The Holocaust exposed the evil possibilities which reside in man. "What do you want people to remember about the Holocaust?" I asked Saul Garber, who was liberated from Mauthausen. "The sufferings of human beings in a so-called civilized period, the twentieth century. We must understand how individuals can be insensitive to children's brains being splashed on their coat. How individuals cannot respond to a mother's plea not to shoot her child. If we understand how it could happen, it might help prevent future disasters."
The Holocaust exposed the ease with which we can inure ourselves to doubt or to guilt. The Holocaust exposed the ease with which man can kill and torture and justifiably believe it is the right, even necessary, thing to do. The Holocaust exposed the ease with which we can suppress our capacity for empathy.
To refer to the Holocaust as a "monstrous, inhuman event" is to miss
the point. The Holocaust was imposed by men and women on other human beings. "It was a time when there were people, not only the Germans, but the others too, what wanted to kill all the Jewish people. After they would kill the Jewish people, they would kill the black people, the brown people. the yellow people. Only people with blond hair and blue eyes would live."
And so most Holocaust survivors believe it could happen again. For those of us who did not endure the calamity, the Holocaust is a historic incident. For survivors, the Holocaust is one more manifestation of an ongoing Jewish history, a history of the antipathy of others, with its lessons for the future. Indeed, survivors insist that the Holocaust must not be seen as an isolated episode. For there was a context, a context of a group that for almost two thousand years has denied the most fundamental beliefs of their majority hosts, a context of the human strategy of finding simplistic solutions to complex problems, a context of the tendency to point the finger at a convenient scapegoat and assuage one's anxiety by acting against that target, and the context of the all too human need to feel superior to others.
from
THE AFTERMATH
Living With The Holocaust
by
AARON HASS
Cambridge University Press 1995
The Holocaust exposed the ease with which we can inure ourselves to doubt or to guilt. The Holocaust exposed the ease with which man can kill and torture and justifiably believe it is the right, even necessary, thing to do. The Holocaust exposed the ease with which we can suppress our capacity for empathy.
To refer to the Holocaust as a "monstrous, inhuman event" is to miss
the point. The Holocaust was imposed by men and women on other human beings. "It was a time when there were people, not only the Germans, but the others too, what wanted to kill all the Jewish people. After they would kill the Jewish people, they would kill the black people, the brown people. the yellow people. Only people with blond hair and blue eyes would live."
And so most Holocaust survivors believe it could happen again. For those of us who did not endure the calamity, the Holocaust is a historic incident. For survivors, the Holocaust is one more manifestation of an ongoing Jewish history, a history of the antipathy of others, with its lessons for the future. Indeed, survivors insist that the Holocaust must not be seen as an isolated episode. For there was a context, a context of a group that for almost two thousand years has denied the most fundamental beliefs of their majority hosts, a context of the human strategy of finding simplistic solutions to complex problems, a context of the tendency to point the finger at a convenient scapegoat and assuage one's anxiety by acting against that target, and the context of the all too human need to feel superior to others.
from
THE AFTERMATH
Living With The Holocaust
by
AARON HASS
Cambridge University Press 1995
drawn by
ELLA LIEBERMANN
16 years old
Children were torn from the arms of their mothers.
Bedzin's Ghetto, Poland
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