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ABSTRACT
The article explores a community that, in large part did not experience the atrocities of the Holocaust, but were nevertheless affected by it. The personal and communal impact of the Holocaust found its expression in a number of cultural ventures. Drawing on previously unused archival material from the Finnish Jewish Archives (found at the National Archives of Finland) and the YIVO Archives, I will demonstrate that, while avoiding the public eye, the Helsinki Jewish community sought and found many ways to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust within their own communal spaces. My focus will be on a Yiddish pageant called Mother Rachel and her children written by Helsinki-born Jac Weinstein (1883–1976). This play depicts the two-thousand-year-long suffering of the Jewish people culminating in the death camps of the Third Reich. Weinstein’s pageant draws attention to the early years of Holocaust commemoration, its significance and its evolution in a country that was de facto allied with Nazi Germany in 1941–1944 and after the war fell into the Soviet Union’s sphere of interest. This unknown chapter in the history of Finnish Jews and Finland in general, speaks also to wider issues of Holocaust remembrance in immediate post-war Jewish communities, to questions about when and how the commemoration should take place and who should be commemorated.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Yvonne Westerlund, Helsinki, for her assistance and making available documents of her grandfather Jac Weinstein. I would also like to thank Laura Ekholm, David Fligg, Joseph Toltz, Hadas Weiss and Helen Beer for their comments and advice on the manuscript. All possible errors are mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr. Simo Muir is currently a research associate in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He received his PhD in Yiddish linguistics at the University of Helsinki in 2004, and has published widely on Jewish history in Finland. Between 2015 and 2017 Dr. Muir was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Leeds in an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project called “Performing the Jewish Archive.” Muir is a contributing co-editor of Finland’s Holocaust: Silences of History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His latest articles include “The Plan to Rescue Finnish Jews in 1944,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 30, no. 1 (2016) and “’Not on the Jewish Migration Route:’ Finland and Polish Holocaust Survivors,” Yad Vashem Studies 44, no. 1 (2016).
Notes
1 Swedish Section of World Jewish Congress to Judiska Församlingen i Helsingfors (Jewish Community of Helsinki, JFH), January 15, 1948, Kansallisarkisto (National Archives of Finland, KA), Suomen juutalaisten arkisto (Finnish Jewish Archives, SJA), box 398; JFH to Swedish Section of World Jewish Congress, undated draft, KA, SJA, box 398.
2 Central Committee of Jews in Poland to JFH, March 22, 1948, KA, SJA, box 81; Protocol of JFH, March 19, 1948, KA, SJA, box 42.
3 Worthen and Muir, “Introduction,” 1–5: Ekholm, “Suomenjuutalaiset,” 177–8.
4 Weinstein’s ’tableau’ translates the best in English as a ’pageant’, which can include a series of tableaux, images.
5 Antero Holmila has written about early post-war discussion of the Holocaust in the Finnish press in his article “Varieties of Silence,” 526–32.
6 Muir, Yiddish in Helsinki, 67–75; Muir, “Jac Weinstein ja jiddišinkielinen revyy Helsingissä,” 128–51.
7 Jac Weinstein, Muter Rochl un ire kinder. A tableau in 15 bilder, undated manuscript, KA, SJA, box 459; Muir, Yiddish in Helsinki, 68.
8 Jac Weinstein, Oh, du main folk, undated draft, Yvonne Westerlund’s private archive, Helsinki.
9 Jac Weinstein, Oh, du main folk, May 1948, KA, SJA, box 459; Prolog zu dem tablo: Di Muter Rochl un ire kinder, July 7, 1948, KA, SJA, box 459.
10 This was possibly meant to be read to the audience before the play started. All the quotes from Weinstein’s pageant, written in Latinized Yiddish, have been transliterated according to the YIVO standard.
