Becoming Murderers, Victims, and Bystanders
From Never Again
On May 25, 2006, I boarded a chartered van with my father’s entire family. There are nine of us accompanied by a driver and guide. We met in Lithuania to travel to the village my great-grandfather left at the age of 16 to avoid conscription in the Russian army and join his sisters in the United States. We don’t know of anyone who knew our family or even have an address to track down. We will be traveling around the town of Postavy to trace his childhood and experience the town he left behind.
After driving through farmland for a few hours, we enter Postavy, an isolated rural town in Belarus. We are met there by a friend of our guide from Lithuania. He is joined by two women who have an interest in local history. Together, we drive through the town.
Just past the city limits, we pull into what appears to be a scrap metal yard. Rusted parts from old machines are heaped high along concrete walls. We pile out of the van and follow our guides through the mounds and around a corner. As I look up, I see a headstone with a yellow Star of David on the top; the same star that Jews were forced to wear during the holocaust. Behind the headstone is a large, well kept pile of gravel. This is the mass grave where the 832 Jews of Postavy were shot and killed by Nazis guards in November 1942. Standing there, the deaths feel so real. I can picture the scene as our guides describe it – parents and children walk side-by-side, crying as people in the town look on. Images of the holocaust flood my imagination as one of the women from the van speaks in Russian and I await the translation. Eventually, we collect ourselves and leave.
At the old Jewish Cemetery where the Jews of Postavy were buried before the holocaust, we are watched intensely by a young boy on his bike. I try to imagine what he thinks of us. No Jews have lived here since the one holocaust survivor left Postavy after the war. We are told that few ever visit. I begin to wonder what children in Postavy were taught about this part of their history. Like the mass grave, other evidence of the existence of the Jews in Postavy is hidden. The synagogues are not marked and you wouldn’t know where the ghetto the Nazis forced Jews to live during their occupation was if it wasn’t pointed out. The cemetery, surrounded by houses, has no sign either. Grass runs halfway up the graves which are slanted nearly parallel with the ground – defeated after years of erosion and neglect. Without our guides, all of this would have been invisible to us; a pit forms in my stomach as I realize that in the 64 years since the Jews were killed, the history and memory of them has been eliminated too.
It occurs to me that children could grow up in Postavy as if the Jews never existed or were killed in their town. I look back at the boy on the bicycle. He is in the same spot, but has pivoted his bike and turned his attention to cars passing on the street. If he doesn’t learn about the Jews in Postavy, both of their life before the Holocaust and of their death during, he has no connection to them. It strikes me that this kind of connection is what would prevent another Holocaust.
We leave the cemetery and head back to the town square where we began; our tour is ending. Before we say goodbye to our guides, we ask one of the women how this is taught in the schools. She is a teacher; she responded that she is determined to teach about the Jews in Postavy, but added that she got no support from the school department and other teachers did not make the same effort. We thank her for giving us hope. Without pause, she shook her head, looked directly at our guide who was translating and replied, “It’s my duty. I want to make sure that my students are not the murderers, victims or bystanders next time.”
Adam Seidel, 25, is an educator dedicated to giving young people a meaningful role in their communities (and urging the communities to support them). He is based in New York City as the Program Manager for the Penny Harvest, a school-based educational program run by Common Cents.
