The wall on Henio Zytomirski‘s Facebook page is filled with Chanukah menorahs and Christmas greetings. His stats say he has over 2,000 friends, and every day his popularity only increases. “Wow,” you might think. “Lucky guy.” But then, looking more closely, you realize that this is no ordinary profile. Henio was killed in Majdanek, a young Jewish victim of the Holocaust. His profile is where Holocaust remembrance meets the 21st century.
The project of bringing Henio back to life is the work of Piotr Brożek, a 22-year-old filmmaker and educational programming assistant at the Grodzka Gate NN Theatre Centre—a cultural organization supported by the city government of Lublin, Poland. Although Brożek is not Jewish, he strongly believes Poland has a problem with its Jewish history and that it is his generation’s responsibility to speak out. “Psychologically, we are a sick nation. Young people want change their mentality. They want to know the truth about history, they don't want to be anti-Semitic. Members of the younger generation – in this case me – must take responsibility for the Henio’s story,” he said. He chose to tell this story through the internet because he realized that through social networking sites like Facebook, Henio’s story could reach the widest audience. And judging by the languages represented on Henio’s wall, Brożek was right. People have ‘friended’ Henio from all over the world, including Poland, Denmark, Israel, Italy, and the United States.
Holocaust remembrance is no stranger to the internet. Holocaust museums have long used the web to educate and engage with people in their own communities. Some of these organizations, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, have also embraced Facebook as a way to reach younger audiences. But what Brożek and the Centre have done goes far beyond traditional remembrance. Instead of simply creating a profile for the Centre with Henio as the focal point, he has taken on Henio’s persona at first anonymously, then under his own name, and attempted to recreate Henio’s life through his imagined words. "My name is Henio Zytomirski“ reads Henio‘s initial profile. “I am seven-years-old. I live on 3 Szewska Street in Lublin.“
While Brożek insists that he has received only few criticisms of his project, his undertaking is not without controversy in the Jewish community. “There seems to be something inherently problematical about a victim of the Holocaust appearing on Facebook,” said Lisa Zaid, a 30-year-old grandchild of Holocaust survivors and former Program Coordinator for the Visiting Scholar Programs at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM. “In part because the victim could not be present to consent to this form of representation. And then there's the whole issue of someone speaking for the victim. It seems utterly wrong to me for someone in Poland to just represent the ‘thoughts’ of a victim without ever knowing them.”
But Brożek rejects the notion that he speaks for Henio. “I'm only his friend, not his spokesperson,” said Brożek. “And as his friend I feel good about my work. I must give him a voice or be silent.” Unsettling though it may be to have a stranger speak for a Holocaust victim, Brożek’s simple, sparse prose doesn’t try to overpower the message of Henio’s experiences. “It is the last day of vacation already.” Henio writes innocently on his wall on August 31, 2009. Tomorrow, 1 September 1939, is my first day of school.”
Then there is another dilemma: how does the inherent informality of Facebook square with the serious tone expected when discussing the Holocaust? When “friends” send Henio a virtual basket of flowers wishing him a happy 2010 or inviting him to join the online game ‘Mafia Wars’, these run the risk of demeaning his story or the larger story of the Holocaust. Zaid shares that concern. “The proximity of Holocaust remembrance to silly pop culture stuff seems to make it feel less sacred and less serious.”
This is a risk that Brożek and Henio’s Facebook friends seem willing to accept. By creating an online space for Holocaust education, discussion, and remembrance, Brożek hopes that other Poles will, in time, gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and becomes more engaged in their history. Betsy Anthony, former deputy director of Survivor Affairs at USHMM, agrees. “Like it or not, we have to find a way to do Holocaust remembrance in some appropriate way online. I think that a duty in education is meeting the client where she is and ‘kids these days’ are online. I think [Henio’s profile] could add to some students’ understanding of the Holocaust as happening to someone their age, in their community – someone they might identify with somehow.”
Through Henio, people “feel a personal story of one life,” said Brożek. “Reading the reactions of people who have followed the story of Henio, I have realized that we have a chance to do together something for Henio. [This was] the life of a little boy - not of six million - a number - but of one Henio Zytomirski. A boy was innocent and he died. [People] start to think about this and then they talk about this and write messages. He lived in Lublin. Now he lives on Facebook.”
Symi Rom-Rymer writes and blogs about Jewish and Muslim issues in the US and in Europe.
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