From Individual to Collectve
Memory
Rena Drexler
Elliot Asarch, Kennan Cronen,
and Chris Eldredge

 How preserve memory of Holocaust?
 Chris
 Rena’s experiences before and during the war
 Kennan
 Keeping the memory alive: How Rena remembers the
Holocaust afer the war
 Elliot
 Collectve memory of the genocide

 Polish neighborhood
 Was ant-Semitsm in small towns
 But Rena “did not experience a lot”
 Had to wear a star
 Forced into Gheto for several months
 Arrived in Auschwitz in 1941
 14 years old
 Separated from family upon arrival
 All but one sister died

 Auschwitz-Birkenau
 Age 14 to 19
 Sorted possessions of
incoming Jews
 Money, jewelry
 Barracks Barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, circa 1945
 Dirty water
 Thyroid problems later

 Survived by being a hard worker
 One of fastest Nazis could fnd
 Took clothes, bread
 Traded with other prisoners
 Snuck showers
 Rubbed blood on cheeks
 Before SS ofcers came by for selecton
 Faith and hope
 “Maybe tomorrow will be a beter day.”
 “Every day you were so scared. Would I survive tomorrow?”

 Weighed 95 lbs.
 Russians invaded May 8, 1945
 Revisited old neighborhood afer war
Drexler at camp afer liberaton, circa 1945

Life Afer the Holocaust
 May 8, 1945
Liberaton
 No assistance or care
 Return to Poland
 Travel to Munich,
Germany
 Finding a brother and
a husband Prisoners liberated at Dachau

Memories of the Holocaust
•Return to Auschwitz
•Stayed quiet for years because Rena didn’t
want her children to “grow up feeling sorry” for
her.
•52057
•“I was tired of waking up and feeling like a
prisoner again”
•Will only discuss her personal memories of the
Holocaust for Three Months out of every year.

Never Forget
•Now Rena makes a habit of traveling as extensively as possible in
order to speak and spread the memory and the first-hand facts.
•Rena will go anywhere, anytime - speak to any group - to keep the
Holocaust from becoming just another footnote in the history books
for future generations.
•Articles
•Schools
•Churches
•programs such as this one
•Swimming in Auschwitz

The American Dream
Three years afer arrival, in 1954, Rena
and her husband opened up a successful
kosher delicatessen.
Has managed to provide her children
with an education.
One child has attended John Hopkins
University and another one graduated
from UCLA and successfully practicing
law
“Because I have been to hell and back,
more than ever I appreciate the freedom
and greatness of the United States”
– Daily News in 1993

 A term coined by Maurice Halbwachs
 Collectve Memory is the aggregate of many individual
memories
 These memories are passed from generaton to
generaton
 Includes:
 What a society teaches their children
 What a society chooses to memorialize in museums

 -Survivors telling their individual memories to
younger generatons as in Bearing Witness
 -Memoirs such as Elie Wiesel’s Night
 -Poetry writen and Diaries kept throughout the
War
 -The Shoah Educaton Project
 -Museums or Memorials such as Yad Vashem

 Steven Spielberg founded the Shoah
Foundaton in 1994 to record video
testmonies of survivors and frst-hand
witnesses of the Holocaust
 The individual memories of thousands
of witnesses has been recorded and
added to our aggregate memory
 The Shoah Foundaton has created
lesson plans incorporatng these
testmonies to further teach the new
generaton about the Holocaust
A screenshot taken from the USC
Shoah Foundaton website

 -A major part of the collectve memory
of a group of people is the memorials
they construct to remember the past
 -Unites States Holocaust Memorial
Museum (USHMM)
 -Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story
 -An exhibiton at the USHMM that tells the
story of Daniel, a fcttous child based on the
collecton of the individual stories
 -This exhibiton symbolizes the collectve
memory of the children who died in the
Railcar on display in the permanent Holocaust
exhibition of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

 "Bearing Witness." Personal interview. 24 Feb. 2008.
 "DELI OWNER RECALLS HOLOCAUST BECAUSE SHE MUST." Daily News of Los Angeles (CA) 16 Mar. 1993,
Valley, News: N3. NewsBank. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
 "KEEPING MEMORY ALIVE - AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR WON'T FORGET HORRORS." Daily News of Los
Angeles (CA) 28 Jan. 2005, Valley rop, News: N3. NewsBank. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
 Mashian, Natalie. "Rena's Story." Bearing Witness. Hillel at UCLA. Web. 28 Feb. 2010. <htp:
//webearwitness.org/the-stories/ucla-2007_2008/renas-story/>.
 SHARON MOESER. "Celebratng Life; 3 Holocaust Survivors Reunite and Remember :Valley Editon. " Los
Angeles Times 30 Dec. 1996,Los Angeles Times, ProQuest. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
 Halbwachs, Maurice. On collectve Memory. The University of Chicago Free Press. 1992
 Global Directory of Holocaust Museums
 htp://www.science.co.il/holocaust-museums.asp
 Archives and Recordkeeping glossary
 htp://john.curtn.edu.au/society/glossary/index.html
 The Uses of Memory: An Introducton David Paul Nord . The Journal of American History, Vol. 85, No. 2
(Sep., 1998), pp. 409-410 Published by: Organizaton of American Historians
 Stable URL: htp://www.jstor.org/stable/2567745

From Individual Memory to
Collectve Memory
Rena Drexler
Elliot Asarch, Kennan Cronen,
and Chris Eldredge