Ryvchin: Holocaust survivors show ‘superhuman resilience’
'The teachings and the actions of the survivors have shown us that we can withstand anything that this world can throw at us'
In a powerful address at Perth’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony last Wednesday, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin described the “superhuman form of resilience” demonstrated by Holocaust survivors.
Speaking to political leaders, diplomats, Holocaust survivors and members of the community at Carmel School, Ryvchin explored resilience in the face of unimaginable horror during the Nazi genocide.
“Resilience is really the capacity to survive by adapting to one’s environment,” he said. “When we examine the stories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, they are always punctuated by moments which would decide everything.”
Ryvchin recounted a survivor’s story where a quick-thinking eldest sister saved her sibling from the gas chambers by convincing an SS guard they were twins.
“The ability of the eldest sister, a teenage girl, to see with perfect clarity and do what was necessary to save her sister from certain death, displays a resilience we can scarcely comprehend,” he said.
While acknowledging acts of extraordinary resistance, including the Sobibor death camp uprising, Ryvchin cautioned, “We must not allow ourselves to believe that those who survived possessed some quality that the martyred millions did not.
“What the accounts of survivors and perpetrators teach us is that the difference in virtually every case of survival versus death was not resilience but simple, dumb luck.”
He connected historical lessons to contemporary challenges faced by Jewish communities globally, particularly following the October 7 attacks in Israel.
“The Holocaust was the greatest calamity a people could endure. But the teachings and the actions of the survivors have shown us that we can withstand anything that this world can throw at us,” he said.
He called on the Jewish-Australian community to draw inspiration from survivors in responding to current challenges.
“We have a choice to make how we react to abuse and harassment, boycotts and bans. Do we respond with strength and unity or break under the strain and turn on each other?”
The ceremony included acknowledgments to Geoff Midalia, president of the Jewish Community Council of Western Australia, and Judith Lawrence, director of education at the Holocaust Institute of Western Australia, for their contributions to Holocaust education and combating antisemitism.
comments