Ester GolanInterfaith Encounter Association |
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Personal Story and Family and Holocaust:
“ The thing is when my mother wrote that my father died, I had something concrete. I had a letter, I cried. But because of not knowing about my mother, I sort of had visions that she might be with the partisans, that she might be in hiding or something. I gave birth to one child after another, and we were struggling to survive. There was no literature around [about the Holocaust], and nobody to talk to. It's very difficult to explain. There was a lot of sadness and I suffered from depression, but eventually, with the Eichmann trial, you couldn't escape listening because it was in the newspaper, it was on the radio, everyone talked about it, but it was very impersonal. It wasn't my mother, it was other people. So it took longer. I can't tell you what I did think because I don't know. Things which are not recorded, I can't recall. But I know that I cried a lot. That I do know. I had years of deep depressions. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Identity and Perceptions of the Other and Holocaust:
“ According to what [Father Emile] Shoufani says, if you want to know the other person, you have to know all of the other person, and if you want to know the Jew, my identity has several components, as everybody's identity has several components, and my components are: Zionism, Judaism, Israel and the Shoah [Holocaust]. So if you want to know me, you have to know also me and the Shoah, not just me and Israel, not just me and Judaism, not just me and Zionism, but me and Shoah, Israel, Judaism and Zionism [...] So [Shoufani] considered it something that had by-passed the Palestinians, that they had not experienced. But living with so many people who were directly impacted by it, and because it has become part of Judaism at large, he had to know it. That is what made him decide that Auschwitz stands for something which is not Jewish, it's inter-religious, it's inter-national, it's inter-disciplinary; it represents something which humanity did, humanity in its darkest and most dreadful situation. [If] he wanted to just get to know Judaism, he could have come to synagogues, but that wasn't the point because that he has [access to] here. [The point was] to encounter that extra element that encompasses my identity and every other Jew as well. And I think that is exactly what happened. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ To the majority of participants it was a first experience [visiting Auschwitz]. So Jews and Christians and Muslims alike were shocked to hear, to experience, to see... because you can't really imagine it. Some people imagine Auschwitz to be something like a local prison, with a fence around it. But the majority of the people who have not been there, who have not taken an active interest, the vastness of it and the finality of it was very unique, and it was an experience which I don't think anybody will forget. And, for instance, as you know there have been cases where Israel and the Palestinian issue has been compared to the Holocaust. But there is no comparison. If you really get to know Auschwitz you see that there is no comparison; this was something which was very unique, and this is something quite different, which is not to be compared. It has to be resolved, but not to be compared. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ When you talk about peace activists, that's political. I am really far removed from political attitudes. If I want the other one to respect me as a Jew, and my religion as legitimate, I have to do the same to him. It's a mutual acceptance of being different. You see, if you use the word peace, war and peace stand opposite each other. But even in wartime I have to encounter the "other." So I don't use these terms. I'm very, very careful in choosing words. I don't use refugee, I don't use victim, I don't use peace, war I have used, that's true. But I try to see beyond those terms. I try to choose words that are neutral, which are not closing in, but opening out. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Conceptions of Peace and Language:
“ Peace doesn't have any meaning to me, because it's not part of my vocabulary. The war is fought, and the war is won or lost, and there is an end to it. Throughout my life I have never encountered the [use of the] word peace which has any meaning to me. I've encountered wars, one war after another, but nothing else […] It's something that doesn't belong to my repertoire. The nearest I can get is peaceful living, side by side, but peaceful is not peace. Maybe it's because it's part of the Hebrew thinking. Shalom. Shalom is something else. You say, "Shalom Aleichem," but you don't say, "peace unto you." Shalom has some connotation that is very unique to the word Shalom. And when I greet you and I say "Shalom," or in the prayer, Heveinu Shalom Aleichem "Grant us peace" -- Shalom is from the word "whole," shalem, and it's connected to the word Jerusalem, so it doesn't fit into the opposite of war. It's something in its own right. That's why I'm careful in using the term, because it has to have a meaning that also means something to me. And "Peace Movement" is a political term, it's been politicized. So I may not fit your image of peace workers. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ [To] me, it is quite clear that if I can be on talking terms with Germans after what they did to my people, and to my parents, on a personal level-- a new generation has grown up, and they are interested to get to know me, and I get to know them-- there is no reason why the same cannot happen with Palestinians. Because whatever we are accused of doing to the Palestinians, or the Palestinians do to us, none of it is to the extent that the Holocaust was, where we were killed not because we did anything, not because we fought anybody, but because we were Jews. So in my opinion, on a people-to-people level, there is no reason why we can't reach the same level of encounter with each other. Irrespective of what politicians do or say. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Perceptions of the Other and Civil Society:
