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Kiss László: Auschwitz Diary

Methodological guidance for teachers on the possible uses of the text in schools

Introduction

In October 2004 some graduate students of the Lauder Javne School started to read the diary of a 17-year-old boy. The author of the diary - similarly to the readers - was the student of a high school in Budapest - but that was 60 years ago. The diary, written on lined sheets of paper, is the account of László Kiss, having returned from Auschwitz at the age of 17 in April 1945, about what had happened to him and his family in the previous year, in the year which is known as the most sorrowful period of Hungarian history and of the Hungarian Jewry. Students and their teachers, having read the lines written sixty years ago, that had been seen by only a few, thought they were holding a document in their hands, the content of which had to be shown to others in order to help remember the victims - children, adolescents and adults - as well as help teach about the Holocaust.

That is how the idea of producing a book out of the diary was born. The published book is the outcome of the work of a team consisting of students and teachers. The English translation of the diary -which makes it possible to use it in English language classes as well as in schools abroad - was made by the students. Their work was helped by the leaders of the team - Andrea Szőnyi and Jim Tucker. Students also participated in selecting and editing the old photos and documents into the book. By doing so they had the chance to meet the now 77-year-old László Kiss professor, and thus a really fruitful cooperation started. Meeting him and talking to him give the whole project special value. The present guide is meant to give help, information and ideas to teachers on how to use the diary in schools.

Reading the diary – who and how?

The book is meant to be used in schools, mainly for the age group 14-18. At this age the students already have some information about the Holocaust. The information younger students have is probably less systematic and come from different sources, but the analysis of this book might be a good way to discuss and settle all they have heard and seen about the issue before.

The text of the diary is not very long - 20 pages altogether -, reading it cannot be a problem. Since teachers know their students well, it is upon their choice and upon the time given, to decide how they would organize reading and working on the text. Here are a few options:

- reading the text together - that is reading aloud - in or out of class, by passages divided according to aspects of content. The reading of the passages is followed by common discussion.

- individual reading - out of class by passages agreed on together. The discussion of a given passage in class follows the reading.

- individual reading - out of class according to the reading speed and needs of the students. The discussion comes at a previously fixed time in class after the complete diary has been read.

- reading a selected part together, discussing it in class, but this should be preceded by the individual reading of the book out of class.

reading a selected part at a memorial ceremony organized by the students (it is preceded by a discussion

- of the whole book and selecting the extract - project work)

The most thorough work - that would include the enlargement of factual, lexical knowledge as well as the discussion of moral issues - is achieved by reading together. This requires more time but has the precious advantage that by listening to the loud reading together, the deep sympathy for the victims is formed in the students within a community and that is the most effective and worthiest way of remembrance. Of course, an important condition of all that is the nice, articulate reading that helps understanding.

Please find here a draft of the possible reading passages:

(When reading together, the text should not be interrupted by reading the footnotes. This should be left to the discussion period.)

1 At Seregélyes, 22 April - 5 June 1944 pp. 17-19

2 In Székesfehérvár and on the train, 5-17 June 1944 pp. 19-25

3 In Auschwitz, from 17 June 1944 pp. 25-33

4 Description of the Auschwitz Lager pp. 35-41

5 Laci's and Bandi's life and fate in

Auschwitz, till the end of January 1945 pp. 43-51

6 The way back to Hungary and in Budapest

20 May 1945 pp. 51-61

Some aspects, options for the content-wise analysis of the book

Giving information about the period before the Holocaust

One important aim of the discussions following the reading is that students should understand and be aware that the 600 000 Hungarian Jewish victims murdered in the Holocaust is not merely the loss of the Hungarian Jewish community and the Jewish families but of the whole Hungarian society. We can only get and give a real picture of the loss beyond the figures if we know all that was value before. That is why it is useful if - before reading the book - students collect information about the past of the Hungarian Jewry before the Holocaust, their role in the economic and cultural life of the country. Data and processes become more real, more understandable if they are not considered only within the territory of the country. If we have data, we should refer the students to the history of the Jewish communities in smaller towns and villages in the neighborhood.

The history of the Jewish community of Seregélyes, the village of the author of the book, is a typical example for the history of Jewish communities in the country.

As with the rural Jewish communities in general, very little is known about the community of Seregélyes. The once flourishing communities became the victims of the Holocaust and so did the written and material remains together with them in most cases. If we would like to learn about the past of a smaller community, we can mostly rely on the national census data every ten years, or the memoirs of a survivor of the Holocaust from the given community, or the stories of the contemporaries living in the given village.

