Shulamit Rosinsky
The Sound of Silence: The Jewish Deaf in Germany and Poland on the Eve of, During, and After the Holocaust
2022 | Full access | Submitted in Hebrew
This study will present the history of the deaf-Jewish communities in Germany and Poland before, during, and after World War II. The study reviews the scientific and cultural background of the general deaf population from the end of the 18th century until World War II. Through implementation of Eugenics, the Nazis marked part of the deaf population as “undesirable”, and some 17,000 deaf German citizens underwent forced sterilization as part of the Nazi racial laws. The Jewish Deaf in Germany and Poland were two of the most influential communities of Jewish Deaf before the outbreak of World War II. In Berlin, a boarding school was established, which was considered the premier institution for the education of deaf Jews and drew students from all over Germany, Europe, and even from the Land of Israel. The Jewish Deaf Community in Poland was arranged by local organizations and an umbrella organization of all deaf Jews in Poland. These organizations maintained an archive that for the first time was researched for this study.
At the outbreak of the war there were about 600 deaf Jews in Germany and about 4,000 deaf Jews in Poland. Most of them perished in the Holocaust. Testimonies of survivors demonstrate special characteristics in a variety of areas: their early childhood, immigration, deafness as a factor that impairs the chances of survival, deafness as a cause of uncertainty and disconnection from the environment, deaf brotherhood, and others. After the war, deaf survivors had to deal with the consequences of the war, immigration, the establishment of their families, and the trauma of the war as reflected in the second generation.
The importance of the research is the systematic presentation of the deaf in the Holocaust, starting with eugenics and non-Jewish deaf people, through the deaf communities on the eve of the war, and finally, the Jewish deaf in the Holocaust. This study is one of the first to examine this population that has not yet been extensively researched. This study will be used to build educational programs for both the deaf population and the hearing. In addition, this study can serve as a model for future Holocaust studies on sub-populations, especially populations of Jews with disabilities.
Supervisor:
Dr. Miriam Ofer