11 List of the musical pieces in order as they appear in the manuscript: Eykho (Oh, how), Eli Tsion (Cry Zion), Kol nidrey (All vows), Fun Shpanye (From Spain; crossed out in the manuscript), Shlof, mayn yidele, shlof (Sleep, my child, sleep), Eyli, Eyli, lomo azavtonu (My God, my God, why have you forsaken us), Eyl mole rakhamim (God full of mercy), Exodus (later amendment), Haleluyo (Hallelujah, Psalm 150), and Hatikvo (The hope). Even though Weinstein became familiar with ghetto and partisan songs through visiting artists and publications he did not incorporate them into his pageant. Instead he decided to use songs from the Jewish liturgical tradition and from pre-war Yiddish theatre that he and the Finnish Jewish community were familiar with.
12 Roskies and Diamant, Holocaust Literature, 74.
13 Finnish Jews had had the possibility to follow the evolution of the Holocaust through the Swedish press. For instance Judisk Krönika had monthly reports about the atrocities carried against Jewish communities. Some families listened to BBC radio, which also reported early on about the annihilation of European Jewry. After the war many families found out what had happened to their relatives in the Nazi occupied territories and could hear accounts of survivors who came to Finland. Besides the above, in February 1945 Finnish Jews had a chance to see an exhibition at Taidehalli in Helsinki created by the Soviet Union’s Moscow based News Agency TASS with photographs taken by the Soviet army, including images of crimes committed in German-occupied Europe (though the identity of the victims was not directly addressed). On the exhibition, see Katarina Ekholm, Boundaries of an Urban Minority, 114.
14 Similar e.g. to Zionist pageants in the US at the time. See Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 159–96.
15 Also the archives of the Jewish Choir Association (Finnish Jewish Archives, National Archives of Finland), which would have been likely to cooperate on a performance like this, don’t have minutes or correspondence from the post-war era.
16 Roskies and Diamant, Holocaust Literature; Schwarz, Survivors and Exiles; Cesarani and Sundqvist, eds., After the Holocaust; Frühauf and Hirsch, eds., Dislocated Memories; Patt and Berkowitz, “We Are Here.”
17 Muir, “The Plan to Rescue Finnish Jews in 1944,” 95.
18 Memorandum beträffande Finska judar under kriget, undated, KA, SJA, box 530.
19 Muir, “The Plan to Rescue,” 95–6.
20 B. Nemes, Report on the Jewish position in Finland, sent to the World Zionist Organisation, March 26, 1945, Central Zionist Archives, ZA/30640-3.
21 Protocol of JFH, December 6, 1944, KA, SJA, box 42.
22 A trial against the chief of Security Police, Arno Anthoni, took place—after the War-Responsibility Trials were over—in Turku in 1947–1948 but he was acquitted. Anthoni used the memorandum of the Central Council in his defence.
23 Judiska Vappenbröder (Jewish brothers-in-arms) to JFH, November 23, 1944, KA, SJA, box 393; Protocol of JFH, April 29, 1945, KA, SJA, box 42; Torvinen, Pakolaiset Suomessa Hitlerin valtakaudella, 264: Jac Weinstein to JFH, 30 January 1945.
24 JFH to the World Jewish Congress, undated draft from 1946, KA, SJA, box 78. At the time it was not known that Finland handed over 50 Soviet-Jewish POWs to the Germans as part of a wider prisoner-of-war exchange. This became widely known after investigative journalist Elina Sana’s book Luovutet (The extradited) was published in 2003. Historian Oula Silvennoinen has since discovered that most of these prisoners-of-war were murdered in Lapland by Einsatzkommando Finnland. Tilli, “Elina Sana’s Luovutet and the Politics of History,” , 151–172; Silvennoinen, Geheime Waffenbrüderschaft.
25 Ekholm, “Suomenjuutalaiset,” 168.
26 Ekholm, “Suomenjuutalaiset,” 173; Hasenson, et al., eds., Suomen juutalaiset sotilaat ja lotat Suomen sodissa 1939–1945.
27 Silvennoinen, “Still under Examination,” 67–92.
28 It would take over twenty years until a generic Holocaust monument was erected in the yard of the Jewish community centre in 1970, and only in the year 2000 a public monument for the eight deported refugees was finally erected in the centre of Helsinki.
