As presented to Students at Our Lady of Compassion.
http://www.olc.solihull.sch.uk/
If this is what The Holocaust means to 10 year olds at this School then all Children should be taught the same meaning. The Holocaust, its relevance and its pertinence to us moving forward, is an essential in laying firmer foundations in tolerance and understanding. I wish to thank you all for the opportunity to have talked to your Students and commend the cooperation afforded to me by Your Staff, namely:
Ann Billingsley
Russell Dempsey
Rhiannon Fraser
Kim Freeman
Daniel Hamilton
Lyn Kirkland
Lauren Mitchell
Lisa Montandon
Amazingly and in such a welcoming environment, one can appreciate the nurturing these Students will gain. There are some sterling Students here who are well equipped to deal with what this World throws at them. It is obvious that Students today will not be denied the Truth, if these Students are anything to go by. These Our Lady of Compassion Students are well aware of The Holocaust consequences for ALL our humanity. Speaking to these 9/10 year olds, one is remarkably impressed by their level of knowledge and their appreciation and understanding of the atrocity! The questions asked are in accordance with what Children of such an impressionable age will find accessible and they are well placed to confront the future, bolstered by the facts of the past. I am reminded that it was back on June 30th. 1942 that Emanuel Ringelblum, who was fully fashioning his Oneg Shabbat as he sought to educate us of what was emerging then woud have been proud of what was evidenced here!
“..Jewish population ..living under ..impact of news from London. ..world has been stirred by ..reports of ..slaughter in Poland ..aroused ..deepest emotions in all of us. Formany ..many months ..endured ..most terrible sufferings ..asking ourselves ..Does ..world know about our sufferings ..if it knows ..why is it silent. Why was ..world not outraged 10’s of 1,000’s of Jews ..shot ..at Ponary. ..10’s of 1,000’s of Jews poisoned in Chelmno. 100’s of 1,000’s of Jews ..slaughtered in Galicia (AUSCHWITZ). ..slaughter in Vilna ..180,000 ..in Rostov ..Jews ..murdered ..in Kiev (BABI YAR)…blood is flowing in rivers. Is ..blood of ..Jews more precious…Only now have we come to understand ..cause of this silence. ..Polish government ..its own radio station .knew nothing about it. ..if London knew ..next day 100 people ..shot ..Pawiak prison ..why ..did it take many months before they learned of ..100’sof 1,000’s murdered Jews…a question which cannot be turned away by excuses.” Emanuel Ringelblum.
Our future for the World we live in is in the hands of those who learn today from what went by yesterday and equips us for the needs of tomorrow. Children have a great journey to make and it is filled with so many twists and turns. The difficulties they will confront are best prepared for now, today and while Tolerance can be well taught. As an education body, and as preparatory for what life will certainly throw at the future of our next generation, a presentation of a less than evocative account of The Death Camp system and a portrait of Anne Frank will assist well. The very introduction which I gained an access to the subject of such a terrible Catastrophe has been for me, as it must be for all of Humanity disturbing, troubling and of deep concern. What should be presented in a suitable format for all and any age grouping is a matter of an astute areness of the educating system given to all Students! Fragments of what we touched upon are here, and they are given as:
Testimony
There is no sense in commemorating a History that has so many blank pages, filled with the emptiness of an omission, of those names of all those People so brutally slaughtered. For Tokele. A 4 year old Jewish Girl, Murdered for being a Jew, inspired an outrage which has gifted me so many words. I asked for words from Your Students and their abundance of words has been added to this piece at the end. What we can know however, what we can remember, what we can memorialize and what we can certainly wish to commemorate is for Tokele having passed this way alongside 6,000,000 others of her Jewish People. That testimony has been pertinent to my own study for so long now, it has marked an indelible ridge into my own conscience. For me, amongst the in excess of 1,500,000 murdered Jewish Children, we have far too many of these Children who are no longer known to us. That too is a very difficult tragedy to deal with alongside the physical destruction meted out to them. It is a very sad indictment of a World which allowed this to happen and an even sadder reflection upon a World which has not yet learned to deal with the intolerance of others.
Hitler’s Belzec
Friday December 11th. 1942 Final Transport of Jews destined for destruction arrives at Belzec. Belzec Death Camp Closes and left behind in the loss to the World of an assessment which has reached 884,700 Jewish souls, lost, devoured in Hitler’s Belzec Death Camp.
“..instructed ..under no circumstances ..discuss ..anything dealing ..with ..operation. ..understand ..top secrecy of ..so called Jewish Relocation. ..I may not take ..pictures. ..I promise to keep my word. ..after completion of my service ..this oath of secrecy will still apply.” Aktion Reinhard Pledge.
For a train to have entered a compound, it signalled that Hitler’s Belzec was no ordinary space. So those who entered the Aktion Reinhard programme, who gave their unconditional oath of allegiance, all too few of these Perpetrator’s have related what the detail of their involvement has been. For the accomplishment of this top secret Jewish Relocation, the guilty administered here at Hitler’s Belzec a special mission which would consign all too many Jews to an annihilation none of them deserved. In the euphemistic terms of Hitler’s will to conceal the detail of what his Final Solution was, the SS to be given charge over the life and death of the Jews in the Aktion Reinhard Death Camps were sworn to that secrecy. For the Jews who might have suspected their fate, they were met with an undertaking so massive that their confusion could not last. The subterfuge of work and persistence managed to convince all but a few that the Germans were as civilised as their formerly stated culture had so clearly demanded. However, for those Jews who were to be relocated, settled, removed, transferred or reconciled with their fate, they would find that Hitler’s final resolve to remove every Jew of Europe from living existence here in Hitler’s Belzec, in all x5 other Death Camps and the Killing Sites, was very real.
Your topic at Our Lady of Compassion is ‘A Child’s War’ and the unfortunate aspect of all of this subject, is that Children cannot and must not be compelled ever to fight in Wars. Children simply become too exposed to its horrors and when they succumb to its awful effects, we have lost a future’s entirety. The Holocaust is no exception. Children are our most precious gift and are amongst our most vulnerable in Society. In the Wild a Lioness will fight hardest to protect her Cubs. Parents are no less protective. Which is why, when I tell you that more than 1,500,000 Jewish Children lost their lives in The Holocaust, for the simple Fact that they were Jewish lives, an immense loss is to be clearly recognised. Of course, not all of these Children died in Hitler’s Belzec nor in the x5 other Death Camps. So for me, and thus far I have visited 4 of the 6 Death Camps which Hitler had placed in War Torn Poland in order to add an awareness to a perspective on The Holocaust I have still toi gain.
It is also certainly true that not all of these Children were killed there in Poland either. The Children of The Holocaust will be mourned in every corner of Europe, taken from their homes, beset by brutality and atrocity and dispatched to the far corners of Europe to be obliterated. In all too many places, not clearly identified, in all too many places not at all marked, these Children reside alongside their Family member’s, Friends and even on their own but they are remembered in our memory so as not to be forgotten. Many of these Children, not old enough to understand what was happening, or indeed what was about to happen to them, have none the less recorded their own account. Those accounts are here today in Diaries and Memoirs and their writings deliver to us a vast area of Testimonies which emerge to give History a deeply saddening look at life for the Child in the grip of horror. On November 15th. 1937 all Jewish Children are expelled from all German Schools and their learning must continue, clandestinely.
The Holocaust Child Diary.
Frank, Anne The Diary of a Young Girl.
Saturday, 15th. July 1944 “..In spite of everything I still believe ..people are really good at heart.” Anne Frank.
Anne Frank, was 15 years old and will be the best known to most Students who have an interest in this period of our History.
“..Day and night ..dragged off. ..deprived ..of ..possessions. Families ..torn apart ..all ..separated. Children coming home ..find ..their parents have disappeared. Women return ..to find ..their families gone.” Anne Frank.
But there are many more Jewish Child Diarists who will enlighten us all, give us a sadness we will use and a grasp of what fear meant for them.
Yitzhak Rudashevski, was 14 years old.
“..I think of nothing ..not what I am losing ..not what I have just lost ..not what is in store for me. ..I only feel that I am terribly weary ..a hurt is burning inside me.” Yitshak Rudashevski.
Weiss, Helga Helga’s Diary.
“..to all young people ..in ..hope that they will keep ..past alive in their memories ..and that they will never experience ..what my generation has had to live through.” Helga Weiss.
I am not here to frighten nor upset your Students in any way. The subject of The Holocaust though is both upsetting and deeply frightening in so many ways. I have worked on this subject for more than 20 years and I am constantly reminded of that fear and dread which must have faced so many People so often. Under a slogan of Always to Remember, Never to Forget I have recorded humanity’s loss in order to remind us that life is precious and All People are important. That has allowed me to voice those very concerns in 4 Books which are based around The Holocaust term. There are many people who ask why I write about The Holocaust, a truly Jewish atrocity. Some even suggest that this might be because I am Jewish or I have Jewish Family. The simple truth is, I was sent a photograph of a 4 year old Jewish Girl, Tokele! She was Murdered in The Holocaust and I found I could write about her, the other 1,500,000 Jewish Children in The Holocaust and in Fact, the total of 6,000,000 Jewish People who are The Holocaust.
Once I had learned to Write, I began Writing. My first Book, a very grand affair was a tiny red notebook and I titled it: The Books I have read. I was about 7 years old. But I realised, I had a love for Reading that was transferable into a newer skill, Writing. If I could master the Art of Writing, I would be a Writer. It amazed me that, once I had moved from Beatrix Potter on to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, whole new Worlds opened up for me. I was not in the modern era where the Net can easily transport us to all the places we would wish to go, and even without having read about them first. But my appreciation was from a world fashioned out of words, all added together to make stories worth reading and then worth even more by Writing about them. Nearly 40 years ago, I put all of this writing into practice and Wrote a story which not only appealed to myself, I was sure it would appeal to others wishing to read it.
I duly sent it to many Publishers and was constantly rejected. Not appropriate to our listing! Not suitable for our readers, etc. There was a chink of light though! A Publisher thought I had a way with words and thought I could best adapt them to a work on ‘The Irish Situation’. I was an Irish Catholic living in a City where some terrorist Irish tried to bomb me and this City of Birmingham. I knew I could not speak out without anger and I felt that my work might be considered slanted, or even biased in an Irish Catholic direction. So I looked for something else to write about. It might have been timely, but I was sent that photograph of Tokele, Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak and I knew I could objectively comment and make my words spring to life with anguish, sorrow, accusation and condemnation. Having lost x2 Sisters at an early age, I had deep emotions and even anger about their Deaths.
These feelings were transferable, and if I hit the tone right, they could result in a work that could achieve all that I wished to say? Certainly, there could be no accusation of Bias or a skewed preference toward Catholics as opposed to any other Faith. In this, my objective view, I was to be proved wrong. As it happened, I have been accused of the very bias I avoided because there are those who do not wish writers to write in relation to the 6,000,000 Jews of Europe who were Murdered during the period of The Holocaust. But I will not be bullied nor swayed from stating what is the Factual Truth, and that during World War II, Hitler systematically sought out and had 6,000,000 Jewish People Murdered. That truth cannot be altered by anyone who chooses to deny this very Fact.
And so, many years later, I have all the tools that open up the widest view of the World for me, and I still have notebooks where I jot down words, meanings, lines to produce and a narrative to state. Old habits die hard! I have learned to look carefully at what is presented to us as we check out sites which seem to offer alleged truths, thinly veiled in a hatred they wish to preserve. That is one of the fundamental ideas to come out of Teaching, knowing what the Truth is and relying upon what we know to dismiss those whose intolerance would alter our understanding and appreciation of History in the World. I have x3 Notebooks on The Holocaust which list the Books I own, the Books essential to obtain and all Books which are related to The Holocaust.
My reading material has grown but has become contained within a much narrower field of study. At times it is a grim study, and at other times it reminds me of why we Humans are worth more than what some would wish for us. So the reason I am here to speak to you today is clear! I wish to pass on to you all an essential in Writing that is necessary to become a Writer and that is a passion for Reading. To begin with, I have sent myself a series of Postcards! This is in case you run out of things you want to hear and I have to tell you the things I wish to tell you. Each of these Postcards is headed with a title which will take us through what there is to learn and what need there is to learn of it! If that is okay, let me introduce myself, and inform you more accurately as to why I am here!
I am a writer and as such, I am the Author of 4 Books on the subject of The Holocaust of the Jews of Europe. One day, a lot of you will have a responsibility for Children, your own, as Parents and others as Teachers, Tutors and Trainers of the future. At the moment, and as this proposed future seems so far away you have Teachers who gift their time to you, tasked with your need to learn. Use their experience and capabilities wisely. Learn from them what you will need to Teach those who will come after you have finally left this school and even your next School. In my work, in that which I have learned of The Holocaust, it is the dimension of the Destructive capacity to Murder Children, and that some 1,500,000 Jewish Children of The Holocaust were Murdered that I have set my self a challenge, Always to Remember, Never to Forget.
This one lesson alone, the Murder of Children because they are Religiously diverse, Ethnically different or have dissimilar features persists to this day, and it not just Jewish People who are the targets of this Intolerance. But such intolerances are a challenge and a threat to God. Much of what I have learned has come from the very People, who during a period in our History a man called Adolf Hitler had decided that they had no right to life, and these were The Jewish People. For me, there are these Jewish Survivors who have gifted us much by way of understanding the intolerance that allowed for Hitler to achieve the Murder of 6,000,000 of their People. These Survivors are the perfect resource for us to learn Tolerance and perhaps a little of the comprehension necessary to understand how The Holocaust could have happened.
No doubt most of you will have heard of Anne Frank who did not Survive, but whose legacy will take us forward. We can all become better People should we choose to learn from her experience and learn to tolerate each and everyone born amongst us. Here is where I came to write, and I borrow words extensively from those who lend a voice, both extinguished and brought out of the Catastrophe, to add my own voice to their concerns. A very great man of words, Elie Wiesel was a Survivor. I had the honour of writing to and receiving letters from Him. His words will take this discussion further than I could on my own. Elie Wiesel was himself a Child of The Holocaust, a Survivor, a winner of The Nobel Peace Prize and a gifted artisan of words, thoughts, meanings and lessons for us all to learn.
“..Sometimes I am asked if I know ..response to Auschwitz ..I answer that not only do I not know it ..but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude HAS a response. What I do know is that there is response in responsibility. When we speak of this era of evil and darkness ..so close and yet so distant ..responsibility is ..key word. ..witness has forced himself to testify. For ..youth of today ..for ..children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.” Elie Wiesel.
From a shocking and terrifying experience, Elie Wiesel has understood why any People should not be the target of abuse. When Elie eventually emerged from The Holocaust to deliver us a lesson in humanitarian tolerances, all too many have chosen to ignore those lessons. Elie Wiesel chose to wait a length of time, distance gained from the immediacy of so much grief and trauma, so as to afford us his lesson. Perhaps Elie was seeking to find some redeeming factors in mankind’s obscenity with their reneging upon a humanity toward their fellow human beings. I am not certain Elie found all that he sought out, given the propensity for Genocides that have peppered the World and ever since we became the custodians of such an unhidden secret, we have betrayed that very evidence of this awful truth.
As an example, what has been delivered to us today through the vast newer media of today has been the increasingly brutal, savage and careless disregard for human life presented in images of atrocity upon atrocity. However, with such a lesson as The Holocaust provides, it is essential that the Children of yesterday pass on an invaluably affirmative lesson which Children of today will take securely into tomorrow. For these Children of The Holocaust, and you can see some of them displayed here, theirs has the benefit of the very lesson from Yesterday which we need to take us forward to tomorrow. It is these Jewish Children, whose destruction should ensure Tolerance will Never allow such an evil Catastrophe to Ever emerge again, that I present to you in my work.
History.
History should be written with integrity and its truth should merely relay the facts of what happened and how it happened. Any deviation from that basic concept will distort the truth and corrupt the lessons of History for us all. But this History must not simply be a cold, emotionless science. It must reverberate with its concise detail and soulful immensity. It must incorporate all facets of the human dimension. This is perhaps why, in the realm of The Holocaust, the Jewish writer becomes the scholar who attributes humanity into this specific detail. The Holocaust discourse becomes relevant therefore, as it attributed the very nature of our own humanity as it is linked into the crescendo of violence we have become a witness to. Under the auspices of historical relevance is the human being who seeks to find a better way to live and go forward taken from the lessons imparted to us.
Here and now and in this time, this moment is History. You are part of that History. Everything you do all adds to what those in the future will know of our time. It must be recorded truthfully so that the facts are well known. If they are written incorrectly History will be distorted. Part of all of our History is a period we know as World War II and someone who fought in WWII was General Miles Dempsey. It was a division of his British Second Army which liberated the Concentration Camp at Belsen. Clearly, if we had written that it was another General whose forces liberated the Camp, it would be wrong and recorded History would be Wrong. We must hold with the correctness and Truth so that History is honestly recorded. As we recorded the ventures and episodes detailed in this landscape of Warfare, so will History know what truth is.
Writing.
Can You Write? If you Can Write then you are writers! You just need to have something to say and for others to want to about read it. Part of the joy of Writing is the Gift to be gained from Reading and I read extensively. I devoured Charles Dickens, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, John Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Astronomy, The Bible, now my net is cast wider into a narrower field of The Holocaust. I have read extensive accounts of The Holocaust from its inception to its final conclusion and am more deeply searching the Memoirs of those who either Survived or did not Survive but have lent us their voice to add to our understanding. Who has a Business Card? Write one word on the back that identifies The Holocaust for You? I will borrow the word you have written on the back of your card and present it back to you in a different form and will represent it for you at the end of this post.
I have been accused of plagiarising the terms of The Holocaust and I accept that I have plagiarised the words of 6,000,000 stilled Jewish voices. I will use 6,000,000 of their own words to ensure that these Jews are not merely defined by The Holocaust term but by their prior existence. Though these 6,000,000 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children have been detained within The Holocaust confines, they are to be remembered as the vibrant People they once where. The imperative, that they must never be forgotten is the overriding effort in the words I place before you. These 6,000,000 Jews are The Holocaust. They are the fundamental reason why the very term, The Holocaust, has been employed by History to recall, remember and never forget that all of these Jews had existed.
“..Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures ..peace is our gift to each other.” Elie Wiesel.
During a period in World War II, Adolf Hitler had these Jewish People selected, rounded up, corralled and then removed toward an exterminating certainty he stated was his Final Solution. By word of mouth, as opposed to a penned deed, Hitler stoked the flames of an ancient hatred which finally sealed the fate of those who now lend me their words. I adopt their words so that I can complete these narratives to their memory. On their behalf, I have chosen to use words, and certain deeds, to remark on why intolerance is despicable and why indifference is most certainly culpable and should be despised. If I merely took a single word from each of those 6,000,000 Jews of The Holocaust, the text of that narrative would have grown by some 60 Books. Those works, based on an intolerable hatred we must attempt to comprehend, have ramifications for us all. So now is not the time to be silent. 6,000,000 stilled Jewish voices provide enough quiet to create an uproar which reverberates with clarity and accusation.
The voice of reason is being drowned out in the stillness while the clamour for hate builds a momentum as loud as a splash in an Ocean. 6,000,000 ripples radiate out and a tsunami of concern can be washed away in the tumult. For me, it is essential that in this World we live in that we learn from the experiences of History and it is abundantly clear, no Jew should have The Holocaust on their Curriculum Vitae or even on their Job application. Tragically, as the relentless spin of time moves remorselessly forward, the Jew today is also heading toward a final solution. But this final resolve is as a consequence of life itself, not as an aberration of Hitler’s hatred. The Jew today will eventually succumb on their own terms to the rigours of life. The Survivor however, having delivered for posterity what Hitler had demanded in mathematical terms with the total Destruction of World Jewry.
Of that fact alone, 11,293,300 of these Jews of Europe were written into the terms of The Wannsee Conference. This Conference was ordered so that all arms of Hitler’s Reich could be linked to the atrocity, become culpable and compliant in the atrocity and submit to the will of Hitler for The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, with the annihilation of all Jews. It is easy for me to trust to memory what has been stated, for all my effort is aimed in a single direction and it will seek to recall from within the abyss as many names as records provide. We are not alone here Always to Remember, Never to Forget but that is the task I have set myself.
Tokele.
“..first victims were ..Jewish Children ..and I shall never forget ..harrowing scenes and ..blood curdling incidents when ..ss men ..cruelly attacked Children. ..Even today ..cries ..shrieking of those Children are clear in my mind.” Adolf Berman.
All of my work has been Dedicated to Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak, just one of over 1,500,000 Jewish Children devastated and devoured. From the Catastrophe that is the 6,000,000 Murdered Jews of The Holocaust they are an inordinate crime against humanity. Tokele too was Murdered for being Jewish and the odyssey she has set me upon has been as traumatic and revealing of the inhumanity that remains unfixed in the World. The passivity of People will be readily taken as acquiescence by those who will use our uncertainty.
