Mar­gare­ta Ack­er­man is a pro­fes­sor, researcher, author and grand­daugh­ter of Holo­caust sur­vivor Sru­lik Ack­er­man. She received her Ph.D. in Com­put­er Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo, Cana­da, and has won numer­ous awards for her research. Her recent­ly pub­lished book, Run­ning from Giants: The Holo­caust Through The Eyes of a Child, is now avail­able. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

In my many years of school­ing across three con­ti­nents, I’ve attend­ed many Holo­caust class­es. Yet, dur­ing each les­son and every lec­ture, I felt that some­thing was missing. 

In high-school, we read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, a beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten first­hand account — right­ful­ly a must-read if there ever was one. But, as most of us know, Anne’s diary ends before her sto­ry does, sav­ing the read­er the worst of the Nazi atroc­i­ties. To my sur­prise, my high-school class cov­ered lit­tle about the Holo­caust oth­er than Anne’s diary. And while the uni­ver­si­ty cours­es on the sub­ject went much fur­ther, there was still some­thing missing. 

Although, thank­ful­ly, the Holo­caust end­ed many years ago, it was still much more real to me than any oth­er his­tor­i­cal sub­ject I stud­ied. If one were to guess who among all my fam­i­ly mem­bers had sur­vived the Holo­caust, no one would have sus­pect­ed my grand­pa. Noth­ing about him brought to mind the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. He had an unas­sum­ing, easy-going demeanor, com­bined with an excep­tion­al sense of humor. When­ev­er I think of him, I always remem­ber him with a smile on his face. Most incred­i­ble, how­ev­er, is that he was, with­out a doubt, the hap­pi­est per­son that I’d ever met. 

For many years, I couldn’t rec­on­cile my grandfather’s per­son­al­i­ty with all of the hor­rors that he and oth­ers suf­fered at the hands of the Nazis. Hope came when, many years lat­er, I was asked to help put togeth­er his mem­oir. Of course, I was hon­ored and agreed right away. Among the many rea­sons that I want­ed to help with this impor­tant project was my hope to final­ly dis­cov­er how Grand­pa man­aged to sur­vive so wholly. 

Don’t we break down from much small­er prob­lems? Don’t peo­ple in times of peace and plen­ty dis­in­te­grate and lose the will to live from prob­lems that can­not even be com­pared with the atroc­i­ties such as the Shoah? What made my own grand­fa­ther so much more resilient?

There are two ways to look at Grandpa’s reac­tion to all that he had endured. The first, is that he had man­aged to be hap­py despite all that hap­pened to him. He would have been a hap­py per­son no mat­ter what. Had he lived a sim­ple life in the Pol­ish vil­lage of Nowosi­ol­ki where he was born, he still would have been an excep­tion­al­ly hap­py guy. Hav­ing sur­vived the Holo­caust, and still retain­ing such con­ta­gious joy for life, sug­gests that he would have been a hap­py per­son no mat­ter what would have hap­pened to him. 

The oth­er per­spec­tive, expressed by some of my read­ers, is that Grand­pa was hap­py pre­cise­ly because of what he had endured. See­ing into the depth of dark­ness enabled him to gain a pro­found appre­ci­a­tion for all that is good in life. Indeed, I was delight­ed to learn that there were oth­er sur­vivors who had the same response as my grand­pa. In con­trast to what they have already been through, the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of nor­mal life seem triv­ial. Instead of focus­ing on the neg­a­tive, they are eter­nal­ly grate­ful for what is good, appre­ci­ate the small things, and are glad to be alive. This is why, a small num­ber of sur­vivors are excep­tion­al­ly hap­py people. 

Which of these the­o­ries is true? One of these, or some com­bi­na­tion of both? That’s the class­room dis­cus­sion that I could have used. A dis­cus­sion, a lec­ture, or a class that would pro­claim to the world that there were peo­ple who the Nazis could not break. There were those who, against all odds, man­aged to sur­vive the Holo­caust both phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly, and went on to live vibrant, joy­ful lives. 

Per­haps it makes a dif­fer­ence to know that there was a ten-year-old boy named Sru­lik Ack­er­man, who went on to live a life full of hap­pi­ness despite all the hor­rors that he endured at the hands of the Nazis. After every­thing that he has been through, he must have laughed and smiled more than a dozen men in a sin­gle lifetime. 

I hope that learn­ing about Sru­lik and oth­ers like him will make it eas­i­er for stu­dents to digest this dif­fi­cult mate­r­i­al. Maybe this les­son on the strength of the human spir­it will encour­age teach­ers to cov­er Holo­caust his­to­ry more com­plete­ly, instead of omit­ting the tru­ly dif­fi­cult, but essen­tial parts of this dark spot in our his­to­ry. Maybe, real­iz­ing humanity’s poten­tial for resilience, and our capac­i­ty for joy and hap­pi­ness no mat­ter what comes our way, will help stu­dents find strength in their own lives. 

Dr. Ack­er­man is the author of over a dozen aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing research on appli­ca­tions of tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish study method­ol­o­gy to the mod­ern class­room. She is join­ing the fac­ul­ty of Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty this year.

Relat­ed Content:

• Read­ing List: Holo­caust
• Read­ing List: Holo­caust Remem­brance Day
• Essays: On the Holocaust
• The Boy on the Wood­en Box: How the Impos­si­ble Became Pos­si­ble on Schindler’s List by Leon Leyson