Batsheva Dagan

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Batsheva Dagan (2016)

Batsheva Dagan ( Hebrew בת-שבע דגן Bat-Scheva' Dagan ) (born 8. September 1925 as Izabella Rubinsztajn in Łódź ) is a Polish-Israeli survivors of the Holocaust . She is an author , educator , psychologist and contemporary witness. As a teenager, she was abducted by the Nazis with her parents in 1940 to the Radom ghetto . When her parents and sister were deported in 1942 and murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp , she fled to Germany , where she was discovered, arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. After 20 months in a concentration camp , she survived two death marches and was liberated by British troops in May 1945. She emigrated with her husband to Israel , where she ran a kindergarten and later did her doctorate as a teacher and psychologist . Dagan wrote books, poems and songs for children and young adults about the Holocaust and developed the Dagan Method , a psychological and educational method for dealing with the Holocaust towards children , which is still used today . She is considered a pioneer in this field.

family

Izabella Rubinsztajn was the second youngest of nine children of the weaving mill owner Szlomo-Fiszel Rubinsztajn (* 1884 in Radom) and the seamstress Fajga Rubinsztajn nee. Lead ice (* 1889 in Konstantynów). The five boys and four girls were Zionist educated. One of the sons, Cwi (Zvi), emigrated to Palestine as an athlete before the outbreak of war .

Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War, the remaining sons and the eldest daughter Anna (Chana) fled to the Soviet Union , while the rest of the family moved to the German-occupied Radom . In 1940 two ghettos were established in the city and the Rubinsztajn family were housed in the main ghetto.

In the ghetto, Izabella Rubinsztajn joined the socialist-Zionist group Hashomer Hatzair . As was customary, she adopted a Hebrew first name and chose Batsheva. As a member of the group, she regularly smuggled the underground newspaper Pod Prąd (Against the Current) from the Warsaw ghetto to Radom using forged, “ Aryan” papers, published by Mordechaj Anielewicz .

On August 5, 1942, the Nazi troops carried out a “ selection ” in the main Radom ghetto , in which the family was torn apart. The parents and the older sister Genia were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered there. Izabella (Batsheva) Rubinsztajn and her younger sister Sabina (* 1926) were taken to the smaller Radom ghetto. They decided to flee separately. Her sister was shot dead in the attempt. Batsheva Rubinsztajn managed to escape unharmed to Schwerin with her forged papers . There she used the papers of a Polish friend who did not want to work in Germany, and took up her position as a maid for the district court director in Schwerin. However, she was denounced and arrested by the Gestapo . After staying in prison in Schwerin, Güstrow, Neubrandenburg, Berlin, Breslau and Beuthen, she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in May 1943 .

There she met a cousin who worked as a nurse and who gave Rubinsztajn a comparatively light job in the prisoner infirmary . When Rubinsztajn fell ill with typhus , her cousin was able to help her with stolen medicine. Later Rubinsztajn worked in the Effektenlager Canada where the stolen property and brought the Jewish victim was sorted. She and seven other women organized an underground newspaper that consisted of scraps of paper written on and read to the others on non-working days.

By the time the Red Army reached Auschwitz in January 1945, the camp had already been cleared and Rubinsztajn had been sent on a death march to the Ravensbrück and Malchow concentration camps , where a Ravensbrück satellite camp was located. After surviving this, she was finally sent on a death march to Lübz , which was liberated by British troops on May 2, 1945 .

Of the eleven members of the Rubinsztajn family, only Batsheva, her brother Zvi, who emigrated to Palestine, and her brother Isaiah (Schajo), who fled to the Soviet Union, survived the war and the Holocaust. The Yad Vashem Memorial has information about the fate of several siblings:

  • Anna, * 1908, accountant, was murdered in Swiatowa Wóla in 1942.
  • Jonas, * 1909, textile engineer, stayed in Kolomyja , Stanislawów , during the Second World War and was murdered in Janowiec in 1942. He was married to Ida geb. Aronovitz.
  • Genya, * 1911, was murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp. She was married to Viktor Levi.
  • Mordechaj, * 1920, Weber, stayed in the Donbass region during the Second World War . He starved to death there.

post war period

Batsheva Dagan (January 27, 2020)

Batsheva Rubinsztajn spent the first time after the war in Belgium. In Brussels she met her future husband, Paul Kornweiz, a British soldier, who got her a visa for the British mandate of Palestine. After her alija , she lived with her brother Zvi. In Israel, Batsheva Rubinsztajn and Paul Kornweiz married; the couple adopted a Hebrew surname derived from grain wheat: Dagan ( Hebrew דגן dagan "grain, grain").

Batsheva Dagan took part as a witness in the trial against the concentration camp guard Irma Grese and traveled to Lüneburg. In October 1945 she wrote an open letter to Grese.

The Dagan couple had two sons. Batsheva Dagan studied at the Shein Teachers' College in Petach Tikva and then worked as an educator in Tel Aviv and Holon . After her husband's death in 1958, she studied educational counseling at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and psychology in the United States on a grant from the Israeli government .

