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Gray Matter
Children of the Holocaust:
“The Memory of Conscience!”
“The only place I felt safe was close to my mother,” she says in a voice barely audible. “We slept together then in a very narrow bed, my mother, my baby sister and me.”
She was four years old in 1944 when the Germans came that first time. “As with all Jews,” she writes, “my family was deeply affected by the war.” So begins this narrative assignment, written for my non-fiction class at Emory University’s Lifelong Learning Center.
“There were 30 people in a three-bedroom apartment,” it continues. This was a Budapest ghetto, a virtual prison mandated by the Germans, intent then on exterminating all of Europe’s Jews. One of these, plainly, was a child named Stephanie, who today is both a writing student and a friend.
“I was often hungry,” remembers this child of the Holocaust. “Yet, I never asked for food. Instead, I withdrew into myself, so as not to be noticed…or to witness things that could frighten or hurt me.”
There were times when the unnatural behavior was not nearly enough protection. “One night, an old man with a long white beard died,” Stephanie writes. “I heard my two older sisters whispering how he was covered with lice. Someone put the body in the bathtub. I clung to my mother, afraid to sleep now lest the lice crawl onto me…”
Tiny, wingless insects were not the main enemy to these cloistered Hungarian civilians. No, the threat came from German storm troopers who arrived wearing jackboots and carrying machine guns.
“All Jews outside,” was the dreaded call, shouted over and over. Stephanie’s story continues:
“There was a big truck waiting to take away all those capable of working. An officer inspected us, sending the sick, the old and very young to the left, all others to the right.
“When it was mother’s turn the officer ordered her back upstairs, saying she must leave the baby. She returned, still carrying my little sister. Again, he ordered her to come back empty-handed. Once more, she ran up and back, all the while holding tight to my infant sister.
“This time she approached the SS officer, placing a hand on his arm. In perfect German, she said: ‘Brother, how could I leave this helpless baby? If I must go, then she will come with me.’
“Without uttering a word, the soldier simply waved her toward the non-workers. I quickly grabbed hold of my mother’s free hand.”
When the long, cruel war was ended, this account, or vignette, became family legend. In the eyes of the mother, “My baby saved my life…” Stephanie prefers another interpretation: “I believe two forces were responsible. First, my mother’s courage. Next, her faith in human compassion. She was able to call our tormentor ‘Brother’ and touch that part of this officer that connects all human beings.”
To better help Stephanie with her unfolding life review, and to learn more about the madness that was the Holocaust. I read the late Elie Wiesel’s “Night” (Hill and Wang; 2006). A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, the brilliant Wiesel wrote:
“It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
“Can this be true? This is the 20th century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?”
This tireless, and fearless, advocate became the world’s conscience, a crusader against the apathetic, the deniers and all who might wish to turn away. Author Wiesel would have urged Stephanie to press on, complete her remembering: “Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”
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Many good people, unaware, remain confident these events could never be repeated.
Sadly, they are. Genocide occurs with all it's brutality on a daily basis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Inexplicably, in a truly Orwellian move, the Hitler of this nation is now
lobbying for the Presidency of the African Union -- the very organization we look to bring an end to this global humanitarian crisis.
Our silence, our failure to act, our complicity has real consequences.
President Bush devoted exactly one half of one sentence to them in his recent address to the nation.
Stand taller than your president, and get involved. Don't let these atrocities like you just read of above take place on your watch without acting. Please visit
savedarfur.org to learn more.
--Webmaster
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Outrageous Associations
