Why the Holocaust is a time we must never forget | GARY COSBY JR.
There are phrases spoken in times of crisis that ring throughout history. Winston Churchill uttered the phrase "We will never surrender," during a speech that rallied the English people in a dark time during World War II.
But the phrase "Never again" must be a rallying cry that is raised with every voice of the human race in perpetuity. It is a rallying cry the Jews loudly voiced after the Holocaust was ended by the defeat of Nazi Germany and it must remain at the forefront of our minds.
I received an invitation to the observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, last Sunday at the Temple Emanu-El in Tuscaloosa. Their service centered on a Holocaust Torah, a Torah that was stolen by Nazis from a ransacked synagogue or temple during World War II and was later restored. The Torahis on permanent loan to the Tuscaloosa temple.
The Torah is a linchpin to which the Jewish people have tied themselves throughout history and the Torah has aided in maintaining a national identity for the 1,900 years the Jews were without a nation to call their home. The Torah helped Jews maintain their faith, their national identity, and their language, three crucial elements that prevented them from disappearing as a people during their long exile.
Many millions of Jews found a home in eastern Europe. Poland in particular drew a large Jewish population, being the most friendly, or, at least the least-unfriendly nation to Jews who found themselves the frequent targets of persecution and repression.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took the hatred of Jews to an unprecedented level. I do not have the words to describe the horrors that befell the Jews under the Nazi regime. Such unrestrained evil was unleashed upon the Jews one can hardly fathom the depths of suffering they endured.
I write historical fiction novels, and I have been researching the Warsaw ghetto for an upcoming book. The Nazis forced very nearly 500,000 Jews into an area of about 1.5 square miles in Warsaw before liquidating the ghetto by sending the Jews to the death camps. Most in Warsaw were sent to Treblinka where they were murdered on an industrial scale never before seen in human history. I recently found the story of the last survivor of Treblinka, a man named Samuel Willenberg. Of the nearly 1 million murdered there, he was one of only 67 survivors of Treblinka.
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Willenberg's story was featured in a PBS documentary. He has since passed away, but his life was saved at Treblinka because he had defended a boy years before in Warsaw who was being beaten up by some other kids. When the boy grew up he joined the SS. When Willenberg's train came into Treblinka, the SS guard recognized him, pulled him aside, and placed him on a work detail, ensuring he would not be immediately murdered.
Among the many heinous duties Willenberg had to perform, he shaved the heads of the Jews coming into the death camp. They were stripped naked, shorn of their hair, then marched to the gas chambers.
Willenberg told of a teenage girl he was shaving. She sat there naked, shivering from the winter cold and fear. The girl had just received her high school diploma. She asked him if the gas took long. She knew what was coming. Then the girl was led away on what the Nazis called the Pathway to Heaven, the path to the gas chambers. The girl's name, preserved in Willenberg's memory for the rest of his life, was Ruth Dorfman. His memory was her only legacy.
I saw another documentary where a warehouse in Auschwitz held 7 tons of human hair that had been cut from victims in that death camp. The Nazis used it, among other purposes, to make cloth and to insulate their U-boats. For some reason, of all the numbers I had ever heard related to the Holocaust , that one hit me the hardest. I stopped watching and just wept.
As I write this, I am looking at a candle I picked up at the Holocaust Remembrance. It bears the name of Eugenie Friedmann. She was born Aug. 21, 1933, in Moravska Ostrava, which would have been in Czechoslovakia during World War II . She died in Treblinka on Oct. 8, 1942, one of at least 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. She was 9 years old, just a little girl. Rabbi Steven Jacobs told us during the remembrance ceremony that about 1.5 million of the victims were children under the age of 18, murdered for no reason other than unbounded hatred.
Do not ever wonder why I so often write about the dangers of extremism. This is why. Don't ever permit yourself to think that it could not happen here, or it could not happen again. Hate is prevalent in our culture as it is in many, and another genocide will occur if we permit it. Do not hate. Do not permit hate to rule our world. Do not permit hate to rule your mind.
Gary Cosby Jr. is the photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why the Holocaust is a time we must never forget | GARY COSBY JR.
