In honor of Ilona Karmel & Henia Karmel-Wolfe
A few weeks ago I attended a Passover seder on the theme of social justice. We sat around the table talking about Malcolm X, Gandhi, Moses, and eventually Anielewicz. We read his last letter and spoke about “Jewish resistance.” We contemplated the age-old question of “what in the world would you, in this day and age, be willing to rise up against?” The conversation orbited around political action and reform, about dedicating one’s life to fighting back, about emulating Anielewicz’s ghetto uprising in the fight to combat institutional racism in the American education system through protest and organizing. It was all very wonderful and it was all very unsettling.
As I listened I couldn’t help but think about my great aunt Ilona Karmel, the novelist, teacher, and poet. She was born in Krakow before the war and survived with her sister, my grandmother, despite being run over by a tank during a death march in the twilight of German’s rule over Poland. I thought about how she and my grandmother wrote poems in the concentration camp and hid them by sewing them into the hems of their skirts. I thought about how when the tank crushed their legs and killed their mother in front of them they tore open their skirts and gave the poems to a cousin who left them for dead. I thought about how they survived. I thought about my grandfather being handed the poems in the days after liberation and what he must have felt clutching the body of their work, the art of their suffering.
A few weeks ago I attended a Passover seder on the theme of social justice. We sat around the table talking about Malcolm X, Gandhi, Moses, and eventually Anielewicz. We read his last letter and spoke about “Jewish resistance.” We contemplated the age-old question of “what in the world would you, in this day and age, be willing to rise up against?” The conversation orbited around political action and reform, about dedicating one’s life to fighting back, about emulating Anielewicz’s ghetto uprising in the fight to combat institutional racism in the American education system through protest and organizing. It was all very wonderful and it was all very unsettling.
As I listened I couldn’t help but think about my great aunt Ilona Karmel, the novelist, teacher, and poet. She was born in Krakow before the war and survived with her sister, my grandmother, despite being run over by a tank during a death march in the twilight of German’s rule over Poland. I thought about how she and my grandmother wrote poems in the concentration camp and hid them by sewing them into the hems of their skirts. I thought about how when the tank crushed their legs and killed their mother in front of them they tore open their skirts and gave the poems to a cousin who left them for dead. I thought about how they survived. I thought about my grandfather being handed the poems in the days after liberation and what he must have felt clutching the body of their work, the art of their suffering.
Years ago, when my great aunt was still alive my father told me that my great Aunt was part of the Krakow ghetto resistance. I was young and steeped in the tales of Anielewicz. Hearing that she was part of that tradition was like hearing that she was a super hero. I wanted to ask her, to hear more but my dad said she didn’t like to talk about it, that he had asked her once and her reply had been, “oh that was just girlscout crap.” My father explained to me that she had worked in the offices sending illegal messages around the ghetto and organizing the troops and that she had been ashamed for not being allowed to actually fight.
Recently I’ve been thinking that she meant something else. Recently I’ve been thinking that political resistance is important, that change is fundamental for our survival, and that rising up against the evils of alienation, corruption, and degradation a necessity. But at the seder I couldn’t help but feel that Anielewicz’s fight is only one way.
As we poured the next cup of wine and dedicated it to resistance, I raised my hand. I told everyone that I wanted to add to our picture of resistance: that writing poetry in a camp while people die around you is a revolutionary act. Painting images of things that no one should ever have to see is a revolutionary act. Writing novels, telling stories, forming a community of souls bound by a narrative is a revolutionary act. It may not force change and it may not destroy enemies, but it strives to explain and understand and it strives to preserve and illuminate. And, in its striving, it diminishes the evil, alienation and degradation in the world. This striving is why I’ve joined “The Unspeakable” team. This striving is why I write and create. This striving is what I think about when it’s Yom HaShoah 71 years after the uprising in Warsaw and 71 years since my aunt Ilona and my grandmother Henia wrote poetry and began sewing.
GET ILONA KARMEL & HENIA-KARMEL WOLFE'S BOOK OF POETRY HERE
Recently I’ve been thinking that she meant something else. Recently I’ve been thinking that political resistance is important, that change is fundamental for our survival, and that rising up against the evils of alienation, corruption, and degradation a necessity. But at the seder I couldn’t help but feel that Anielewicz’s fight is only one way.
As we poured the next cup of wine and dedicated it to resistance, I raised my hand. I told everyone that I wanted to add to our picture of resistance: that writing poetry in a camp while people die around you is a revolutionary act. Painting images of things that no one should ever have to see is a revolutionary act. Writing novels, telling stories, forming a community of souls bound by a narrative is a revolutionary act. It may not force change and it may not destroy enemies, but it strives to explain and understand and it strives to preserve and illuminate. And, in its striving, it diminishes the evil, alienation and degradation in the world. This striving is why I’ve joined “The Unspeakable” team. This striving is why I write and create. This striving is what I think about when it’s Yom HaShoah 71 years after the uprising in Warsaw and 71 years since my aunt Ilona and my grandmother Henia wrote poetry and began sewing.
GET ILONA KARMEL & HENIA-KARMEL WOLFE'S BOOK OF POETRY HERE
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