By Gabrielle Bonifacio

An integral part of identity construction is one’s language, and how one uses it to define themselves and the world around them. Language can be an indicator of many identity markers, such as ethnic background, nationality, education or personal interests. One’s fluency in a language or languages can also dictate how well they are able to communicate to others, and can thus create access or denial to services, relationships and certain spaces in society. In her article, “Accepting Jewish roots for a pair of shoes: identity dilemmas of Jewish children in Poland during the Second World War and in the early post-war years”, scholar Marta Ansilewska illustrates how language was a particularly pertinent factor for hidden Jewish children survival in Poland during the Holocaust, as the children were instructed to suppress their Jewish identity and adopt the ultimate ‘Aryan’ persona, which meant, amongst other things, “a fluent command of the Polish language with no trace of a Yiddish accent” (Ansilewska, 355). Iza Fiszhaut-Laponce was only four years old when she was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto, hidden with a Polish family, and taught to conceal any parts of her identity that would signal her Jewishness. Her unpublished memoirs, Three Families and a Child Part 1 and Three Families and a Child Part 2 illustrate how her identity and adolescence were significantly impacted by her experiences, first inside the Warsaw Ghetto and then outside of it in various parts of Poland. Though both memoirs are written in English, Fiszhaut-Laponce frequently comments upon the differences between English, a language learned after she immigrated to Vancouver as a youth, and her native language, Polish. The complex ways in which she identifies or does not identify with parts of Jewish, Polish and later Canadian culture, is expressed clearly through her use of and attention to Yiddish, Polish and English from childhood to adulthood. Further, the words and phrases she uses to describe herself, her family, and the different cultures she encounters, are indicative of how her identity—and how she chooses to identify herself—changes along with her circumstances. In scholar Katarzyna Prot’s article, “Broken Identity: The Impact of the Holocaust on Identity in Romanian and Polish Jews”, she breaks down the different aspects of identity that Romanian and Polish Jews wrestle with during and after the Holocaust, such as religion, assimilation, and feelings toward adoptive and biological families. Though Fiszhaut- Laponce certainly struggles with complicated questions about her different families and cultures, especially during her adolescence, I believe that she is able to successfully find a sense of belonging and confidence in her identity by accepting and embracing parts of all three. Professor and poet, Ruth Kluger, was another child survivor whose English memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, speaks to her childhood experiences in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, the family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Christianstadt, a slave labour camp which was a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and later her adolescence and adulthood in America. Though their individual situations and contexts are different and it would be inappropriate to compare them in that way, I find similarities in the ways that Kluger and Fiszhaut-Laponce experience internal conflicts about their identities as children, and also struggle to forge a connection to their relatives who had not been in Europe during the Holocaust. In her chapter, “A Young Person’s War: The Disrupted Lives of Children and Youth”, scholar Joanna B. Michlic provides historical context for the diverse fates of Jewish child survivors during the Holocaust in Europe, and emphasizes the importance of including child survivor testimonies as important and valid sources of study. Following Michlic’s arguments, I agree that analyzing child survivor testimonies such as the memoirs by Fiszhaut-Laponce and Kluger are essential to understanding the impact that the Holocaust had on individuals, in a meaningful way that simply cannot be found in any other text or learning material. Drawing on existing scholarship about hidden children in Poland, child survivor testimony and finding parallels in Fiszhaut-Laponce’s memoir with Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive, I aim to highlight how Fiszhaut-Laponce overcomes the challenges she experienced in regards to identity formation as a child, and is able to use her language(s) to define herself in her own terms.

In her chapter, Michlic highlights the different ways in which Jewish children and youth resisted and, despite meager odds, found ways to survive the various, unique oppressions they faced as children who were either separated from their biological family or orphaned. Michlic also emphasizes the benefits of including child survivor testimonies when studying the Holocaust, arguing that they “reveal that the Shoah is a history without a particular end” (Michlic, 303) and furthermore, stresses the physical, mental and emotional impacts that the Holocaust and the war had on child survivors. Similarly, Prot emphasizes the lasting impression that the Holocaust had on survivor identities, stating that the Holocaust was not one period of time, “but a trauma which lasted for several years” (240). Though Fiszhaut-Laponce was especially young during her time in the Warsaw Ghetto, the vivid emotional detail that she conveys through her writing, clearly illustrates the serious impacts that these experiences had on her identity and perceptions.