“ You have to be able to live with yourself and the other. The same way that I want to live with myself, he has to live with himself. So this encounter with the other enables us to see the other and to respect the other for what he is. He doesn't have to think the same way as I do, doesn't have to believe the same way as I do, but if I encounter him and I get to know him, I can respect him and hope that he does the same to me. And I think that the encounter with the other-- and living side by side-- is something that is irrespective of political decisions; whatever great hardships are caused by politicians should not prevent me from being able to encounter the other in his otherness. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Obstacles and Challenges and International Involvement:
“ I wish people from abroad would see us in the light of a human being rather than a political entity. Because we are first and foremost and right at the bottom and right at the top, human beings. I think that anyone who has been here to Israel begins to realize that they didn't understand what it's all about from far away. And anybody who enters my home realizes who I am, and I'm no longer an anonymous number. So I think people who think they know the answer to all of our troubles, they should come first and meet us, and then maybe they'll be able to help us cope better with life. Because there is no one answer. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ The emotional strength [to continue interfaith work] comes from the people I encounter. For instance in Germany, very often I am asked by school children, but also by grownups, "Isn't it difficult to tell the story again and again?" So I look at them and I say, "Did it sound like that?" And they say, "No," and they smile, and I say, "That's why I can carry on, because you smile at me." The emotional involvement, yes it is a very deep emotional involvement, on both sides of the encounter. Once you get over the initial cultural shock of meeting the "other," once we start smiling at each other, that gives us emotional strength. Yes we do share our joys and our sorrows, personal ones and other ones, but to me personally the smile of the other person is a very important factor, as a source of emotional strength that I need. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ My mother said, "As long as there is a future there is hope." So that's what I live by. Look, France and England were arch-enemies, and they fought one war after another for hundreds of years. Nobody ever believed there would be peace; in the First World War they ate each other up. And look at it after the Second World War. And the same with Germany and Poland. So there are things on a wider geo-political level that have changed in a way that nobody would have predicted could happen. So if it happens there, why shouldn't it happen here? ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ [For] many, for the younger generation, all they know about Palestinians are the suicide bombers who kill us, I'm not surprised that they [Israelis] don't like them. It just doesn't surprise me. You know, many of the school children go to school by bus, [but] their parents stop letting them go by bus. Is that a normal situation? That you are scared to go to school by bus because you may not come home, you may be blown up? So I can't even blame those children for hating the Arabs, because they can't go to play football when they want, they can't go out to visit their friends by themselves. Life in Israel has become very restricted. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Perceptions of the Other and Lessons Learned:
“ [It's important] that we get to know each other and take responsibility for each other, because we live in the same country, go to the same schools, go to the same university, the same places of work, and don't know anything about each other. And the less you know about each other the easier it is to hate each other. But once you get to know each other there is no room for hate. Hate dissolves, and there is a possibility of respecting each other. The respect for the other grows and gets deeper when you encounter the other, when it's not something theoretical but practical. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Personal Story and Zionism:
“ I was 10 years old [when Hitler came to power], and although there was a big beautiful synagogue in the town there wasn't a Jewish school, so I went to a Christian school. One day the teacher came in, I sat in the front because I was so little, so he said, "There's no room for Jews to sit in the front, you have to sit in the back." That wasn't so bad, but I was 10 years old and children still played in the yard at the break, and nobody spoke to me anymore from that day on. The boys went to their Hitler Youth, and the girls to a different group. The Jewish community did all it could to compensate us for that by having more activities for youth in the synagogue, and we went to a Zionist youth movement, which my mother helped to set up. So from a very young age, I was engaged in preparing myself to come to Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] and to Palestine. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ Even if I had gone to America, I already knew then [growing up in Germany in the 1930s] that I wanted to come to Israel, Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel]. I was a Zionist, I was in a Zionist youth movement. And as a young girl, I realized that this was where I could live my Judaism. When I first came here in ‘45 we lived next to Arab villages, to Arab towns, and there was communication, they sold us things, and we sold them things, and there was quite a lot of mutuality. I am grateful to say that all of my children and grandchildren live here and hopefully will carry on doing so for many more generations. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Identity and Religion and Zionism:
“ I feel very, very deeply, consciously Jewish-- Zionist Jewish. A combination of Zionism and Judaism, which is different from the Haredim, who have no Zionist feelings. I certainly believe in having to defend my being Jewish. That's why I was in the army, my children were in the army, my grandchildren are in the army. Because I have a right to live, and I defend that right to live. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
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