Dr. Sarah Cramsey brings new insights about the devastation during the Holocaust

By Regan Lipes

(AJNews) – The 2024 Toby and Saul Reichert Holocaust Lecture at the University of Alberta’s Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies was given by a passionate and dynamic scholar. Dr. Sarah Cramsey is the Special Chair for Central European Studies at Leiden University, Assistant Professor of Judaism & Diaspora Studies and Director of the Austria Centre Leiden. The American academic earned her PhD in 2016 from the University of California at Berkeley and has enjoyed acclaim and success both as a lecturer and scholarly writer. She is the author of a 2023 book: Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946. A close personal friend of Dr. Alexander Carpenter, the Wirth Institute’s current Director, the University of Alberta and larger Edmonton Jewish communities were eager to welcome such a noted researcher.

A symptom of the ‘Hollywood-factor’ is that younger generations of learners are not cognizant to the reality that the Holocaust’s devastation manifested differently in a prolific number of locations throughout continental Europe. One valuable contribution that Cramsey’s research vividly showcased was that the Holocaust was more than gas chambers and ovens, but that the decay of human decency and the systematic attempt to eradicate entire ethnic groups was being inflicted in a disturbing variety of ways and places. Vacillating interchangeably between the terms Shoah and Holocaust, Cramsey provided perspectives for three geographical territories.

“The Other Holocaust: Care, Children, and the Jewish Catastrophe” was the title of Cramsey’s presentation and did not do justice to the level of insight and discussion she was able to provide on the topic. Despite Yad Vashem’s estimate that 1.5 million children were murdered during the Holocaust, Cramsey, a historian by training disputes this, and estimates that these numbers are inaccurate and lower than the reality of losses. A mother herself, Cramsey’s devotion to the topic is to give voice to those who provided care, support, and love to this vulnerable population that found themselves too young to defend themselves against the Nazi genocide machine. At first glance, one might think her research is dedicated to children, but what she aims to do is find the stories and documentation that narrate what caretaking during this devastating chapter looked like.

Her remarks were separated into three distinct spheres of examination: the Warsaw Ghetto prior to liquidation, displacement within the Soviet Union, and Auschwitz-Birkenau and its satellite camps. Cramsey notes that making demographic estimates about how many children where being cared for by any one family is complicated by a lack of statistical data being collected at the time, births not being reported, and the need to hide.

The story of Dr. Janusz Korczak may be the most widely known when considering the protection of children during the Holocaust, but Cramsey illustrated with archival photos and the journals of Adam Czerniakow that in fact, actual playgrounds were being constructed within the oppressive and siffling walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, and that children’s laughter could be heard. While plans were being made to obliterate European Jewish civilization, small efforts were also being made to see to the welfare of the community’s smallest citizens.

Those Jews displaced to remote and distant regions of the Soviet Union were able to exercise some minimal freedoms. Cramsey noted the case of one Jewish family in the outskirts of greater Tashkent (modern day Uzbekistan), who took a picture of their son after his Brit Milah with the hope of showing it to their family to celebrate the fact that they could have their son circumcised without persecution. In reality, tragically, the photograph shown to attendees at the lecture was never seen by the child’s extended family who were slaughtered in Nazi extermination camps.

Cramsey’s third sphere of investigation was the notorious site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She highlighted what could be learned about how caregivers comforted and protected small children from the horrifying realities of the truth until the very final moments through the preserved drawings of David Olere. As a member of the Sonderkommando, the Polish-born French-Jew, Olere, was cursed with a front seat to the inhumanity of the mass executions and their aftermath.  These are indelible memories that haunted his artwork throughout his career.

Cramsey additionally noted that even in times of extreme turmoil fertility cannot always be turned off and went on to explain that meant pregnancies occurred when within the gates of what is now Europe’s largest and grimmest graveyard. Although Cramsey did not cite the work of Dr. Gisele Perl when making this point, the noted Jewish-Hungarian gynecologist’s contribution to her people should be noted. Cramsey did highlight that the children of survivors born shortly after liberation were later recognized by Germany as eligible for reparations: an acknowledgement that generational trauma is inescapable and requires long-term support.

In addition to Dr. Sarah Cramsey’s emotional speech, a gallery of photos and postered informational resources was set up in the atrium to the lecture hall. This gave attendees the opportunity to reach further on the topic and reflect on Cransey’s remarks. Although there were recognizable faces from the Edmonton Jewish community, most of the audience was made up of academics and graduate students from the University of Alberta. Members from the greater Jewish community would no doubt have found this year’s Toby and Saul Reichert Holocaust Lecture to be a valuable discussion, but it was gratifying to see so many non-Jewish Edmontonians coming out in the bitter cold to learn more about the Holocaust amidst so much international antisemitism and hateful mainstream media rhetoric.

Regan Lipes is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter