The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy: Social Work Through the Holocaust

Foreword

xi Foreword Joachim Wieler This book is about remembering, about diving into the abyss of the Holocaust and coming out of it, as Louis Lowy and others have shown us. This thoroughly researched and well-written book is also one of the first to explore the relationship between surviving the Holocaust and forming a professional identity as a social worker. Lorrie Greenhouse Gardella allows Louis Lowy to speak for himself, and she involves other closely related people who tell of their own experiences , confirming similarities but also adding their own memories. The author weaves individual experiences into living dialogues and institutional contexts and puts everything into a larger historical framework. We are reminded of the generic approach in formulating social histories in social work by moving from personal concerns and very concrete experiences to social and institutional connections and on to structural contexts , including the micro, mezzo, and the macro levels. This account is a tangible enactment of social work philosophy. We encounter in this book some of the last eyewitnesses to the Holocaust . It must have been very painful for these witnesses to relive some of their horrifying experiences through inquiries and narrative interviews, and I join the author in thanking them for opening their lives and for making this moving eyewitness report possible. Let me also congratulate the publisher. Without books on social work history and Holocaust history , we deny the past, and how can there be a future if there is no past? Critical acknowledgment, constructive analysis, and alternative action as demonstrated in this book will lead to a renewed future for the social work profession. xii | Foreword Remembrance is the foundation of reconciliation. This wisdom, based on the Talmud and on other basic religious and humanistic teachings, has many implications. Remembrance and acknowledgment seem to be a prerequisite and the most important key for any kind of research. For Holocaust research it has a particular meaning. Remembrance is the foundation , but not reconciliation as such. It is a necessary precondition, and if acknowledged, it might lead to reconciliation. I live in Weimar/Germany, where the first democratic constitution led to the Weimar Republic and, ironically, where the Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald casts a lasting shadow. Every year, when we have commemorated the liberation of Buchenwald and other concentration camps, former inmates have come back to help us remember. Every year, there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses who return. Nonetheless, there is considerable emphasis on turning these terrible places into memorials for a different future. This book is another sign post in that direction. It has taken a long time for scholars in social work and other fields to reflect critically and constructively on the horrors of the war and the Holocaust. However, some professionals, including social workers, made immediate efforts to alleviate loss, pain, and destruction. Louis Lowy participated in those efforts long before his formal training and before he called himself a professional social worker. Likewise, in the archives of several American schools of social work along the East Coast, I have found master’s degree theses from the 1940s and 1950s that dealt with various groups of European war refugees and survivors. They focused on practical issues for specific groups, such as unaccompanied minors, mothers with children, and survivors from various professions. A wealth of information on Holocaust survivors in social work remains available. Realistically speaking, however, the chances for life encounters with survivors are diminishing, and soon we will have to rely entirely on secondary sources or on written and otherwise recorded testimony. This impressive account of Louis Lowy’s life might be a stimulus for continuation , for further remembrances, and thus for adding to this kind of research into social work history and the Holocaust. It certainly is a challenging invitation! ...