“..Christianity ..said ..you have no right to live among us as Jews. ..secular rulers who followed ..said ..you have no right to live among us. Nazis had at last decreed ..you have no right to live.” Raul Hilberg.
As I set out upon this odyssey, an edifice over which hangs such despair, and in terms that are written as The Holocaust, it has always been my deepest concern for and about 6,000,000 Jews. My first Book, Testimony and Fading Memory in The Holocaust (2002) came into being to inform the World of how much I had still to learn and what little I knew that could all add up to the most despicable crime ever contemplated, let alone committed in times of civilised society. For me, this was a juxta position between what I knew we might and were learning and what the evidence’s to be brought forward which might as yet be lost.
“..we ..went to Piotrkow ..Polish children shouted at us calling us Jews. ..Dad stayed in Piotrkow ..we sneaked back to Lodz. We obtained some letters from him ..then .. correspondence stopped ..I never saw my dear Father again.” Hana Svirsky.
The purpose of this first Book, and it was a 7 year endeavour, was also to share with the reader the words of many who suffered. Interspersed with these are the memories for those who could suffer no more, and their memory is infilled with the mind numbing reality that perpetration was a human device. In my wish to then inform the reader that my research was as in-depth a search as I could sustain, it was essential to find out from the Survivor, more of these lost Jews than have been already recorded.
“..The Holocaust was an unprecedented crime against humanity ..aimed at ..total annihilation of ..entire Jewish population of Europe ..down to ..last Man ..Woman ..Child. It was ..planned ..deliberate policy decision of a powerful state ..Nazi Reich ..which mobilised all its resources to destroy an entire People.” Robert S. Wistrich.
But ostensibly, my unfaltering position is in trying to find and facilitate the Jewish space that is occupying the Jewish place for them in The Holocaust. With my second Book, on der Einsatzgruppe and the Destruction of European Jewry (2003), it was essential then to point out those who Murdered in excess of 1,250,000 Jews, and as many as 2,000,000 Jews or even more. So the central focus is upon those Jews, totally removed from all existence and by the sheer brutality of scale that was wielded initially by over 3,000 Einsatz. To resolve the Jewish issue though required as many as a further 100,000 personnel fully involved in the Slaughter. All the while, the continued concern is toward recording the Jewish loss and with identifying them with that destructive removal.
“.. conventional wisdom is .. Wehrmacht soldiers were part of a gigantic apparatus of annihilation ..were participants in ..if not executioners of .. unparalleled mass murder. ..no doubt .. Wehrmacht was involved in criminal acts ..from .. killing of civilians to .. systematic murder of Jewish ..Men ..Women ..Children.” Sonke Neitzler.
When it came to my third Book, Babi-Yar A Jewish Catastrophe (2005) it was imperative to align the destructive capacity of Hitler’s legions in destroying these Jews of Kiev. The figure of 33,771 Jews Slaughtered over this two day period, September 29th. 1941 till September 30th. 1941, attests to what such hatred adapted militarily can manage against defenceless Jews. The argument to denial thus becomes not only what was done but also, what the military might of Hitler’s Reich could achieve against innocent and civilian Jews. It is certain that what was managed against these Jews of Kiev, and if this was to be replicated, 11,293,300 further Jews of Europe could become extinguished in a period of just under 2 years.
“..Final Solution of .. European Jewish Question ..willed and ordered by Adolf Hitler ..distinguishes itself from all previous recorded tides of human destruction through its unprecedented ..systematic ..and wholesale murder of ..Jews.” Gerald Fleming.
I was then persuaded by Elie Wiesel that my fourth Book should not be the one I had been researching to write, and though it was nearing completion, I stalled on it. All along in this, my proposed 4th. Book, this was to add contemporaneously to that detailed progress already maintained in assessing the overall Jewish loss at Babi-Yar. I was thus stalled in a literary wilderness, a fourth Book nearly complete and a decision to find another chapter in my search for the Jewish presence. As I set off on my journey to visit all 6 Death Camps in Poland, I set about and established My Blog space. I had begun to abandon those many media platforms which refused to restrict the open hatred displayed against both what I write and why I write it.
