WATERTOWN - Auschwitz survivor Meyer Hack kept his
secret for more than 60 years - a small cache of pocket
watches, an exquisite diamond ring, an ornate Old World
bracelet of gold and emerald, and other jewellery that
Jewish Holocaust victims took to their deaths.
Hack
spent four years as an inmate at the notorious Nazi
concentration camp, where he worked on the camp's
laundry crew - processing clothing the Nazis had
confiscated from new arrivals to Auschwitz, and handing
out uniforms to other prisoners. He would occasionally
find jewels and other valuables in the pockets, or sewn
into garment linings, and kept them hidden in a sock in
his barracks.
As Hack
and his wife, Sylvia, also an Auschwitz survivor, raised
their two sons, and moved to Brighton in the 1960s, the
16 pieces of jewellery remained with him, hidden in his
attic, a morbid collection he could not bring himself to
reveal.
Now a
frail 92-year-old, Hack has chosen to unveil the
precious artefacts on Jan. 20 in an unusual joint
exhibit at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in
Watertown, home of the nation's only permanent display
on the Armenian genocide. As the first public unveiling
of the objects he kept secret for so long, the exhibit
offers some closure to Hack, but it also offers the hope
of resolution for members of two communities split over
interpretations of history.
Representatives of the local Armenian and Jewish
communities have been bitterly divided in recent months
over the national Anti-Defamation League's refusal to
fully recognize the Turkish massacre of Armenians in
1915, which claimed more than 1.5 million lives, as a
genocide.
The
Armenians understand Jewish suffering, said Hack, who
will be joined at the exhibit opening by Armenian
genocide survivor Kevork Norian of Arlington.
"We have
to tell the world what happened. My diary is written on
my heart, and I have to tell the world about what I
saw," said Hack, a Polish-born Jew who was deported to
Auschwitz in 1941 at age 27. His mother, brother, and
two sisters were put to death.
Norian,
who is also 92, will sit side-by-side with Hack during
the two-hour long event, and tell the assembled crowd
about his own connection to tragedy. "We can't let these
memories die," said Norian. "I do not expect to be
around too much longer."
The
local showing was organized by Susie Davidson, a writer
from Brookline who profiled Hack in her 2005 book about
Boston-area Holocaust survivors, "I Refused to Die."
Watertown, home to 8,000 Armenian-Americans, is an ideal
place for the joint exhibit to reaffirm relations
between the Jewish and Armenian communities, she said,
adding her hope that it will also heighten awareness of
modern-day genocide.
"You
realize how similar suffering is between people who have
gone through something like this," said Davidson, who
has studied contemporary genocides in Africa, as well as
mass murders in Bosnia, Cambodia, and Europe.
Watertown was where a community rift first formed in
August, after Armenian activists criticized the ADL for
refusing to recognize the massacre of Armenians as the
first genocide of the 20th century.
National
ADL leader Abraham H. Foxman responded by calling the
deaths "tantamount to genocide," but refused to support
a proposed congressional resolution recognizing the
event as a genocide. In protest of Foxman's stance, at
least seven Massachusetts communities withdrew from
ADL's "No Place For Hate" antibigotry school programs.
Andrew Tarsy, the New England director of the ADL, was
fired, then reinstated, then quit his post over his
disagreement with Foxman's stance.
Following the controversy, Armenians here were at first
a bit surprised but receptive to the idea of hosting
Hack's Holocaust artefacts, Davidson said.
The
Watertown museum - which houses Bibles, art,
photographs, and other artefacts from the Armenian
genocide - offered a display case for the Auschwitz
jewellery, near an exhibit of clothes belonging to an
Armenian child killed in the Syrian desert in 1915.
The
joint exhibit will be deeply meaningful to both Jews and
Armenians, said Mariam Stepanyan, director of the
museum. "We felt it was such a rare and important
pairing of experiences of two people who have seen to
much and have so much to teach us."
Davidson
did not ask the ADL to be involved, and reached out to
such groups as Facing History and Ourselves, an
educational program based in Brookline, and the
Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies at Clark University in Worcester.
The
Strassler Center was "honoured to be included," said
Tatyana Macaulay, a program manager at the center. "The
vision of bringing together people from both cultures
who have suffered greatly resonated with us," she said.
Todd
Gunick, a New York-based spokesman for
the ADL, said that the group would probably accept
Davidson's invitation to attend the Watertown exhibit.
Several
Armenian groups have accepted invitations to cosponsor
the exhibit. "We thought it was a great idea to bring
people together at this point in time," said Sharistan
Melkonian, chairwoman of the eastern Massachusetts
chapter of the Armenian National Committee, who is the
granddaughter of genocide survivors.
She said
the dispute last year over the ADL stance was not about
the Armenian and Jewish people, but "one organization's
policy."
"We are
hoping [the exhibit] helps people understand that this
experience has been shared by way too many people. We'll
hear about it in a way you can only hear about from
survivors," said Melkonian. "When my grandmother said,
'This can never happen again,' she didn't mean just to
Armenians. She meant we have to make sure we are apart
of making sure it never happens to anyone again."
Hack
said he decided last year to confide about the hidden
artefacts to Rabbi Abraham I. Halbfinger and Dean
Solomon, long-time friends from his
Brighton synagogue, Kadimah-Toras Moshe. The men decided
the jewellery should go to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust
memorial in Israel, after the local display in
Watertown.
Solomon
said he understood why Hack had not been able to break
his silence for six decades.
"He
didn't feel people could understand," he said. "But then
he realized he could use the pieces to tell everyone
what had happened. The idea became that these pieces
would speak volumes. They would speak for him and speak
for the dead people."
Hack
said he would like to travel to Jerusalem in the spring
with Solomon, Davidson, and Halbfinger, to deliver the
Auschwitz jewellery. He holds out hope that the pieces
can be reunited with the families of their owners,
although without markings or monograms, chances are
slim.
"These
don't belong to me," said Hack. "They have never
belonged to me. These belong to people who I say a
Kaddish [mourning prayer] for every day."
Erica Noonan can be reached at
enoonan@globe.com
