Reconstruction of Victim using Diaries of David Sierakowak and Adam Czerniakow
In the early 1940s in the city called Lodz, Poland, German occupiers started to evict gentiles from the slum area which was in the district of Baluty; this was done so that they can pave the way for hundreds of thousands of Jews who were concentrated in the region from other parts of the city, elsewhere in Poland and the rest of conquered Europe. The Germans sealed off the area perimeter and called it “Ghetto Litzmannstadt,” also known as Lodz ghetto. David Sierakowak and his family were among the people who were forced to relocate, and their lives were extinguished in the Holocaust. Before the German invasion in 1939, David started to write his diary when he was in the Zionist youth camp. In his diary, he used to write about his daily entries; he continued to write until he met his untimely death caused by hunger and exhaustion. In this essay, we will use direct quotes from David’s diary and their meaning combined with some elements from Adam Czerniakow dairy that can be used in reconstructing a victim’s history of this kind of wartime.
David honestly shares about his life and all that is happening in the world around him. With all information that is written in his diary, we can see precisely what is healthy as well as how it affected the population of Jewish in the Lodz and how the Nazis were trying to prosecute them. It also showed the normality of losing hope, the ever lingering death ideas, as well as how that affected the interpretations that David was putting forth every Day about his surroundings.
Hope is a positive thing that has been in existence in humans’ lives through all the ages. Every human being who is alive has an idea of faith and what they want in life. But to people who were living in Lodz ghetto had a different idea about hope. The hopes they had were sure; they tried to save their lives from death and the destruction they were facing from Nazis. David wrote for about four years, the idea of hope kept him sane, but as time went by it started to diminish. In his early dairy writings, he talks about mobilizing the polish army, who will rise against the Germans. “Mobilization! A great many neighbors have been called. Although terrible scenes of farewell are taking place in the streets of the city, in our building there is a heroic calm, Don’t wait, beat them now” (Diary, p. 26).
In this quote, David is trying to explain in detail the area and how people are trying to cope with the ideology of war. The people are hoping they will be victorious, and they hope that the Polish army will defeat the advanced Germans. He also shows another form of hope when he writes about the early victory of Germans. “It doesn’t look like a retreating army. It looks like a regular army’s troop movement. So weak hope springs up: maybe the Germans will not come. Will the miracle on the Vistula happen again? Will we live to see a second Marne now (Diary, p. 35)?” The most paramount thing that kept his hopes alive was his attachment to the diary. His devotion to the dairy is shown in the few lines he wrote on 27 May 1942. During this time, he was considering being deported; he also gave up his opinion, referring to his reasons, “I would miss my books and ‘letters,’ notes and copybooks especially this diary” (Diary, p. 174). The dairy symbolized hope that his life and his family life will not die if they were to perish. The diary was a friend and confidant such that he could share everything with it, including his secrets. As a friend and confidant, the dairy seemed to give David comfort, helping us understand his feelings. Through the diary, we can interpret the writings on a historical level, and we can get the reality of what happened to people in Lodz ghetto.
In the rest of his dairy, he looks like a person who is losing hope. For instance, he writes, “Day after day passes. One buys rations, eats the little food there is in them, starves while eating it, and after that keeps waiting persistently, continuously, and unshakably until the end of the cursed, devilish war; the workshop, home, meals, reading, night and bedbugs and cockroaches, and all over again without end, constantly losing strength, with diminishing efficiency of body and mind (Diary, p. 205).” In this writing, he is sharing his inner feelings deep from his heart. It seems like life is drifting away from him together with the hope that was made to move on Day to Day. People are slowly losing faith in the ghettos because things are not getting better, and as the trust is disappearing, so in the lives of the people who depend on it. In the beginning, in the ghettos, hope was a regular thing, but as time passed, it started to become a rare commodity together with food people needed for their bodies. In the end, David says, “I feel myself beginning to fall into melancholy. There is no way out of this for us (Diary, p. 268).” This shows how he had completely lost hope, and he finally stops writing.
He makes light of some situations, and that gives him the ability to continue writing. He uses humorous jokes and sarcasm; this might have been caused by his academic intelligence of making fun of toughest situations or trying everything possible to put a smile on his face during hard times. Sometimes when he is going down a flight of stairs, and he staggers, he feels “awful,” regardless of his inability to retain hardly any knowledge, he tries to learn more English. He even goes further to take a job from Schopenhauer so that he can gear his mind.
The diary of David was entirely impacted by hope, and it is more interesting because it is tied to the idea of normalcy. The only thing that is normal from the beginning to the end is hope. The problem with it is that it is gradually faded and dies, leaving David and the people around him without faith. In addition to that, the entire diary also shows the idea of death, which seems to become more and more indifferent such that it gets to the point of normalcy. The first time he becomes indifferent to devastating death becomes evident on 17 December 1939 when he finds about “Eighty infants frozen to death were supposedly brought to Lodz from Koluszki today (Diary, p. 72).” These children were from the Jews who were deported. David acted like the death of the infants did not bother him at all. He lets it do, and he forgets what had happened. Death had become a reasonable thing to the Jewish people because people had begun to disappear all over. David seems to lose everything on 5 September 1942 when his mother was taken. “My most sacred, beloved, worn-out, blessed, cherished Mother has fallen victim to the bloodthirsty German Nazi beast!!! They say that Mom is unrecognizable, which makes her slim chances even less. At times such shudders and heart palpitations come over me that it seems to I’m going insane or delirious. Even so, I’m unable to turn my consciousness away from Mom, and suddenly, as though I divide, I find myself in her mind and body. The hour of her deportation is coming closer, and there’s no help from anywhere. Nothing will fill up the eternal emptiness in the soul, brain, mind, and heart created by the loss of one’s most beloved person (Diary, p. 276).” This seems like he had lost everything because the only thing now he was living for is his sister. He has lost contact with people he knew, or people he knew were taken away from him. When he loses his father on 6 March 1943, he does not feel much pain, and that’s why he does not know much about it. He continues to endure all this hardship, but shortly after his father died, he also dies on 8 August 1943 because of tuberculosis and starvation.
Just like David, Adam Czerniakow wrote a diary about Warsaw Ghetto, where he was the chairman. For instance, on 7 January 1942, he wrote in the morning how he suggested the higher authorities’ approach so that they can request to release Jewish who were imprisoned, which would act as compensation for the far that was supplied. He also goes further to ask for the addition of food, but he also says it would be better without food if there were a chance to save more lives. He also wrote on 15 May 1942 wrote about how the rumors of deportation continued and how tens of thousands of people were speaking to work according to the plan, which was under such conditions is remarkable. He goes further to say how Day by Day they will work, and then he goes back to refer to Dickens writing that states, “A watch is not wound with tears.”
As depicted by David and Adam in their dairies about ghetto life, it can be used to reconstruct a victim’s history because being in the ghetto is the same mainly if that victim exists in the same period as David and Adam. The victim will also pass through the same if he/she lives in the same ghetto where David and Adam lived.
Works Cited
Czerniakow, Adam, et al. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow. Stein & Day Pub, 1979.
Garbarini, Alexandra. Numbered days: Diaries and the Holocaust. Yale University Press, 2006.
Sierakowiak, Dawid. The diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five notebooks from the Lódz ghetto. Oxford University Press, 1998.