by Nicolai Hilton

Robbie Waisman, born Rumak Waisman, was barely fourteen years old when he was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945. Angry at the world and filled with thousands of questions, he and the other victims could not explain why they had been subjected to the atrocities at the hands of the Nazis. He adopted a new first name, Robert, and eventually immigrated to Vancouver. After coming to Canada, Waisman did not talk about his experiences during the Holocaust for 30 years, except to his children after he felt they were ready. In reaction to a Holocaust denier in 1983, Waisman felt he needed to speak out about his experiences and educate students about the Holocaust, as he believes Holocaust education is his sacred duty. This contribution will quickly summarize Waisman’s life before the Holocaust and his experience during it, and then discuss several themes that are explored Waisman’s testimonies and writings such as, liberation, education, and intergenerational trauma. Another figure this essay will explore is Leon Bass, a liberator of Buchenwald and one of Robbie’s closest friends. This essay will emphasize that Robbie Waisman sees his sacred duty and role as an educator of people, especially children, to help prevent future genocides.

            Waisman was born on February 2, 1931 in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, where around 2,500 Jews lived.[1] Though he was very young at the time, Waisman says that before the Polish leader, Jósef Piłsudski, died in 1935, Jews and their communities were relatively well accepted and greeted with peace: “Jews had rights. Jews could own land and businesses and hold positions in politics, the military, and in universities.”[2] In 1941, Robbie and his family were forced into a ghetto.[3] Waisman worked, along with thousands of other Jews, at an armament factory called HASAG that the Nazis took over during their invasion of Poland. He was eleven years old at the time, working twelve-hour shifts, six days a week.[4]

            Waisman was transferred to Buchenwald as the Nazis retreated from the Russian advance into Poland. He said one’s only purpose while in the camp was survival; there was no thought past the next hour.[5] The camp conditions were cruel and agonizing for the prisoners. They were so desensitized and dehumanized that other people dying next to them felt normal.[6] Men inside the camp would tell Waisman and the other boys, “If any of you live, you must tell the story of what happened here. The world can never forget. The world must never repeat what is happening.”[7]

            In his testimony, Waisman says he has feelings of joy remembering liberation, but remembers he felt a lot of tension on that day.[8] Waisman learned about the war’s various fronts from rumors among prisoners and that American army units were getting close to Buchenwald.[9] The prisoners were told that the whole camp had been rigged with explosives so the Allies would not find evidence of the camp. For Waisman, the excitement about possible liberation was matched by the fear of possible destruction.[10] He thought about escaping, but said escaping Buchenwald was very unlikely.[11] He mentions in his testimony that all these decisions were purely instinctual, and says the primary instinct had to be will to survive.[12]

            Before coming to Canada, Waisman and many of the other boys in Buchenwald were sent to an orphanage in Normandy.[13] He and the other boys had thousands of questions. What did they do to the human race to deserve extermination?[14] How could a God let this happen to us?[15] Some of the boys were claimed by remaining family members, and the orphanage tried to resume some semblance of normal life for the other boys.[16] How could these boys return to normalcy when they had lost several developmental years, and when no one wanted to listen to their experiences?[17] Doctors and psychiatrists were not helpful either, dismissing

their traumas and telling the boys to forget what they saw and move on.[18] Other people saw the boys’ anger towards the world as a sign they would never recover, deeming them ‘Les Enfants Terribles de Buchenwald.’[19] [Include information about his immigration to Canada]

Waisman and Holocaust Education

            The Keegstra Affair in 1983 started a fundamental shift for Waisman. James Keegstra, a teacher in Alberta, was actively teaching his students his antisemitic beliefs, notably Holocaust denialism. Part of why the Keegstra Affair is so horrifying is that his students acknowledged and absorbed these teachings. One of Keegstra’s students wrote in an essay:

The Jews since 1976 have financed and supported the spread of Communism because it is a step toward what they must feel is heaven. Their heaven would be a New World Order under a One World Government. This government, of course, would be led by these cutthroats themselves.[20]

In his 1984 testimony, Waisman tells the interviewer that he had become comfortable and complacent before the Keegstra Affair. For thirty years, he had not talked about his experiences with people other than his children, with whom he waited to tell until they were mature enough. Waisman told himself that to educate people he would have to relive his suffering in extreme detail, he said “it will be painful, but you’re not a stranger to suffering.”[21] Having survived the Holocaust, Waisman realized that educating people about the Holocaust was now his purpose.