In Israel she developed psychological and educational methods for talking to children and young adults about the Holocaust. She received awards from both the Yad Vashem Memorial and the City of Holon.

She has lectured at universities and attended an event organized by the Jewish Agency , lecturing in Mexico, Great Britain, the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union. As a contemporary witness, she was a speaker and interlocutor at Holocaust memorial events, at universities and in Yad Vashem. She began writing children's books about the Shoah in the 1990s .

Educational and literary concept

While working as a kindergarten teacher, children asked Dagan about the meaning of their tattooed number on their forearms. She did not avoid the children's questions, but looked for ways to explain to the children what happened in a child-friendly manner. While working as a consultant for the Progressive Jewish Organization in England, she wrote her first book: “What happened during the Shoah. A story in rhymes for children who want to know. ”The formulation is characteristic of Dagan's approach. Children decide for themselves whether or not to expose themselves to the Holocaust. “As I said, my book is entitled“ What Happened in the Shoah? - A story in rhyme for children who want to know ”. The child also has a choice in the title. If it doesn't want to know, it doesn't have to listen, and that's what I told the teachers. "

Dagan describes the appropriation of the history of the Holocaust as a "gradual process of development". In order to prevent denial or repression, it is important to strengthen interest in the Shoah and to give children the opportunity to identify with positive elements of human behavior. It is morally dubious and cannot be dealt with by children if only cruelty is described. In literary terms, she is based on fairy tales in which the good triumphs. For example, her children's book When Stars Could Talk ends with the child protagonists meeting their abducted mother in Auschwitz and surviving the Holocaust together as a family. Dagan has been criticized for her "happy ending" approach. She replied: “At some point I understood: whatever I write, it would be criticized. And that's good."

Others

Dagan visited Auschwitz five times after 1945. In 2016 she donated a "lucky charm" to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial , which she said she had hidden in her straw sleeping camp for the entire time in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The approximately one centimeter pair of stylized shoes was made by a German inmate who had given them to Dagan with the words “May they carry you to freedom”.

In January 2020, she gave a speech at the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz .

Publications (selection)

  • Blessed be the imagination - cursed be it! Memories of "Dort" , Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-936411-70-6
  • If stars could speak , Metropol-Verlag, Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-60-4
  • Chika, the bitch in the ghetto , Publishers advertising agency Medien & Verlag GmbH; Edition: 1 (May 30, 2008), ISBN 978-3-9812358-1-4 . The 15-minute puppet film of the same name (director: Sandra Schießl) premiered on April 13, 2016 in Wismar. Israeli television acquired the rights and shows a Hebrew dubbed version on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 21, 2020.
  • Helping Children to Learn about the Shoah . Center for Jewish Education, London 1987.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Imagination: Blessed Be, Cursed Be . Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum . February 17, 2010. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Yad Vashem, The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names: Submitter Batsheva Dagan .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Yad Vashem: Bat-Sheva Dagan
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g State Parliament Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: “I live. This is my victory! ”Holocaust survivor Batsheva Dagan reports on her fate and her struggle for a society free of hatred and exclusion . Schwerin Castle Talk, September 12, 2012.
  5. ↑ "You are the witnesses of the witness." The Holocaust survivor Batsheva Dagan reports on her fate. Commemorative event of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament, January 22, 2019.
  6. ↑ Art. Anielewicz Mordechaj . In: Polski Słownik Judaistyczny , Jewish Historical Institute.
  7. ↑ Imagination: Blessed Be, Cursed Be . Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum . February 17, 2010. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  8. ↑ 'I saw so many people go to their deaths' . In: BBC News . January 26, 2005. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  9. ↑ Traces of War: Grese, Irma .
  10. ↑ a b c d e Art. בת שבע דגן Bat Schevaʿ Dagan . In: Lexicon of Modern Hebrew Literature, Ohio State University.
  11. ↑ Constanze Jaiser: Triumph of the good. In: Jüdische Allgemeine. October 4, 2007, accessed April 23, 2020 .
  12. ^ Judith Poppe: Portrait of the children's book author: Verse als Seelenfutter. In: taz. January 27, 2020, accessed April 22, 2020 .
  13. ↑ 'I saw so many people go to their deaths' . In: BBC News . January 26, 2005. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  14. ^ Auschwitz 75 years on: Leaders and royals commemorate Holocaust . In: BBC News , January 27, 2020. 
  15. ↑ Holocaust survivor Batszewa Dagan donates lucky charm to Auschwitz museum . In: ABC News , January 21, 2016. Retrieved November 16, 2016. 
  16. ^ Auschwitz 75 years on: Leaders and royals commemorate Holocaust . In: BBC News , January 27, 2020. 
  17. ↑ movie office mv: Promoted productions - Chika, the dog in the ghetto
personal data
SURNAME Dagan, Batsheva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rubinsztajn, Izabella (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-Israeli survivor of the Holocaust, educator, psychologist and author
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź