What is history



Outcomes Addressed

A student:

H1 explains and evaluates the effects of different contexts of responders and composers on texts

H2 explains relationships among texts

H3 develops language relevant to the study of English

H4 explains and analyses the ways in which language forms and features, and structures of texts shape meaning and influence responses

H5 explains and evaluates the effects of textual forms, technologies and their media of production on meaning.

H7 adapts and synthesises a range of textual features to explore and communicate information, ideas and values, for a variety of purposes, audiences and contexts.

H8 articulates and represents own ideas in critical, interpretive and imaginative texts from a range of perspectives

H9 evaluates the effectiveness of a range of processes and technologies for various learning purposes including the investigation and organisation of information and ideas

H10 analyses and synthesises information and ideas into sustained and logical argument for a range of purposes, audiences and contexts

H12A explains and evaluates different ways of responding to and composing text

This module requires students to:

• Explore the text’s representation of the Holocaust

• Evaluate how medium of production, textual form, perspective and features of non-fiction influence meaning

• Understand the relationship between representation and meaning

• Supplement the study with a variety of texts of their own choosing, drawn from a variety of sources, in a range of genres and media

• Explore different versions and perspectives of the Holocaust

• Develop a range of imaginative, interpretive and analytical compositions that may be realised in a variety of forms and media, explore the relationships between individual memory and documented events, and consider the role of personal experience and empathy in the growth of cultural knowledge.

Module C: Representation and Text: History and Memory

Students explore the relationship between individual memory and documented events and consider the role of personal experience in the growth of cultural knowledge.

As memory is the individual, so is history to the community or society. Without memory, individuals find great difficulty in relating to others, in finding their bearings, in making intelligent decisions – they have lost their sense of identity.

What is history?

• What has happened

• Evidence

• Documented events

• Facts

• Record

• Objective in essence

• The past

• Detached from emotions

• Collaborated understanding

• Lacks personal experience and emotions

• History repeats itself

o Humanity – some issues in human nature

o Power – politics, religion, morality, ethnicity

o Detached from emotions

o Can’t learn vicariously

o Some things we can’t change

o Lacks personal experience and emotion

• Easily manipulated

o Different interpretations

o Secondary Source

o Reliability?

• Shared memory

o Verified

What is memory?

• Inherently individual

• Blocked

• Idiosyncratic

• Subjective

• Perception of history

• Recollection of events

• Fragmented

• Can be unrealistic

• Manipulated

• Fill in the blanks

• Influences decision

• Can control it

• Shaped by emotions

• Becomes history when verified

• Repressed – pain, denial

• Forget

• Blackness – sheds light

• Unreliable

• Collective memory

• Shapes who you are

Epigram – metaphor of the book

“There is a palace of hidden treasures.”

Palace

- Aspiration

- Precious

- Large

- Magical

- Place of hidden memories. esp. mother – hides hers

- Hidden treasures – what cannot be found

“In this palace there are fourty – nine gates that separate

good from evil, the blessing from the curse.”

- Double edge sword

- Opposites

“Beyond them is a fiftieth gate lager than the entire

world.”

- Once you are there you are in heaven

- Paradise and nirvana

- Oxymoron – choose to ignore

- Hidden – too large to contemplate – vastness of mind

“It is a hidden gate.”

- Concept of knowledge rather than the physical. Don’t have to see it.

- hidden – hidden within yourself

“On this gate there is a lock, which has a narrow place

where the key may be inserted.”

- Obstacles in the way

- Need to overcome these obstacles in order to reach the fiftieth gate

- narrow place – contrasts to ‘large gate’ – only a small opportunity in which to overcome these obstacles

“Come and see.”

- Asked to go on a journey

- See through the eyes

“Through this gate all other gates may be seen.”

- Is retrospective, will understand how you got through clear understanding

“Whoever enters the fiftieth gate sees through

God’s eyes from end of the world to the other.”

- Is omnipresent, omniscient, everywhere – creator sees and knows everything

- Will see god once fiftieth gate is reached

“The darkness or the light.”

- Need light – end of darkness for Mark Baker – stop the darkness for his children

“Come and see.”

- Repetition

- Eyes/ seeing motif

“The key is the broken heart, the yearning for prayer,

the memory of death.”

- Paint and suffering emotional hurt

- Asking for forgiveness, understanding, insight

- Wanting to believe

- Death of others, a way of life, of your soul

- A part inside you dies – layers of life on top of bad memories

- The key is on the inside – only the individual can reach the fiftieth gate – unaided

“The key is the forgotten heart, the murdered prayer,

the death of memory.”

- Emotion or love has been buried

- Reliving memories. Put the past behind them. Allows you to move on.

“It opens the blessing or the curse.”

- Don’t do right thing, have values or intentions, thought about how you would get rid of it.

“Come and see.”

- Motif

Chapter 1

“Nothing I don’t recognise anything.” – Deterioration of memory

Repression of memory – loss – age contributes

Past experiences force them to forget

“This memory thing is no light matter for my father.” – Links to epigram – light – father clinging onto past culture

“Infectious smiles, dancing images.” – Memories are seen through the eyes

“Stream of light rushes past us…” – light motif – links to epigram

Chapter 2

Memory is affected by age and context

History deteriorates memory

“Hobbles past a fallen gate” – indicative of lost memory – metaphor

Chapter 3

“In the fields there is an eery silence” – silence – like her mind – trying to repress memory

Physically searching through memory – “I began this search through scattered stones.

Memory helps history live on.

Memory forces him to live in fear.

Chapter 4

“It’s very clear from the past, more clear than now.” – Deterioration of memory

“What was his name? I’ve forgotten, but It’ll come back to me.” – Opening of the fiftieth gate – unlocking memory

Chapter 5

“’Ruins, ruins.’ She muttered at the end of the tour.” – Looks at happy memories, ignores the sad – selective memory

Chapter 6

“I remember on Saturday all the Jews…”

“So much more to say about my family before the war.” – Memory – before and after

Melbourne – symbol of new beginning – Mark’s birth

“Do you remember crying when you were a baby?” – Unreliability of memory

“I have heard much about the moment from my mother.” – Memory given from mother.

Hot tea – Mark’s worst memory – contrast to parent’s worst memory – Holocaust

Cracked egg for burning – no cure for emotional burning – have no panacea

Younger generations cannot empathise – hot tea and cracked egg downplay the significance of Holocaust

Jewish tradition is still carried on in Melbourne – cultural values, customs carried on

Got punched for being a Jew when he was younger – If we don’t learn from the past history repeats itself

Hunger acts as a trigger

Chapter 7

“Do you still believe in god… after everything that happened?” – Does he believe that god would let that happen?

Yossl says Genia’s faith is stronger.

Yossl survived with luck, Genia with courage.

“My facts from the past are different.” – Mother has memory of a perfect town – doesn’t believe her town was corrupted – hard to take – history broke her memory down.

“I don’t see a gate.”

Chapter 8

Fairy tale – history was validating memory

Chapter 9

“I went to a fancy dress party as Hitler.” – shows his naivety of situation

Mind is constantly alert – mother a born survivor – father is not – mother is left alone – Yossl is not, he has his comrades

Chapter 10

Extract – describes Bolszowce – language factual – indicative of history

Chapter 11

Focus of chapter is Yossl and Yossl’s memory

“My father works amongst his departed friends, seeking signs of intimacy with fragmented moment from his childhood.”- Struggle to link physical history with memory

“It is an empty and chaotic landscape of death.”

“Can you hear, or do the screams from the mass grave drown out the sounds.” Attempting to unlock the memories – can memory prevail? Lamenting the death of his friends

Chapter 12

About sages they’ve learnt – A Garden of Eden. Rabi entered and existed in peace – taught different by Mark’s parents – Mark’s parents do no want to openly reveal memory

Chapter 13

Report card – trigger

There was more to this episode then he was prepared to admit – Genia can’t substantiate her memory with facts

“Tomorrow you children will shed your tears, tuck your memories in and say goodnight.”

Chapter 14

Mark reflecting on what he has done.

Chapter dominated by history

Yossl – sense of pride “For my father the rivers have not thawed, until now, when his words break out from their glacial silence, releasing a torrent into his darkest nights.”

Chapter 15

Mark’s father recounting the loss of his own father.

Different view – history shows exactly what happened – as a number

Chapter 16

“I repeat: I can show you what your father wore when he arrived in Buchenwald”

Power of history – Baker uses it to reveal mundane detail – what he is here – father is outraged – downgrades Mark’s use of history

“I know the story she is about to tell, word for word…”

Still have happy memories/communication

Focus on Mark’s memories – his childhood

Because his parents didn’t reveal memories, it compelled him to discover it for himself

“I turned my own bedroom into a horror-house of memories… photographs of massacred bodied.”

Didn’t understand it, as it wasn’t explained

Chapter 17

Historical recreation of his Grandfather’s life

When he was in the concentration camps – Yossl’s dad

Very blunt “Jews were only fit to die…”

Representation – history is blunt/scientific

Chapter 18

“…even today I’m still scared of darkness…”

“Nightfall is to me sadness and darkness and I just can’t disconnect my past…”

How the past influences the future.

Chapter 19

Presents different memories/perspectives

Highlights the contrast between history and memory and their cohesive nature

“I believe I have never come home so depressed. I am a man but I cry at home because of the fact that this was expected of me.” Regretting was cruelty – which wasn’t his choice

“What we did was brutal, cruel and inhumane…”

“I can’t describe my inner feelings.”

Chapter 20

Combination of history and memory – allocation of how everyone was murdered – scientific, blunt

“Jews do not remember with flowers… they wither… as if the corpse is a temporal thing… Jews do not remember with mirrors… Jews remember with stones… and… with Lords…” repetition – stones – permanent

“tak, tak, tak” – memory – trigger – sound – aural - Yossl

Chapter 21

Memory remembers scenes of emotional hurt.

“Damn Jew can’t you run?” – A forceful use of language – Yossl’s memories

“Left, right. Left, right.” – Something to trigger memory – repetition of marching

The fight of memory – the fight to reach the fiftieth gate – “He throws the child against the gate. He smashes her head.”

The purpose of the text – To remove the ‘blackness’ – For Mark himself to reach the fiftieth gate, and remove the burden from his children

“An old man struggles…” “A younger man cries out…” – Contrast between young and old – the older man is adamant, he struggles, he is stubborn reflects Mark’s relationship with his parents – Mark cries out and tries to remove the blackness, while his parents continue to struggle.

