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For Australian Jews, the trauma of loss must not permit us to grow callous to the grief of others - ABC Religion & Ethics
Corinne Fagueret features in the Compass episode 'Friends During Wartime' which airs on ABC-TV on Sunday, 15 June at 6.30pm. Find it also on ABC iview and YouTube.
As a young child growing up in France, the Holocaust fascinated me. 10-year-old Corinne spent hours interrogating old black-and-white photos of starving people and dead, naked bodies. Some of these were taken by Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto, where many members of my mother's Polish family had been forced to move. One question obsessed my younger self: how had this been possible and how was it that human beings were living nearby, getting on with the ordinary business of their lives?
Much later, in my early forties, I visited the Treblinka death camp deep in the Polish forest, where my ancestors had been transported in cattle trains to be gassed and burned. I stood metres away from the train tracks — the same ones that carried almost one million humans to their carefully orchestrated deaths. There, I was struck by an unexpected realisation. The scene I was looking at was not black and white; it was real, in full colour. Suddenly, the Holocaust was no longer in the distant past; it was immediate. It could happen again, I thought. And it could be me this time, and my children. It could be any one of us.
This realisation loomed again with the events that occurred 7 October 2023, and with everything that has now transpired in its aftermath.
Living in two realities
I migrated to Australia with my mother at the age of 15, while my father remained in France. My grandparents on both sides were communist dreamers and my home was filled with a strong sense of social justice. During the Holocaust, my mother's parents escaped to the then USSR, even as my father's family fought in the French resistance. My childhood was thus steeped in the trauma and memories of this dark period.
Arriving in Australia in 1986, I felt culturally lost. My mother suggested I join a progressive Zionist youth movement, hoping I would find things in common with other young Jewish people. By 1990, I was deeply engaged in a group called Netzer , spending considerable time in Israel after the end of high school. There, I was taught an 'official version' of Israeli history. At the same time — perhaps because of my family background, or perhaps because of the stories I heard from young Israeli soldiers stationed at checkpoints in the West Bank — I found myself becoming increasingly aware that I was not being told the whole story. There was a large piece missing: the Palestinian perspective. No one told me about the effect that the creation of the State of Israel had on the lives of Palestinians.
The Nakba is not a term used in the mainstream Jewish community. It was certainly not a word I ever heard in Netzer or during my time in Israel. But in the wake of 7 October, I have heard many Palestinian Australians tell the stories of how their families were affected by Israel's 'War of Independence' in 1948. I heard them recount how they lost their homes forever and could not return, how members of their family were killed, and how others ended up living in permanent refugee camps — including in Gaza.
Over the past twenty months, I have had a strange and growing sensation of living in two realities: the one that I had grown up in, which was shaped by the Zionist version of history; and the one I am still learning about, the ongoing lived reality of Palestinians since 1948. As a result, my worldview has been fundamentally shaken.
I suspect that most Jewish Australians have had little to do with anyone of Palestinian heritage. As a consequence, many are simply oblivious to their distress. That's why dialogue is so important: because getting to know 'the other' breaks down stereotypes and overcomes prejudices. In this regard, I am particularly grateful to my neighbour and friend Selina Nasir and her father Munir, a Palestinian Australian man from Haifa whose family lost everything in 1948. Their kindness and friendship helped guide my journey.
The cost of speaking out
My increased awareness of Palestinian suffering and of Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza has also meant that I've become increasingly active in speaking out against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the conduct of his government. Shortly after 7 October, I joined a newly formed group, Jewish Women For Peace. This led to me co-founding the #OzJewsSayNO initiative which, in February this year, coordinated the publication of a full-page advertisement in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald stating our opposition to US President Donald Trump's plan to remove Palestinians permanently from Gaza.
More recently, almost 700 Jewish Australians signed a statement expressing their concern about the actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza, calling on mainstream Jewish leaders to represent the views of those in our community who want the atrocities to end. My sense is the ground is rapidly shifting for Jewish Australians, with more and more individuals appalled at what's happening in Israel's name. I don't believe the number of signatures we collected reflects the level of discontent that exists within Jewish communities. Indeed, we received many secret messages of support — many said they couldn't sign or speak out, worried about the risk of losing family, friends, community or jobs.
For me, personally, speaking up has meant some members of my family in Israel have stopped speaking to me. I know that this has been very difficult for them, too. They live in a different world to me — a world directly affected and deeply traumatised by the events of 7 October 2023. It's a place that is still mourning the death of loved ones, and still waiting for the remaining hostages to be returned from their living hell.
The situation is undeniably horrific. I cannot imagine how the families of hostages can carry on with their lives, not knowing when or whether their daughters, their sons, their spouse, sister or brother might return home. But the depth of such human grief must not make us ignore or minimise suffering of the tens of thousands of Gazans maimed, killed and starving. In the name of our common humanity, this must end.
There are always reasons to remain silent. There is always a rationale for turning a blind eye. But for those of us whose lives have been shaped by the horrors of the Holocaust and who have pledged that such a thing must never happen again, we cannot let history repeat. We should never give up trying to understand 'the other', and we must never succumb to the temptation to dehumanise our fellow human beings. The commitment to peace and justice is nurtured in the small, seemingly insignificant gestures. Even during wars, it is still possible to make friends.
Corinne Fagueret is co-chair of Jewish Women 4 Peace Action Ready Group and co-founder of the #OzJewsSayNO initiative.