For example, decades later, Fiszhaut-Laponce can still conjure traumatic memories about selections of who would be sent to the gas chambers in Treblinka and the “stark terror and hysteria” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 20) she gleaned from the adults who surrounded her in the Ghetto. Supporting this, Michlic in fact begins her analysis of Jewish children in the ghettos by categorizing them as “the most vulnerable victims of the ghettoization process” (Michlic, 297). Michlic further writes that the ghettos were rife with Nazi brutality, starvation, and poor living conditions and thus specifically cites the “environment” as a “source of traumatic experiences that had imprinted themselves on young survivors’ memories” (297). Beyond the fact that the ghettos were an objectively unhealthy environment for any person to live, however, Michlic focuses specifically on their impact on Jewish children, arguing that their presence in the ghettos meant that they “were denied basic vestiges of childhood, carefree play and contact with nature, and education” (297). The daily exposure to disturbing scenes of violence and deprivation, as well as being “raised” in such an oppressively controlled environment would naturally have a deep emotional impact on such children. Even after she is placed with ‘Aunt Lena’ as a hidden child, Fiszhaut-Laponce recalls a moment where they are outside, and she nearly accidentally exposes herself as a Jewish person because she is (unsurprisingly) frightened by a casual encounter with an SS officer in the streets and assumes that he will kill her if she does not allow him to pass first, as she had been “well-trained” to in the Ghetto (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 58).

Evidently, fear of the Nazis/Germans in general, as well as a distinct understanding that her identification as a Jewish person could lead to punishment or death, are deeply ingrained, learned behaviours which stem from her time in the Ghetto despite her age, which was relatively young to understand the serious subject matter.

Following Fiszhaut-Laponce’s father’s successful attempt to get her safely out of the ghetto, she is then sent to live with her future adopted mother, whom she later calls ‘Aunt Lena’, and then later ‘Aunt Lena’s extended family, the Milewicz-Rygalskis. The time Fiszhaut-Laponce spends with them is fraught with both positive and negative experiences, as she struggles to cope with the loss of her biological parents, and the discomfort of knowing that she is living with people whom she is not really related, some behaving more or less warmly to her due to their now combined vulnerability. Despite initial struggles, however, Fiszhaut-Laponce writes fondly about the Milewicz-Rygalskis family, relaying anecdotes of closeness and connection with several members including her ‘grandparents’, ‘aunt’ and ‘uncles’. When Fistzhaut-Laponce and ‘Aunt Lena’ spend their final Christmas with the family before they immigrate to Vancouver, she states that “Lena and I kissed our family good-bye” (Fistzhaut-Laponce, 168), with the possessive pronoun ‘our’ indicating her loving sentiment and adoption of the Polish family who took her in as a young child. Prot’s study about the impact of identity construction in Romanian and Polish Jews finds something similar amongst their Jewish Polish participants, some of whom simultaneously harbour “a sense of loyalty towards the family which did not survive” yet in some situations also “feel that they are Poles and emphasize their relationship with the rescuing family (244). In this case, Fistzhaut-Laponce demonstrates both as she devotes passages of love to her biological parents, whilst also highlighting the love she receives and reciprocates to her adopted families. Living with the Milewicz-Rygalskis and later the Fiszhauts, Fistzhaut-Laponce is therefore also constantly surrounded by Polish culture. In her article, Ansilewska offers a comprehensive analysis into the intense, identity conflicts that hidden children grappled with during and after the Holocaust, as a result of having to suppress their Jewish identities and conform to dominant traditions and ways of life, including the language (Polish) and religion (Catholicism) (Ansilewska, 354 – 355,). Full immersion into the ‘acceptable’ dominant culture meant speaking only that culture’s language—in both literal and figurative terms. A strong comprehension and embodiment of the linguistics, mannerisms, idioms and traditions created a ‘deeper’ cover for the hidden child that would theoretically be less vulnerable to exposure, but, as Ansilewska points out, this also came with emotional consequences and confusion, as survivors questioned their own identities and relationships to culture and family even post-liberation (Ansilewksa, 355). Throughout the memoirs, Fiszhaut-Laponce contemplates both the dominant, Polish culture that she is familiar with and essentially lives in for a considerable portion of her formative years, as well as the Jewish culture that she was unable to engage with for many years. As per Ansilewksa’s article, Fiszhaut-Laponce was fortunate in that she already spoke fluent Polish as a child; in fact, she specifically recalls incidents wherein she interacts with other Polish people, such as her teacher, and is perhaps misinterpreted as pretentious because, in an effort to communicate well with her, she “[uses] the proper grammatical structure and the “precious” accent of a Warsavian” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 129). Her ease and familiarity with the language is an asset as much as it is a part of her identity. Though written predominantly in English—presumably so that it is accessible to her children, grandchildren and future descendants who were born in Canada—Fiszhaut-Laponce’s memoirs also contain a considerable number of Polish references (with their translations) and pronunciations. When speaking about Bąza, a Jewish woman also in hiding, she refers to both of them as “completely assimilated [Jews]” (50), signaling an identification with Polish culture whilst simultaneously retaining her Jewish identity. When discussing her biological family’s engagement with Polish ways of life, Fiszhaut-Laponce writes that they too, were “thoroughly assimilated into the Polish culture and spoke no Yiddish” (78), thus cementing that she was always been raised with a strong grasp and relation to the dominant culture.

