part0011

GOD TESTED ME . Like Job, he put stumbling blocks before me, and even though I survived, I no longer believe in God. How can I believe in a God who took my little brother, and a million and a half other children, children whose only crime was that they were born Jewish? How can I believe in a God when I was beaten, starved, and tormented without justification? I witnessed death and was surrounded by death. I cheated death – not once, but at least twice. Fear was my constant companion, like a shadow that followed me, but it did not extinguish even in the dark. I live each moment, despite the fear. I fear not what awaits me after this life, for I have survived indescribable misery and torment. Hell is living with the memory of what I have seen. Perhaps when it is my time, the movie reel that plays again and again in my mind will finally pause, and I will be able to sleep in peace. Perhaps heaven is having no memory of pain.

I am a Holocaust survivor, but physical survival is only one aspect of living through this tragedy. I lost everything – my childhood, my family, my dignity, my possessions, my security, and my belief in God. I was driven to make something of my life, to overcome obstacles, to learn new languages, to adapt to new cultures, and to create a new family. I did not want to remain forever “in the camps” psychologically, never to return to normalcy. No one survived the Holocaust normal. After liberation, many organizations helped feed, clothe, and house us, but there were scarce resources to help survivors overcome tremendous emotional trauma, the torment of deprivation, and dehumanizing abuse and slavery. My generation was unlikely to seek out psychological counseling, or admit that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is real. Survivors coped the best they could, some better than others.

Few can say they are tested and know the depths of what they are made of – and what they can endure. Few can say that stripped of everything, they know their true essence, their true identity. Holocaust survivors know these things. I know these things.

After the war, I kept busy and moved forward with my life, not speaking about my past. Still, every night the movie reel played in my head. I still see the images, hear the screams, feel the pain as I attempt to sleep. I internalized much of my suffering, but I learned that one cannot outrun trauma. It has a way of manifesting itself and cannot be erased.

Each year at the Passover Seder, Jews around the world read the Hagaddah, the Jewish text that recounts the history of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and their liberation from Pharaoh. During the service, we read that each of us is obliged to see ourselves as if we were personally freed from slavery, as if we, too, went forth from Egypt. For Holocaust survivors, this is something real. I don’t have to imagine it. Survivors walk in the shoes of the Israelites, who transformed themselves from slaves of the Egyptian Pharaoh, to wanderers in the desert, before finally entering into the Promised Land. Upon our liberation from the Nazi Pharaohs, Holocaust survivors wandered in displaced persons camps (DP Camps), before arriving, mostly illegally, in far flung places around the globe. Many, including me, arrived in Palestine, our biblical homeland, the future State of Israel.

Many of my survivor friends never wanted to return to Europe after the war because it was a place of terrible memories and extreme loss. It remains the largest Jewish cemetery on earth, a cemetery without individual graves or headstones, but Alex Haley’s Roots inspired me to return. In 1978, my wife Betty, and I traveled to Poland for the first time since the war. I did not mention the trip to my many survivor friends. “Why go back?” my friends would have asked. I had many reasons to revisit: to walk the streets of my childhood, to see the buildings and home of my past, to smell the flowers that adorned the gardens of my youth. I still struggle to make sense of it all, and I wanted desperately to feel close to the ones I once loved but have since lost. I wanted to honor and pay tribute to those dear to me who perished, and also to show respect to those who perished whom I never knew. I felt an overwhelming need to retrace my steps to remind myself that I did, in fact, survive. Returning serves as a reminder that nations, indeed entire civilizations, can, through open and dedicated involvement, or through passive inaction, be led down a path of evil. I do not fault anyone for failing to aid Jewish families at their own peril, but I will not forgive those who overtly took action to turn in Jews, to betray them, to commit atrocities.

For as long as I am able, I will make the pilgrimage each spring to remember and to bear witness. I believe it is a mitzvah, a good deed, to participate in The March of the Living. There is no better way to educate people than hearing survivor stories firsthand. Some survivors believe it is a sin to return to Poland, but I see it as an opportunity to teach what humans are capable of doing to their fellow human beings. It is important for people to hear it from someone with personal experience – not just to read about it in books, but to stand at the places where evil occurred and to try to ensure that genocide, of any kind and in any manner, does not happen again.

Christopher Browning, a history professor at the University of North Carolina who has written a number of books on the Holocaust, wanted to investigate the survival of Jews from the region of Poland known as Wierzbnik-Starachowice, where I was born and lived during my early youth. He contacted me for an interview for his book published in 2010 called Remembering Survival : Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp . The premise of the book, aside from Browning’s theory of why a disproportionate number of Jews from Wierzbnik survived, is that individuals may remember the same events differently. According to Browning, a number of middle-class Jews with means procured work permits, and were thus protected in a factory where their skills were necessary for the war effort. Wierzbnik Jews with work permits were not relocated far from their homes and were able to access hidden money and valuables to sell or trade on the black market, and could make deals with factory guards or non-Jewish contacts outside the camp. Wierzbnik Jews were accustomed to a camp environment when the factories were eventually evacuated, and they were transported to concentration camps and death camps toward the latter part of the war.

Many survivors suffer in silence. Some details are just too painful or humiliating to impart to another human being. I have watched survivors break down in an attempt to just say out loud what happened to them, as if vocalizing it could create a physical wound. It is a burden to carry these heavy emotions and overwhelming memories. The world will never fully know all the atrocities the Nazi collaborators inflicted upon their victims. As much as what I share is terrible, there are occurrences far worse than what I am able to articulate. These will remain forever within me in a deep and hidden place.