The Holocaust.
“..I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.” Elie Wiesel.
I have taken the time to visit the Death Camps, to add a perspective to my work that I feel is missing. I have stood on the grounds of such desolation and when you stand on these mass graves, which the Death Camps invariably are, you can sense the aura of hatred which surrounds these areas. It is tangible, it is in the air. Even the overwhelming feeling of a grief which belongs to us all is substantial and can overcome your feeling of remoteness from the tragedy. They are quite unpleasant, familiar and even touching and moving places, striking at the core of our humanity. On the x4 sites I have already visited, 1,000,000’s of Jewish People and others have been consumed. Then, when you consider the dimensions at Belzec and Sobibor, they become defiant in their strategic ability to relate the industrial nature and mechanised detail of the mass murder accomplished within them.
The awful legacy remaining to us all, where at Auschwitz more than 1,100,000 Jews were destroyed will never diminish. This line of Jewish footsteps would have stretched more than 173 miles from the gates of destruction and back toward a safety that did not exist for these Jews, once Hitler had come to prominence. Measurement seems to be a way to deal with, not only the capacity for Murder but the dimensions to which it could be sustained and maintained. The precise detail of all that transpired in these Death Camps and Killing Sites has been logged and as the train carriages carried a human cargo that would be deposited, and those Human Beings would be extinguished almost immediately upon arrival, the calculations were being made.
Remember also, the sheer weight of plunder, the spoils of a massive undertaking, was organised so that Hitler could profit ever further from the destruction of The Jews of Europe. I have entered the gates at Majdanek and accessed an arena which sought to conceal the destruction of more than 360,000 people. Majdanek was simply a stroll away from Lublin, and as I stood on the ramparts of Globocnik’s Castle, I could see the outline of the Camp from there.
As I stood in the deep snow in Sobibor what lay concealed beneath my feet was the annihilation of more than 250,000 Jews forced to perish there. What I found as I paced these grounds however, of Belzec and Sobibor was the feeling that this was a space designed to not only destroy those Jews who were sent there, but it was designed well enough to even conceal that truth. All other Death Camps so far have been surprisingly open to an audience right outside the gates, hardly hidden behind the barbed wire and visited on a regular basis by road and rail links.
“..I shall never forget this scene. ..this was no march to ..carriages ..but rather a mute protest ..against this murderous regime. ..a procession ..no human eye has ever witnessed. ..They were going to their death with eyes full of contempt for ..murderers. Seeing Korczak. ..Germans asked ..who is this man. ..I could no longer contain myself. I tried to hide ..stream of tears running from my eyes.” Nachum Remba.
Even Belzec, which killed as many as 884,700 Jews, this tiny space, a postage stamp in comparison, could not be fully hidden from the locals, let alone those who traversed Road and Rail lines merely metres from the Camp entrance. Concealment from those who sought to know what was going on in any of these Death Camps could not be kept from the inquisitive, let alone from the knowledgeable.
“..first and foremost perpetrator was Adolf Hitler. ..without him it would have been inconceivable.” Raul Hilberg.
It must always be remembered what a very gifted historian Raul Hilberg is and he has stated in acknowledging that without Hitler there would have been no Holocaust. It is a certainty that might have meant security for 6,000,000 Jews who have been taken from us? That too speaks for the losses incurred in WWII also. Hitler latched onto an under current of antisemitism and when that rolled out into Poland and the East in particular it was met with a similar antagonism. That combined in allowing 3,000 Einsatz to secure the services of local and active participants in the perpetration of The Holocaust. A scene such as that depicted within Warsaw was played out across the length and breadth of Europe, heart rending and gut wrenching scenes of despair.
“..Nachum Remba ..his Wife ..drove to ..Umschlagplatz to rescue as many Children as they could. ..they saved 100’s of Jewish Children.” David Wdowinski.
Tolerance.
Who knows what Tolerance means? Kind of like your Parents say Vegetables are good for You. You may not like them but they Are good for You. So you tolerate them. You are given a Mars Bar. You may not like them but you say thank You and eat it anyway. When it comes to People we learn to Tolerate and accept all the differences because we are all different. God did that to show how special We all are. To be tolerant of People means to include all people in how we behave toward the World we share. The essential in my writing is for those who read my work to gain an understanding, not only of what it is I write about, but why I write. The intolerable nature of bias, exclusion, racism and hatred can be exposed and might be better avoided if we all learn the innate differences within each of us is not intolerable?