“Her O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” – Prayer – impact of religion on text – their faith never falters

“What of Hinda and her four children?” – Women unable to support themselves – became head of the family while their husbands went to war – Mark’s worry about his own family – his children growing up in the dark

Chapter 22

Yossl’s memories

The distortion of memory – “I don’t know what date… what month… what year.”

“He says it was cold, Winter. But it was warm. Autumn.” – The loss makes it feel cold.

Memory remember scenes of emotional trauma “People were scared, the dogs were chasing us, everyone was chasing…” – creates empathy – rhythm of speech

The conflict of history and memory

“Dare I tell him his age?”

History is told in a factual manner – incomplete sentences – emphasis on dates and time – makes Yossl’s experience real

The ‘us and them’ perspective as a result of the war – “They took us away. They marched us…” – both sides of the war – anonymous – like Yossl’s number – loss of identity “Thirteen? Fourteen?,” “1942? or 1943?” – number don’t matter

Yossl’s personal context – looks at death through the eyes of a child “Not yet bar mitzvahed…” – looks at death through physical aspects

Chapter 23

History is the main focus of the chapter – number and statistics

Memory – “Where have the millions of Jews gone?” – death though it’s not stated – ambiguous

Chapter 24

Memory provides closure – Mark needs his parents’ memory to gain closure – memory cannot be learnt

“Of my mother’s world I knew next to nothing.”

Genia is opposed to history – shows her son doubts her

“Do you remember you told me you were the only one to survive Bolszowce well it’s true. I mean, I believed you, but it’s really true.” – shows he had doubt

History needs proof

“It was not the facts that were held under suspicion, but her credibility as a survivor.” – Mark associates trauma with physical injury – coincides with the history/ memory theme, the objective/subjective

History can provide closure – Yossl has his past outlined – Genia doesn’t

The impact on the next generation

“Ow-switch. O shwish. Aaaarshuitz. And later were added: Arse-witch, Oswiecim, sounds which lull me to sleep as I count the syllables jumping into the fence.”

Chapter 25

Parents feel they missed out on childhood memories – cherish trivialities

“I was good at my work. I was young, but I was still good.”

Memory colliding with history

“But I can still se the holes” – Yossl still has scars from the war – emotional scars

The disturbance of memory refreshes past trauma

“Why, why has we brought them here?”

Proud of history – it is physical proof of one’s memory

“My father explains the process of the smelter as if her were guiding prospective buyers through his clothing factory.”

The difficulty in accepting history

“It is difficult to imagine my father enslaved in physical toil”

Chapter 26

“How can you be so sure? Were you there? You think that suddenly because you’ve read a few pieces of paper that you suddenly understand everything?”

“Grey hair from all your questions.” – Characterisation – Genia is tired

Chapter 27

Kurt Gerstein – experience of people getting off the trains

“The final moment can never be retrieved by history. Nor by memory,”

“It was difficult to separate them while emptying the room for the next batch.”- Batch – not even human

Chapter 28

Yossl’s experiences at Auschwitz and the concentration camps

No real perception of time – mark has dates, etc

“I became his calendar, making sense of time for him, when days, months and even years meant nothing.”

“Tap, tap, tap.” – trigger

“He is frustrated, angry at memory again.”

Chapter 29

“The fire; the parchment burning; the bodies buried; the letters soaring high; turned to ashen dust.”

Chapter 30

Mark passing on memories to his children

Wonders whether he should have told his kids about their grandparents memories – will it hurt them>

“Free of the mountains and stony walls that hem it’s inhabitants into history.”

“Only a broken heart yearns to heal the world.”

Chapter 31

“I don’t remember how the transport happened – was it by truck or… this, I don’t really remember.”- Memory repressed – Genia has forgotten

Historical facts “soon after my mother arrival.” Contrasting to facts

Yossl able to express memory easily “A disaster! How could you bring me back here? So I can have more nightmares?”

Chapter 32

“I don’t believe you!” Mark has knowledge of history which clashes with memory “Prove it… I don’t believe this part. Prove it.” P190.

Religion – Judaism – spread throughout – Sabbath – Day of rest – Genia had to learn the Lord’s Prayer in Polish

Chapter 33

“For every alternative there is an alternate.” How things could have changed

“Left. Right.” – Luck

“Imagine, the same story, different endings” Everything left to chance

Chapter 34

“Oh my papa he was so wonderful…” Didn’t give Genia fatherly connection

“This book will be for generations to come… Please, I beg you be careful what you say. It’s forever, It’s our family.” Doesn’t want him to degrade their family

“Raid on my mother’s memory.”- Relates himself to those who tormented his mother – he raids her memory himself – connotations to stealing

Chapter 35

“So when I exhausted memory, I turned to history.”- Relates to history – less ‘true’ than memory

“Memory visited her as a stranger from another world.”p214 – Doesn’t like to access/revisit her memories – it’s a ‘stranger’- unfamiliar

Food – trigger – buttermilk

Chapter 36

“You can’t begin to understand what it means to survive the death of your entire world.” – Nothing lives up to the memory – can read and learn, but never experience

“And this woman – this woman who gave me life, who is she?” Mark talking about Genia – doesn’t know everything about Genia – so unlike Yossl – doesn’t talk

Chapter 37

“I enter a field with a river of wine… I dreamt that the wine has turned to blood.” – Rapid change in situation/life

Gate keeper “I do not have the key.” Mark cannot experience his parent’s memories

Chapter 39

“She wasn’t seen but she was heard.” Never had an identity – identity through Mark

“Doesn’t the photographer know that in two months my grandmother’s smile will be erased forever?” rhetorical question – memory of smile lives one – ‘erased’ ironic

Best dress – holiday – happy memories – contrast

“Genia you are a survivor, Genia you are a fighter…”

Chapter 40

“You can take the Baker out of Bekiermaszyn but you can’t take the Bekiermaszyn out of the Baker.”

