Jewish Holocaust survivor, a socialist, activist and author, links her long ago Holocaust experience with her hopes for a socialist, humanist, and earth-loving society.
Here’s the video record of a talk I gave September 2 hosted by the Tzedek congregation in Chicago. Thank you to Tzedek congregation Rabbi Brant Rosen, my friends Linda Loew, Guy Miller, and my life partner, John Riddell for organizing this event.
Rabbi Rosen says: “I urge friends to watch and listen to the special program, attended by participants from across the country, Canada, and beyond…. It’s a powerful conversation with Holocaust survivor/activist Suzanne Weiss, who shared her story of wartime survival and discussed how she applies it to the solidarity struggles of today.”
As reviewer, Naomi Allen says of Suzanne Weiss’s memoir: It is a “Thrilling and sometimes harrowing account of her life, from war orphan to immigrant to socialist activist, can be read almost as a catalog of liberation struggles from the post-World War II era through the first decades of the 21st century…. Reaching deeply into her Jewish heritage, she pulled out the traditional solidarity of Jews with oppressed people everywhere, paying tribute to her parents’ sacrifice as part of their struggle for human values. Thus, she understood that her support of Palestinian human rights flows directly from the best values of her Jewishness…”
Suzanne Weiss, Jewish advocate for Palestinian human rights and author of “Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey” (Fernwood, 2019), contributed the following response to our questions in Sada Almashrek, an Arabic-English publication in Montreal.
Though the “anti-Semitism” narrative is today being made bait at large to hit back hard on any criticisers of Israel, outspoken Weiss says she, like many other Jews, refuses the Israeli authorities’ unjust treatment and supports, instead, al-Quds Day, as well as collaboration with Muslims to fight real anti-Semitism and any other form of racism.
Mrs Weiss says that her activism on behalf of Palestine is based on the principle of “universalism” found in both Jewish and Islamic faiths.
Now
nearing eighty, Suzanne Weiss still enjoys a strong memory of major global
incidents that have shaped today’s injustices and is therefore determined to
make a difference.
1) Mrs Weiss, it is amazing to read your book Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, and learn about your personal journey, so would you please briefly share some background info on it?
When
I was an infant child, a Jew in France under Fascist occupation, the Nazis targeted
me to be killed. After the Nazi defeat, I wondered how I had survived. Over the
decades, I pieced the story together: my survival was the work of a broad
movement of solidarity that saved many thousands of other Jewish children.
Suzanne Weiss was born in Paris in
1941, during the German occupation. Her Ukrainian father was a prisoner of war.
Her mother, a left-wing Polish refugee, was deported from France in 1943 and
died later that year in Auschwitz.
Weiss was one of thousands of Jewish
children who were rescued by an underground network of Jewish and gentile
groups. They placed these youngsters with families and in children’s homes
throughout southern France.
A long-time political and social
activist, Weiss spoke about her experience as a young Holocaust survivor and
her 2017 visit to Auvergne, the region where she was hidden, in Toronto on Jan.
31. The event was organized by IfNotNow Toronto – which is dedicated to
fighting anti-Semitism, building a Jewish community that values inclusivity and
justice, and challenging community support for Israel’s occupation of the West
Bank – to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On July 16, 1942, French police
arrested 13,150 Jewish refugees. They were herded into the Velodrome d’Hiver
(Vel’ d’Hiv) and soon after sent to extermination camps, Weiss recounted.
“Almost all of them were killed. Why was I spared? I have pieced the story
together.”
She and her mother, Faiga Berliner,
escaped the “Vel’ d’Hiv round-up,” and headed south, but they ended up in a
German transit camp with other Jewish refugees. Weiss was smuggled out and
eventually placed with a family in Auvergne, a region in southern France
governed by the Vichy regime.
“Faiga had to entrust me to a
left-wing Jewish organization. They placed me with a nursemaid, a non- Jewish
nanny,” recalls Weiss.
Jewish parents like her mother
“understood that they had to hide their children.… A network of anti-Nazi
resisters saved the children by dispersing them.”
Some were sent to live with gentile
families, while others were placed in orphanages. “They were hidden in plain
sight of all,” she said.
These French villagers and clergy
risked their lives to save Jewish children. A network of organizations provided
stipends to the gentile families and institutions, to care for the children,
Weiss explained.
The Buchners, friends of her father’s
who were in the Jewish resistance, also looked out for her, Weiss said,
pointing out that an important mission of the French Jewish resistance was to
save Jewish lives.
She still does not know the name of the
family, or even the village, where she was placed. “I remember nothing. I was
on a peasant farm with a family who had wanted to adopt me,” she said. “I owe
my life to the hospitality of that family.”
Weiss did, however, recall that after
the war, she was located by her father, Aron Itzkovitch. One of her first
memories is of her desire to remain with the French family. “They fought to
keep me. I was unwilling to go,” said Weiss. “He took my arm and pulled me
away.”
He returned her to the Jewish
community and died shortly thereafter. She lived in a Jewish orphanage in Paris
for five years, until she was adopted by the Weisses, a left-wing
Jewish-American couple.
“I was brought up with people in the
orphanages who promoted justice, love, peace and solidarity. That was their
Judaism,” she said. “That was my Judaism. I believe that was the Judaism of my
natural parents. It was the Judaism of my adopted parents. They were against
segregation, apartheid, the death penalty and fascism.”
When she visited the French town of
Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne region, in 2017, Weiss took the opportunity
to thank the people of that area for their bravery, solidarity and generosity.
“During the occupation, they accepted
a diversity of refugees. The people of Auvergne saved the lives of thousands of
people,” said Weiss.
“They wove a fabric of solidarity and
built a long chain to save lives and change the course of history.
“We have to apply the same humanity to refugees and those fleeing authoritarian regimes.”
Today, June 1, was a great success for the Al Quds rally which gathered more than 1,000 people in support of Palestinian freedom and free speech. I was honoured to be one of the speakers. Here is what I said:
My name is Suzanne Weiss. I am a Holocaust survivor. As a Jewish infant, I was marked down by the Nazis for death. All my life I have worked to prevent another Holocaust through pursuit of social justice and free speech. We meet today in the cause of human rights for the Palestinian peoples. Their lands are seized, their homes destroyed; they are confined by walls and checkpoints; they are arbitrarily jailed. In Gaza – they suffer a brutal and murderous blockade without the medications, water, and food needed to enjoy life.
How can we help put an end to these evils?
Through the global campaign to end Israeli apartheid. A campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against the Israeli government! To end apartheid, we have three demands:
** End the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
** Let the exiled Palestinians return to their homeland.
** Grant equal rights to all in Israel- including the Palestinians.
Some tell us that to speak of Israeli apartheid is hateful. Some want to make it a crime even to say the words “Israeli apartheid.”
But we must speak the truth. It is Israeli apartheid that is the crime. The call to end Israeli apartheid is a non-violent effort to achieve justice and reconciliation. The call to end Israeli apartheid affirms our hope and trust that the Israeli people, like the Palestinians, will come to embrace an agenda of equality. Our goal is for Palestinians to be free to pursue their dreams in their homeland, in equality and reconciliation with their Jewish sisters and brothers.
I welcome the efforts of the Al-Quds organizers, our Muslim and Palestinian friends, to achieve this goal. Al Quds explains the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Al Quds seeks to overcome anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian prejudice. They say “Judaism yes, Zionism no!” These efforts deserve constructive engagement, dialogue, and respect for free speech.
There was a wonderful rally of several thousands in Toronto on Sun., Oct. 15, 2017 at which many leaders of the community called for unity against white supremacists and racism.
Below is the speech I gave.
Down with white supremacy!
The Nazis killed my mother, Fajga Berliner, in Auschwitz because she was Jewish and therefore subhuman. That’s Nazi white supremacy in action. My mother was among its tens of millions of victims.
We join today against this poisonous doctrine. White supremacy was expressed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in a violent racist rally two months ago. Imagine! That rally got encouragement from the U.S. presidency. Shame!
In the winter of 2017, I received an invitation to spend a week giving media interviews and talks to high-school students in Clermont-Ferrand, the main city in Auvergne, a rural area in Central France. My topic was how I had been hidden in Auvergne during the Nazi occupation almost 75 years ago. The initiative came from the main Jewish organization there. They had heard of me during a previous visit to Auvergne, when reporters tracked me down for interviews. Continue reading Resisting Fascism: A lesson from Auvergne
I’ve learned to make concise and cogent speeches in the three minutes appropriate for rallies and meetings. Of the several dozen “three-minute” talks I have on file, here are six examples.
Against Islamophobia and white supremacy
The video version of this speech made a rally against Islamophobia and white supremacy went viral and received over 26,000 views as of this posting.
I speak today as a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust. Nazism took the lives of most of my family and six million my Jewish community. I and so many other Holocaust survivors are here only because of people united to protect us.
What is anti Semitism? It is simply the hatred of Jewish people. Amazingly, Donald Trump honoured the Holocaust by omitting, and in essence denying history. He forgot to mention that that six million Jews were murdered in the attempt to eliminate the whole Jewish people. It’s amazing that we heard no one object to this omission, and we especially did not hear a peep from Israel who prides itself on building a Jewish state. Continue reading Six three-minute speeches …
The video version of this speech made a rally against Islamophobia and white supremacy went viral and received over 26,000 views as of this posting.
I speak today as a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust. Nazism took the lives of most of my family and six million my Jewish community. I and so many other Holocaust survivors are here only because of people united to protect us.
What is anti Semitism? It is simply the hatred of Jewish people. Amazingly, Donald Trump honoured the Holocaust by omitting, and in essence denying history. He forgot to mention that that six million Jews were murdered in the attempt to eliminate the whole Jewish people. It’s amazing that we heard no one object to this omission, and we especially did not hear a peep from Israel who prides itself on building a Jewish state.
What is Islamophobia? It is the hatred of people who believe in the Islamic religion. Continue reading Against Islamophobia and white supremacy
9 October 2015 – In September I accompanied Suzanne Weiss on a research trip concerning the work of anti-Nazi resistance in France 1940-45 to save Jewish children. Suzanne’s work took an unexpected turn, becoming part of present debate on attitudes to refugees. Here is her report. For the French text, see Europe Solidaire. — John Riddell
Toronto, 1 October 2015 – Last month I visited Auvergne, a farming region in central France where, as a Jewish child of two, I was protected from the Nazis by a peasant family. It was the third time I had gone there with John Riddell, my husband, to find out where and how I had been saved from the Holocaust.
At a Toronto rally of 25,000: Here, I comments on the stand taken by anti-Zionist Jews against Israel’s massacres in Gaza – and on the real history of the Nazi Holocaust and the resistance to it.
26 July 2014 – I am proud to join more than 250 Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors in condemning “the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza” and “the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”
There was a wonderful rally of several thousands in Toronto on Sun., Oct. 15, 2017 at which many leaders of the community called for unity against white supremacists and racism. 