29 Muir, “Not on the Jewish Migration Route,” 182.
30 Ibid., 191–03.
31 Protocol of JFH, March 4, 1946, KA, SJA, box 42.
32 Among others following singers and actors visited Finland during 1946–1949: Marcel Kaufler, Khayele Grober, Nusia Gold and Pnina Zalman. This information is gathered from the newsletter (Yedies) published by the Swedish Section of the World Jewish Congress.
33 Shneer, “Eberhard Rebling, Lin Jaldati, and Yiddish Music,” 166.
34 Judisk konst, programme for Lin Jaldati’s performance at Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu, November 28, 1946, KA, SJA, box 459; JFH to Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 19, 1946, KA, SJA, box 79.
35 Partisaner-himn, arr. M. Beresowsky, KA, SJA, box 468.
36 Mordco Husid to Isaij Davidkin, November 29, 1947, KA, SJA, box 80.
37 Detta är vad vi hungrat efter … , programmes for January 24 and 27, 1948, YIVO, Finland, RG 116, box 74, folder 9.
38 Roskies and Diamant, Holocaust Literature, 60–1.
39 “Nor oyf dem khurbn iz nishto/ Yirmyohu vos zol klogn Eykho”. Sh. Shayevitsh, … Lekh-lekho … (Lodzh: Tsentrale yidishe historishe komisye, 1946), 35.
40 Indelman, “Di schverd fun Bar-Kochva,” 8–10; Hatikwah published also a shorter poem by him called Pesakhdik gefes (Passover dishes), Hatikwah 2, no. 3 (1947): 9.
41 Indelman to JFH, May 30, 1947, KA, SJA, box 80; Muir, “Not on the Jewish Migration Route,” 194.
42 Fridberg, Bimdinot ha-harega. Hebrew kina (pl. kinot) is a dirge for a collective catastrophe, especially in the Book of Lamentations.
43 Muir, Yiddish in Helsinki, 116–7.
44 The song, also in Hebrew translation, was to be sung to the melody of Bialik’s Birkat am. Frydberg, Oyb der talyen hot dikh gelozt lebn … / Im lo hayta gam bekha yad harotseah … . YIVO, Finland, RG 116, box 74, folder 7.
45 On the Swedish Section of World Jewish Congress see, Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Victims of Nazi Terror, 1933-1945, 261.
46 Soback, “På sångens vingar till Skandinavien,” 9–10.
47 L. T., “Der yidisher gezangfareyn fun Helsingfors in Malme,” Di shtime fun sheyres-hakhurbn in Shvedn (January 1948).
48 “A fayerlekher gezegenungsovnt,” Yedies (aroysgegebn fun Yidishn Veltkongres), February 27, 1948.
49 JFH to Evreiskii Antifashistkii Komitet v SSSR, undated draft in Russian, KA, SJA, box 79.
50 Protocol of JFH, January 28, 1946, KA, SJA, box 42; Protocol of JFH, September 3, 1946, Ibid.
51 Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism, 78–9; Joshua Rubenstein, “Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee,” in The YIVO Encyclopaedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Jewish_Anti-Fascist_Committee.
52 Evreiskii Antifashistkii Komitet v SSSR to JFH, May 24, 1946, KA, SJA, box 79.
53 Manelewitsch, “Judisk kulturellt liv i S.S.S.R.,” 6.
54 Later in 1946 the Jewish Community of Helsinki wanted to invite representatives of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to a Scandinavian conference in Helsinki and requested permission from Andrei Zhdanov. The conference never took place because the tiny Finnish Jewish community—lacking political influence—was not seen as an important enough player in the eyes of Soviet leaders. The anticipated collaboration dried up before it even had chance to start owing to the gradual shutdown of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. S. Mikhoels and I. Fefer to A. Zhdanov, August 1946, Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism, 317–8; M. Suslov to A. Zhdanov, September 20, 1946, Ibid., 318.
55 Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 196, 202–203; Roskies and Diamant, Holocaust Literature, 82–83.
