Deaf Jews and the Holocaust

On November 9, 2019 Valley Beth Shalom, in Encino, California hosted a program in commemoration of the 81^stAnniversary of Kristallnacht entitled “Rescuing History: Kristallnacht and ‘The Holocaust Through the Eyes of Deaf Jews’.” (Kristallnacht was two nights of violence perpetrated against the Jewish communities of Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938.) It was a multinational effort to collect the stories of the under looked segment of the European Jewish population during the holocaust—the Jewish deaf. Speakers Michelle Baron and Marla Petal provided video testimonials, photos and a survivor’s art by revealing the vibrancy of a lost Jewish Deaf culture. The presentation was interpreted in American Sign Language.

In 1991 the Helen Keller Center in Tel Aviv, Israel established a memorial to honor the six thousand deaf Jews slaughtered during the Holocaust. However, the Nazis targeted more people than the Jews focusing in on the deaf and people with other handicaps. According to the Nazis, handicapped people were imperfect and wouldn’t fit into the perfect Aryan race. From 1941 through 1945 17,000 deaf Germans were sterilized and told to be quiet or be thrown into a concentration camp. The Nazis wanted to make sure deafness wouldn’t infect their “superior” race. However, this heinous act was based in ignorance, for only ten percent of deaf couples have deaf children.

The producers of the program canvased the Deaf community to find survivors to tell their stories. Morris Field, a deaf resident of five concentration camps was oral with an accent that blended into the crowd of foreigners. When he noticed a group signing in a dark corner of a detention camp, Field decided to keep his deafness to himself. The next day, the group was gone and he suspected they were murdered.

David Bloch, a deaf artist managed to escape to Shanghai with the help from his brother living in the United States. He was briefly interned in the Dachau Concentration Camp. Though he could not hear music, Bloch interpreted it as a signal of imminent death. His masterpiece, “Reception-Deception”, depicts a skeletal prisoner playing the violin.

The horror of the Holocaust didn’t end at war’s end for deaf Jews. Those who did survive were denied refugee status in the United States. Stanley Teger was initially denied entrance because immigration officials thought deafness was contagious. After Teger’s mother goaded the child to speak, the official was satisfied because he believed in the deaf-dumb correlation.

The Valley Beth Shalom event about deaf Jews and the Holocaust was an eye-opener showing how ignorant people are about deafness and the poor treatment the deaf lived through during one of the most evil times in world history.