How can it possibly be said that a loved ones death is a victory?
Make no mistake, Jack Goldman who passed away last week was a loved one, not only here at the Intermountain Jewish News, where for many years his photography was an integral part of the newspaper, but among a throng of Denverites, Jewish and non-Jewish, and especially the community of Holocaust survivors of which he was a leader and a symbol.
Goldmans death is a keen loss to all of the above again, this man was loved but we cannot deny that his passing represents a triumph.
The fact that he died in 2009, not in the 1930s, is a triumph. The fact that Goldman lived for 85 years, long enough to become a husband, a father and a grandfather; the fact that he became a skillful artist and photographer, much of whose work celebrated the holiness and beauty of Judaism, and that he had enough days, months and years to tell his story all these are incalculable triumphs.
The stories he told the articulate and relentless witness to horror that Goldman allowed himself to become represent even more than a triumph over Nazism. Those stories served, and will, G-d willing, continue to serve as a powerful antidote to the genocidal hatred that sadly remains part of the human race. Read the IJN’s obituary for Jack Goldman
Goldman understood, well before most Holocaust survivors were able to speak out, the invaluable importance of bearing witness to those horrors. He engaged in this testimony willingly, tirelessly, selflessly, ubiquitously. He told his stories to anyone who would listen and to others, he made them listen.
Although one seldom heard a quiver in his voice nor glimpsed a tear in his eye, so focused was he on his subject and his task, it could not have been easy for Goldman.
The memories he refused to sublimate of a childhood shattered and never regained, of parents and loved ones slain, of atrocities in places like Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and Dachau were of such a nature that most of us, thankfully, can never really understand how it felt to live them and then voluntarily to re-live them, again and again.
Goldman understood, rest assured, but bravely he spoke on.
That phenomenal bravery first the bravery of a man who refused to give in to the Nazis and then of a man who refused to be silenced by the horror of his own memories was yet another triumph over his persecutors.
His ultimate victory, however, was in his humanity.
Goldman was not one to forgive the Nazis for their crimes, but he refused to condemn all Germans and refused to confer generational guilt. He remembered both the SS man who tortured him and the SS man who repeatedly saved his life, and articulated the stark differences between them.
He never allowed hatred to govern his life nor bitterness to cloud his judgment.
He never lost his belief in G-d, his love of family and friends, his soft and measured voice, his gentle smile the playful sparkle in his eye all while remaining a fierce witness to the Holocaust and a determined fighter for human rights.
To Jack Goldman, human rights and the struggle for the safety of Israel were synonymous. His passion for Israel was so strong that two of his children live there and some of his grandchildren defend the Jewish state in the Israel Defense Forces.
Goldmans humanity came to the fore in ways that had little to do with his grievous history. Jack Goldman was fun to be around, a delight to debate, invariably honest, above recrimination. And he was always busy, enthusiastic, looking forward to all that life offered. He embraced his artisanship and craftsmanship. He took pride in his photography, cherished his role as a Bar Mitzvah tutor, conveyed a sense of motion and growth, yet always had time for people, who never felt rushed in his presence.
Jack Goldman and his perfect helpmate Margot tasted the depths of sadness with the passing of their son Mark. But they rebounded and kept going, incorporating their loss into a phenomenally optimistic and forward-looking approach to life.
In 1993, after Jack Goldman returned to his native town of Mannheim, Germany, the IJN asked him to sum up his feelings about his homecoming.
What I felt is that Hitler is dead and Im alive, he replied simply. I made it and Im alive.
That was Goldmans own declaration of victory. We join him in celebrating it, even as we mourn his passing and the great gap for our children, for the future that this silenced Holocaust witness creates. It devolves on all of us to take up, inadequately as we might, the cause of Holocaust witness, of advocacy of Israel, and of simple humanity that are his legacy.