However, her lack of exposure to Yiddish, and to the Jewish culture which was obviously inaccessible to her as a child, is something which complicates her conception of her own identity. As a young child, Fiszhaut-Laponce initially uses language as a way to construct her understanding of the world and other people. For example, her experiences with SS officers in the Warsaw Ghetto naturally creates a negative association with the German language. Because Fiszhaut-Laponce cannot initially discern the difference between German and Yiddish, she recounts incidents wherein her fear of the former creates a similar anxiety, unease and confusion with the latter. When she is sent to a summer camp with other Jewish children fluent in Yiddish and enthusiastic about the concept of moving to Palestine, Fiszhaut-Laponce recalls feeling “alienated” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 157), because she is so unfamiliar with the language and ideas. When she begins to understand the implications of Palestine, she states that she “realized that they did not much like my country, and the Poles” (157) and is only further disengaged. Fiszhaut-Laponce’s use of the possessive article “my” indicates her feeling of belonging and claim to Poland (and by extension its language and culture), while her discomfort or ambivalence to the summer camp illustrate the significant impact of having little to no prior contact with these particular aspects of Jewish culture. The choice between having pride in or having negative and fearful associations with her Jewish identity is illustrated through a school anecdote, post- liberation, wherein she and her classmates call a known Jewish girl “a dirty Jew” (161). When recalling the incident, Fiszhaut-Laponce admits that she is ashamed of her actions and writes:

I have no idea why I was so mean to her, perhaps because all the other children were and I did not want to be different. Perhaps because I wanted to make certain that no one would ever suspect that I too, was one.

Fiszhaut-Laponce, 161

This passage clearly highlights her internal conflict, as she emphasizes that she was not even especially conscious of why she joined the others in being mean to a girl who was also Jewish, speculating that she did not want to be perceived by the other Polish children as “different” from them. As a child who does not recognize the full impact of her actions, Fiszhaut-Laponce seeks to align herself with the other Polish children because she so strongly identifies with the culture in which she has been raised and has faced severe persecution from her Jewish identity. Yet there is conflict because while her other classmates may not know this, she knows that she is Jewish as well as Polish. It is the subsequent, potentially negative consequences of that being revealed, even after the Holocaust, are what ultimately drive her to go along with the others. Even as a child, Fiszhaut-Laponce is always keenly aware of her Jewish identity, as she labels herself and her biological family as Jews, even when she is not able to fully comprehend what that means. The manifestation of her trauma as a hidden child even results in an incident where she shouts that she is a “Jewess” despite being aware of the dangers because the Nazis have murdered her parents, and there is a layer of unresolved guilt and anger at the knowledge that many are suffering and being murdered for their Jewishness while she is not (80). However, it is clear from her extensive passages about Jewish culture, the history of whom she calls her “irrepressible Jewish family” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, Table of Contents), and her article on a study about Jewish people in Warsaw who survived by hiding (Fiszhaut-Laponce, “Untitled Article”), that she is able to express and create meaningful connections to her Jewish identity through family and research later in her life.

Just as Fiszhaut-Laponce’s memoirs demonstrate significant personal changes as she grows up during the Holocaust and the post-war period, Ruth Kluger explores how deeply her identity shifts from her childhood in Vienna, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Christianstadt to her eventual teenage and adult years in America in Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. Though she speaks “flawless and presumably native German” (Kluger, 129), Kluger harbours complex feelings about being ‘German’ and Viennese, where she is confronted by antisemitism in the streets of Vienna. Though Kluger acknowledges the city as an important site in her personal life because it is where she spent formative years of her early childhood, she also naturally possesses an aversion for it due to the antisemitic discrimination she experienced growing up. Throughout her memoir, Kluger critiques Vienna and its citizens’ role in persecuting and allowing the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust. Yet, in a quote that illustrates the complex negotiations of identity as a Jewish child survivor, she also writes: “Vienna is a part of me— that’s where I acquired consciousness and acquired language” (118). Like Fiszhaut- Laponce, who integrates various explanations about Polish idioms and pronunciations to provide integral cultural context in her memoir, Kluger also includes German words and analyzes German culture and her complicated connection with it in great detail. She is never timid about pointing out problematic aspects of said culture, and how many Austrians allowed or directly participated in the Holocaust. But the language and the culture from where it comes from is also one facet of her identity which she cannot deny nor completely disengage from, as evidenced from her future career as a “professor of German literature” (203). Ruth writes that, at 15, post- liberation:

My mind was stocked with German books and ideas. I lived among the ruins of German cities and German culture. By the time I left, a part of me was irreversibly German, albeit in an offbeat way.

