UNESCO 2014 Unthinkable Journeys Body Text
Everything became unknown, from the way life used to be before, when we knew exactly what every minute in every day will bring. Suddenly every minute was a total unknown…
In the 1940s, flight and movement of peoples continued as war took hold in larger and larger segments of the European continent and the world. Organized forced movement of peoples started occurring en masse as entire Jewish populations were liquidated through the processes of ghettoization and deportation. While flight meant an uncertain future and entailed great risk for people starting a new life in foreign lands, deportation brought uncertainty, loss, and, increasingly, imminent death. The journey of deportation provided a foreboding introduction to the death and destruction that followed as the Nazis eventually developed a “final solution to the Jewish problem.” As Felicia Carmelly describes in the epigraph that opens this section, the process of deportation introduced the unknown as the only predictable part of life.
Deportation happened throughout Europe and involved the involuntary movement of people from their homes to ghettoes and/or camps. While the general trajectory of deportation is now wellknown, the microhistory of deportation actually reveals a variety of experiences of forced movement. The uncertainty that prevailed in the moment of deportation caused fear to grip people so strongly that it limited other peoples’ agency. In her testimony, Régine Jacubert highlights the fear that pervaded deportees during their journey into the Holocaust. It was so strong that it prevented some from trying to save their own lives.
Deportation followed circuitous routes. In the region of Ukraine that the Nazis referred to as Transnistria, Jews from the regions of Bukovina and Bessarabia (today, Moldova and Ukraine) were deported by train, barge, and on foot. The process was ad hoc and camps weren’t formalized. Deportees like Moshe Shamir were left to seek shelter en route. The local Jewish population was partially exterminated and those who survived were put into ghettos and camps. Deportees from Romania were incarcerated there in ghettos, camps, and colonies. In the part of his testimony that you see here, Moshe describes his experience with deportation to Transnistria.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to confront in curating an exhibit based on testimonies of survivors of genocide is the unthinkable journey of genocide itself. Deportation was one step in this process but the ultimate destination of this journey – the gas chamber, the mass grave—is not representable and not often present in testimonies of survivors. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pay particular tribute to these victims, whose stories cannot be told. For those who miraculously survived Nazi efforts at extermination, many also endured what have come to be known as “death marches.” Simone Lagrange’s testimony provides a searing account of these genocidal marches. The uncertain future that Felicia Carmelly evokes in her testimony is, and will remain, an uncertain past. What is certain today, is that the horror of genocide must never be forgotten.