Pre Poland Seminars; 1&2: Important peulot.

As Workshop continues there are challenges that arise daily which face the kvutza, just as any other kvutza in the world. However these challenges are challenges which, no matter how difficult or frustrating they may be, are overcome. By challenges I mean a lot, ranging from kupa issues to value expression issues to ideological disagreements. However, at this point in the Workshop journey arises possibly the most intense of all challenges, where everyone in the kvutza will have a chance to truly function as a kvutza with a tight knit support system, where every one is there for one another.
Two weeks ago we began our Poland journey on a yom kvutza. Since then, we have experienced two intense seminars which have remarkably made me think of the Holocaust on a level I never have before. It is no secret that seminars have been where I have made the most breakthroughs in terms of my personal developments. On Rabin seminar we had our first exposure to apathy and racism in Israel and during Habo history seminar many of us had ideological breakthroughs where we were able to relate to Socialist Zionism on an entire new level. DUring these seminars, I came away with two things in terms of how I think of the Holocaust, as well as an almost endless list of wonders. One being that everything that happened was a choice made by human beings,and two is that with the previous being said, the value of human life which we speak so highly of really is a value which I need to aspire to carrying out every day. Seeing as we probably had a total of a billion peulot, there is no way I could possibly write about all of them, but the things which really stand out to me are blog worthy. Before I go any further, I would like to express how excited I, and the rest of the kvutz is for Miriam to continue to facilitate our journey, as she did an extraordinary job in the prep seminars.
Seminar one: "The journey to uncover the roots of the zionist revolution and the youth movements heroism."
-Question to keep in mind: what's the deal with the tittle of this seminar? there are a lot of important words in that one sentence.
In all of my education of the Holocaust I have struggled to understand that all the events that happened were by humans. I had no way of getting around the thoughts of labeling every nazi as a monster or a robot. Entering the seminar, I maintained that mindset, but the first text we read changed the way I think about things.
I cannot find a link to this article so i will do my best to explain. The tittle of the article is "Against mystification: The Holocaust as a Historical Phenomenon." In a nut shell, this article gives reasons why the Holocaust, due to a variety of reasons, is so often called a mystification. (Mystification: anywhere you look for a definition, you will come across something like, "to hide; or make unclear." or, "confusion resulting from failure to understand." To me, an example of mystification would be apathy towards a certain subject, as a result of feeling that that particular subject is too difficult to comprehend. With that understood, the article gives a few reasons, and points of clarification as to why mystifications do exist, and how to treat them. Above all, from this peula I learned no matter what it is that I am about to engage myself in, it is important to know my intentions. The first mystification is the explanation of why (what I just gave an example of,) people fail to recognize the Holocaust, or on the other hand a mystification could be one thinking that they have nothing left to learn about the Holocaust, and feeling that they have already a complete understanding of it. There are two simple examples of this. One, the attitude where one expresses that they studied that matter, felt sad, and feel they have a complete understanding. And two, like the first, one having a complete grasp on the subject in terms of numbers and statistics, and that individuals knowledge not going passed that point. These are both, in a way a form of escapism. At this point, we went off to a sicha about the value of human life. A question which came up was, what is worse, a holocaust or a genocide. The article introduces the matter,and explains that as a result of the mystification of Jews being responsible for virtually all issues facing the countries people, (from economic economic issues to others)and animal image the Jews were given by the nazis, the intention of the nazi regime was to completely wipe out the Jews. This is a Holocaust. Further explanation; the elimination of every member of a group, eliminating national identity. On the other hand,according to the article, a genocide is taking down a people, but not completely eliminating them. Rather than eliminating their existence, making them objects of people; denationalizing them by taking down their government, social institutions, economy, biological, and as a replacement of the loss of these things of one group, they are replaced with the opposite by the host population. For instance, its no question that it was every intention of the nazis to do this to the Gypsies. The Jews were victims of a Holocaust, and the Gypsies were victims of a genocide, as they were made into a lower class. In the midst of this, the question was brought up: what is worse, A Holocaust or a Genocide? Furthermore, is it worse to have your life taken, or to live a life of torture and be a lower class, yet with some slight hope of one day living a better life. The question is a tough one, and the answer can be different for everyone. But for me, this is where I have formed my opinion that any form of human life is to be valued, no matter what. Under this condition, you can still in some way experience life rather than the alternative. The act of killing is one person taking away another's right to live, in other words, someone else is controlling your death and denying your existence. Back to the point of mystification, there are countless explanations, and I may just give a few reasons for the untrue reasoning of these mystifications. (Or however much time I have before I need to give this computer back!) So, another example of mystification is what I referred to way earlier. There is a stigma of dehumanizing nazis. Doing this, or having the understandings or thoughts that Hitler was a robot is making it difficult to understand the truth. The truth that there were all people who made choices. Yes he was a human, but one who chose to handle problems in an almost unreal way, but it was real, and we cannot tell ourself it wasn't. We came to the conclusion that its not okay to dehumanize the nazis, because they were people who fell for the belief that there is one way to solve problems, and that was inhumane. However stating they were robots is just covering up the truth.
A next mystification mentioned is that of Zionism, and Gutter literature. This type of literature stated that the Zionist movement wanted the Jews of Eastern Europe to be killed. This is a mystification. There is no truth to this stated in the Gutter literature, because many Zionist thinkers are from Eastern Europe, and it was people from that area like Mordechai Anielewicz, an active Hashomer Hatzair member, who was a top commander of the movement in the Warshaw Ghetto Uprising. The exact same goes for other commanders in the uprising like Frumka and Tuvia, leaders of the Dror movement. This is a classic example of why these mystifications have no truth to them. This literature twists the Zionist ideology to a point that makes no sense. Authors feel that by doing this, it makes it easier to believe.
All of these mystifications make little, or no sense. This was our first peula, and it gave me, and the kvutza the understanding that we cannot even think of these mystifications and allow them to relate to ourselves, otherwise it could potentially take away from our Poland journey. Additionally, I came away with the understanding that all human life is to be valued, and its our role to carry that belief out at all times.
This was the first of many of our peulot.
More soon!