Eliezer (Elazar) Zyskind (b. 22 June 1925 in
Brzeziny; husband from 1948)[1]
Sara Zyskind, alsoSara Plager-Zyskind (
Hebrew: שרה פלגר-זיסקינד) (b. 26 March 1927 in
Łódź; d. 1 January 1995 in
Tel-Aviv), was a prominent Polish–Israeli writer on the
Holocaust. She was a survivor of the
Łódź Ghetto, and of the
Auschwitz, the
Mittelsteine concentration camp, and the
GrafenortNazi concentration camps. Her style as a writer on the Holocaust has been praised for its effective literary technique that allows the reader to identify with the reality of the period.[2] Her writings constitute valuable primary sources in Holocaust historiography.[3][4][5]
Life
Sara Zyskind was born in
Łódź to the family of Anschel (Anszel) Kalman Plager (1897–1943), a native of
Drohobycz, and his wife Mindla, née Biederman (1900–1940), who came from a well-known family of Łódź industrialists. (At least on some occasions, Zyskind will spell her maiden name "Sala Plagier": see
External links below.)[6] Zyskind's childhood in Łódź was a very happy one, as she was swaddled in love and support from family members.[7]
At the age of 12 she saw her world crushing down around her after the
Nazis invaded her town on 8 September 1939.[8] Within three months of the occupation the town's residents of Jewish origin were required to move into a newly designated
Ghetto, which was subsequently declared off limits to outsiders on 8 February 1940 and sealed to the outside world on 1 May 1940.[9] Her mother, who endured the ensuing privations with uncommon tact and cheerfulness, died the same year. She and her father mutually supported each other during the following years, successfully evading arrest and deportation, until he died during the
Passover of 1943. Upon the "liquidation" of the Ghetto Zyskind was deported to
Auschwitz in August 1944, at the age of 16 (her
inmate number was 55091),[10] and thence to the
MittelsteineNazi concentration camp, 17 kilometres to the north-west of
Kłodzko (Ger., Glatz), the latter being then an all-female subcamp of the
Gross-Rosen,[11] and subsequently to the
GrafenortNazi concentration camp, 27 kilometres away (12 km south of Kłodzko), where at the end of the War the hundreds of prisoners held there (virtually all Jewish women deported from the Łódź area) were worked at a murderous pace building trenches in the Nazis' frantic attempts to fortify their retreat against the advancing
Soviet forces — and where Zyskind concluded that she would not be able survive her wartime ordeal.[12] She writes:
The work was far beyond our capacity. We were nothing but living skeletons, unable to lift the shovelfuls of heavy soil above our heads, let alone work at the speed demanded of us.[13]
After the liberation she returned to Łódź in the spring of 1945, at the age of 17, only to find her entire world of human relations completely wiped out, at which time she decided to emigrate to
Palestine. She left Poland on forged wartime papers with a group of other refugees from Łódź. (Zyskind would not return to Poland until 1988 when she, then aged 61, together with her husband and their three children would visit Łódź and Auschwitz.) Aided by a Jewish relief group called Escape, they wandered across Europe for two years, crossing national frontiers surreptitiously. She finally reached Palestine on 15 May 1947. Because of British restrictions on Jewish emigration.
David Patterson wrote about Sara Zyskind in his monograph about the memoirs of Holocaust survivors:
The essence of Nazism was murder, and the target of Nazi murder was the image and essence of the human being; it was the image of the divine that makes this being human, which is to say, it was the being-for-the-other of human being. (...) Sara Zyskind remembers, "Our friendship and our care for one another enabled us to preserve something of our humanity..."[14]
Together with Eliezer Zyskind, Sara participated in armed combat in the
First Arab-Israeli War of 1948. In December 1948 she married Eliezer Zyskind (b. 1925), a native of
Brzeziny, a locality 24 kilometres distant from her native Łódź.[15] Her brother was a co-founder of the first
textile mill in
Tel-Aviv.
Works
(1977) העטרה שאבדה : בגיטו לודז׳ ובמחנות
Stolen Years (1981; translation of ha-ʻAṭarah she-avda)
Bet loḥame ha-geṭaʼot (1985)
Struggle (1988; translation of Maʾavako shel naʻar)
^Paul Wieser, "That We Do No Less"; in: Working to Make a Difference: The Personal and Pedagogical Stories of Holocaust Educators across the Globe, ed. S. Totten,
Westport (Connecticut),
Praeger Publishers, 2002, p. 229.
ISBN0897897099.
^Thomas Taterka, Dante Deutsch: Studien zur Lagerliteratur,
Berlin, Erich Schmidt, 1999, p. 203.
ISBN3503049118.
^Andrea Löw, "Arbeit, Lohn, Essen: Überlebensbedingungen im Ghetto"; in: Ghettorenten: Entschädigungspolitik, Rechtsprechung und historische Forschung, ed. J. Zarusky,
Munich, Oldenbourg, 2010, pp. 71–72.
ISBN9783486589412.
^Cf. Andrzej Strzelecki, The Deportation of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination: A Description of the Events and the Presentation of Historical Sources, tr. W. Kościa-Zbirohowski,
Oświęcim,
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2006, pp. 12, 97.
ISBN8360210187. (Cited invariably as "Sara Plagier [sic]" throughout.)
^Sara Zyskind, Światło w dolinie łez, tr. (from the Hebrew) Sara Zyskind (in collaboration with K. Koźniewski),
Łódź, Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, 1994, publishers'
blurb on back cover.
ISBN8321810063.
^Michal Unger (2004), "The Status and Plight of Women in the Lodz Ghetto"; in: Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed.
D. Cesarani, vol. 4 (Jewish Confrontations with Persecution and Mass Murder), London,
Routledge; p. 235.
ISBN041527513X.
Andrzej Strzelecki, The Deportation of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination: A Description of the Events and the Presentation of Historical Sources, tr. W. Kościa-Zbirohowski,
Oświęcim,
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2006, pp. 12, 97.
ISBN8360210187. (Cited as "Sara Plagier".)
Zoë Waxman, "Testimony and Silence: Sexual Violence and the Holocaust"; in: Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation, ed. S. Gunne & Z. Brigley Thompson, New York City,
Routledge, 2010, page 118.
ISBN9780415806084,
ISBN0415806089.
Zoë V. Waxman, "Towards an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Masculinity, Femininity, and Genocide"; in: Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination: Saul Friedlander and the Future of Holocaust Studies, ed. C. Wiese & P. Betts, London & New York City,
Continuum, 2010, page 317.
ISBN9781441189370,
ISBN1441189378,
ISBN9781441129871,
ISBN1441129871.