A writer who survived the Nazi era says cooperation, not competition, was essential then - and still is.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published December 3, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - A University of Connecticut sociology professor says that the Holocaust, in which 6-million Jews perished, offers lessons besides the obvious one of tolerance.
Cooperation is among them, said Nechama Tec, who conducted interviews with Holocaust survivors and researched diaries and memoirs to write her newest book, Resilience and Courage, Women, Men and the Holocaust, which recently received the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category and has been nominated for a Pulitzer.
Cooperation during the Holocaust "didn't necessarily save lives," said Tec, herself a survivor, "but it made it more bearable" and is a quality important in today's society.
"Now we are constantly facing extreme situations, but we should promote the value, the importance of cooperation," she said in a telephone interview from her Connecticut home. "We should de-emphasize competition and differential power. Excessive domination and power very often lead to oppression of the weaker party."
Tec will discuss Resilience and Courage at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Florida Holocaust Museum, 55 Fifth St. S.
In the book, she writes about the coping strategies of Jewish men and women in different Holocaust settings. In general, she found, the policies of the Nazi regime were more devastating to men in the ghettos. There, unlike in the forests, where men fought with the resistance movement, their traditional roles as providers and protectors were wrested from them.
Their self-esteem often plummeted and they sank into despair and apathy, Tec writes. For upper-class men living in the ghettos, the humiliation was particularly difficult, the book states. Working-class men, accustomed to life's hardships, coped better. Yet upper-class Jewish men were more socially adept at passing as Christians, but like all Jewish men faced the threat of being discovered because they had been circumcised.
As the Nazis started to institute their anti-Semitic policies, women were spared to some extent. They continued in their accustomed role as nurturers, Tec said, at the same time being forced into the traditional male province as providers and even protectors.
"The Germans, while they wanted to destroy all the Jews, they couldn't do it all at once," she said.
So they started with the men.
"It seems, historically, when they took over an area, they did attack the elite male, which, of course, sent a signal to the population that the men were in danger, especially the elite men, who were seen as the potential revolutionaries that would undermine their system," Tec said in an interview.
Women at first thought they were safe. They scrounged for food and begged the authorities for favors. Even as they realized they were in danger, they continued to protect their families and their communities, she said. Tec added that the focus on Jewish annihilation eventually shifted to the women in 1942, when the Nazis began to demolish the ghettos.
"They attacked the women through their born and unborn children," she said. "They had to work to hide those children. Sometimes they would come back from forced labor and the hiding place was empty."
As they were moved to concentration camps, those who were pregnant or had small children were sent directly to the gas chambers with their children, she said.
For both Jewish men and women, "the destination was the same, but the road was slightly different," Tec said.
"And as they were moving along, they tried to cooperate and help each other. There was sorrow and pain, but not resentment and competition."
The author of five books about the Holocaust, Tec was born in Lublin, Poland, a city that was home to about 40,000 Jews before World War II. Only 150 survived the Holocaust. Tec, her sister and parents belonged to one of the three families that survived intact. In the book Dry Tears: The Story of Lost Childhood, she tells how her family was hidden by Polish Christians. A blond, blue-eyed child who spoke Polish fluently, she was able to pass as Catholic.
Among those expected to attend Thursday's discussion and book signing are teachers of the Holocaust. Tec's message to them will be to de-emphasize competition and domination.
"Oppression begins in very small increments. You just define a person as less than you," she said.
"If you get kicks out of humiliating someone else, that is a very bad beginning. It is a very good lesson for children."
If you go
Nechama Tec will discuss her newest book, Resilience and Courage, Women, Men and the Holocaust, 7 p.m. Thursday at the Florida Holocaust Museum, 55 Fifth St. S, St. Petersburg. The cost is $5 for museum members and teachers and $10 for nonmembers. A book signing will follow.