“..We Jews have no order to award ..we have a good and long memory. ..German Jews will not forget how often you have helped them.” Hans Friedenthal.
Personally, I sought no accolades nor awards for my effort, as I only wished for those who might read my words would know, that not all non-Jews would have stood aside. No Pasaran had become common parlance for that stand to be made while facing down the very deliberate effort of too many to dictate the terms of their own hatred. As I sought a reference point to further add to the progress of my own endeavour, words were added to fragments of those Books I felt I would write. It was not until I had visited the last of these Death Camps, that Belzec gained prominence in my thought process.
“..While ..leaders of ..countries plotted ..pushed ..hundreds of thousands of Eastern European citizens continued their work a day lives unaware ..as pawns ..their lives were about to change forever.” Shirley Lebovitz.
It is so blindingly obvious to be True, that so many Jews were exterminated here within Belzec, and in far graver numbers than History admitted to, that the Death Camp at Belzec needed to be more widely known. The genesis of Hitler’s Belzec (2016) was borne and ownership of what was perpetrated in Poland was fully attributed to the mindset of a hate filled leader of the Nazis. Also, and there were many Survivors who looked at Poland, and gentile poles, in less than favourable terms so I sought to add to such an apparent generality. Many Survivors too were obviously filled with the vexation that betrayal by their former neighbours engenders. I was therefore looking to find if objectivity could be delivered on behalf of what Polish Jewry suffered and was made to suffer at the hands of unchristian poles.
“..I too .must walk this inner path that leads from Here towards ..untold sufferings of my people ..and gropes onwards out of ..pain.” Nelly Sachs.
So here I am. Dealing still in the death and destruction of the Jewish People and looking to secure, in memory, their unique place in The Holocaust. I remain convinced that the detail should remain specific to the awful truth of what was forced upon these Jews and the many forms of atrocity which brought about the overall catastrophe. My effort in this is now 4 Books long and with 6,000,000 words of soul searching questions to unspeakable answers. There has been a concentration of effort for over 6,000,000 of the Jews of Europe who are totally obliterated from life. Book after Book opens the gateway to newer searches and the pathway to more research that has occupied me.
“..To ..relatives who lost their lives shot in ..street or camps needlessly ..those who dug their own graves ..those who committed suicide ..you will never ever be forgotten. To my grandparents ..Siegfried ..Sophie ..Oskar ..Erna ..and to my Dad ..thanks for making me.” Sandra M. Scheller.
I only name in passing the many who perpetrated, participated and otherwise led the Jews toward their destruction to add fully to the depth of the terrifying horror inflicted upon these Jews. For those, whose words I borrow from, I can only judge the huge grief and pain of loss as an hugely incomprehensible suffering to is bound to continue. I speak here of their pain of loss as I do not wish to be drawn into conflict over the emergence of the State of Israel. For me, Israel should have been in existence some 5,000 years and brought forward to this day alongside that fact and Christianity’s acknowledgement of that truth which is 2,000 years old.
“..I owe more than it is possible to express. ..My largest debt ..is to ..Survivors ..each one ..expanded my knowledge and enabled ..work of this book to go forward.” Dorothy Rabinowitz.
Israel’s status was confirmed and then sponsored in 1948, and by some who sought to salve the conscience of a World whose unconscionable and intractable indifference led 6,000,000 Jews toward eternity without our simplest concern. I look back at realising the many criminals to escape justice and know more words must be raised against them. That Franz Six escaped his crimes, then worked for Porsche and the CIA, is both galling and an affront to our own humanity’s decency.
“..Natzweiler ..had been a tool of .. Hitler’s Final Solution. Medical experiments ..on Jewish inmates ..to prove ..inferiority of ..Jewish race ..Untermench in Nazi speak.” Damien Lewis.