Up to the present day we have no record of the time Jews got to Seregélyes, but we know that according to the first census in Hungary in 1880, there were 127 people of Israelite faith among the 3478 people of the village. They all claimed Hungarian to be their mother-tongue. They made their living of agriculture-related trade and craft belonging to the everyday life of the village. The Hungarian Jewry flourished in the second half of the 19 th century and in the first decades of the 20 th century. This fact is proved by the growth of the communities in Fejér county. ‘ Egyenlőség ' the religious weekly reports about the inauguration of a new shul in Seregélyes in 1907. The community officially belonged to the neolog - the most modern of the three religious directions of the Hungarian Jewry - community of Kápolnásnyék, the members of which did not outnumber Seregélyes too much. The community in Seregélyes had two local employees: the cantor and the community administrator.

The cantor's tasks included religious education as well as ritual slaughtering of poultry.

The up-to-now most detailed data of the community come from László Kiss in the Auschwitz Diary (see: pp. 21-25), where he enumerates the names and occupations of the people taken away from Seregélyes in 1944. Cantor Ábrahám Tolnai, aged 73 at the time and community administrator Izidor Weisz, aged 74, are on the list too. They were both killed in Auschwitz.

In the memoir of László Kiss the Jewish community of Seregélyes appears as a community integrated in the life of the village. It was the same in the case of other Jewish communities in most of the villages in Hungary. The children of the Jewish community of 80-90 people at the beginning of the 1930s mainly attended the Catholic elementary school of the village. Besides they received religious education twice a week in the afternoons in the house of uncle Tolnai. Kosher meet could be bought at the village butcher's and obviously the cantor supervised the meet. The village vet, Dr Fülöp Berger had a high reputation because of his education. But similar respect was given to village doctor Dr Ernő Medák or engineer Kálmán Weisz whose mill was the place where the village grain crop was ground. (Neither of them returned from Auschwitz.)

A fine example for integration is the dedication of the country flag in the thirties when the village headmen considered it essential that the flag would get for blessing to the church of each religion thus to the Jewish shul too. László Kiss remembers that as a child he and his mates escorted the flag from one church to the other. ‘We felt we were Hungarians with Israelite religion' - he says. The depth of the tragedy of the Holocaust formulates beyond these stories, these additional facts. Our experience is that the collection and record of these personal stories and stories concerning the community - the so called ‘oral history' - opens new and very useful ways of teaching history and of community education.

In a number of Hungarian villages local history research has been going on for some time, in many places they were initiated by enthusiastic teachers of the local schools. The local history of a village can only be complete if it contains the history of all the smaller communities living or once having lived there. Because of the above mentioned reasons, the history of most of the rural Jewish communities is still uncovered. The students of the local schools do a great service to both Hungarian and universal historical research if - in the very last moments - they search for, collect and save for future generations the architectural, material memorials connected to the vanished Jewish life, if they record and publish oral memoirs.

The Seregélyes community - according to the last census before the war in 1941 - consisted of 82 people. After forced labor and deportation, there were hardly any survivors in 1945. According to the data published in the diary, out of the 69 people deported to Auschwitz, only five came back. Six more people returned from forced labor. No member of the Jewish community stayed in Seregélyes after 1945.

The connection of private history and macro-history

Family history and personal history within photos and documents

We all know that besides the history of a community, the personal, private history also reflects the historical events and changes of a country, moreover of universal history. That is the reason why the research of private history is an excellent territory for education. For the students research is practically realized in nothing else but listening to and reading the narratives of people having witnessed or experienced the events, or studying the photos and documents belonging to the persons and families. The publication of the Auschwitz Diary serves that purpose. Often the two ways go together as shown by the photos and documents coming with the text of the present publication. Old photos, because of their illustrative character, are especially suitable for teaching history to students. Thus the study of the photos and documents in the book is highly recommended as one of the possibilities to write up the Auschwitz Diary in schools.

Before setting some photos as example, we feel it important to mention that photos as well as documents carry a double message from a historical point of view. On one hand they carry immediate messages conveyed by the picture or documents: that is things that can be seen or read on them. On the other hand photos and documents, as objects have their own story in which we can find traces of the great historical processes (macro-history).

Because of the Holocaust, in the case of Hungarian Jewish families it is unfortunately not at all obvious that old photos are available. It is so with the family of László Kiss, author of our book. In spite of the fact that many photos were taken to record family and community events - photographing was the hobby of tailor Mihály Kis, László Kiss' father - only a few of the photos taken in Seregélyes survived the war. (" My father took his photos to a glass plate; we children, helped him. There had been many photos but only 2 or 3 remained on the attic of our plundered house.") The published family photos (pp. 12-13) belonged to József Kis, László Kiss' uncle - he survived the Shoa in his apartment in Budapest. László Kiss arrived at his house from Auschwitz and it was him who asked László Kiss to note down the diary.