Kluger, 160

Interestingly enough, both Fiszhaut-Laponce and Kluger encounter cultural and emotional barriers when meeting and connecting with relatives in New York. Upon her and her mother’s first stay in New York, Kluger specifically recounts a moment wherein her aunt explicitly urges her to “erase from your memory everything that happened in Europe…make a new beginning, [and] forget what they did to [her]” (Kluger, 176). This statement provokes an emotional reaction from Kluger, who, despite speaking little English at the time, attempts to express that doing so would “betray [her] people, [her] dead” (176). Kluger recognizes and acknowledges that her aunt’s childhood greatly differs from her own, which was fraught with so much fear, death and violence (176). Yet despite her struggles, Kluger asserts her autonomy and claim to her life experiences— good and bad alike—stating that it is the “only thing that [she] [owns] for sure” (176), and that she simply “can’t invent one for [herself] that’s more respectable” (176), regardless of how traumatic it was. When Fiszhaut-Laponce’s biological aunt and family in New York correspond with her through letters and gifts in an attempt to establish a relationship so that she may one day feel comfortable enough to live with them, the opposite effect is achieved. Their initial attempt at legally taking her with them is naturally met with fear, as Fiszhaut-Laponce assumes she is being kidnapped, and also confusion because she had not been warned that they were seeking custody. Further, Fiszhaut-Laponce’s reaction to it reveals a layer of insecurity with her own identity, as she writes that she is unsure of how her biological family tracked her down, considering that “for years while I looked for myself, I never found me” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 153). Fiszhaut-Laponce recalls the discomfort she experiences at the thought of being sent to live with them permanently, in part because the circumstances of the Holocaust and the subsequent murder of her parents by Nazis in the camps forced her to constantly be mobile, often with an array of guardians with whom she bore no biological relation, but whom she spent considerable time with (155).

Fiszhaut-Laponce discusses this initial disconnect with her biological extended family in New York candidly, and without malice:

They were convinced that once I could be transported to “their world”, I would immediately forget the past, and we could all be happy ignoring the painful events that led us to the new life.

Fiszhaut-Laponce, 155

Though perhaps well-intentioned, the concept of forgetting is something that Fiszhaut-Laponce does not want to do. Earlier in the memoir, when she is first placed with the extended Milewicz- Rygalski family, she writes about internalizing the Polish value of remembrance because “to forget was to betray, and my very Polish adopted grandfather already began to socialize me into the traditional values of his culture…I was made aware that being ashamed of one’s origins and circumstances fell into the category of being dishonourable” (79). Though challenging due to her young age, Fiszhaut-Laponce’s memories of her loving biological mother and father are viewed by her as things to be cherished as much as possible. While she may not be well-versed in Jewish culture as a child, her enduring love for her parents also creates an inexplicable link to the Jewish part of her identity. Interestingly, Fiszhaut-Laponce also recognizes and names one aspect of Polish tradition that is directly influenced by a man whom she defines as her “very Polish adopted grandfather” (79). The stress on honour and remembrance as specifically Polish values and Fiszhaut-Laponce’s subsequent belief and adherence to them is one example of her recognition and acceptance of a part of Polish culture. Post-liberation, when Fiszhaut-Laponce is able to attend school in Warsaw, she notes her immersion in Polish culture through education and writes: “I was passionately involved in the lessons of history (Polish history). I loved Polish literature, and was excellent at memorizing Polish poetry.” (159) In fact, there is a quote from Kluger’s Still Alive which aptly resonates with Fiszhaut-Laponce ’s story: “language is the strongest bond there is between an individual and a place” (Kluger, 205). After she is smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto, Fiszhaut-Laponce spends her formative years in different parts of Poland, and post-liberation, returns to Warsaw with her later adopted mother, ‘Aunt Lena’ and adopted stepfather ‘Uncle Stasiek’, a fact which explains her strong connection with both the language and the physical space. Despite all of the challenges that she faces in the country and the city, Fiszhaut-Laponce consistently expresses a genuine association with and attachment to the city, stating that her “love affair with Warsaw was instant and abiding” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 147). When she speaks about returning after years living in North America, Fiszhaut-Laponce uses the metaphor of a salmon returning home (147), indicating its lasting link to her sense of personal history and self-identification. When she embarks on the ship to North America with ‘Aunt’ Lena and ‘Uncle’ Stasiek, she recalls singing patriotic songs with the other equally emotional immigrants, all starting a new chapter whilst “vowing to never forget the land of [their] birth” (170).

