Ester Golan
Posted on | October 27, 2008 | No Comments
Sociologist and Holocaust educator
What was your childhood like in Nazi Germany?
My mother was a Zionist since the Balfour Declaration. So, I grew up in the belief that the ancient dream would be fulfilled one day and we would come to Palestine. I was ten years old when Hitler came. In Catholic school, the teacher came in and said: “You are Jewish? Get up and sit at the back.” From that day on nobody talked to me any more. Nobody played with me any more.
There were only two immigration countries, America and Palestine. But both of them had very strict immigration rules. My mother heard it was possible to get adopted in America and sent in my picture. They sent it back and said “Such an ugly girl, who wants to adopt her?” I was twelve years old when I wad told that.
Then Kristallnacht happened, when well over 1,000 Jewish synagogues were burned and Jewish men were put into concentration camps. I tried to apply to come to Palestine and was summoned before a review committee, who decided I was too underweight. So, I was too ugly to go to America and too skinny to go to Palestine. The world did not come to our aid.
But hope and rescue came through the Kindertransport.
In April of 1939, we got a notice that I could join the Kindertransport, which was an evacuation and rescue operation for Jewish children in Germany organized by Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer, who brought them as far as Holland. From there, 500 children, including my sister and I, were brought to England and settled in Jewish and Christian homes, and the estate of Lord Balfour.
My mother went to her death alone and abandoned. When I teach in schools in Germany, they ask, “Don’t you hate us?” At home, I wasn’t allowed to hate my brother or sister. I wasn’t even allowed to hate spinach. Hate creates more hate, and more hate creates more hate and, in the end, it comes to self-hate. I wasn’t brought up with hate.
Your mother’s letters have a special place in your life.
I got lots and lots of letters from my mother. In one of the last letters I received, she said that my father had died. Then she sent a note to say that she had a new address. Her last letter was from Auschwitz. I had never heard of Auschwitz. It wasn’t in any newspaper or any journal. It wasn’t in any book. Nobody talked about it.
Were you brought up with forgiveness?
Forgiveness for Jews is different than for Christians. When we have Yom Kippur, we ask God for forgiveness only for sins we did between us and God. But if I pinch you, I have to come and ask you, “Will you forgive me?” I can’t ask God to forgive me for that, I have to ask you.
As far as my being in Germany, the present generation didn’t do anything to me. There’s nothing I have to forgive them for. What was done to my parents was done by different people. They did something between men and God because they are not supposed to murder, and they murdered six million Jews. If they want forgiveness, they have to ask the dead people or God.
You speak of murdered Jews, yet I feel warmth from you, I see your smile.
I can either cry or smile, what would you prefer? When I was a small child in Poland, I had a lot of joy, but not since. I was taught at home by my mother. She was exceptional, to look to the future and plan for a better day. She was a heroine. My mother parted from one child to another so we could live. The power of my mother’s letters accompanied me in my adolescent years. I take strength from her.
Strength to do what?
I published a book, I write articles, I’m in organizations. I opened a scout school in our immigrant settlements. I’ve talked in schools in Germany. They know six million Jews were killed but nobody knows what the Jews were like. Here the same thing is happening. Christian Palestinians live in a closed area and don’t meet Muslim women. Muslim women live in a closed area and don’t meet Jewish women.
You don’t hate something you are familiar with; there’s no need to be afraid of what you know. I belong to the Interfaith Encounter group, and when my grandson was killed in the fight in Jenin, Arab women, Muslim women, and Christian women visited me. When your grandson dies, it doesn’t matter how he dies, he’s still dead. It helped me carry on.
Life carries on, so make the best of it. Every day the sun shines, I am grateful the sun shines. Be kind to each other. I don’t say love each other, but no matter what happens, be kind. Let me live my Jewish life, you live your Christian life, and you live your Muslim life.
On Shabbat where I live, it’s quiet. You feel the Shabbat, you smell the Shabbat. My being Jewish doesn’t harm anybody, let me enjoy myself.
What kind of peace work have you done?
I lived over 40 years in Haifa, which is a mixed town of Arabs and Jews. I became a tourist guide, taking Christian people to see the Christian sites, Muslim people to see the Muslim sites, and Jewish people to see Jewish sites. It was natural for me to become part of the Interfaith Encounter group.
You made a special pilgrimage to Auschwitz.
I went to Auschwitz with my son and a small Jewish group. Before the expedition, I went to Mount Herzl. I took a handful of soil from the path that connects Herzl’s grave, the memorial of the man who had a vision for the state, with Yad Vashem, which is a memorial for victims of the Shoah. When we got to Auschwitz, I scattered it there and said a prayer.
Golan’s parents were killed at Auschwitz. Along with her sister, Golan survived through Kindertransport when 10,000 Jewish children, primarily from Germany, were resettled to Europe in late 1938 and 1939. Golan came to Palestine in 1945. She is active in interfaith dialogue and promotes face to face encounters with the Other. Golan speaks in schools, including in Germany, and at the Yad Vashem Museum. She blogs at http://golanes.blogspot.com/