Getting more questions than answers – questions make family relive the painful memories – but Mark needs them for his own personal enlightenment

Chapter 41

Focuses on history

Documents shed light on the memories of his family

Contrast between history and memory – informal/personal language “Lament propels me foreword in desperate bid for illumination” find out memory

Short, truncated sentences “The lie grows.” Lacks emotion

Single photograph – source of history

“What happens to families that die?” Baker

“Again I find myself peering into memory’s black hole.” Endless memory – endless search

Chapter 42

“Jews were finished” somewhat matter-of-fact comment – contrast

“Memories discarded – only given meaning by those who are searching for them “Silver spoons, faded photographs and feathers fly overhead, the empty contents of a case abandoned by its owners.”

Chapter 43

“Child born with infinite memory.” Journey will never be complete as memory is endless

Chapter 44

“One stone for so many lives and so many untold deaths.” Collective memory in fragments

“Pushing the darkness of night into our vehicle.” – Vehicle to remembrance – trigger to memory

Figures – objects “Shadowy figures grope in the dark forming a sea of human pillar held upright in a wooden cage…” mass of people

Chapter 45

History sees numbers – memory sees people “’No!’ I say, ‘It’s not numbers, it’s people…’”

Move away form facts, onto a personal connection “Towards the fiftieth gate where light hovers inside the darkness…”

Chapter 46

“I searched for my parents. Hoping to find them somewhere between A – Z” Interweaving true account and analysis

History provokes memory

“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse and therefore choose life.” Suppress memory, or choose journey – reach enlightenment

Chapter 47

“In the end, the beginning.” Paradox – cyclical structure of memory in the text – in the end of this journey – the beginning is enlightenment

Recurring light “She lights a candle for his death.” Reminisces his life

Occupation of Poland – context

History – “I can trace his journey from other fragments in the package.” History creates memory – history reinforces what memory cannot explain

Report card – Mark shedding light on father’s darkness “sometimes I think that if I were granted the time before I would die, I would prefer to leave the idea of me, rather than bits and pieces…”

Chapter 48

“It’s all I have, she says, memories, just memories and nothing more.”

“I have found my first memory.”

Trigger – lock of hair.

Chapter 49

Memories can be shared with others

Context – Russian immigrants and Jews – dancing

Memory reinforcing history “From Germany we went by train.”

History – verification – dates

“For my father, his new life was accompanied by a new name…”rebirth – clean slate, transportation from Buchenwald to Melbourne

“Freedom is not a happy ending. It is a flame that dances in remembrance inside the blackness.” Not free from their curse – their memory

Chapter 50

“…It always begins in blackness until the first light illuminated a hidden fragment of memory…”

Suggests one truth

Cyclical memory – same quote used in beginning of text

‘First’ – reoccurring motif

‘Blackness’ – suppression of memory

The final collaboration of history and memory – the nature of history and memory – notion of piecing together history and memory throughout the 49 gates.

History is a narrative of human experience, written retrospectively. There is a process of evaluation and reflection that colours, interprets and reshapes events into patterns of memory that can be selective and distinctly individual.

The past is not finite, as The Fiftieth Gate highlights as it is a world marked by shifting perceptions, contrasting moments of suffering and triumph. Authenticity and verifiable details make history a more reliable ‘story’ of human experience through the additional use of personal memories.

• History repeats itself (English proverb)

• Not to know what happened before one was born is to always remain a child

• Every person’s memory is his private literature (Aldous Huxley)

• That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach (Aldous Huxley)

• History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

The Fiftieth Gate explores the impact of personal experience on memory and therefore history. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ‘Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own mind.’

Memory is fragile, often short term and highly subjective. The mind’s impact on memory can seriously affect a person’s life long after the events that are burned into memory have actually occurred.

Memories can stagnate action and prevent healing, however, pain and suffering can be cathartic and liberating as it is in the case of Baker’s parents who find great release in having their memories of the Holocaust dredged from them. It links them to the momentous times that impacted on Jewry as a whole and this helps give personal understanding of their experience.

Memories can open windows of enlightenment as in The Fiftieth Gate.

• Once described as ‘a journey from despair and death towards hope and life; the story of a son who enters his parents’ memories and, inside the darkness, finds light’.

• The past and present become fused in this non-fiction text. It is testimony to the importance of personal experience and memory on subsequent existence and history.

• Veracity and authenticity are achieved by the author giving readers direct access to his parent’s history through a range of research techniques that have been used to record their memories for the posterity of future generations.