            Waisman says that he was so keen on speaking with children because they are those who must be aware of what happened to prevent future genocides. Some of the questions from schoolchildren and adults that he receives illustrate Holocaust skepticism that is still prevalent in society. He says that people ask him several times why had the Jews let this happen to them, why did he and the other prisoners not resist the Nazis? Waisman says he has asked himself this many times, but organizing resistance was not simple when your goal of each hour was to survive to the next. If you are surrounded by machine guns but still have the will to live, it is impossible to run up against a guard with a gun and meet certain death.[22] As well, the world outside of the camps was often equally hostile towards Jews. Waisman’s father, Chil, helped organize Waisman’s escape by bribing an SS guard, providing Waisman the opportunity to escape through the camp fence. After his escape, Waisman managed to meet up with a group of partisan fighters. After travelling with the partisans for a few days, one group member wanted to kill Waisman, claiming he was drawing too much attention. Other members prevented him form harming Waisman, but his threats demonstrated that the environment outside of the camp was just as hostile and aggressive. This hostility pushed Waisman to reenter the camp, back through the hole he escaped from.[23]

Leon Bass

            One of Buchenwald’s liberators and Waisman’s friend, Leon Bass shares a similar goal. Waisman and Bass were reconnected through another survivor of Buchenwald, Abram Chapnik.[24] During World War II, Bass was a part of an all-Black unit in the US army that was ordered into Weimar where they helped liberate Buchenwald. After returning to the United States, Bass went to college but was met by segregation and racism. He had put his life on the line and fought for democracy, but he was not allowed to benefit from the ideals he fought for because of his race.[25] After graduating, Bass became an elementary school teacher; he wanted to convey a philosophy that solving issues and conflicts is possible without fighting and violence. Bass was later appointed principal, where one teacher had brought a survivor of Auschwitz to speak with her students. When Bass went to the classroom, he saw they were not listening and disregarding the survivor’s story.[26] Bass stepped in and explained to the students that he had been a soldier and witnessed what the survivor was describing. After this experience, he was convinced that his story was also worth telling to prevent racism, and antisemitism.

            Bass said that he had been everywhere telling his story, telling people that racism, antisemitism, bigotry, and prejudice is still with humanity.[27] Despite how traumatizing his story was, Bass told himself that he had to be ready for the pain and that he must talk about his story. Education and respect are two keys he highlights in genocide prevention. In his testimony, Bass said, “If we want to make the world a better place, education is one of the keys.”[28] Similar to Waisman, Bass recalls that the students asked the survivor why they and other victims did not resist or fight back. Bass was told that the Holocaust did not happen when telling his own story. He was also asked why he was talking about the Holocaust as a Black man. In response, Bass said that the Holocaust and hatred is a human problem.[29] This question of race also highlights a glaring issue in Holocaust education. Waisman and Bass travelled across North America together, talking at schools, conferences, and other events with the goal of spreading Holocaust awareness. When talking with my History of the Holocaust class in the fall of 2021, Waisman recalled that dozens of students have sent him and Bass letters, thanking them for the opportunity to hear their experiences.

Intergenerational Trauma

            Waisman talks extensively about the intergenerational trauma that he suffers from. An event that he frequently comes back to was his brother, Abram’s, death and how it affected his relationship with his father. Waisman writes that Abram had typhoid fever, and slowly separated himself from Waisman to not make him sick. Abram was selected to go on a truck, which Waisman watched leave the camp and disappear into the nearby forest. Robbie heard machine gun fire and the same truck return empty.[30] Waisman’s father became detached, and Waisman became angry with his father in response. His father was not able to provide Waisman with the support he needed. Waisman says:

That must have been completely devastating and he probably gave up at this point in time, where I just thought of myself and the will to survive. I was angry with my father because I needed his strength and it was not there any more…Now I am angry with myself that I did not have more compassion towards my father.[31]

Intergenerational trauma is not a unique phenomenon which only affects Waisman though. Waisman shares in his memoir how other boys from Buchenwald experienced similar trauma, and how few doctors took time to understand what created this trauma.

Canada’s Troubled Past and the Post-Witness Era

            The Keegstra Affair highlights a significant blight that is unfortunately ever-present in Canada: antisemitism. In the introduction of his book, Like Everyone Else but Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews, Morton Weinfield says the “security of North American Jewry is not immediately threatened by traditional anti-Semitism,” however new forms of persecution facing Jews have emerged.[32] Antisemitism reached its peak in Canada in the 1930s, with various explicit fascist organizations in English and French Canada, and the very explicit antisemitic act of the St. Louis’ rejection.

            On May 15, 1935, 907 German Jews had departed on the St. Louis from Hamburg to Cuba.[33] All the passengers on board had entrance visas for the country however, the Cuban government refused to recognize their validity. The passengers of the St. Louis searched for any country that would accept them, but nowhere in Latin America would allow them to dock. The United States sent a gunboat to make sure the St. Louis did not get close to American shores as the ship went north to Canada. Prime Minister Mackenzie King did not care about the passengers of the ship though. He felt it was not a Canadian issue, and delegated the task of dealing with the St. Louis to two men who were known for their extreme opposition to Jewish immigration.[34] One of the men, F.C. Blair, stated that if the Jews of the St. Louis found home in Canada, “they would ‘likely be followed by other shiploads.’”[35] Between 1933 and 1939, more than 800,000 Jews tried to escape Nazi Germany by immigrating to Canada, which “found room within her borders for approximately 4000.”[36] Argentina took 22,000; the United States accepted 140,000.[37]

