of Holocaust survivors".

"And indeed, there was a prevalent feeling of being abandoned during the Yom Kippur War," she adds. "Only then it was armed soldiers and not helpless babies, children and elderly people. And now, suddenly the civilian population - parents, children and the elderly - are abandoned to their fates in a country whose motto is 'Never Again.'"

Nevertheless, according to Yablonka, we cannot allow the Holocaust to serve as the rationale for the decisions and actions of a modern state. She says that "the resilience of the home front is a source of strength no less powerful than military might." 

The strength of our resilience is "the great unknown. Resilience also depends on the quality of the leadership and public trust in it," Prof. Yablonka explains. "I would forego slogans and clichés like 'we will win.' A little modesty, please! Even Winston Churchill chose to word it differently, and I suggest adopting the spirit of the British leader who spoke about 'blood, sweat and tears’ during World War II.'"

Adapted from an article in issue 140 of Aleph-Bet-Gimmel, the University’s Hebrew language magazine. For the original article.