GISI FLEISCHMANN AND ME

By Joan Campion, jbcampion@gmail.com

(Author of In The Lion’s Mouth: Gisi Fleischmann and the Jewish Fight for Survival)

Before I took my first trip to Israel, many years ago, I read everything I could find on the history and
backgroujd of the area. That necessarily involved study of the Nazi Holocaust, since it would be
impossible to understand Israeli Jews without some knowledge of the great historical tragedy which had
befallen the Jewish people just a few decades earlier.

It was in Nora Levin’s fine book The Holocaust that I first came upon the name of Gisi Fleischmann of
Slovakia—attached to fragments of a tale of estraordinary heroism that was entirely new to me. I
recognized at once that Gisi was a person of great historical importance—the only woman who had played
a major role in resisting Nazism in an entire country. As I continued to lay plans for my trip to Israel, I also
searched for a book about her. I soon learned, with perplexity, that there didn’t seem to be any. At least, not
in English.

The closest thing was, perhaps, her friend Y. O. Neumann’s Gisi Fleischmann: The Story of a Heroic
Woman. Dr. Neumann did this small work for WIZO, the Women’s International Zionist Organization, a
group in which Gisi long played a leadership role. But his book revealed little about Gisi Fleischmann the
human being, which was what most interested me.

(Later I decided that, if there were to be a book about Gisi Fleischmann I would have to write it. Dr.
Neumann was of immense help, and he encouraged my work in every possible way. We conducted a long
correspondence with each other, I met him at his home at Beer Tuvia, and—most helpfully—he presented
me with a copy of Im Schatten des Todes, his German-language memoir of his experiences during the
Holocaust years in Slovakia.

More memorable than that: Upon my arrival, the old gentleman made me a gift of tangerines he had picked
from the tree in his own yard. That was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.)

At least a year and a half elapsed between the time I discovered Gisi’s name in Professor Levin’s book and
my decision to write In The Lion’s Mouth. I was deeply aware that, once I began, I would become involved
in a moral obligation that would make this a very difficult work to walk away from. Therefore, I had to be
sure my resolve was up to the task. Over what have sometimes seemed endless years of testing of that
resolve, I have had frequenr cause to be glad I was sure of myself before I started.

Did I succeed in the task I set before myself? Yes and no. I have made it possible for at least a few people
to come to know Gisi’s story; and, through the magic of Print-On-Demand publishing, there will be a
chance for more people to learn that story for the foreseeable future. That is something. It is nothing like
the large audience I had hoped for from the first; but the future remains open.

Also, I had hoped to be able to produce a full-length portrait of Gisi Fleischmann, this so ordinary, so
extraordinary heroic figure. But all I have been able to do, with the resources available to me, has been a
sketch, with large areas fading tantalizingly into the background. Perhaps so much had been lost by the
time I began that the possibility for a portrait had already been lost.

I feel, though, that the sketch was worth doing, from both the historical and the personal point of view. In
an era short of heroic figures and full of the often gross expression of individualism, Gisi is more than ever
worth remembering. She, who set the welfare of her people above her own, can serve as a rallying point
for those who understand that, unless the community survives, nothing survives. For her, then, the
community was her own menaced people. Had she lived, though, I think she would have been like Elie
Wiesel, advocating the community of all humanity.

And how we need such advocates! Now, more than ever.