Worse too, many others, including SS, SD, Gestapo, Einsatz commanders and even Concentration Camp kommandants who flooded the ranks of allied intelligence agencies. There was the Gehlen Organisation, headed by a man steeped in the wiles of wherefores of Hitler’s needs. This was a group which also had the brief to hold onto those Nazi files that were specifically detailing the murderous efforts of other Nazi War Criminals. This evidence was including files to indict those who were accused of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. All the while, Allied intelligence was employing far too many of them to spread further and deeper into nation states they had formerly sought to vanquish, extinguish and destroy.
“..It reads like fiction. Surely ..real life is not so cruel ..so devastating ..so extreme. Real life does not threaten death every day ..split families ..dehumanise ..dignity of ..elderly ..make Children ..specific target of people bent on their painful ..frightening destruction ” The AJR.
It is perhaps more disturbing once we realise that even Israel was engaged with such a cohort as had extorted life from so many of the 6,000,000 Jews who are, The Holocaust. The relentless progression, of what is this pernicious evil, the very distinct nature of this Jew hatred, acclimatised itself to periods in time. The Jews though, who perpetually suffered for being Jews, are belonging to all of history, and theirs is but one damning voice. Throughout what we might consider, Our moral history, this is a shameful episode that continued for over 5,000 years and then 2,000 years of Christian and Moral probity. As we may well reflect today, and more widely upon what we accept antisemitism presents to the World, The Holocaust rises above the torment of abuse to propel all of History into a genocide beyond human comprehension.
“..Jews were hunted down with a fanatical hatred ..reserved for them alone. ..killed amounted to over half ..to more than two thirds of all European Jews ..between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 ..not including those who died of hunger and disease in .. ghettos.” Norman Cohn.
But, and for me this is crucial, antisemitism is but a fraction of what has propelled Hitler to consider the mass murder of the Jews. That this was undertaken, and upon such a genocidal level, speaks volumes for the sadistic intention of those soon to be involved in delivering the overall atrocity for Hitler. With a broad sweep of accusation also, and against those who did so little to save any one of these Jews, my work finds newer meaning to accuse. With this as a certainty, antisemitism does not, nor can it ever define the fuller remit for what The Holocaust represents. However such is the term of this Jew hatred itself, and that forms much as is recognised as antisemitism, must stand in full accord with what Ken Stern stressed is the hatred of the Jews for being Jews.
“..There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all, ..one must not forget them either. Such an event is The Holocaust.” Rabbi Israel Spira.
But here the term antisemitism itself merely shrouds The Holocaust in that same hatred that has persisted and lasted for more than these 2,000 years. The notion then, which would partially dissolve the unique status belonging to these 6,000,000 Jews of Europe, who are The Holocaust, does not present what is the most destructive endeavour ever contemplated in destroying a People, as a People who are Jews. Such contention, around these 6,000,000 Slaughtered Jews, and for those who are still amongst us, these Survivors are uniquely qualified to be uniquely and reverentially treated. These Jews cannot escape the fact of their terrifying position and what proves counter productive in The Holocaust meaning.
“..pages before you are segments of contemplation and memory. Memory ..elusive ..selective ..it holds on to what it wants to hold on to. I won’t say it retains only what is good and pleasant.” Aharon Appelfeld.
That essential is to not only and amply recognise the words of those who survived to inform us, but to accept the very veracity of the truth detailed in the factual relationship they have toward them. As I initially formed the opinion that The Holocaust followed a less than rigid framework, an almost fluid delineated set of opportune moments, I recognised all who adopted or adapted to its reach, did so in an ever changing cauldron. The Final Solution of the Jewish Question emerged from the limited consideration of the expulsion of all Jews under Hitler’s gaze. The proposal to deliver untold misery to the Jewish People to be sent to Madagascar, as both France and Poland had previously proposed, was too logistically unsound.
On October 25th. 1941 “..It is good that we are preceded by an aura of terror for our plans to exterminate Jewry ” Adolf Hitler.
