Strategy III: Put Your sources into conversation with one another

Strategy III: Put your sources into conversation with one another

Two of my sources, Survivors of the Holocaust by Hanna Yablonka and Attitudes Toward the Holocaust Among Israeli High School Students by Uri Farago, use statistical analysis to prove their respective points. Yablonka cites a 1949 study that surveyed the general sentiments of Holocaust survivors fighting in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Farago’s article explores the results of a questionnaire given to Israeli high school about their opinions of Holocaust commemoration. These studies were conducted forty-two years apart, they both shed light on the experience of the Holocaust survivor in Israel and the relationship between survivors and sabras (Israeli-born natives). The statistics in Yablonka’s work focus on the experience of the Gahal (new immigrant) soldiers compared to the sabras. By 1948-49, many Holocaust survivors had emigrated to Israel and within weeks were drafted into the Israeli army. Immediately, most of the Gahal had a “deleterious effect on the army” (Yablonka 131). Still recovering from the wounds of WWII, the survivors were not psychologically equipped to handle the strain of the War of Independence. A January study reported that 43% of the of the immigrants experienced low morale. 88% percent of the Gahal soldiers reported “they had been given insufficient information on opportunities in Israel” (Yablonka 131). 14% of Gahal soldiers versus 81% of sabras and army veterans reported having made “lots of friends” (Yablonka 132). Yablonka’s article also discusses the subordination of Holocaust survivors and their inabilities to assimilate into the army culture.
Farago’s 1991 study of Israeli high school students illustrates a greater level of acceptance in Israeli society. He describes the Holocaust’s position as the center of national consciousness and the crux of Israeli “civil religion.” Farago asked the students various questions relating to their identification with Holocaust survivors. He asked them to rank their responses, and he organized the results by ethnicity (Israeli, European/American, Asian/African). To the question “Sense of identification with Jews who suffered in the Holocaust,” 85.5% of Israel answered either “Considerably Yes” or “Yes.” Clearly, the Holocaust is, at least subconsciously, on the minds of most Israelis. Yet the Israeli youth had a more difficult time relating to the actual experience of the Jew in the Holocaust. Only 44.6% of Israelis agreed with the statement “Every Jew in the world should regard himself as if he were a survivor of the Holocaust.” Only 24.1% felt as if “he himself were a Holocaust survivor.” Only forty years removed from the event itself, Israelis had lost the immediate sense of the trauma from the Holocaust. In Israel, the consensus opinion is that this removal is a positive, healthy development in society. Many of the students who answered the survey probably had relatives who were involved in the Holocaust. Still, they have undergone the innately human process of healing. Forty years earlier, survivors were unable to assimilate, unable to behave as functioning members of society. They were simply paralyzed with grief. But as Farago’s study indicates, one or two generations of separation helped absorb the horrible memories into the status quo. These two sources show the grieving process’s progression in Israeli society.