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Auschwitz: 75 years since its liberation, January 27, 1945

It is in the Jewish DNA. Conscious. Or unconscious. Forever.

Auschwitz.

Whether one looks into this for the first time or for the five-thousandth time, the reaction is the same.

One cannot speak. Or think. Or absorb. Or understand. Or cry. Or scream.

Auschwitz.

It is beyond. Beyond imagination. Beyond reason. Beyond grief. Beyond rage.

It was liberated 75 years ago next Monday. The Russian Army entered. The Germans, the Nazis, and all the Germans were Nazis if they did not stand up to the evil, busied themselves killing as many Jews as possible at the last minute, before the Russians entered.

Why? How could any person or group or nation descend to this? Words, even if accurate, fail. “Racism.” “Anti-Semitism.” “Hate.” “Final Solution.” “Lebensraum.” “Purity.” Every word fails. No word, nor even the millions upon millions of words offered in explanation after-the-fact, can embrace this one word: Auschwitz.

Images, only too accurate, still fail. Living skeletons. Sneering Nazis. Snarling dogs. Rail tracks. Zyklon B cannisters. Electrified fences. Striped uniforms. Crematoria prongs. Red skies. Stacked bodies. Stacked shoes. “Medical” experiments. Add up these images: they cannot be added up. They comprise yet they cannot convey this one word:

Auschwitz.

It is beyond image.

Beyond word.

Beyond idea.

In its operation, Auschwitz burned and burned and burned. Its operation shut down, after its liberation 75 years ago, it freezes any human grasp.

A 75th anniversary of liberation triggers another vector, a different one. Five years ago, one day before the 70th anniversary, a survivor of Auschwitz who lived in Denver, a beloved rabbi and educator, Israel Rosenfeld, died. Survivor — anniversary — death: a confluence that raises a related if very different pain, the disappearance of the survivors of . . . Auschwitz.

The witnesses.

The bearers of the pain. The history. The reality. The inhumanity. The descent of humanity. The inadequacy of words.

The silent commanders: the people who told us when they were alive and now tell us again, after their deaths: Remember.

But as the 75th anniversary looms, this one word, “remember,” no longer looms as self-validating, self-explanatory, to those born long after the liberation of Auschwitz, even to many Jews born long after the liberation.

Why? Why remember?

Again, the justifications, if offered in words, fail. Remember so that “Never again.” Or so that “they did not die in vain.” Or for a level of justice, in the form of the profanation of the memory of the perpetrators. Fail — these words, too, fail. There can never be any rational justification for remembering any more than there can be any rational explanation of . . . Auschwitz.

Permit us to share a brief story of a ride in Jerusalem some 40 years ago.

A Jew standing by the road was given a ride. He was hitchhiking. The ride could not have lasted more than a few minutes.

A brief conversation between driver and rider ensued. The rider shared: He was a Holocaust survivor.

As alone in this word as Adam before the creation of Eve.

This rider was a male. He had no wife, no children, no parents, no siblings, no cousins. He was absolutely alone in this world.

What better symbol of . . .

Auschwitz.

Even as the survivors depart, even as the Jewish people less and less know the Holocaust from direct witnesses, even as remembrance may be harder to explain, the aloneness of that hitchhiker subliminally drives the Jewish people today, certainly in Israel, and largely outside of Israel, too.

That aloneness is something in, as they say today, the Jewish DNA. It knows not only the consequences of hate — no, not that, not mainly. It knows, like no other nation or people on earth knows, the possibilities of hate, contained in one word: Auschwitz.

“Auschwitz borders,” said Abba Eban, describing the pre-June 5, 1967 borders of Israel, when the whole country was nine miles wide at its narrowest point.

Auschwitz borders: Everybody knew what Eban meant.

Even if no word, or no offering of millions of words, can encompass or define or express or curse or ascribe adequate blame for that one word, “Auschwitz,” it becomes the obligation of those of us alive on the 75th anniversary of its liberation to project, however inadequate our efforts, that one word.

Auschwitz.

What it did, and to whom. Who operated it. Who conceived it. Who ignored it. Who rejoiced in it. Who justified it. Who did not bomb it. Who pretended not to see it or not to know what happened there. Who survived it. Who was deformed, bodily or psychologically or spiritually, because of it.

It is our obligation. Young or old. Witnesses or not. Testified to by witnesses or not. Distant from it or not. It devolves on us to remember.

But again, why?

Because we are a remembering people. It is no more possible for Jews not to remember than it is for Jews not to breathe. We conceive of each Shabbat as remembrance of the creation of the universe. We conceive of each Passover as remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. We conceive of many other sacred times in the Jewish year as remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. We remember what Amalek did to the Israelites as they exited Egypt. We remember loved ones who have died at Yizkor. We remember loved ones on the anniversaries of their deaths. We put time, money and gentle care into cemeteries. We remember Sinai. We remember Jerusalem. We are a remembering people. And it has fallen to us, looking backward, to remember something more.

Auschwitz.

A synonym for all the other death camps, too.

For their multiplication.

For the incomprehensible evil of the the Nazis, the German people, every last one of them, save those who stood up, back then.

Try to list all those “camps.”

You can’t.

The list of the more well known camps — known because they were larger, they consumed more human beings — that list hardly touches it. The final number of the camps, including the subcamps, may never be known. So we just say, “Auschwitz.” It signifies the whole, even as not a single part of the whole leaves us, whether on the first look or on the five-thousandth look, able to speak. Or think. Or absorb. Or understand. Or cry. Or scream.

Auschwitz.

Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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