Eichmann too had his Jewish reservoir in the Nisko project yet none of these proposed the Slaughter that was to come. This brutality, that is Hitler’s exponents of such forms of antisemitism, forged the greatest hatred and most pernicious evil ever to be recognised. This most detestable absurdity ever envisioned by mankind though, has brought with it unrestricted comparisons to the unique position which The Holocaust holds. However much we try, antisemitism does not allow for the uniqueness, which is what The Final Solution defines as The Jewish Question. This is where the lines of historical parity, and any seemingly comparable likenesses must divest themselves. Everything I write on the atrocity, that is The Holocaust, is only inspired by the necessity to know exactly, What Happened to these 6,000,000 Individual Jews.
“..On November 11th. 1941 ..Himmler ..has just come from ..Fuhrer. ..He told me ..destruction of ..Jews is being planned. ..Final Solution of ..Jewish Question.” Felix Kersten.
In that, it is the Survivor I look to constantly to provide some answer to an incomprehensible loss that is added to all of civilization. All too often then, as I revisit those works I gained inspiration from, and that is every single Book in my, The Holocaust Library. I find newer emphasis to add ever more to what must be said. As I now pause for thought, I am looking to the testimony of those Jewish Survivors, and the Jewish Children who also managed to survive, to add their own testimony to our historical need. While I do not discount antisemitism from The Holocaust, I merely reflect upon it as a containing poison and detaining spur. This slur, this hatred, which cannot alter my persuasion as to Hitler’s unique intervention as being more extraordinarily brutal than history itself has ever conceived of, is omnipresent still.
“..I am hiding in this crate what I have written ..noted and collected ..with thrill and anxiety ..so that it may serve as material evidence ..corpus delicti ..accusing testimony when ..Day of Judgment comes.” Avraham Tory.
All of that said, the unparalleled wrong that is The Holocaust is a uniquely placed horror which must now be spaced firmly in times between 1889, and 1945 to 1946. What is pledged in memoriam, for those relatives who perished during The Holocaust, and I have come to know such an immensity of their grief, it is a borrowed pain for me to act within. Through Survivor’s, I have repeatedly placed the names of those many of their lost, these names held before time, that will last beyond time due to memory. Also, my visit the Death Camps has been done and somehow adds to the emotional connection I have gained. But! This does not release me from the urgent need to know why all of these Jews were allowed to perish, were given up upon the mantle of abandonment and left with searching for the answers to why.
“..some 2,000 of .. city’s Jews had been dispatched to ..extermination camps. ..in time Mannheim’s ..industries ..attracted ..Allied Bombers.” Damien Lewis.
Here too, when I reached a major acknowledgement of what so many family’s have registered as loss, and this amounts to a grief beyond compare, it so shocks me even still. For those we never knew and for all of those many more we are not going to know, the tally of loss is vast. There are more pages transcribed with such a detailed account, in an effort even to read of such horror, we cannot come to terms with what we read. What Auschwitz , Belzec and Sobibor can bring is matched by what Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek and Treblinka delivered. That these spaces resonate so loudly in the overall atrocity for so many losses is clear. What echoes through also is the great loss owed to where places unknown to too many of us and have taken those Jews we seek to recall. In all too many places, where Jewish life could be extinguished, ashes over time still dwell where these Jews were eventually destroyed.
On December 31st. 1942 “..Fuhrer ..regards campaign against gangs
..August 31,246 Jews
..September 165,282 Jews
.. October 95,735 Jews
..November 70,948 Jews
..totals 362,211 Jews
executed during ..period 1st. September to 1st. December 1942″ Heinrich Himmler.
For me, it is an imperative that the participants in the terrifying and inflicted horror are recognised for their crimes. Also, and as much as we cannot ignore the duplicitous nature of all of those involved in the Slaughter of the Jews, it is worthy of a more concerted search to extricate them from the obscurity they seek. It concerns me also, that while all future proprietary rights to the words I have constructed, they may not be altered from their intention. While the words I have formed are issued, they are merely to place before history what those 6,000,000 Jews could no longer endure. What the Jewish Survivor then brings forth in a lived testimony, adds to the experience that makes us the custodians of that testimony. The truth of the very detailed aspect of such an atrocity is all too often played down by many who do not wish to confront what ordinary human beings are capable of achieving in line with what hatred dictates.
