Camp Hemshekh

Camp Hemshekh (Yiddish, Yidish, ייִדיש : "continuation") was a Jewish summer camp that was founded in 1959 by Holocaust survivors who were active in the Jewish Labor Bund, a socialist party in Eastern Europe.Camp Hemshekh had as its goal instilling in its campers the ideals of the Jewish socialist movement that flourished in interwar Poland: socialism, secular Yiddish culture, equality and justice, and the Bundist concept of doikayt, “hereness,” that Jews should live, build their culture and struggle for their rights wherever they dwell, rather than seeking refuge in a Jewish homeland. Camp Hemshekh closed in 1978 because the number of campers diminished.

"Ghetto Night"

One of the more memorable events each summer was "Ghetto Night". Ghetto Night took place on the third Sunday of August. Ghetto Night was a solemn, all-day commemoration of the Jewish partisans and victims of the Nazis that culminated in a gripping English and Yiddish retelling of the Holocaust through poetry and song. At the end of the performance, as the piano softly played the haunting melody of Ani Ma'amin (“I Believe”), (a song reportedly sung by many Jews during the Holocaust as they entered the gas chambers), everyone walked out single file and followed a torch-lit path to the "Ghetto Denkmol". The Ghetto Night program, titled “Varshever Oyfshtand un Geto Akademie” (“Warsaw Uprising and Ghetto Program”), was as close we came to a religious service in the adamantly secular Camp Hemshekh. It began with a bellowed command: “Z’khor! Gedenk vos es hot geton mit dayn folk der daytshisher nazi amalek” — “Remember! Remember what the German Nazi Amalek did to your people.” It closed with a pledge that we chanted in unison: “To remember and remember and remember for all time.” This was followed by a call and response: “Let there be no forgetfulness! No forgetfulness! Let there be no dimming of memory! No dimming of memory! Let the memory be clear as glass, cold as ice and bright as a diamond.” The Ghetto Night Program included the heartrending, such as the untitled poem that concluded: “The hands of the killers/Broke the locked hold/Of our mother’s mad embrace/It was all in vain/The frantic cries/The murderer-hands clawed our flesh/Hurled us against the wall/To instant death.” It included the gruesome, like Yuri Suhl’s “The Permanent Delegate”: “I am the spasm of a body convulsed in flames, the crumbling of a skeleton, the boiling of blood,” and the macabre, such as Aaron Zeitlin’s “Kinder fun Majdanek” (“Children of Majdanek”): “Kopele, where is your head? Where is the light of your eyes?” At its heart, however, the program was a tribute to resistance. Much of the text was taken from Never to Forget: the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto, written by Howard Fast and William Gropper, published in 1946 by the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order, International Workers Order There were also up-tempo, bold songs like Shmerke Kaczergin-ski’s Yid Du Partizaner — “Fun di getos tfise vent/in di velder fraye/anshtot keytn oyf di hent/kh’alt a biks a naye!” (“From the ghetto’s prison walls/into the free forests/Instead of chains on my hands/I carry a new rifle!”)

"Ghetto Denkmol"

The "Ghetto Denkmol" was a simple memorial that consisted of a replica of the barbed-wire, glass-encrusted ghetto wall, six black signposts of representing the 6 million Jews murdered, each one inscribed, in Yiddish, with the name of a death camp. In the center stood a striking mosaic of a ghetto fighter, created in 1962 by one of the older campers, Daniel Libeskind, later to become a world-renowned architect. His mosaic partisan was a young man dressed in military-style garb, triumphantly stepping out of flames, one arm thrusting a rifle, the other with fist clenched. The face was an oval devoid of features. Throughout the day, a boy and girl from the group of oldest campers stood vakh (watch or vigil) at the Denkmol. Dressed in work-shirts and red bandanas, they were silent and solemn, changing shifts every hour so that the wall was never unguarded, and so all the oldest campers had the chance to perform this honor.

Memory as an element in the Camp

Memory was embedded everywhere, beginning with the camp’s name: Hemshekh means “continuation” in Yiddish. A banner above the stage in the hall where we performed plays and had socials implored, “Lomir Trogn Dem Gayst Vos Men Hot Undz Fartroyt” — “Let us carry the spirit that has been entrusted to us.” A small rock garden where we held campfires and meetings was named in honor of Froim Lozer, a Bundist who had fought for a small park to be built in the crowded, dirty industrial city of Lodz for workers to enjoy a bit of air after long hours in the textile factories. Even nature was pressed into the service of memory: Small wooden plaques nailed to trees bore the names Henryk Ehrlich and Viktor Alter, Bundist activists and resistance organizers murdered by Stalin’s police, and Mordechai Anielewicz, the 23-year-old commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

50th Anniversary Reunion

On October 10th and 11th, 2009 (Columbus Day Weekend) the Camp Hemshekh 50th Anniversary Reunion will take place in New York City. The main event will take place on Sunday, October 11, 2009, at the Workmen’s Circle Building (45 East 33rd Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). It will begin mid-morning, continue through late afternoon and will include a catered lunch. We will have access to almost all the space in the now mostly-empty building, including a large meeting room in which we may all gather together as well as smaller rooms in which we can have singing, folk-dancing, exhibitions of memorabilia, showing of camp movies, shmuesing and hanging out. The venue is subject to change. Saturday’s activities will consist of informal house pot-luck gatherings at the homes of Hemshekhistn from the different generations of camp in or near the city. If there is demand, we may organize trips to the Hunter (Village) and Mountaindale campsites on that date as well.

See Also

Jewish Labor Bund

The Workmens Circle

Jewish Left

External Links

Camp Hemshekh Facebook Group [1] Camp Hemshekh Facebook Event (50th Anniversary Reunion) [2] Camp Hemshekh Youtube Channel, "HemshekhZingt" (Link pending approval...)