The responsibility of bearing witness

Listening to Omer Shemtov tell me his story of survival in the terror tunnels of Gaza it suddenly dawned on me: I am bearing witness in a way I could never have anticipated.

One of the major reasons I was drawn to The AJN was the opportunity to meet Holocaust survivors and tell their stories. My grandfather escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, but he lost family members in Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. He kept his grade 1 textbook full of Nazi propaganda in impeccable condition until the day he died in Israel, in December last year.

For as long as I can remember, probably because of my own family’s connection, I have been reading Holocaust books and have been overwhelmingly affected and utterly inspired by the survivors who endured the worst suffering, yet went on to lead such extraordinary, productive lives. Primo Levi. Elie Wiesel. Viktor Frankl. Eddie Jaku. To name just a few.

I felt – and still feel – it is my duty to know their stories, to be moved by them, and to share them.

For many years I worked as a soccer journalist for The Daily Telegraph and Fox Sports. I was at the 2015 A-League Grand Final in Melbourne, working in the press box, when then Football Federation Australia chairman Sir Frank Lowy fell off the stage. It was a sickening moment.

“This cannot be how it ends,” I thought to myself. Thank God it wasn’t.

I knew Sir Frank’s story, but after that night I found a video of his speech at Auschwitz during March of the Living in 2013. Watching him tear up when he mentioned his late father Hugo crushed me. I made sure I sent that clip to my non-Jewish colleagues, many of whom used to give Sir Frank a hard time in press conferences and in their column inches. They needed to hear his story.

Soon after I joined The AJN I had the immense privilege of speaking to the late Olga Horak. No matter how many times she shared her story, she still broke down each time she described how her mother had died in her arms, tragically on the day they were liberated from Bergen Belsen.

When I interviewed the late Abe Goldberg, I struggled to keep it together when he told me how he had travelled to Poland in 1996 to honour the final wish of a dear friend and fellow Holocaust survivor. His friend had passed away in Canada in May 1996, but he requested that he be cremated and his ashes deposited in the ruins of the Auschwitz crematorium on August 23 – the date he had arrived at Auschwitz and lost his mother.

Hearing a survivor’s story firsthand is an unforgettable experience and I am blessed to have heard Olga’s and Abe’s before they passed away. I was also privileged to sit down with Jack Meister, who sadly passed away just this week.

Being a journalist requires you to become an “instant expert” as you research a topic in order to formulate a fair and accurate story. But the essence of journalism is storytelling and there are times when telling a person’s story is heart wrenching. Hearing and relaying the details can take a toll.

Telling a survivor’s story is a privilege, but perhaps more importantly it is also a responsibility because you are recording history and, therefore, serving society. This is especially true when it comes to recording the stories of October 7 survivors.

Although the Holocaust and the October 7 massacre are not equitable, the depravity of Hamas terrorists has triggered deep, intergenerational trauma. Thanks to the likes of Yad Vashem, the Shoah Foundation and survivors themselves, we have records and personal, traumatic accounts of the Holocaust.

The events of October 7, and the stories of those who were caught up in the atrocities of that day – and the days, months and years that have followed – are still raw and are still being recorded. Those of us who are in a position to interview survivors and tell their stories are doing so for the public record.

I am acutely aware of that responsibility. There will come a time in the future when someone will research October 7, 2023, and they may come across the interview I did with Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin. They will read how the Holocaust and October 7 intertwined for Jon and Rachel, who were told by released hostages that their son Hersh became a source of light in the tunnels because he spoke to them about Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, whose core message in his book Man’s Search for Meaning is: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

They may read the interview I did with Omer Shemtov, who was abducted from the Nova festival and described the “miracles” he encountered during his 505 days in Hamas captivity and his deepening connection to Hashem while he spent 400 of those 505 days alone in a tunnel.

After Omer shared the full, harrowing story of his survival I told him how privileged I felt to have heard it firsthand, to bear witness, and I promised to share it.

That is my duty.

Carly Adno is an AJN senior journalist.