56 Roskies, ed., The Literature of Destruction, 4.
57 Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 196. Besides melodies from the Ninth of Av, Weinstein included Kol nidre (All vows) from the liturgy of the Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. The song in Mother Rachel, chosen for its solemn melody, rather than its Aramaic text, appears in the context of the expulsion from Spain (tableau 7) and is sung behind the scenes by the Previous Generations accompanied by a violin. Weinstein most likely placed the song there because it was commonly thought to have been composed by Spanish Jews, who converted to Christianity to escape persecution. On the origin of Kol nidre, see Saperstein, “The Marrano Connetion to Kol Nidre,” 31–8.
58 Jac Weinstein, Di Warschawer getto, undated manuscript, SJA, box 439. Similarly, Weinstein’s Swedish-language poem Chanukaljusen (Hanukkah candles) written on December 6, 1943 is about Jewish endurance despite all odds. Jac Weinstein, Chanukaljusen, December 6, 1943, KA, SJA, box 439.
59 Gilbert, Music in the Holocaust, 17.
60 This famous Yiddish song by Jacob Sandler, also from a late nineteenth century operetta, about the persecution of Jews, was very popular during the Holocaust and postwar era. On Eyli Eyli see Robboy, “Reconstructing a Yiddish Theatre Score,” 247.
61 Interview with Boris Rubanovitsch (1926-2018), January 27, 2017, Helsinki; Simo Muir, “Vaiettu kuolema”, Helsingin Sanomat, January 27, 2018, C 1-3.
62 Muir, “The Plan to Rescue,” 90–1.
63 B. Nemes, Report on the Jewish position in Finland, sent to the World Zionist Organisation, March 26, 1945, Central Zionist Archives, ZA/30640-3.
64 Feinstein, “Re-imagining the Un-imaginable: Theater, Memory and Rehabilitation in Displaced Persons Camps,” 52.
65 Feinstein, “Re-imagining the Un-imaginable,” 43. According to Dominick LaCapra, reliving or what in psychoanalytic terminology is called “acting-out may be a necessary condition of working through a traumatic event, at least for victims.” LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz, 45.
66 Makowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 212–3.
67 For instance in 1943 Ben Hecht’s pageant We Will Never Die: A Memorial Dedicated to the 2,000,000 Jewish Dead of Europe featuring narration and scenes with song and prayer (e.g. Kaddish) was performed for over hundred thousand people and broadcast in the radio. Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 190; Roskies and Diamant, Holocaust Literature, 30–1.
68 Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 90–2.
69 The original song in the manuscript has been erased and the song Exodus has been handwritten in its place. This might refer to various songs with that title. For instance Ekzodus-lid by Yitskhak Perlov and Lola Folman, and Ekzodus—1947 by Reuven Lipshits. Werb, “‘Vu ahin zol ikh geyn,’ 95. It is even possible that Weinstein added this in the early 1960s after seeing the film Exodus.
70 Tydor Baumel, “‘Rachel Laments Her Children’,” 116.
71 Psalm 150; translation: Jewish Publication Society Bible (1917).
72 Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 198.
73 Interview with Boris Rubanovitsch (1926-2018), January 27, 2017, Helsinki.
74 Feinstein, “Re-imagining the Un-imaginable,” 49.
75 Weinstein does not seem to have been a member of any of the Zionist associations in Helsinki and his theatrical pieces don’t contain Zionist aspirations or satirize Zionists. Two poems though chronicle stages in realization of the Jewish state, Vid tollbommen (At the customs gate) written after the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and Dos alt-naye lid (The new-old song) after the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. KA, SJA, box 439.
76 Hatikvo, arranged by Samuel Rubinstein, KA, SJA, box 468. Zionism had played a big role in the Jewish communities in Finland already before the war. In 1936, the Finnish-Jewish revisionist journal Hazohar declared that almost all Jewish children in Helsinki were part of some Zionist youth organization. Whilst most members of the Jewish community of Helsinki fostered moderate General Zionist ideas, approximately a third represented right-wing Revisionists. There was no organized leftist, anti-Zionist Bund, let alone Communists. In December 1942, when Finnish Jewish leaders discovered the extent of the annihilation of European Jewry, they considered that there would be no Jewish future in Europe and decided to strengthen Zionist teaching and preparation for an Aliyah to the Land of Israel. After the war Finnish Jewish community became politically vocal by taking part in protests against England and its policy towards Jewish survivors trying to reach Palestine. Ultimately, several Finnish Jewish soldiers who had fought against the Soviets during World War II, fought in the Israeli Independence War. Hazohar No. 7–8 (1936): 3; Protocol of the Central Council of Jewish Communities in Finland, December 29, 1942, KA, SJA, box 392; JFH to Finska Notisbyrån (Finnish Press Office, STT), undated draft from 1947, KA, SJA, box 80.