• Memories are a fragile commodity – tangible links with the past become even more tenuous – this text has an important cultural function in cementing verifiable truths about history into the public record.

• The rebirth of neo-Nazi ideologies and the practices of revisionist historians who distort facts so that a completely different reading of history is given emphasises the value of this type of text

• Access to the truth is more tangible when it is gleaned through the memories of personal experience rather than sifted from historical data and artifacts. Baker has achieved a melding of the two so that research verifies and bears out the verbal histories of those who were there.

• Responders ‘come and see’ various metaphorical gates of time, what their survival represents.

• Baker makes a journey into the past to better understand the present – journey motif – highlight a growth in personal knowledge and moral development.

• Metaphorically, the 50th gate is ‘where light hovers inside the darkness. Inside the broken heart’ and attests to the resilience of the human spirit. Baker describes it as ‘the highest knowledge of God’, a state of enhanced self-awareness and acceptance.

• The legitimacy of personal memory as a way of passing the lessons of the past into the present has been confirmed by the author’s journey through the ‘gates of the heart’ to the stage where he welcomes the responsibility for enshrining the memories of his parents for his children. Genia affirms ‘It’s all I have’, only ‘Memories. Just memories. Nothing more’.

Style

• The text is about historical verification – an important source for Mark Baker’s history of the Holocaust

• He offers readers a personal perspective that uncovers history

• Visual and aural images are used to build a permanent record of his parents’ violent past

• His parents’ traumatic experience becomes a didactic lesson for a broad audience

• Multiple storylines weave the past into the present through the perspectives of a father, a mother and a son into a non-fiction narration that is able to portray a graphic depiction of the past based on factual experience.

• The author is often brutally honest about the difficulties and the pain he has caused, admitting that his ‘vague’ idea of setting out to record the past ended up ‘not a search, an obsession, a raid on my mother’s memory, a son’s theft of her past.’

• Baker’s pivotal involvement at every step gives him the authority to speak on behalf of his parents and others like them

• Authentic characterisation is often reflected in heavily accented colloquialisms which add veracity to what is said

• Readers can identify with the varied emotions the parents experience therefore better comprehend the historical magnitude of their stories

• Mark uses clear explanations to chart the process he has followed to reach the fiftieth gate of understanding, telling us that ‘when I exhausted history I turned to memory’

• Recurring motifs and evocative imagery give the story that unfolds a powerful resonance and confronting reality

• Various images such as graveyards, fields, gates and the act of running are used to unify different phases of the text

• The end of one chapter has Genia describing how she had to run for her life to escape capture while the next chapter opens with a scene from an athletic race where Mark’s parents are yelling to him to ‘run’ in a totally different context

• The use of italics indicates when a different parents is speaking and gives a more verbatim account of what they say

• What Genia recalls is ‘pitch black. Pitch black’ and visions from a ‘horrible nightmare’.

• Metaphors are used to make certain moments in the history particularly graphic and emotive

• A claustrophobic and nightmarish atmosphere is conjured up in descriptions of the gas chambers

• Their transportation to the camp is captured by references to ‘shadowy figures’, ‘grope in the dark’, ‘sea of human pillars’, ‘in a wooden cage’.

Genia

• A lone survivor who has no concentration camp experience to help design her past or cope with it

• A complex woman, both fragile and strong ‘sometimes I know how lucky I really am… when I’m in control’

• Regrets about her stolen youth and loss of family are never far from her mind – explains her recurring depression

• ‘her medals, she knew, were cold dark eyes and delicately sculptured face, features which connected her present mien to the image.

• Mark often mentions her appearance and the wrinkles that mark the ravages of time, her ‘ruins’

• Vanity is female trait responders can identify with and comments are realistically individual rather than stereotypical Jewish mothers – her flaws make her real, personable and arouses empathy of readers.

• In some ways, life itself is battlefield and in her attitude towards life she acted ‘like a victorious soldier displayed in full finery’.

• Traditional aspects of culture are important to her

• Her story always begins with the word ‘then’ for it was ‘the key to everything; the title she gave to her story’.

• She has a unique connection with the clothes she wears – represents facets of her life that help give it meaning, structure and coherence. ‘shmattes’ – ‘a narrative in her life’

• Seeing her life signposted by memorial religious events – inner pain frequently just below the surface.

• Regret blankets her views on life – readers see it’s through Mark’s perceptions his parents are revealed

• A phase of her life has been stolen – only sees herself in broken fragments of reflections from the past

• Memories are filled with emotion – resorts to metaphorical images to describe her feelings ‘nightfall is to me sadness and darkness and I just can’t disconnect my past, you know.’

• Her heavy accents make her portrait more realistic

• Little regard for benefit of history ‘where will the past get you in life?’

• Her revenge for the evils is her children – the horrors of the past are reconciled with happiness of the present and painful act of verbalising pat personal experience is validated

Yossl/Joe

• Baker highlights the fragility of his father in figurative terms ‘I had already caught a glimpse of time doing its charmed dance around his body.. his life was a gamble’.

• Described as being ‘pitifully angry at his memory for failing him’ Mark’s descriptions show intimate knowledge of mannerisms and habits – mutual journey to past strengthens their bond

• Initially dismissive about the project – mocks his son’s obsession ‘fecks, fecks’

• He enjoys human relationships and has an ‘unquenchable instinct for sociability’ – from camps

• Joe is twice reborn – 1st in Buchenwald and then Australia.