The cover photo can also be found on page 13 with a photo from 1926 next to it, which was taken at the entrance of the family tailor shop. The sign-board reads: ‘KLEIN SÁNDOR' in block capitals. He was László Kiss' grandfather. After his death the writing on the sign-board was completed: KLEIN SÁNDOR - Proprietors: Kis Brothers - Founded: 1852. The Kis Brothers are Mihály Kis and Nándor Kis the adult twins on the photo on the left. Their brother József Klein, four years older than them, was the one to initiate the change of name in 1909, in the year of his graduation. From that year on the four brothers used the surname Kis. The sisters kept to the original family name. Family names and the history of name changes are fields of micro-history through which students can be shown how macro historical processes and political tendencies influence the decisions of private life. The difference between assimilation and integration can also be discussed here and we can try to find the reason for the strong urge to assimilate. We can touch upon the analysis of the advantages of a multi-cultural society illustrating it with examples.

The picture at the bottom of page 13 shows the family house. We know from the introductory part of the book that the two tailor brothers used to live there together with their families of three children in each. The house, which is one of the most beautiful buildings of Seregélyes up to now, had been built by the two brothers in 1928. The two families lived in ideal happiness here, as in a fairy-tale, and we can sense some of it if we study the photo of the two twin couples taken in the garden in 1934. Giving enough time for thorough examination we can discover a number of signs that refer to ideal happiness.

We can talk about political events and their influence on cultural life, about the relation of majority and minority cultures, about cultural integrity referring to the photo of the ten-year-old Ágnes in traditional Hungarian dress (page 12) or the photo of the Kun brothers (page 28).

The Auschwitz cigarette coupon and ration coupon should be taken as example of the published documents (pp.42-43). Both convey a lot of information about the life in the camp. (The cigarette coupon shows the prisoner-number of the author of the diary in real-life ‘use'.) It is worth allowing the students to explain what conclusions can be drawn from the documents. The letters on pages 62-66 can also bring students closer to understanding the story of the 17-year-old László Kiss, the situation of Jewish families in 1945.

Moral Issues

A surpassingly important aim in Holocaust education is that students - analyzing the negative example of the Auschwitz phenomenon - realize what decisions, what moral negligence led to the tragedy. At the same time it is essential for the students to see and be aware that there are positive moral values that make it possible to avoid and prevent similar tragedies. The enforcement of these positive values is the personal responsibility of every human being.

Upon discussing the diary we have a chance to analyze different ways of behavior. Having read the first few pages we can talk about the choices people living together or surrounding the persecuted and the exposed, had and have even today. Connected to the events in the book we can analyze the behavior of the persecutors, the quiet bystanders , the rescuers and helpers and the background of their actions. The question can be raised: what could be the reason for having so few examples for solidarity in that period? Who were the ones in the community of a village or a small town, who could influence moral values? In how many forms can solidarity be expressed? Was it possible for the individual or for smaller communities to act against the generally expected norms of the era? How could discrimination and persecution become generally accepted? Names listed in the book can make our questions very specific. There are lives, family histories behind the names. "Father and uncle Nándi" - that is Mihály Kis and Nándor Kis, the 48-year-old tailor twins, whose ancestors, father and grandfather, had been tailors at Seregélyes, and had been living there together with their families for nearly 100 years. Neither of them returned from forced labor. We can read slowly, attentively the list, compiled by the 17-year-old boy, of the deportees and murdered (pp. 20-24 and pp. 30-33). The lists contain occupations and ages besides the names, family members one after the other: grandparents, grandchildren. How could it be possible that a train carrying all these people left for Auschwitz on June 14, 1944?

Finally there is one more thing we recommend as a topic for discussion. There will probably be students who notice the factual, impersonal style of the book. That is most stunning when we read about the death of the twin brother Bandi. If we read the passages of different topics carefully, we will notice that the emotional self-control is intentional. That intention makes it possible - to different extent at different places - not to speak about emotion directly. It does not mean, however, that the 17-year-old adolescent had no emotions in connection with what had happened. We know from psychological studies that in extremely difficult situations the soul protects itself instinctively in order to survive. That is especially true for children. The factual style is an attempt for protection in the incomprehensible situation, when a 17-year-old boy, returning from the Auschwitz concentration camp has to understand that he is all alone - without his parents, his brother and sister, without his family and community.

Never ever, nowhere in the world should children get in similar situations. It is our duty to prevent that.