Mira Bernstein

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Mira Bernstein , also Mire Bernshteyn , Mira Bernsztejn and other spellings ( September 13, 1908 in Vilnius , Russian Empire - September 1943 in the Majdanek extermination camp ) was a Lithuanian teacher and communist  from Vilnius who also continued teaching her children in the Vilnius ghetto until she herself was abducted by the Nazi regime and murdered by gassing . The Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever observed her work in the ghetto and addressed it in the famous poem Dilererum Mire (The Teacher Mira).

life and work

Her parents were Meir Bernstein and Ana, also Hanna geb. Liberman. She had two brothers, Aharon and Moshe, also called Moske. She headed the secondary school. Her goals were the renewal of Yiddish culture and especially of Jewish education. She was involved in communist circles. She taught Yiddish and Hebrew , read to her students from the works of Scholem Alejchem and Jizchok Leib Perez . After the establishment of the ghetto, she was jointly responsible for the school system there and directed the school in the small ghetto . She stood by the students' side and made sure that "normality" could be maintained as much as possible. She was particularly concerned about those children whose parents had already been murdered by the National Socialists . She also worked for the underground organization Fareinigte Partisaner Organisatzije . When the ghetto was to be liquidated in September 1943, she was too weak to flee. She was deported to the Majdanek extermination camp , where she was murdered by the Nazi regime.

Entrance to the ghetto

You can read more about Mira Bernstein and the schools in the ghetto in Sutzkever's report on Wilner Getto .

Dilererum Mire

Abraham Sutzkever chose Daniel Kac and Janusz Korczak as central characters in his book Wilno Jerusalem . In his ballad Dilererum Mire of May 28, 1943, the heroine Mira Bernstein, the prototypical Yiddish teacher, is all around concerned, a bit strict and very much loved by her students:

Eh axes do not split the mind of you, the bold,
Mira is the flower, the children are bees.
The flower is gray, its limbs wither,
in the morning dew the flower opens again.

In 1941 she came to the Small Ghetto with 130 children. In the fifteen stanzas of the ballad, the rounding up of the people in the ghetto is first discussed, how Mira takes care of the children, how she fights to be able to continue the lessons as if nothing had happened. But her students, like in a cruel counting rhyme, become less, less, less and less. There is a sharp contrast between the falling number of students and the hope that the teacher wants to convey to the children. When the Small Ghetto is liquidated, there are only seven left. But Mira continues to teach.

literature

  • Abraham Sutzkever: The teacher Mira. In: Peter Comans (ed.): Walk over words like a minefield. Poetry and prose. Frankfurt 2009. p. 123 f.
  • Daniel Kac: Wilno Jerozolimą było. Rzecz o Abrahamie Sutkeverze , Wydawnictwo Pogranicza, Sejny 2003, ISBN 83-86872-51-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names has two entries on the person, both accessed on July 29, 2018:
personal data
SURNAME Amber, Mira
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bernshteyn, Mire; Bernsztejn, Mira
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian teacher and Holocaust victim
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Vilnius , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH September 1943
Place of death Majdanek extermination camp