• Only observes traditional Jewish law and religious practice under pressure from family. ‘His Jewish world was a shell that protected him’.

• Survivor friendships form a close-knit network that is very important – hate not recognising somebody. ‘my father’s fate was not possessed of the same urgency as hers. His was a past written on a page of history shared by other survivors’.

• Characterisation drawn for readers as we witness his process of remembering ‘when his hands cease tapping… a neglected piece of memory has been retrieved’.

• Memory is represented as a tactile place – real thing equated with factual veracity

• Metaphors are used ‘landscape of his past’; Genia too ‘territory she is reclaiming’

• Tendency to be apprehensive – fears the worst – especially Jewish gatherings.

• Metaphor highlights his fear of being targeted as Jewish

• Tells his stories ‘in matter-of-fact tone, with good humour but never with an enlarged sense of his role’.

• Doesn’t invest it with as much emotion as Genia

• Resonance of place releases powerful emotions that disturb both son and reader in the pain that obviously accompanies them.

• Tries to clarify the intensity of his memories by demanding whether the son comprehends their suffering ‘you read, you read. Books, books everywhere. But do you know how it feels?’

• Brutality of experiences become clear in the heightened emotive language that he uses and his desperate attempt to capture the utter sense of abandonment they felt. ‘we didn’t go like sheep to the slaughter’, ‘we were standing like little lambs. Screams, crying. A massacre of weeping lambs’.

Themes

The power of traumatic experience

The fragmented nature of memory shows how traumatic experiences can change events. Yossl thinks that one day in Auschwitz was cold, but it was Autumn, it was warm. This shows that the trauma of this experience has disturbed his memory.

How does it engage the responder?

Pain is universal.

Through the use of emotive language it engages on a fundamental human level. It contrasts to the objective and factual nature of history.

The experiences of Jewish refugees in Australia after WW2

Movement from Buchenwald to Melbourne, symbolic for new beginnings, attempting to leave the past behind them. ‘Grey hairs from all your questions…’ Genia is tied, history is draining

Experience of going to the Buchenwald Ball

Learning a new language

How does it engage the responder?

Relief – Genia and Yossl got out of trouble

Struggle is universal

Attempting to repress the past is coloured by emotion. Genia and Yossl are in Australia, so they are within the same contextual background as the responder, thus they can relate to the text more readily. This closes the gap between WWII and now.

The struggle of the children of Holocaust survivors to understand, respect and move on from their parents’ experiences

Mark dresses up as Hitler for the fancy dress party

‘In the absence of the Holocaust I was compelled to create my own.’

‘To my parents, Genia and Yossl… For my children, Gabriel, Sarah and Rachel…’ Baker writes the fiftieth gate so that his children might escape the blackness. Baker needs this book for his own personal enlightenment

How does it engage the responders?

Baker is not directly affected by the Holocaust and nor is the responder, so they can empathise with Baker.

The cultural life of Jewish Australians

“‘Our sages remember… the parchment is burning but the letter are soaring high above me’ My parents remember the parchment burning, the bodies buried, letters soaring high, turned to ashen dust.” (p174) – influence of change on Jewish Australians – different view of religion

How does it engage the responder?

The influence of religion on this text is very powerful and their interpretation of the sages shows the extent to which the Holocaust has affected the. Baker uses midrash to engage the responder

The effect of the Holocaust on Jewish thought, culture and community

Yossl – wants to know everyone – influenced from camps

Buchenwald Ball

‘…but nothing seems to set alarm bells ringing as much as public demonstrations of Jewishness.’ – still targeted by Holocaust – How the past effects the present – Yossl doesn’t want to be recognised as a Jew

How does it engage the responder?

Baker collaborates the context of the responder and the Holocaust, which bridges the gap between WWII and now.

The role of memory and remembrance

‘The memory visited her as a stranger from another world.’

Darkness pervades Genia’s memories. She recalls ‘Pitch black. Pitch black’ and visions from a ‘horrible nightmare’ – truncated sentences – the horrors of the Holocaust flood Genia’s memories – the language is powerful due to its emotive nature

How does it engage the responder?

It engages the responder, as the emotive nature of memory gives a ‘face’ to history, this engaging on a fundamental human level.

Cultural Memory

Genia is able to bury some of the ghosts from her past and affirm the positive process that her son has dragged her through. She realises that it has achieved something momentous that is representational of the survival of Jewry itself and that her story and that of others like her, needs to be told. Mark has recorded her story and she recognises its value: ‘So always remember it, and your children will remember it. They will survive, they will sing and they will dance’. The personal story of two survivors is scarred but not destroyed them and cultural memory needs to comprehend their methods of survival as readily as it records the historical details of internecine violence.

What readers are given, along with the facts of the past, is a vision of what has followed. Mark proudly describes both of them ‘laughing, crying, shouting; showering my brother and me with love and adoration, dreaming through us their burnt desires. An Australian Jewish childhood.’ At one point in the book, Mark signs himself as ‘The People’s Investigator’ and this role is crucial for cultural memory. The journey has proved beneficial for all and it is with pride that the son is able to ‘return memory to them. Only then can I assume responsibility for their stories. First I must give in order to take. And give generously, details and details, fecks and fecks.’

