holocaust in space

To Keep a Promise, by Tammy Layman-Wilzig. Illustrator: Wolf Bulba. Published by Sefrit Poalim, 30 pages, NIS 49

By: Yael Dr

In preparation for Holocaust Day 2004, a book is added to the Holocaust book shelf that is intended for relatively young children - for children in the lower grades and even for kindergarten children. Due to the paucity of literary texts on the subject of the Holocaust for people of this age, it can be assumed that kindergarteners and teachers and even parents will be very happy about it, but reading the book itself raises questions about its messages and even about its basic assumptions.

The book tells the story of the small Torah scroll, which the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon took with him into space in January 2003, as a symbol of the Jewish people's survival in the Holocaust and its resurrection in Israel. On February XNUMXst, as is known, the spaceship "Columbia" exploded on its way back to Earth, and Ramon perished along with the rest of the crew that manned the spaceship. "The Torah book was not found", we are told in the last line of this new book.

Regarding the history of the Torah scroll that was lost in space: it belonged to the space scientist Joachim Yosef, who received it, while still a child, from the hands of Rabbi Shimon Dasberg from the Netherlands in his bar mitzvah ceremony that was celebrated in hiding in the Bergen-Belsen extermination camp. At the end of the ceremony, the rabbi asked the boy to keep the book, and if he was saved - to "tell the story". Joachim Yosef was indeed saved, and immigrated to Israel with his family. Rabbi Dasberg died in the camp a few months before liberation.

Ilan Ramon's choice to take this Torah book into space naturally symbolized the expansion of the boundaries of the story of the survival of the Jewish people, from a national story to a world story. The narrator of the story - the first Israeli astronaut to be launched into space - emphasized the idea of ​​resurrection in the very fact that he was sent into space as a representative of human progress.

The very name of the book, "to keep a promise", hints at the initial commandment that accompanied this particular Torah book in Bergen-Belsen: to tell what happened in the Holocaust for future generations as well. But in fact it is aimed at the story of the national lesson that unfolds precisely the story behind the story: the story of the astronaut Ilan Ramon, who chose to tell the story and died himself a tragic-heroic death.

The order to "tell the story", as it was worded in the book, received different forms and expressions over the years in literature, cinema and other channels of artistic expression, including children's literature. As is well known, it is customary to divide the artistic discourse on the Holocaust according to the generations that tell it: the stories of the first generation, the story of the survivors and the survivors who reached the safe shore and the story of the national lesson that was drawn from the Holocaust; The stories of the second generation - the stories of the children and family members of the survivors, over whose childhood a holocaust story that was silenced or only told in part hovered like a shadow; And the story of the third generation, the dubbed generation, aware that soon there will be no more witnesses left to tell the personal story. The presumption of the third generation is that the story of the lesson from the Holocaust, which began with the Holocaust and continued with a national revival in Israel, has been told and exhausted to the end. Now the personal story, the story of those who were there and those for whom the Holocaust is part of their lives must be heard and voiced through the previous generation.

To Davon Halev, the author, Tami Layman-Wilzig, chose the old option, which characterized, among other things, the story of the Holocaust for children in the first decades of the state: that is, she stuck to the story of the "strengthening" and "moving" national lesson. This story was very suitable for the representative role of the astronaut Ramon, and the enthusiastic journalistic coverage that accompanied him. However, in the spirit of the times, and in the transition to a children's book, it would be worthwhile to break free from the national kitsch and return to the story its private, one-time connection.

The character of the rabbi and his commitment to the lone boy who reached the age of mitzvah, as well as the character of the other residents of the barracks in the camp who mobilized to help, and of course the character of the boy himself, have the greatest literary potential, which was to unfold for the young readers an exciting and waiting Holocaust story. But Leiman-Wilzig chose to emphasize the national-representative story, and even added a cosmic aura to strengthen it. And this is how she chose to end the story: "In his journey around the earth, Ilan Ramon picked up the Torah book and presented it to the whole world. When he told the story the book was released from his hand and floated through space in conditions of zero gravity. 'This Torah book (...) is proof of the Jewish people's resilience and survival, even in the darkest times. We must look to the future with hope and faith.''

Ramon's tragic death added to this Holocaust story an aura of national heroism, which often accompanied the Holocaust story in the first decades of the country. By emphasizing Ramon's character - both in the dedication to the book and in the frame story - as someone who hears the story and unfolds it in the ears of the entire universe - she actually diminishes the story itself, which took place in Bergen-Belsen more than 50 years ago. Furthermore, it seems that the author and even the publisher believed that the very presence of the revered astronaut in the story of the Torah book would increase the children's willingness to hear a Holocaust story, and make the Holocaust story more "relevant" in their world.

However, this assumption is obviously wrong. The willingness of children today to hear about the holocaust will increase as the number of stories that are primarily human and personal - stories that take advantage of the potential of the complexity of the literary story, stories that cannot be exhausted in one or two paragraphs in a newspaper.