“..For 5 years ..starting in 1938 ..we lived in a time without a future ..a dark present overhung by a confused .. indistinct nightmare ..which enveloped us after September 8th. 1943.” Piers Sonnino.
What should and will remain integral to my intention for both the 6,000,000 Jews and the Jewish Survivor, is intentionally formed and must ensure that any future search cannot allow for these facts to be altered. Such is my hope for all the artistic and intellectual integrity of these words, as they are firmly ensconced in any and all my Books, I wish for them to remain there. I have been aware for a long time, that the best requirement in that which we recall, has to be those vey names of their own People that they knew, and who are now testified to as the lost. I was preparing to annotate somehow, a measure of that need by naming those, which some of the formerly Child Survivors put into any particular Book we learn from to remember.
“..To ..past ..way has been barred ..And what do I need past for now. What is there. Bloodied flagstone. ..a bricked up door. ..an echo ..That still cannot die away ..However much I beg.” Nonna L. Bannister.
I expect what must retain the very integrity of memory is in fully honouring those 6,000,000 Jews to whom the memories belong to. These, and of all of my words, are wholly gifted to the memory of those 6,000,000 Jews, whose future testimony has been so sorely denied. That these Jews are the constituent parts of The Holocaust must not be diminished, diluted not denied. In our own effort, and for us to know of whom we choose to remember, the very names which are to emerge from the Catastrophe are the one constant. When I looked through those named, at the back of those Books who credit their names, I realised the effort involved had been achieved. I could do no more than reflect back upon the depth and pain of loss that had endured. But! Could I ever add further to memory by duplicating the terrible loss the Survivor has ascribed to paper.
“..Being a member of ..Jewish community was never a problem. It was proudly claimed by my father ..for cultural reasons ..not religious ones. ..In his eyes ..if ..Jewish people were to remain ..chosen people ..it was because they were People of ..Book ..People of thinking and writing.” Simone Veil.
This position cannot ever be changed, nor altered or even be less than future proofed for those who are still to learn. It has now become evidential that certain words can be altered in editing a book so as to conform to the norms of another days acceptance. For me! There can be no diffusion of The Holocaust term particularly for a People of thought and words. Therefore, no dilution of my particular intention to confront the grave wrongs perpetrated against 6,000,000 innocent Jews can ever be considered. Here too is the very contention which deserves to stand, and which must not be altered and cannot ever be changed. Hitler led a latter day crusade of such hatred, 6,000,000 Jews are confined within its ugly reaches.
“.. Hitler .became overweeningly confident of a continued run of easy success. Even when he came to see that further ventures might entail a war he felt it would be only a small one ..and a short one. His moments of doubt ..drowned by ..cumulative effect of intoxicating success.” Basil H. Liddel-Hart.
It is in fully regarding those criminals who committed these atrocities that we add a dimension to our search which much of history has sought to dismember. Also, and for all of those crimes, and all of those who placated the very route toward a genocide that required a uniquely descriptive and structured edifice of atrocity, all of this has delivered us to The Holocaust. There is also the fact that World opinion progressed both incrementally, and with acquiescence, and toward the abandonment of the Jewish People. Steadily, and toward an eventual extinction of 6,000,000 of their People, we witnessed the stalling of any effective or firmer intervention in favour of the Jewish People. The very tenets of The Holocaust is therefore written in both the blood and destruction of these Jews. But, and it is also in the eternal shame of those who either perpetrated and participated in the crimes or stood aside to allow this all to happen.
“..Having tried for ..last 65 years to forget and erase from my memory my teenage experiences in Auschwitz and other Nazi ..camps ..I am now ..persuaded ..I owe ..to my family and others to write them.” Felix Weinberg.
There is a complicity growing in the 1930’s, that is of the future sanctioning of the Slaughter of the Jewish People. There was not to be a World wide attempt at responding positively, not an intervention to the horror that was steadily emerging. Although there was not a world’s effort, any moral compassion that drew so little positively, in containing the huge atrocity being undertaken, a systematic approach to the Slaughter was fully condoned as it was engaged. This was clearly witnessed early on within Poland in 1939, while dealing with 10’s of 1,000’s of Polish Jews being rounded up and Murdered. We cannot fail to take account of this burgeoning Slaughter let alone come to terms with the eventual tragedy written 6,000,000 times over in Jewish desperation and destruction without recognising its genesis was given over to a supplicant national community only too willing to ignore what was happening to Polish Jewry.