“..All sorts of things happened to my faith during The Holocaust ..although I could not have articulated it in this way ..one thing I understood ..precisely ..what happened to us was not because of what God did ..but what people did after rejecting him.. I witnessed ..destruction that follows when men try to turn themselves into Gods.” Hugo Gryn.
Speaking to the Young Students at Our Lady of Compassion, *happy* is not a word I thought would appear relevant to the topic for discussion, The Holocaust, excepting that these Students were happy to learn more of what they had already learned about what is The Holocaust. In terms of what appeared *important* to them, they were *shocked* and *disgusted* by the very detail of the atrocity that awakened their curiosity. I am certain that while they found the subject matter *interesting* the suggestion of the *horrific* *brutality* made an *anxious* concern for what had been a *terrible* atrocity that both *horrified* and *intrigued* them an easier way for me to explain to these Students the great hatred The Holocaust contained. Again, it comes back to what they say that they found *interesting*, with a mixture of *upset* that such a *devastating* level of *death* by *gas* was exercised that it so *shocked* and *mortified* their sensitivity. That said, I was *heartened* that here, these Students had gained a *knowledge* which they considered was *a lot more dark than I expected.*
Though the subject matter *shocked* their *disbelief* that so much *death* could be meted out to so many innocent People, simply because they were Jews, was a *horrid* detail of our History which *devastated* and actually *horrified* them. It did prove *interesting* that they could relate the *brutal* and *shocking* excesses mentioned and to such a degree that they became *heavy hearted* with the idea that so many *terrified* and *frightened* Jewish People could be so ruined by an *unimaginable* atrocity raged against them by their fellow human beings. The *horrified* *sadness* and *upset* suggested an empathy with a People exposed to the full horrors of this atrocity which were so *savage* and *devastating*, these Students ability to become so *flabbergasted* and *ashamed* by such a perpetration, it allowed them to feel *sorry for the people so *petrified* and *terrified* by their obvious ordeal. It is *interesting* that students of such a tender age can empathize their concern for a ravaged People with words like *sorry* *upset* and *heart broken* and it renders the writer consumed by the words they used to adapt to the catastrophe.
What these Students are well on their way toward, learning the positive lessons they are being taught, will ensure they are the next positive generation of *respectful* and tolerant people. The *unbelievable* severity of The Holocaust atrocity so *shocked and devastated* their awareness that the *unimaginable* became a detail of History that they could relate to as *fateful* and immensely *important.* As one student remarked, *I feel good about it because I am from Poland* was in response to the clear delineation between what happened, in relation to where it happened and who actually instigated the overall atrocity. It was also *unimaginable* to these students, whose sense of *despair* was so clearly obvious. Their countenance was a *respectful* blend of community and sensitivity for their fellow human beings which would suggest they would be *angry* and *sad* at the *death* of so many People who suffered a *horrible* *suffocation*. Surely not only the Children being led to the Death Camps or the Killing Sites were the only ones *shocked and frightened.*
It clearly resonated with these students that they too could feel for the countless lines of Jewish People making their way toward the *gas*. There was a sense of *anger* also from these students that the *madness* was so *horrible* and it was they who felt the *shame* for what was done, but not in their name. *Anxious* and *upset* became words which fixed an *astonished* group of students with a sense of *sadness* so *horrific*, humanity *alone* would be *upset*, *sad* and even *annoyed* at such an atrocity against ALL of Humanity. That the Jews of The Holocaust stood *petrified* and *alone* enabled these students to become *furious* with *anger* at the sheer depravity of what was the fate of 6,000,000 Jewish People, and all because they were Jews! Of course it is essential that the sense of *anger* they feel for what a *petrified* People were forced to endure is *sad* on its own but there is no *demolition* of the human spirit I have witnessed here, only a sense of acknowledgement for a grave wrong that was done. All of which fully becomes a future *memorial* to the lives of these Jews of The Holocaust we have all joined here. Always to Remember, Never to Forget.
To da Raba. (Hebrew – Thank You Very Much)
