6.1 What was lost?
6.1 What was lost? During the Holocaust, six million Jews were murdered, including one and a half million children – 90 per cent of all Jewish children living in Europe. The loss was devastating. Entire families, entire communities, entire towns and villages all across Europe no longer existed. Hopes and dreams were shattered, ways of life were destroyed, and the diversity of Jewish life and culture that existed before
Figure 6.1 Children of the Jewish school in the shtetl Trochenbrod (in Ukraine) in 1934/35. In 1930, approximately 5,000 Jews lived in this town, which had seven synagogues and a rich farming culture.
the war was gone forever. Before the Second World War, cities like Warsaw, Budapest and Vienna were bustling with Jewish life. Today, you can walk the streets of these cities and not meet a single Jewish person. Think of the huge void that was left by the loss of six million people, the families they never had, and the contributions to art, culture and science they were never able to make.
Figure 6.2 The location of the Jewish shtetl Trochenbrod as it is today. During the Holocaust, the town’s people, buildings and streets were completely destroyed.
Activities 1 Look back at the map on pages 8–9. Which countries had the greatest Jewish losses? Which country did the largest number of Jewish people killed come from?
2 Look at Figures 6.1 and 6.2. What is the difference between these images? What do they tell us about the Holocaust?
3 Look at Figure 6.3. How did the architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin try to show the void that was created by the Holocaust? Undertake some research on other ways people have tried to express this huge loss.
Figure 6.3 The Jewish Museum, Berlin. The architect of this building (Daniel Libeskind) created these empty spaces, called ‘voids’. They are meant to show the emptiness that resulted from the destruction of Jewish life in the Holocaust. He wanted to make this loss visible through architecture.
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