“..I am here in this World ..having endured ..survived The Holocaust ..remain purely alive purely by chance.” Anna Podgajecki.
It is clear also that any allowance for chance must play no part in any survival for any Jew, even though chance is credited by so many Jews who did in fact Survive. There should then be no ambiguity nor confusion over who Slaughtered these Jews nor who allowed for the slaughter to happen. For all of those others, complicit or duplicitous, we accept they fell under Hitler’s influence, and with an unnecessary cruelty they fully adopted Hitler’s vengeful gaze. But, and for those who stubbornly resisted the moral efficacy involved in intervening, so as to attempt to prevent such an immoral massacre, History stands to accuse them all. We can and do excuse those who took it upon themselves to resist the tide of hatred. We recognise their righteous nature and realise fully the cauldron in which they had to manage their humanity.
“..Polish women. ..write secret messages ..Poland has not yet perished ..even though ..it perished a long time ago. ..now there is Western Ukraine here .there is communism .. everybody is equal and that’s what hurts them. ..that they can’t say You bloody Yid. They still say it ..but in secret.” Renia Spiegel.
Today as I write, I am mindful that every single work cannot mask the accusation aimed at the level of inhumanity that is to be expressed tellingly. But those who stand as witnesses to the depravity of this voiding of morality, they are present to record what adds to our ethical descent. For the very morality which absconded, and from that place of Jewish urgent need, we now look back at the decimation such an immobile indifference caused. There were clearly those who blatantly stood aside as the Jewish People languished before the gates of those Death Camps. Within all 6 of these Camps of annihilation, all increasingly vying for the complete destruction of the Jews sent to them, atrocity expanded upon atrocity to such levels of depravity, we have never come close to comprehending what it is we are reaching to understand.
“..in Poland ..our train made a stop. ..There was another train. ..loaded with Jews heading for .. extermination camps. ..so pitiful ..dressed in rags ..not seen food for ..a long time. Some ..like human skeletons ..so thin ..they looked like death.” Nonna L. Bannister.
Also, and there are the very many, with craned necks poised as they stood atop the abyss watching what was interfering in what humanity is. Such spaces, which swallowed as many as 2,000,000 Jews wholesale, and we are at liberty today to be able to recall the scant regard reserved for such Jewish pain. For all of these innocent Jews, who are rounded up, fully detained and then driven systematically toward destruction, their sojourn was not complicated by a World’s compassion. It is with certainty that we recognise in Hitler’s world view, his Weltanschauung, that this led the charge toward the near total obliteration of all Jews under Hitler’s gaze and for whom, migration did not serve enough of the Jewish People.
“..There was a pronounced military weakness in those states which depended for their existence on foreign trade. As our foreign trade was carried on over ..sea routes dominated by Britain ..it was more a question of security of transport than one of foreign exchange ..which revealed ..in time of war ..full weakness of our food situation. ..only remedy ..and one which might appear to us as visionary ..lay in ..acquisition of greater living space a quest which has at all times been ..origin of ..formation of states and of ..migration of peoples.” Adolf Hitler.
Along with the lean toward, War, Space and other such declarations, the evisceration of these People, for being Jews was to be advanced. Hitler was Never to relinquish his hold on the one aspect of his ultimate demands, and to the very end of his own miserable existence, this was to be The Final Solution of the Jewish Question. The very intention to extol Hitler’s clear lack of any virtue, is witness to his composite intolerance that was completely formed. Hitler would confront totally those intolerable levels of a hatred which would then devour the Jews of Europe with a qualm of a moment of conscience. For the World, conscience was abated and excuses relevant to sustaining both personal prejudice and perhaps a certain enmity toward Jewish existence led the Jews further down the track toward complete annihilation.
