The rise of Christianity added to the rise of antisemitism. Christians made Jews the enemy, blaming Jews instead of Romans for the crucifixion. Today, antisemitism is still present in racial protests, college campuses, and hate crimes are spewed in the news daily. Novels, memoirs, and other art forms are ways that people can learn about antisemitism and the holocaust. Issues surrounding antisemitism is more relevant today that ever with a rise in racism due to political movements and current events such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 election. With more than a third of American Jews saying they have been verbally or physically assaulted over the past five years because they are Jewish (Huffnagle, 2020), it is clear antisemitism is rising. Literature can teach simply teach people the significance of antisemitism, and hopefully change their views and actions. 

        Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, wrote a memoir about his time in Auschwitz called If this is a Man.  — a vivid display of the dehumanization of the prisoners from the time they enter the camp to the time they either are killed or liberated. The coined Nazi phrase is that Jews are living a life not worth living and are less than human. This is their motto in the camps. Levi gives a very detailed record of his time in Auschwitz, starting from the beginning. Levi’s journey to Auschwitz began in a small boxcar on a train filled with so many people there was not enough places for people to sit—there were twelve wagons for 600 people. There were no food or water and people had to use the bathroom in buckets. Men, women, and children were in this boxcar for about 5 days. Some people died, and everyone had to stay on the train with dead people and buckets of bodily fluids. The boxcar ride was so excruciating from the heat, darkness, and no food or water, that everyone was relieved to arrive at Auschwitz. Levi described feeling like it could not get any worse. This was just one of many moving stories told in If this is a Man, his memoir is educating in being a raw primary source for people to learn the effects the holocaust has on its victims’ long term. 

        After Long Silence by Helen Freemont is a beautiful memoir written by a daughter of holocaust survivors. Helen finds herself lost with identity issues. She is raised Catholic, with some questionable bumps. Her mother also shows signs of disliking the church and its preaching but goes every Sunday like it is her life duty. She also has interesting interactions of people thinking she is Jewish. She argues that she is not in a few different cases but comes to the realization she might be Jewish at a cocktail party when her and a friend from the Bar association share stories of their families. After continuing the conversation, Helen realizes it is a good possibility she is Jewish. This is the beginning of a long journey with some heartbreak.

        Freemont’s parents, especially her mother, are very reserved about their religion throughout the whole book. Her mother often became very emotional from any conversation about her being Jewish. This is where Freemont and her mother’s relationship starts to tear. She is so absorbed in learning their true identity that she does not realize what pain she is causing her mother. While Freemont deserves to know and learn about her true identity, her parents are victims of one of the biggest genocides in human history and that should not be taken lightly. It is easy to forget what someone went through when it was long ago, and one can never truly emphasize of experience what they went through.

To continue on with art forms about survivors and the holocaust, Beyond Lament edited and introduced by Marguerite M. Striar, is a large and well composed book of old and new poems about the horrors of the Holocaust. Poetry can be used as a way to remember history, and to represent the resiliency of humans. Striar arranged around 300 poems in this book to tell the story of the holocaust. From the beginning of Nazi evil in 1933, through the formation of concentration camps and genocide that ended in 1945. Some famous poets in the book include Paul Celan, Czeslaw Milosz, and Nelly Sachs among many other poets, some unnamed. To take one poem out of this book to represent the book entirely is impossible. Here is an excerpt from one of the many moving poems in the book by Curtis Robbins:

 

In Der Nacht (In the Night)

A Nazi Soldier was gathering your deaf friends, 

Guiding them, with his kindly, assuring hand,

To those trains of a certain destiny.

Rosa, Rosa, in der Nacht,

The darkness is brighter than the flame.

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         This poem portrays a scene of Nazi soldiers taking holocaust prisoners to the trains that would transport them to a concentration camp. The people were “deaf” and unaware of the horrors they were about to face. Soldiers kept the prisoners calm, which made transportation easier. The soldiers portrayed the concentration camp as a work camp, and not a kill center. The “kind” and “assuring hand” were used to keep victims calm as they were brought to “those trains of a certain destiny.” Reminiscent of Levi’s If this is a Man, people died in these trains before they even made it to a concentration camp. The trains and vans were used to kill people in masses, death by carbon monoxide. If they were not killed in the train, they were brought to a fatal destiny of the concentration camp. Another riveting poem is “Treblinka, 1944” by T.W. Perkins. Here is an excerpt from their poem. 

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More of my people died today.

I know, because the moon is red. 

“Blood on the moon”

there are legends about its cause,

but I’ve always found

that on those nights

a Jew has died. 

 

The moon is red a lot over Poland. 

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The red blood of the victims filled the night up to the sky. Also, the red of the Nazi flag only being a daily reminder of what the Jewish prisoners lost, and will continue to lose at the hands of the holocaust. 

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        The American Jewish Committee (AJC), a Jewish advocate non-profit organization has released its first ever State of Antisemitism in America report on October 26, 2020. The report showed a disturbing lack of awareness among the general public about the severity of antisemitism in the United States. The ignorance and lack of compassion for antisemitism makes for a dangerous environment for the hatred of Jewish people. Nearly half of all Americans say they have either never heard the term ‘antisemitism’ (21%) or know the word but are not sure on the definition (25%), according to the AJC’s report (Huffnagle, 2020). Less than half of Americans agree that antisemitism has increased in the last five years, while over 80% of American Jews agree that it has increased. This discrepancy is disturbing because far too often when something is not an issue for someone personally, they do not believe it is an issue at all.