In Canada, Fiszhaut-Laponce continues to retain a strong connection to Polish culture, as she is regularly sent to the Polish cultural centre, where she forges solid friendships and enjoys lighter aspects of adolescence, such as roller skating (Fiszhaut-Laponce, Part 2, 479). Her connection with Canadian or North American culture, however, is also more complicated than a simple acceptance or denial of the new customs and language itself, which she is initially reluctant to learn. Though Fiszhaut-Laponce states that she and the other Polish immigrants “had mostly Anglo-Saxon friends”, she also states that they “fit with [varying] difficulty” into the then “WASP society” (480). The level of belonging she feels as a Jewish Polish immigrant is sometimes challenged by the differences in Polish culture and North American culture, particularly in social terms, as she and the other Polish immigrants are consistently “perceived as “too serious” and “square”” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, Part 2, 480) in their new context and environment. Fiszhaut-Laponce prefaces the English memoir by asserting “how difficult it is to function in different cultures and languages simultaneously” (Fiszhaut-Laponce, 14). As Fiszhaut-Laponce illustrates through her frequent explanations of Polish idioms, there are simply some words and phrases that do not translate in the same way or convey the original intention. However, her use of both English and Polish ‘speak’ to different parts of her identity and experiences in different times and spaces. Although she does not speak Yiddish, Fiszhaut- Laponce names other ways in which she identifies with her Jewishness. A primary example would be her biological parents, whom she remembers with deep love, affection and gratitude; she describes both her mother and father as “kind” and “gentle”, and states that until she was told her father had been murdered, he was the only person whom she would have left with post- liberation. Another example is her “tendency to gesticulate while speaking when excited”, because “Poles do not use their bodies to “speak”” (78). Here, Fiszhaut-Laponce categorizes body language as another aspect or form of ‘speaking’, and associates it with the Jewish part of her identity. Finally, in regards to assimilated or young child survivors, Prot asserts that “the fact that the family perished because it was Jewish means that the survivor cannot possibly ignore his or her Jewish identity” (Prot, 244). With this lens, Fistzhaut-Laponce’s experience in the Holocaust as a child in the Warsaw Ghetto and a hidden child in Poland, is a painful yet foundational part of her early experiences in the world as a Jewish person.

In the conclusion of her essay, Michlic asserts that shifts in the field are giving more space to child survivor testimonies because “the exploration of human subjectivity allows us to understand the emotional impact and the individual human meaning of events” (Michlic, 306). Following Michlic’s line of thinking, the history of the Holocaust must indeed go beyond simply recitation of objective facts and presumptions of what it could have been like to be a child during such a traumatic moment in time. As such, I believe that readers are given invaluable insight by analyzing even just one aspect of Fiszhaut-Laponce’s memoir, such as her relationship with language and how she employs it to tell her story and construct her identity as I have done here. Through her memoirs, we are privileged to not only learn, but to feel Fiszhaut-Laponce ’s journey as a child survivor who, against extremely challenging odds, manages to find herself, forge her own path, and leave behind a legacy of loved ones that may one day read her story and understand not only aspects of the Holocaust, but also their own family history.

Works Cited

Ansilewska,, Marta. “Accepting Jewish roots for a pair of shoes: identity dilemmas of Jewish children in Poland during the Second World War and in the early post-war years.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 22:2, 2015, pp. 348-367.

Kluger, Ruth. Still Alive. Feminist Press. 2001.

Fiszhaut-Laponce, Iza. Three Families and a Child Part 1. 2017.

Fiszhaut-Laponce, Iza. Three Families and a Child Part 2. 2019.

Fiszhaut-Laponce, Iza. “Untitled Iza Laponce Article.”

Michlic, Joanna B. “A Young Person’s War: The Disrupted Lives of Children and Youth”, A Companion to the Holocaust, First Edition. Edited by Simone Gigliotti and Hilary Earl, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2020. pp. 295 – 306. Prot, Katarzyna. “Broken Identity. The Impact of the Holocaust on Identity in Romanian and Polish Jews”. Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci Vol 45 No. 4, 2008, pp. 239–246.