On Wednesday, November 8, the eve of Kristallnacht, Haverford welcomed holocaust survivor Ruth Cyzner to the Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) facility. The event was moved from a classroom to the screening room at the last minute in order to accommodate the overwhelming interest expressed by the student body.
Cyzner, who was born in Berlin in 1930, escaped Germany before the Holocaust reached its peak by way of the Kindertransport, a British rescue program for Jewish children. She was only eight years old when she left her home and her family for England, where she would stay for nearly a decade. Although Birmingham, where she lived, was bombed nearly every night for the duration of the war, she was far safer than she would have been elsewhere.
For a time, her mother had considered sending Cyzner and her sister to Poland, where the family was originally from, rather than to England, but was ultimately dissuaded by their Polish relatives. “And that, of course,” Cyzner explained, “is why I’m sitting here now.” Indeed, her parents, who were deported to Poland, were ultimately murdered in Auschwitz.
Because of her young age at the time, Cyzner’s memories of life in Nazi Germany are relatively few. She remembers the restrictions placed upon Jewish Germans: they could not go shopping for food until after 4:30 in the afternoon, could not buy cake, could not join choirs. She remembers how the “nervousness” grew: “How do I describe the feeling that I gradually, gradually felt when I was just walking and a gang of boys came along and I was afraid that they would throw stones at me?” She remembers the night that her father was taken from their apartment in Berlin in the middle of the night, by whom, she still is not certain. She remembers that he did not turn the light on when he hugged her goodbye; she now suspects that this was because he did not want her to see the look on his face. She remembers what her mother wore on May 4, 1939, the day that she saved her daughters’ lives by sending them away to England.
Cyzner reflected on the limitations of childhood memories, calling her own “selective.” When she goes to the doctor’s office, she is unable to answer questions about her family history, but she knows that her “mother was a wonderful cook and the apartment always smelled wonderfully.” She has lost the ability to speak German and has “absolutely no memory” of her Jewish elementary school in Berlin except for one classmate: “I had a crush on a boy and his name was Ephraim, and he had freckles all over his face and I chased him all around the playground.”
As the discussion came to an end, Cyzner reflected briefly on her perception of her own experiences at the time:
“I’ve never really thought of myself as a victim, because really, I’m a survivor.”
Ruth Cyzner.
However, as she grows older and has more time to think about her past, she finds herself increasingly unsettled. Several audience members asked for her thoughts on the rise of antisemitism, prompting her to share that her doctor had recently asked her if she was experiencing flashbacks to her childhood due to the current political climate, to which she answered: “Funny you should ask. I am.” She referred to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as “the beginning” and expressed her concern for the future.
“I hope that people will get their senses and realize that we all have to live together, but I don’t hold much hope for that.” Despite this hatred, or perhaps because of it, Cyzner persists in telling her story.
“For all the young people,” she said, “I hope I’ve made it a little more real for you.”