“..Jews were expelled. ..No foreign government protested. ..British Foreign Secretary ..Halifax ..ruled .against giving unnecessary offence to Hitler.” Peter Calvocoressi.
Readily recognised, and heavily featured in Hitler’s Weltanschauung was the formatting of a Total War that would exorcise the Jewish People. Yet to be written as a matter of more grave an urgency, a resolve to end Jewish persistence was designed, though initially it aimed toward an emphasis upon total World dominion to disguise its inception. However, what was inevitably geared toward a confrontation with the persistence of World Jewry, is not as hidden as many in History would propose. In that eventual confrontation, The Final Solution of the Jewish Question was unequivocally answered in such brutal terms we required newer meanings to understand this incomprehensible slaughter. This atrocity fully resulted in the single most dedicated accomplishment of Hitler’s most devoted aim. All of which emerged in the form of the atrocious Horror for the 6,000,000 Jewish People who were massacred.
“..10 o’clock .. morning ..May 5th. 1945. ..courtyard ..Mauthausen. ..Gone ..sweetish smell of burnt flesh. ..night before ..last SS ..had run away. .. machinery of death had come to a stop. .. crematorium no longer operated.” Simon Wiesenthal.
I find it impossible here to compensate the Jewish People for what has been done to them in an ostensibly christian name. While I offer my words in some way as a consolation for what other people allowed to happen to them, it can never prove adequate enough. I have shaken the hand of many of the Survivors and I hope in some way to have gifted them that outreaching hand of a deep sense of friendship. For that which was not offered up to them, and from so many of those of past generations who failed to do so, our eternal sorrow will be forever an accusing voice. Such however is the failing of humanity, in an ambivalence and indifference to the Jewish struggle, the whole of civilisation is weighted with a sickness we cannot repair.
“..Nazis ..have tragically demonstrated that in a large proportion of mankind ..impulse to inflict torture exists ..and requires only opportunity to display itself in all its naked horror.” Bertrand Russell.
The truth of that ailment, of the realisation that far too much was done and not enough that could have been done wasn’t, we cannot come to terms with what we now measure. So as to save any Jews from adding to the 6,000,000 of their People who are so cruelly slaughtered, we look at those who exemplified the terror of the atrocity. So for those Survivors of you who have experienced the Nazi Camp system, I offer my words now when a simple word was absent then. For those of you who have even managed to Survived the Death Camp system, and latterly, for all those who wish to understand, I lend my words so that I too may attempt appreciate all that is lost, which I am certain I will never fathom.
“.. Holocaust Survivors reaching ..end of their lives began to tell long suppressed stories and now sought a measure of justice for what had been stripped of them. People make history and a few People provided ..sparks that ignited ..kindling of unsatisfied justice.” Stuart E. Eizenstat.
Here though, and separated by more than 50 years from what Hitler and the Nazis rise delivered, Fyodor Dostoevsky recognised what was in the hearts of some of human kind. Since then, and there are a further 30 years for us to learn from, we exist in a World apart from the experiences we must bring to the fore to make sense of the insensible. My experience of visiting the 6 Death Camps in Poland have not given me more than a fearful collision with what must have been a monstrous series of events delivering innocent People to these places because they were Jews, different from us in no other way.
“..Here there is a world Apart ..unlike everything else ..with laws of its own ..house of ..living dead ..life as nowhere else and a People apart.” Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.
That the Jews fell victim to such an enormous human failure, and with an escape from the morality which grace lends us, all of this reflects purely upon our own fight against inhumanity. For all of this, we owe far too much to the dominance of a Hitlerite mania, which squashed humanity into a degrading abyss. In as much as this hatred should be detained within the terms of The Holocaust, and while it can still be expressed, we are not learning. An historical lesson is being obscured by what we have learned of the fraught struggle, and with a philosophical uncertainty, we match its truth an immense and gaping wound. The Holocaust’s theological presentation oversees a continued bias and it is within the psychology of a recanted sociological indifference that still measures it. With a firm resolve that continues toward the persistence of that exact same hatred, there is no guarantee that it will be levelled at the Jewish People exclusively.