77 Feinstein, “Re-imagining the Un-imaginable,” 44.
78 The silence about the Finnish experience vis-à-vis the Holocaust is evident also in Weinstein’s unpublished chronicle of the history of Jews in Finland from 1956, where he mentions the Holocaust only in passing. Ekholm, “Suomenjuutalaiset,” 172. These silences may have also to with the fact that Finnish Jews by fighting alongside Nazi-Germans against Soviet Union were accused of prolonging the suffering of their brethren in German occupied countries.
79 Hansson, Flykt och överlevnad, 286. On Jewish survivors in Sweden, see also Byström and Frohnert, eds., Reaching a State of Hope.
80 To make it even more obvious, he chose to call Mother Rachel by the formal and German sounding word for mother, muter, rather than using the familiar mame, or for that matter, the traditional Hebraic expression Rokhl imeynu, Rachel our mother.
81 Parmet, Genom fönsterrutan, 131–7. The music composed by Pergament-Parmet was never performed.
82 Email correspondence with Pälvi Laine (Teatterimuseo, Theatre Museum, Helsinki), February 16, 2017.
83 Moses Pergament, “The Jewish song,” [1976], in the CD record Den judiska sången / The Jewish song, published by SMIC.
84 C. B-g, “Den judiska sången,” Dagens Nyheter, October 20, 1947. Interview with Regina Forsberg (nee Weinstein, 1917–2015), Helsinki, 1998.
85 “The Jewish Song, poems by Ragnar Josephson,” in CD record Den judiska sången / The Jewish song, published by SMIC.
86 These were impressions of journalist A. I. Fischer who visited Sweden and Finland after the war. A. I. Fischer, “Di yidn in Finland,” Unzer veg (Paris), December 12, 1948. See also Gumpler, “Judarna i Finland under tre årtionden,” 3–4. About the Swedish Jewish community see e.g. Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Victims of Nazi Terror, 16–23.
87 Jac Weinstein, O, du mitt folk (Oh, you my people), undated fragment, Yvonne Westerlund’s private archive, Helsinki.
88 These poems were typed which would indicate that they were either read publicly at gatherings or part of Weinstein’s kleynkunst soirees or he wanted them to be published. The poems are found in KA, SJA, box 439.
89 Jac Weinstein, Dos einsame kind, unpublished and undated manuscript in Latinized Yiddish, KA, SJA, box 459. The song is written to the melody of Sonny Boy. In 1945 the Finnish officials established a quota for bringing Jewish child survivors to Finland. This plan did not work out and subsequently some Jewish families in Finland adopted children that had been brought to Sweden. Muir, “Not on the Jewish Migration Route,” 181–91.
90 Schwarts, Survivors and Exiles, 158.
91 Muir, “‘Oh, Language of Exile – Woven of Sorrow and Mockery’,” 347–367.
92 World Jewish Congress to JFH, February 28, 1949, KA, SJA, box 82.
93 Azoy vi di Kneset in Yerusholayim […], invitation to a memorial event on May 3, 1951, YIVO, Finland, RG 116, Box 74, folder 10. The programme included recitation of Psalms, speech by Rabbi Eliezer Berlinger, Eyl mole rakhamin and Aleynu. Seyder hayom, programme for the memorial event, May 3, 1951, YIVO, Finland, RG 116, box 74, folder 10.
94 For a film of the performance see https://vimeo.com/172722462. The pageant has been also performed in “Out of the Shadows” festivals in Leeds and Prague, 2016. On “Performing the Jewish Archive” project and the “Out of the Shadows” festivals see http://ptja.leeds.ac.uk/.