My Obsession

Is it a failing, or is it a calling that must be fulfilled, that daily interrupts the targets and goals I set for myself? I know I must be responsible for settling the estate and for finding a way to make myself independently financially sufficient. I know when I stick to the task at hand, I can be amazing. But far too often I allow myself to be pulled toward other tasks that so far have done nothing to help me meet my financial obligations.

I am obsessed with the Holocaust. There has yet been no end to conflicts in our world. Even our own nation, which has existed for almost 250 years (an infant compared to European and Asian nations), has never known an extended period of peace. Someone is ALWAYS trying to gain control over someone else, one nation or group subjugating the people of another by self-justifying that the others are too weak or otherwise unworthy of sovereignty.

There have been many Americans killed in wars after World War II. Even though my own father fought in that war on the Pacific front, I am constantly drawn to the nightmare that was Europe during Hitler’s reign of terror. Was I there in a previous lifetime? Nothing tells me that this is so.

What draws me is the constant discovery of humanity, real people with real stories who lived to make a difference, even if they themselves didn’t survive to realize the impact of their lives and actions.

I understand that these atrocities are as old as mankind and have had different names in various waves of eras, places, and excuses, even now. But maybe if I focus on one of these tsunamis of evil I will in some way be addressing all of them.

I am not even talking, here, about the soldiers who fought this war. There is plenty to say about them. Today I speak of those who could not wait, who had no assurances that anyone from the outside would come to their rescue. I speak of those who chose to battle from within those secret places in the occupied territories.

As the very youngest of the survivors, those who were victimized as children, are now dying of old age, I cannot let go of the Holocaust. I cannot let go of the tragedy and triumphs and I cannot stand the thought that my children and grandchildren are oblivious and frankly don’t care about what they don’t know. I cannot forgive those who deny that the Holocaust happened, and happened millions of times over to every single person who was caught up in it.

My first personal introduction to this was reading The Diary of Anne Frank when I was 12 or 13. Then, it seemed like I was reading the words of someone in ancient history, but I was born only 7 years after her death at age 16. She died the same year the war ended. Her written words told only of a child’s life of hope while in hiding. Once her family was taken prisoner and the true horrors began for her, the diary was left behind and the words stopped. But since then, I have been privileged to meet others who survived and personally told me their stories. Moreover, I have read books by and seen lengthy interviews of Holocaust survivors. More recently, more and more stories of those courageous enough to hide and save Jews, and others who aided them, have been published. Many of those quiet heroes were barely more than children themselves, some were even Nazis or living among them.

Every time a person protected or rescued a Jew, he/she put himself and his whole family in mortal danger. Most people who did this were in fact killed and their stories have gone untold. Did they act in vain?

I have heard or read more than one Holocaust survivor tell about not only the horror of the Nazis taking them prisoner but seeing their gentile neighbors, among whom they’d lived as friends, cheering at their being taken away. Did they not support it, they should have stayed home praying out of sight. How heartbreaking!

I can understand why most stood by silently and let it happen. Not only were they afraid for themselves, but also for their loved ones. However they felt about the horror, they stuffed it down in self-preservation. I can understand that without celebrating it because none of us knows for certain how we would respond in their place.

Yet, among them were Lore and William Perl, Benjamin Kaganovich (Leon Kahn), Hanka (Anna) Weitzblum, Pinchas Rosenbaum, Recha Sternbuch, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Robert Clary, Corrie Ten Boom, Oskar Schindler, Carl Lutz, Freddie Oversteegen, Johan van Hulst, Virginia Hall. There are more ordinary people who hid, fed, and/or smuggled children or families out of Nazi held territories than I can ever know or share with you. Many of those heroes who survived the War never spoke of their activities afterwards and wanted no acclaim. I suspect it might be because no matter how many they saved, they could never forget those whom they could not save, and felt guilty that they didn’t do more, or that friends who helped them died as a result.

My fear is that as the survivors die off, just as the Americans who fought in the war die off, the stories of fear, hunger, torture, death all around them, and the stories of undercover heroism will fall silent. And the evil will repeat itself because the populous is too ignorant to see it coming and stop it in its infancy. It is happening now. Please read, learn, understand, and be among the knowing brave.