Eddie Jaku Holocaust testimony a timely reminder, says granddaughter
Daughters, granddaughters of Holocaust survivors say people need to listen to their testimony and their message now more than ever.
On the underground level of the Sydney Jewish Museum, a life-size projection of Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku sits on a screen and answers questions posed by visitors.
With Eddie’s death in October 2021, this artificial-intelligence-powered “interactive biography”, captured over five days of intensive interviews in the summer of 2020-21, is serving its intended purpose: to relay the important testimony of Holocaust survivors after they are gone.
Danielle Jaku-Greenfield and her three children popped into the museum to visit their “public” grandfather and great-grandfather one Saturday.
AI-Eddie prompts them to ask about his time in the war but they are more interested to hear about his german shepherd and their great-grandmother Flore, and get him to rattle off their names.
While it’s been just 2½ years since Eddie died, aged 101, and six months since Hamas’s attack on Israel, Jaku-Greenfield says people need to hear her grandfather’s testimony and his message now more than ever.
“As we move into a time of questioning whether it happened and revisionists and the dangers of this space of anti-Zionism and, I would say, anti-Semitism, it’s especially important to be able to learn from (Holocaust survivors’) experiences, especially my grandfather’s message of ‘do not hate’ and ‘do not fear difference’,” she says.
“Whether it’s my grandfather’s story or other Holocaust survivors’ stories or survivors of the 7th of October or survivors of the experience of the Palestinians in Gaza, we need to learn as a people … to be able to sit in a place of empathy and understanding and definitely not a place of hating anybody.”
But she also fears that people no longer want to listen to the testimony of Holocaust survivors.
“Perhaps there’s less interest and less sympathy for Holocaust stories because of the perception or allegations by many people that Israel is committing genocide,” Jaku-Greenfield says.
“Is it more important than ever? Yes. But is it going to receive the positive reception that it’s been receiving until now? I sadly suspect it’s not. You know, this idea that the post-Holocaust years of sympathy towards Jewish people might have seen its day sadly.
“And if they don’t want to listen, they’re not gonna sit here (at the museum) in front of him.”
The testimony of Holocaust survivor Kuba Enoch, who died in July 2021, has also been made into an interactive biography.
His message is also there for anyone who will listen, daughter Pearl Blasina says.
“His biggest thing is that hatred is something that you feel, your enemy doesn’t feel it. It eats you up. It’s a downward spiral. There’s no point hating because it’s not going to serve you,” she says.
Blasina, a volunteer at the museum, often sits alone with her father n the small auditorium where they carry out public demonstrations with the AI, on days when she needs to see his “little smirk”. She’s learnt he still has important stories to tell that even she hasn’t heard.
“One day my nephew brought all his co-workers into the museum … There was this breakthrough moment for me and for him because Dad reveals something that neither of us had heard him say before,” Blasina says. “He’d hinted about the sexual abuse that was in the camps. But I hadn’t actually heard him talk about it. So we both looked at each other and we were like oh my god … It was like a punch to the guts in a way.
“We had a very silent father for our whole childhood … Once the grandchildren were born, especially my first daughter, Rebecca, who is now 46. Then he started relaxing a little. He felt he’d survived. He’d thrived. And he had now created a family … Four Kids, 11 grandkids and 12 great-grandkids.
“That’s what he always was very adamant about, that continuity of Jewish life. The fact that Hitler didn’t win.”
Blasina says her first reaction to October 7 and what followed was “thank God Dad wasn’t here to see this rise in anti-Semitism”.
“But then, the survivors that are here, they say, what do you expect? (Anti-Semitism) is always there,” she says.
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