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Mark’s own history

Mark feels a certain duality of role in his relationship with his parents who are the primary source for his journey into the past. It is history that has affected his life from an early age and the author admits that the process of quantifying and validating the events that occurred becomes almost and obsession for him.

• He sees he is both son and academic researcher – conflict of interests – makes the delving into the past painful for parents

• He reflects on what he does and why he does it – allows reader to gain insight into his own memories and personal history

• He confesses he embedded himself into the world they had experienced – fusing history and imagination – fantasy world linked him to the past. ‘I invented a biography for myself from elements of my parents’ lives…’ He looks back on his own past trying to comprehend his motivation for make-believe – results in conclusion that ‘In the absence of the Holocaust, I was compelled to create my own…’ – thus the author becomes a mediator between the past, present and future.

• He sets out on ‘a fact-finding mission’ in an effort to verify the version of history his parents has passed down to him. He seeks eye witness accounts or documentary evidence – he doubts the veracity of their memories.

• Often he pushes, prompts and perseveres where they would choose to be left undisturbed.

• As the process continues, transformation begins where Mark changes course, becoming more participatory: ‘I knew then I has to wrap myself in the details of her story, if only immunise myself against the thing that lay there…’ The act of listening gives him emotional access to the often ‘empty and chaotic landscape of death’ that they describe.

Midrash as a literary device in Mark Baker’s Fiftieth Gate

The word midrash comes from the Hebrew root DARASH meaning ‘to investigate’ or to ‘seek out’. Indeed Midrash is exactly that – it is and investigation of the Biblical text in order to try and probe its deeper meaning/s.

Midrash therefore refers to both a method of interpretation (exegesis) and a body of literature that is a result of this literary methodology.

Midrash is an ancient form of exegesis but it continues to be practiced in Jewish communities in the present as Jews continue to search for meaning and relevance in their sacred texts. Midrashic method rests upon four basic assumptions concerning the Biblical text

1. The Biblical text is cryptic ie. not self-evident. We therefore need to search the text to understand its true or multilayered meanings.

2. The Biblical text is perfect and self-referential. For example, if the text seems to contradict itself (such as the different accounts of the number of Israelites that left Egypt), this simply means that we have not understood its true meaning OR the answer is found elsewhere in the Bible.

3. The bible text does not simply describe Israel’s collective past but is relevant to its present – particularly to current beliefs and practices.

4. The Biblical text is in some way Divine or divinely inspired.

Midrash is comprised of three elements

1. 1 Exegesis

2. Starting with Scripture

3. Ending in community

Midrash can begin as word play, a concern with textual irregularity, word plat, parable and all of the above. Ultimately it seeks to provide a ‘lesson’ of sorts – whether that be to expound a verse more clearly and with greater relevance to contemporary communal needs, to make political or theological point or to seek out an answer to a question posed by the text itself. It is a varied and immense literature spanning the entirety of Scripture, beginning, some argue, within the Biblical text itself, reaching its greatest heights in classical Rabbinic literature and continuing into the present day.

Midrash is a corpus of literature that has enabled Jewish communities to remain in dialogue with living Biblical text – bridging the gap between past and future – and enabling the text to intersect and inform the day to day life of generations of Jewish communities.

Consider the Midrash below:

Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rav: When Moses ascended on high to receive the Torah he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing taggin to the letters. Moses said: “Lord of the Universe, who stays thy hand?” He replied “There will be a man at the end of many generation. Akiba Ben Joseph by name, who will expound, upon each title, heaps and heaps of laws” “Lord of the Universe,” said Moses, “permit me to see him” He replied: “Turn around.”

Moses went (into the academy of Rabbi Akiba) and sat down behind eight rows (of Akiba’s disciples). Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when thy came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master “When do you know it?” and the latter replied . “It is a law given to Moses at Sinai, he was comforted.

This Midrash powerfully illustrates how midrash has allowed the Hebrew Bible to remain a living document in Jewish communities throughout history. The parable spans literally thousands of years as Moses is reported in time from Senai to the second century yeshiva of the famous Talmudic Rabbi Akiva. Yet the point of the parable in clear : Divine law is immutable and changing – it was ‘given to Moses at Senai’. All Akiva is doing is ‘interpreting’ what is already there. Yet is doing so, he is making the law vital and relevant for the Jewish community in which he had lived.

Similarly, in Baker’s novel, midrashic technique is used to link and differentiate ancient and modern Jewish history – particularly the experience of the Holocaust. Consider the following passage:

Our sages remember: Rabbi Hanina Ben Teradoin was studying the Torah and holding a Scroll of the Law to his chest.

Our enemies took hold of him, wrapped him in the scroll, placed bundles of branches around him and set them on fire.

His disciples called out, ‘Rabbi, what do you see?’

He answered them, ‘The parchment is burning but the letters are soaring high above me.’

My parents remember:

The fire

The parchment burning

The bodies buried

Letters soaring high.

Turned to ashen dust.