            Waisman also acknowledges Canada’s troubled past and present. In his testimony, Waisman not only mentions the rejection of the St. Louis as an example of Canadian bigotry, but also highlights the Japanese internment camps, saying that he would have been ashamed to be Canadian when these were in operation.[38] These examples relate to the work Waisman has done with Indigenous communities around Canada. For his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Waisman was awarded with a Governor General’s award in 2013. Many of the Indigenous students Waisman has talked with “identify with Robbie’s story of family separation and alienation from culture and heritage.”[39]

            As Waisman and Bass both believe, education is one of the keys to preventing future genocide. In a 2005 study, 7 percent of Canadians said they had never heard of the Holocaust, and 55 percent said they wished to learn more about the Holocaust.[40] As we get closer to the unfortunate post-witness era, the task of Holocaust education becomes indescribably more difficult. Losing the opportunity to interact with survivors and witnesses and hear from them directly is an invaluable experience; listening to Waisman talk in the fall of 2021 was a significant reason why I chose to focus on him for this project. Testimony is an incredibly useful resource of course, but they are a “one-way transfer of knowledge and experience.”[41] Testimony “keeps the Holocaust and National Socialism at an arm’s length.”[42] Both Waisman and Bass had fundamental moments where they transitioned from not telling their stories to sharing their experiences, a similar transition that will occur between our present world with living memory and the future world without.[43] In an interview, Waisman said, “Time is running out, and so we have to do everything we can to leave some sort of a legacy of the Holocaust so that it doesn’t repeat itself.”[44]

Bibliography

Abella, Irving, and Harold Troper. “‘The Line Must Be Drawn Somewhere’: Canada and Jewish Refugees, 1933–9.” Canadian Historical Review 60, no. 2 (1979): 178–209. https://doi.org/10.3138/chr-060-02-04.

Byer, Barbara. Liberator Leon Bass Testimony. Other. Youtube. USC Shoah Foundation, 1998. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQrNQorZLrc.

Hayden, Sandra. Robbie W. testimony 1984. Other. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, 1984. https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/objects/528.

van Noord, Andrea. “Memorialization and the Task of the Archive.” Essay. In After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era, edited by Charlotte Schallié, Helga Thorson, and Andrea van Noord, 221–33. Univ. of Regina Press, 2020.

Waisman, Robbie. “A Child Survivor in Western Canada.” Canadian Jewish studies 5 (1997). https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.19815.

Waisman, Robert, and Susan McClelland. Boy from Buchenwald. New York: Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2021.

Weinfeld, Morton, Randal F. Schnoor, and Michelle Shames. Like Everyone Else but Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018.

            [1] Robert Waisman and Susan McClelland, Boy from Buchenwald (New York: Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2021), 10.

[2] Waisman, 9.

[3] Waisman, 12.

[4] Waisman, 15.

[5] Robbie Waisman, 1984, https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/objects/528, Tape 3, 37:20.

[6] Waisman, 37:20.

[7] Waisman, Boy from Buchenwald, 14.

[8] Robbie Waisman, Tape 3, 1:05.

[9] Waisman, 2:35.

[10] Waisman, 3:50.

[11] Waisman, Tape 2, 44:36.

[12] Waisman, 5:05.

            [13] Robbie Waisman, “A Child Survivor in Western Canada,” Canadian Jewish Studies 5 (1997), https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.19815, 128.

[14] Waisman, Tape 2, 2:49.

[15] Waisman, “A Child Survivor in Western Canada,” 129.

[16] Waisman, Tape 2, 27:00.

[17] Waisman, 29:30.

[18] Waisman, 29:30.

[19] Waisman, “A Child Survivor in Western Canada,” 128.

            [20] Morton Weinfeld, Randal F. Schnoor, and Michelle Shames, Like Everyone Else but Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), 320.

[21] Waisman, Tape 3, 33:16.

[22] Waisman, Tape 2, 23:45.

[23] Waisman, 19:35.

[24] Waisman, Tape 2, 10:17.

[25] Leon Bass, 1998, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQrNQorZLrc, 1:23:50.

[26] Bass, 1:34:50.

[27] Bass, 1:36:30.

[28] Bass, 1:54:05.

[29] Bass, 1:54:05.

[30] Waisman, Boy from Buchenwald, 69.

[31] Waisman, “A Child Survivor in Western Canada,” 133.

[32] Weinfeld, Like Everyone Else but Different, 6.

            [33] Irving Abella and Harold Troper, “‘The Line Must Be Drawn Somewhere’: Canada and Jewish Refugees, 1933–9,” Canadian Historical Review 60, no. 2 (January 1979): pp. 178-209, https://doi.org/10.3138/chr-060-02-04, 178.

[34] Abella, 179.

[35] Abella, 180.

[36] Abella, 181.

[37] Abella, 181.

[38] Waisman, Tape 3, 46:00.

[39] Waisman, Boy from Buchenwald, 205.

[40] Weinfeld, Like Everyone Else but Different, 322.

            [41] Andrea van Noord, “Memorialization and the Task of the Archive,” in After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era, ed. Charlotte Schallié, Helga Thorson, and Andrea van Noord (Univ. of Regina Press, 2020), pp. 221-233, 226.

[42] van Noord, 227.

[43] van Noord, 229.

[44] Waisman, “A Child Survivor in Western Canada,” 134.