The importance of student journalism in today’s world is undeniable; it unites students, it gives them a voice, and it allows them to interpret the environment they find themselves, and convey this through the medium of their respective publications.
Whether it be readers, writers, or other contributors to student journalism, it is a space in which students are able to have a dialogue between themselves and the world around them.
We are fortunate to be doing this from the comfort of a life more or less free of persecution. This article will highlight a story which shows the courage of a group of boys in the face of the most dehumanising of circumstances.
It begins in the Warsaw Ghetto in early 1941, in which 10 boys from the orphanage at 6-8 Gęsia Street published Głos Domu Chłopców, which translates from Polish to English as Voice of the Boys House’.
However, before we look at the contents of the publication, it is important to try to understand the situation for Jews living under Nazi occupation, as well as the wider context of the Holocaust at this time.
Nazi persecution towards Jews began as soon as they rose to power in 1933, with the aim of alienising Jewish minorities from a society in which they were once heavily integrated.
The pre-war period saw the gradual intensification of antisemitic policy, from the boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 to the mass pogrom known as Kristallnacht in 1938.
The commencement of the war saw the territories of Nazi Germany rapidly expand across mainland Europe. The country of interest in this article is Poland, home to the highest proportion of Jews in Europe and where the Holocaust mostly took place.
This led to the arising of a ‘Jewish problem’ for the Nazis, in which they explored the possible solutions to overcome this ‘problem’ of occupying a country densely populated with Jews.
Popular representation of the Holocaust founds itself in the gas chambers and extermination of Jews, in which they were systematically murdered in several death camps across Europe.
However, despite the date being commonly debated, it is believed that the turn to this ‘final solution’, or genocide, was taken towards the end of 1941, with mass deportations beginning in 1942. Therefore, situating our story not in the context of the ‘final solution’, but instead under the policy of Ghettoization.
The word ‘Ghetto’ is believed to have derived from Venice in 1516, in which an area of Jewish settlement was set aside from the rest of the city. The formation of ghettos across major cities would further aid the Nazi policy of alienating and segregating Jews from society.
This was a policy which involved the forced separation of those defined as ‘Jewish’ under the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, in which Jews were both determined as non-Aryan and seen as a different race.
The stipulations on who was ‘Jewish’ and who was ‘German’ according to the Nuremberg Laws meant that those with 3-4 Jewish grandparents were Jewish, and those with 1-2 Jewish grandparents were Mischlinge (Mixed-race persons).
The first ghetto was established in October 1939, shortly after WW2 commenced. It is important to note that every ghetto built in the years following this was different. Although, they shared the same goal of separating Jews from society within occupied Europe.
The Warsaw Ghetto was the biggest and most crowded of the ghettos. It was a walled off area of the city home to 400,000 Jews by November 1940, in an area of just 1.3 square miles.
Conditions were desperate, with food shortages, disease, and overcrowding. Death became commonplace in the daily lives of those in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Amongst this hardship, a thriving cultural life emerged despite the intense persecution. Theatre productions, music, and academic texts were all produced in the height of Nazi antisemitism.
The boys home itself is an example of this. The orphanage was run by the Association of Societies for the Care of Jewish Orphans, in which the boys were somewhat sheltered, as much as possible, from the harsh realities of the Warsaw ghetto.
The organisation attempted to provide the boys with food, sanitary living conditions, and education. These make up three of the most essential pillars to a normal upbringing; the home facilitated the provision of these three basic necessities to the best of its ability.
Whilst it attempted to provide this, food remained extremely scarce (boys described others scouring for vegetable peelings), education was a luxury, and sanitary conditions required intense organisation and work from the boys. The situation at Gęsia street was comparatively better than other care homes, but these aspects of life remained a distant prospect.
In this home the boys undertook this monumental feat of defiance: they decided to publish a magazine.
The content of the magazine is wide-ranging, as expected by the varying ages of the authors. Many of the younger children simply described their lives, with Josef Fibich’s article innocently describing his friends and what they do with their days. When this article is placed in the wider context of the holocaust, its content becomes harrowing. The juxtaposition of innocence and Nazi cruelty puts the extent of persecution into a distressing perspective.
This displays the undeniable importance of viewing the holocaust from the eyes of the persecuted, and not just the persecutors. Holocaust memory falls into what is known as the ‘nazi gaze’, which leans on official documents and policy to remember the holocaust, often neglecting its social aspect.
Contrastingly, the article Our Life by M. Bafilis describes the extreme hopelessness of an adolescent. His account outlines dark thoughts and an unwillingness to get out of his bed for breakfast.
Despite this, the overall tone of the magazine has limited mention of the war, ghetto, or persecution. Its tone is inherently positive in the most desperate of circumstances.
This could perhaps reflect the work of the care home, a lack of understanding of their situation, the conscious omittance of details of the holocaust, or a combination of the three.
The articles of the magazine are eloquently written, demonstrating a flourishing academic culture at the orphanage.
The magazine as a whole displays the importance of the written word for many reasons.
- Firstly, it is a beacon of hope. In the holocaust’s dehumanising circumstances, a flourishing culture arose from the children at Gęsia St. It enabled these boys to maintain their humanity through the writing and publishing of their thoughts, opinions, and life.
- Secondly, it shows how no matter the conditions, humans will find a way to express themselves. From theatre displays to concerts to magazines, Jews were able to wield the written/spoken word as a means of cultural resistance. It displayed a form of revolution that the Nazis proved unable to stamp out, no matter the intensifications of their antisemitic policy.
- Thirdly, and most importantly, it gives agency to voices that would have otherwise been lost. With the exception of one of the authors, who managed to escape the ghetto, the children who wrote this magazine all perished later in the holocaust. Accounts of children’s experiences of the holocaust tend to take the form of memory, or the perspective, of an adult. These memories tend to be warped by forgetfulness and the benefit of hindsight. Głos Domu Chłopców provides a poignant, unfiltered account of the Warsaw Ghetto from the perspective of a child. It allows us to view it from a lens that would have otherwise been lost.
As student journalists today, it is important we keep Głos Domu Chłopców in mind. It reminds us that we are extremely fortunate to have freedom of press, something so often taken for granted in lands free of persecution, such as the UK.
With this liberty comes a responsibility that is so often degraded in the multitude of fake news stories commonplace in modern-day media.
