Resilience and Hope after the Holocaust

Resilience and Hope after the HolocaustA Conversation with Shoshana Bellen After her birth in 1946 in Föhrenwald, Shoshana Bellen (on the left) immigrated to the US with her parents in 1949, then to Israel with her husband in 1969. Over the years she worked intensively with new immigrants, advocated for women's rights, and marched for the promotion of a negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors. Click for larger view View full resolution 1948 in dp camp fohrenwald blimeh hellman (shoshana bellen) standing in front of typical building Click for larger view View full resolution foehrenwald fancia, max and blimeh hellman 1948 Shoshana Bellen was born in Föhrenwald, Germany, in a displaced persons camp that was used to house Holocaust survivors following World War II. Now living in Israel, she returned to Germany in 2018 to attend the opening of the Badehaus Place of Remembrance (Erinnerungsort Badehaus), a historical museum and education center that occupies a renovated building which originally served as the camp's bathhouse. Bellen was one of the contributors to the museum's efforts to document the history of Föhrenwald through the use of photos, videos, multimedia installations, and recorded eyewitness testimony. In our recent conversation, she revealed why it was so important for her to return to the former camp after so many years and what the Badehaus project has meant to her and other Holocaust survivors and descendants in Germany and Israel. BEARING WITNESS In his ongoing column, which appears in every other issue, Karlos K. Hill highlights the efforts of cultural figures doing works of essential good around issues of social justice. Karlos K. Hill: Part of what I do as a historian and a journalist is bear witness to America's decades-long history of anti-Black violence. Whether it be lynching or slavery, I bear witness to the stories of victims, survivors, and descendants. For me, it's ultimately about justice. I've been involved in justice work in connection with the 1921 Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it has been some of the hardest work I've done in my career. Working with descendants and survivors has been particularly challenging, to the point that I've sometimes wanted to give up because it got too difficult. I didn't see people ultimately doing the really hard things that are needed to build bridges. So I am encouraged to see how you, as the child of Holocaust survivors, not only were able to begin to reconcile yourself to a place and a people who had caused your family so much pain, but you were able to help others see and feel that it was something that could also be regenerative for them. Yours is a hopeful story, and it has had a profound impact on me. So I'd like to hear about how you were able to start coming to terms with the place of your birth, and with being in relationship with Germans, including individuals who might well be family members of perpetrators. Shoshana Bellen: I find it interesting that justice is an important word for you. It would not be one of the first words I would use in talking about why I'm doing what I'm doing. I don't think there is justice in this world. I look more toward another word that you use, which is hope. I look more at resilience. One of the amazing things about the Holocaust survivors was that they did not seek revenge. There was a very small group that got weapons and wanted to hunt down the top Nazis, but for the majority of people, revenge meant having babies and continuing their lineage. If you talk to some of those who went through the Holocaust, they will point to their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren and say, "This is my revenge." As for this partnership involving descendants of the Nazis and descendants of the perpetrators and descendants of the victims, it's easier to do it in Germany because the German government, German society, has taken on responsibility. They have said, "This happened": the Nazis are part of our history, this dark period

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