London – There are no words for the darkness and desolation of Auschwitz.
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I have read so much about the Shoah, watched so many films and documentaries, had the enormous privilege of speaking with survivors and educators. I thought I was ready for my visit, but I now know that I wasn’t and couldn’t have been, because imagination helps us prepare by linking what we are about to experience to something we have experienced before.
But I have never stood before a mountain of human hair before. Never touched the walls of gas chambers where human hands have gouged the brick in terror and despair. Never seen at their place of execution a mound of the shoes of thousands of children who one by one walked to their painful deaths. Never looked, as I have now, at the suitcase of an infant aged three – an orphan who went to her death with no mother or father to comfort her.
What I saw in Auschwitz was a terrible indictment not only of the absolute evil of the perpetrators, but also of the moral blindness of all those who looked aside. I now have a new understanding of the burden of memory, that distance from the Holocaust in time and geography does not lessen but increase our obligation to remember and to resist.
But I have also learned an even deeper lesson. Even when walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Jewish people were determined to remain a light unto the nations. People in Auschwitz continued to pray, to observe the festivals and to perform mitzvot. People shared what bread they had – endlessly dividing nothing as far as nothing could possibly go.
The story of Auschwitz is one of courage as well as cruelty, of how people can still find the ability to be human, even in inhuman places. I am reminded of the rabbi who was not himself ever in a camp, who was asked why he did so much for Holocaust education when he was not himself a survivor. And he replied that he was a survivor, that we all are, not just all Jews, but all of humanity, because we had found the hope to move past our darkest hour. This is what Elie Weisel meant when he said ‘because I remember, I despair. But because I remember, I have a duty to reject despair.’
So we must remember on Holocaust Memorial Day and Yom Hashoah. But most of all we must serve the memory of those who did not survive by teaching our children that they were born endowed with free will. It is that ability to choose that contains within it not only the potential for atrocity but also our capacity to live justly. That is what differentiates humankind from all other creatures and that is what the Nazis tried to destroy. So for me, the true lesson of Auschwitz is a simple and profoundly Jewish one: we honour the dead by celebrating life; and we defeat hate by choosing hope.
It’s such a crazy world that we have to rush and show as many as possible what hate can bring! So we have to tank G-D that we have wise people in our “family” who would do everything it should be remembered.
It should be mandatory for a sitting head of a nation to visit Auschwitz. And maybe every person convicted of a hate crime and Guatanamo detainees as well. What the Prime Minister pointed out is something we have lived with and felt for almost 70 years. Others need to see up close and personal what the end result of harboring so much hate brings.
He says he learned something? His Government is banning Michael Savage from entering Britain to eliminate free speech !!! His Government is on the same path as the Nazi’s, ysvz. Next they will ban frum yidden due to their religous belief’s evoking negative responses from British Muslims and our belief in shechita and bris mila !!!
I’m relieved that he pointed out the mesiras nefesh that we had for YIDDISHKEIT!!!!
If the White Book would not have been issued by Britain in 1939 from Austria [then Ostmark] and Germany thousand of Yidishe kinder would not have been pushed in the gas chambers
whoever wrote this is a great speechwriter, thats for sure. brown should give him a raise!
requiring all heads of state will not help. someone who has a tremendous amount of hate for jews will only rejoice in the site of the remains of so many of our kedoshim killed.
When he goes home to Great Britain, will he listen to the BBC or Michael Savage??
PMO is totally incorrect in his argument !!! Gordon Brown is the head of the Labor Party which has banned Michael Savage. Freedom of Speech is sacred and if you listened to the Savage Nation you would understand that Michael Savage is the greatest patriot since George Washington !!! Perhaps that is why he perceived as a dangerous threat to new ultra-liberal new world order. Since when was STRAIGHT TALK a crime. John McCain would have won the election if he had actually given the US electorate some real straight talk. Instead he folded like a lawn chair to the new liberal group think. Did you see the news conference today ? Obama said the USA was guilty of torture !!! All muslim detainees must be brought to the US soil for trial and given lawyers of THEIR choosing. We need Michael Savage to PREVENT the next Auschwitz !!! Gordon Brown and Barak Obama will never protect democracy or the free world or Am Yisroel. Wake up Yidden !!!
Dead Jews evoke sympathy from the world, it’s the living ones they can’t stand.