THE FIFTIETH GATEMark Raphael Baker

Introduction

Mark Baker acknowledges the book’s difficulty which is the only reason why he keeps on lecturing about it

He calls the book a self-conscious layering of history and memory

The purpose for his lecture is to provide insight into the writing and the background of the book.

His childhood

His parents had experienced deep trauma in their lives – up until Mark Baker was in his 40s he never really spoke about this experience.

◦ The fact of it was palpable, but never directly discussed, but he intuited their anguish and secrets

◦ Became an expert on the Holocaust, studying it and teaching about it at university

◦ Knew of the work of Primo Levi, Eli Wiesel, Anne Frank

Ironically he knew their stories but did not know about his own parents, they had been unable to talk about the past, they had both “repressed” their experiences and Baker began to “project” their repression onto something else – in this case others’ experiences

Childhood experiences

Why could his parents not speak of their experiences? They were typical of the generation who never spoke

of their past and there were many survivors in Australia (Australia had taken a disproportionate number of survivors)

They broke their silence at a good time – after Schindler’s List and Shoah had been released.

Baker was the typical child of Holocaust survivors, he knew of the existence of the “black box of secrets” (Helen Epstein – author of texts on the Holocaust), which in their case was a silver box of photos of corpses which were the only early souvenirs of his father’s life.

He read Eli Wiesel’s Night which recounted an experience much the same as his father – Auschwitz and Buchenwald – the line he most remembers is that you can be in Auschwitz with out actually being there. His father used to dream and when Baker questioned him about it his father would answer “because”.

Baker began to understand this concept when they actually went back to Auschwitz, and stood under the taunting sign “Arbeit Macht Frei”, Baker knew you could be in Auschwitz, without actually being there. (MEMORY)

Contest between history and memory

There is an ongoing conflict between history and memory in the text – history being objective, and memory being subjective, but all history is subjective (Wie ist eigentlich gewesen – history as it actually happened – can never be – it is always filtered through somebody’s subconscious/ conscious mind)◦ For example – the contested term –

Holocaust – in Greek means a “burnt offering” or “sacrifice by fire”. This has been interpreted by some to say that the Jews were sacrificed to atone for their sins (That the Jews were victims for their sins can be seen by some to be a justification for the Holocaust) Words are subjective, narrative is subjective Baker prefers to use the word “shoah” which

is Hebrew for calamity

Baker’s original intention

At the start he wanted to set up the truth versus fiction, he wanted to present the parents’ stories on one page – and the history on the other

He researched the archives to get the birds eye view Once he began to apply this paradigm to his research, he realized it

began to fall away as the stories and the research flowed and merged together◦ For example his family had no tangible memory of the childhood of

their parents and grandparents until he began to research – no sense of the continuity of the generations He found the report cards of his father and his aunts and then

memory began to step into history His father had no idea of what happened to his father and his

mother and sisters (died in Treblinka) His mothers family died in Belzec

Memory – testimony

History – Objective truth

Treblinka

Some history – concerning Treblinka and Belzec, the survivor numbers are significantly smaller than the victims (Belzec has 3 survivors)◦ Here was industrialized death (only

example in history, closest analogy is to an abattoir)

◦ Mass graves – bodies were exhumed for burial, and only a handful of survivors remember

Baker interviewed a survivor from Treblinka in the book who has made a model of the camp in his living room ◦ This was a representation of history

and conflated memory◦ What he felt obliged to bear witness to

At right are some representations of the THE "LAZARETT" Here, in this fake Red Cross station, old and handicapped people were shot. They were brought from the ramp to the "Lazarett", then they had to undress and kneel down at the permanently burning pit before being shot in the neck.

Schindler’s List

Baker’s parents are survivors of the Shoah◦ They tell a story of

redemption, as they repress the real memory

elimination not creation◦ Avoided using their story as a way

redeeming the Holocaust (compensate for)

While in Schindler's List, all the featured characters are presented as heroes, and all survive.◦ Spielberg has played with

memory, as he has used black and white film to make his film look like the newsreels, however the people who were in the camps saw experienced it is colour. He’s trying to draw us into the event.

