If I was born 100 years ago in mainland Europe, what type of Jew would I be?

I would be 21 years old when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, perhaps just graduated from university. I would be deciding on my future career... would I have gone into education? Would I have wanted to change the world and enable young people to add value to their lives through getting good qualifications? Would I have been engaged in a Jewish youth movement? Would I have belonged to Hashomer Hatza’ir, the oldest Jewish youth movement, or perhaps Poalei Zion? Would I have been a Zionist and made plans to emigrate to Palestine?

Would I have gone to synagogue services regularly?  Would they have been orthodox services or progressive services? Would I have lived in a cosmopolitan European city like Berlin, Vienna or Prague? Or would I have lived in a small Jewish community such as Uhrineves in Czechoslovakia or Baranovich in the USSR?

How would have I defined myself? Would being Jewish be important to me or would my nationalist identity come first? Would I have seen myself as a Jewish German or a German Jew? Would I have been nervous about Hitler’s rise to power or dismissed him as a madman? Would I have stayed away from Jewish businesses for fear of implicating myself? Would I have made sure I shopped in ‘Jewish’ stores to give those shopkeepers a much needed boost? Would I have worried when I lost my job teaching in a non Jewish school or been stripped of my gym membership? Would I have been excited about the Olympic Games? Would I have tried to leave Europe in 1938 when it was clear things were not going to get better anytime soon? Would I have been one of the 90,000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps during Kristallnacht? Would I have been cheered at the thought of Britain declaring war on Germany? Would I have been proud or embarrassed to wear a yellow star?

Would I be happy to pack my bags and be relocated to a ghetto? A small overcrowded area where deprivation and disease were widespread? Would I have profiteered from ghetto life and smuggled food into the ghetto and resold it an inflated price? Would I have resorted to crime to try to feed my family? Would I have joined the resistance movement? Would I become a member of the Judenrat and collaborate with Nazi officials in the belief it might save me? Would I have been happy to be used as slave labour?

When ordered to relocate to the East would I have just packed my bags? Would I have got on cattle truck happily believing that things couldn’t get worse than the ghetto? Would I have believed the rumours of extermination? Would I have survived up to three days with no food or drink on the way to an unknown destination?  

Would I have been sent to the left or the right? If I was sent to the left, at what point would I realise what was going on? Would it be when I had my head shaved? Would it be when I looked around and realised that most of the people with me were the infirm, elderly or children? Would it be when I saw that the soap was really stone? Would it be the moment the iron doors were closed..?

If I was sent to the right would I have been given a job that would have guaranteed me survival? Would I be a musician? Would I be a maid in Mengele’s household? Would my fingers been suitable to work in an armament factory? Would the Nazi’s be fooled by my poor sowing skills and put me to work fixing Nazi uniforms?

Would I have survived the meagre rations, the typhus and the constant selections? Would I have thrown myself against the electrified barbed wire having lost all hope? Would I still believe in God?

WOULD I SURVIVE?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions but when I think about the Shoah, I cannot help but think that the 6 million Jews were unlucky enough to be victims of the world they lived in.  Let’s not be victims of the world we live in.

Never again.