(The Fiftieth Gate p.174)

Triggers

Sound

“Tak, tak, tak” – record history on typewriter

“A nervous rhythm”

“So too does my mother recall the shots… the moaning… the terror”

“Wshhh. Wshhh” – the sound of running water triggers Yossl’s memory of being showered in the chamber

“you could hea those boots, boots, boots” – sound of heavy footsteps

“Zhiip. My hair… Zhiip” – memory of hair cut in concentration camps

Prayer “I can still hear her reciting it”

“Tap, tap, tap” – tries to remember, he taps his fingers – memory has been retrieved

“I remember how everyone was saying Muller… it has stuck.”

“He practices ringing on a bell… its peal echoing across the landscape of his past.” – Yossl

“Can you hear or do the screams from the mass grave drown out the sounds… of Wierzbnik in its innocence?”

“Genia, I still hear it, ‘Genia you’re not allowed’” – sound of her own name can prompt memory

Yiddish melodies and lullabies “Ohh my papa”

Fragments of recognition through words which spoke of mother’s tears…”

Genia – “A new melody snatched from a forgotten moment of her life.”

“The camp song whispered his cry for freedom” – “Buchenwald song”

“Tateh Tateh” – “he imitates the sound of a young boy…”

“Left, Right. Left. Right.” – the sound of these words is the sound of life and death

“at the sound of a visitor she would jump under a bed and hide for hours” – sound of arrival she relates to past experiences of her being torn away from her family.

Sight

“The Ukrainians are marching past the market square… gesturing us to enter the vehicle so we can escape his approaching nightmare.” Pg 182 – the appearance of the Ukrainians ignites painful memories of Yossl’s traumatic experiences

“No the chimneys were closer... it wasn’t this spot.” – in Yossl’s mind the image of his concentration camp is different to that presented when they visited the camp. Because these images fail to collaborate he can tell they are in the wrong part of the camp.

“A gate confirms that he knew this town once before...” – the sight of the gate reminds Yossl of his childhood residence in the town.

The prisoner number tattoo is a visible sign of what the Nazi’s put the prisoners through referring to them as numbers not names.

“Pitch black.. 100 per cent black…” – Genia’s adult dislike of the darkness is a direct result of her childhood ‘imprisonment’ in a small dark bunker.

“Nightfall is home to me sadness and darkness and I just can’t disconnect my past…”

Smell

“It seems right that his memory should begin in his stomach. Doesn’t all knowledge originate with a single forbidden bite?”

“A terrible odour wafts past my nose, different from the smell of decay… which dominated our carriage.”

“The smell of burning flesh…” – Yvonne

“The air is mixed with the pungent odour of fresh vomit and faeces…”

“My clothes smell of decay and ruin, yet the music revives my body. It makes me feel human again…”

“I want to know more about the blackberries picked from forests surrounding his home Wierzbnick. He allows the smell to carry him through his house...” pg 27 – The diction of ‘move’, exposes the character’s need to manipulate smell as a vehicle which carries him to a particular destination

“Mmmm, what did they call it? Mmmm. I can smell it but I can’t remember what we called it. The oven I remember. The smell of special cakes with blackberries from the forest. It makes me hungry just thinking about it…” – repetition of ‘mmmm…’ as the smell in combination with the longing to remember the type of food shows the distorted memory.

Touch

“He knocks with his knuckles on the planks of wood against which he had once rested his body…”

“I slept good last night. You know, it’s a comfy bed.” – Comfort absent during the war, propelling a desire to feel the comfort he missed out on. Hard/uncomfortable beds trigger back those memories.

“’Push,’ we scream, ‘lift the latch and push.’”

“No. They’ll think we’re coming back to take our house. I remember too much now. No.” – Touching may open the gates to a flood of memories he wants to forget.

“’…the hot tea,’ I tell my father. ‘Do you remember someone spilled hot tea on me?’” – Physical pain, traumatic memories never forgotten.

Feelings of coldness Yossl remembers Auschwitz as cold, but is contradicted by history. Makes every effort to not feel cold, and therefore not feel the way he did on that day – not relive those moments

Taste

“Soft and doughy, filled with sweet cheese and bitter memories.” Page 211

“My mother still savours these American chocolate bars, her rations in Berline.” Page 281

“They made such pastries for me – pierogi. Sometimes special things. They always gave me the same to eat as their child.” Page 193

“’Everyday we’d go into her corner shop on the way to school and buy icecream.’” Page 130

“The thirst is harder to bear than the hunger; a desperate woman feeds her baby its own urine, while another offers a child the salty juice of her skin to lick.” Page 265

“Lollies. Anyone who was alive today from another town would remember buba laya and her lollies.” Page 29

“For my father, it is cabbage soup that connects his tastebuds to the camps. Anything tastes good in hunger, he tell us, a piece of bread, a drop of rain, a watery soup.” Page 281

Representation and Text: History and Memory: The Fiftieth Gate

History and memory validate each other

Memory can be unreliable – emotions

Individual and collective history and memory

Objective vs subjective information

Tragedy of Holocaust is lifelong

Impact of suppressed memories on future generations

History lacks personal experience and empathy

History patched the gaps to form a mosaic of memory

Fragmented nature of memory – based on senses

Purposes of combining both is to gain an accurate representation of truth

Uses midrash to offer insight to the responder

No language to accurately represent the experience of Holocaust survivors

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Cultural Context

Sages

Torah

Yossl wants to know everybody – cultural context of Wierzbnik – sense of community

Baker dresses up as Hitler – pop culture influence – sensationalisation of Holocaust

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