The Shoah

A better film is Shoah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W0WcZu9O74

which is available on YouTube – goes for 10 hours, but you could watch an hour or so◦This film relies totally on

memory◦10 hours of ruins,

remains and interviews with people remembering their experiences.

History and memory – how far can you go?

History is remembered◦ We remember one thing◦ Remember another thing and so

on… In his book he had to ask

the question – how far do I allow my imagination to go? ◦ There was no memory of the

train trip to the camp, and no recollection of the arrival at the station

◦ No language is adequate for this task, there was no way familiar language could adequately describe this. Primo Levi asked, “If this is man, what is man?”

Jewish Mysticism - Kabbalah

Baker talked about the language of mysticism – kabbalah – medieval tradition that tries to find language to describe the inexplicable – understanding whereby you can use images out of the ordinary experience for what can’t be grasped◦ The palace is where the gates are,

all doors are connected and this is a metaphor for life, the gates equal the decisions we have to make

◦ The notion of memory begins with his parents memory, goes to history, goes to interpretation

◦ Influences his own Jewish tradition

The Talmud

The Talmud – is non-linear, is a series of circles, has a centre block of text, wrapped around that is an interpretation of verse from another century and so on… like a hypertext demonstrating extensive connections through time

The Talmud is interconnected but not at the same time◦ History represents a point in time◦ Memory allows other voices to be

heard at the same time

“Remember inside the darkness”

Some of the stories in his text concern tales that happened 2000 years ago, but its not how the story ends◦ He recounted the tale of the rabbi who was

the first century victim of the Romans who was set on fire and watched the letters of his writings fly “I am dying and the parchment is burning, but my words will survive me”

◦ Baker thinks of Auschwitz as the pinnacle of the death camps, as this was the only camp where the selections occurred, as there were the three camps, in other camps all died.

◦ The number on the arm was only a feature of Auschwitz as it meant that you were a survivor it was a “signpost to life”

◦ He told the story of how the system broke down after Hungary was emptied of their Jews in 1944. Corpses were put directly onto a bonfire – after the ovens could not cope (??)

◦ Like the Talmudic text – can words survive? ◦ The letters turn to dust and ashes, but this is

his purpose with the book – to reclaim the words for history “Remember inside the darkness”

Age – the point of his father’s birth date – he was born in 1927, he said 1929

Every document showed different birth dateYour moment of birth is historical, yet his

birth date became a tool for his survival, when he came to a different place he would tell them you he was older or younger if it meant that he would survive, his altered age was a testament to his will to survive. It was a question not of how old he was, but how old he had to be in order to survive.

There are some general themes in the Holocaust – what does it mean to be human, what is evil?

◦Ideologies pervade◦Blind spots –

dehumanizing actions as a result of peer pressure and this led to conditioning

Relationship to his parents

◦The culture of telling has changed◦They were frozen on this topic and could not look back◦They were unable to live like that◦Talking about it made it easier by distance, culture of

confession◦Most of the Jews who experienced the Holocaust left

Europe, many others were killed in pogroms after the war

◦Memory can be shaped and reshaped, transmitted, kept alive, it begins and ends in the same place, you can tell the stories in different ways, they will never be forgotten

Does forgetting change the history?

◦ History is subjective, it does rely on facts and it is constructed and imagined

◦ Collingwood said – “All history is contemporary history” i.e. history is refracted through the person you are now, every age has its Medieval Period as a result of bias, subjectivity, memory and history. These can be shared and remembered, but the boundaries are not clear.

◦ Eg., the cold day that was actually warm, memory makes his father feel vulnerable on this, and these examples of faltered memory are used by Holocaust deniers who use facts selectively Memory is the truth as they experienced it, and the only way deniers

can construct their assumptions is via conspiracy theories as they play with the evidence

Survivors fear deniers, how will we remember when they are all gone?

What is the responsibility of memory? In the bible it says remember 169 times.

What is his parent’s view of the book?

◦The issue his mother had about the Judenrat, the Jewish Council set up by the Nazis to administer Jewish ghettos and interests. Her father was on the Judenrat, but she felt immense shame about this, as she was afraid the only reason she survived was because of his position. She must remember that the Judenrat were asked to carry out orders they had no idea of the implications of…

She experiences survivor guilt – this is not the story, it is much more complex than that!