“..Scenes of biblical fury and transgression took place all across Germany.” Alon Contino.
Along with the rather weathered religious corruption that has been clearly exposed, what is laid bare is the conceited irrelevance it measures. What is given over to a belief system that revokes any compatibility with the tenets of any moral essential, is a belief system which must be dismissed from human following. There should be an incandescent rage to be instilled within the tenets of this, as a lessening of the Jewish tragedy, for there is the Jewish abandoned, left languishing with ignominy as it winds its course through our forgetfulness. Even our literature hones newer skills to express our utter contempt for those, whose seeming capacity is capable of every and any excess against the Jewish People. So as to render all manner of meaning to the meaningless absurdity that became The Holocaust, we reflect gravelly upon 6,000,000 losses which were preventable.
“..justification of a murderous purpose was penned by ..Hitler ..as he point by point built ..case for annihilating ..Jewish race. ..to execute a plan ..The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem.” Hal Lindsey.
However, and fully cloaked in the terms of The Final Solution, the Jewish Question remains at the epicentre of what marginalises the Historical society we seek to inhabit. I am certain too, and despite many an effort to promote The Holocaust in learning, the exclusive presence of the Jews, as the sought out and systematic victims, is not an acceptable position for all too many. These 6,000,000 Jewish People would not be allowed such a position in the overall history of the period, and simply because they are Jews. The Holocaust term itself has been so abused by those seeking to dilute it’s very meaning, and for all of those Jews it was intended to enclose. What then, for a term that must reflect the heinous nature of all hatreds, as it is exemplified by its investment against these Jews, can we allow history to ignore such a fact. Also, and with such grandiose schemes of commemoration to represent them, the Jewish presence is so begrudgingly delivered.
“..sheltered by Christian Poles without whose help my Family and I would not have survived. At ..end of ..war I resumed my former identity ..determined to put ..past behind me. I wanted to forget ..person I had tried so desperately to become ..to forget that which ..forced me to become someone else ..to forget even ..Christians who had helped me ..stay alive. ..Thirty years later my memories started to stir. They called for attention.” Nechama Tec.
However, what was designed to divest all too many Jews from life and meaning, and while the expression of that hatred for the Jews still flourishes, we realise that where such ignorance unravels the positive lessons we must learn, bitterness will swamp our every effort. The hatred for the Jewish People has henceforth become a self propagating assault upon the Jewish Survivor, and all Jews in general. With any suggestion of apology, and this is always allied to a recompense of restitution that is sourced, it is meant to benefit all of those Jews who were the intended victims. This then all becomes a disputed truth, as too many others seek to retain all that they gained in preventing all surviving Jews reclaiming anything of all that they have lost.
“..To put up with .. discrepancy between imagination and fact. Not to invent another imaginary system that will agree with a new fact. Better to say I suffer than This Landscape is ugly.” Simone Weil.
What we recognise, for any fact of restitution and reparations to add any means to such form of compensation, there is nothing that will ever repair the loss of 6,000,000 Jews. To seek a rejected ownership of all that was allowed to be taken from these Jews, it is to express such disdain for any ethical source to afford any moral efficacy. As we continually look back, we adorn memory with a hopeful conscience that is morally grounded and ethically based. While it is then apparent that what we owe, by way of alleviating anything of the pained loss the Jews suffered, this must not and cannot be weighted by any bias. In seeking to deny what is a morally bound attempt to repay even something of all that is owed, we deliver All to those Jews to which All is owed. In that certainty we will enable all of history to move forward with its integrity mindful of the truth it posits and the facts of that veracity it must maintain. For 6,000,000 Jews, the loss is terminal and for us, it is an interminable atrocity which will measure us as human beings throughout what remains of History.
“.. Every time I see my Children and Grandchildren ..I ..call out to my dear Parents. Look. ..These are your Grandchildren. Be proud ..your lifelong devotion ..your selfless love .are reflected in ..faces of your Grandchildren. Through them and your future generations ..you will ..live forever.” Mala Kacenberg.
