Samuel Pisar: Liberation From Auschwitz
[Samuel Pisar is an international lawyer and the author of “Of Blood and Hope.”]
Sixty-five years ago, to the day, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, while the Americans were approaching Dachau. For a survivor of these two infernos to be still alive and well, with a new and happy family that has resurrected for me the one I had lost seems almost unreal. When I entered Eichmann and Mengele’s gruesome universe at the age of 13, I measured my life expectancy in days, weeks at the most.
In the early winter of 1944, World War II was coming to an end. But we in the camps knew nothing. We were wondering: What is happening in the world outside? Where is God? Where is the pope? Does anyone out there know what is happening here to us? Do they care?
Russia was devastated. England was resisting, her back against the wall. And America? She was so far away, so divided. How could she be expected to save civilization from the seemingly invincible forces of darkness at this late stage? I was almost 16 now and I wanted to live....
Today we, the last living survivors of the greatest catastrophe ever perpetrated by man against man, are disappearing one by one. Soon, history will speak about Auschwitz at best with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists, and at worst in the malevolent register of revisionists and falsifiers who call the Holocaust a “myth.” This process has already begun. That is why we feel a visceral duty to transmit to our fellow men the memory of what we have endured in body and soul; to alert our children that the fanaticism and violence that is spreading again in our newly enflamed world could destroy their universe as it has once destroyed mine....
Meanwhile, we remain divided and confused, we hesitate, we vacillate, like sleepwalkers at the edge of the abyss. But the irrevocable has not yet happened. Our chances are still intact. Let us hope that mankind will somehow seize them and learn to live with its diversity in better harmony.
Read entire article at NYT
Sixty-five years ago, to the day, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, while the Americans were approaching Dachau. For a survivor of these two infernos to be still alive and well, with a new and happy family that has resurrected for me the one I had lost seems almost unreal. When I entered Eichmann and Mengele’s gruesome universe at the age of 13, I measured my life expectancy in days, weeks at the most.
In the early winter of 1944, World War II was coming to an end. But we in the camps knew nothing. We were wondering: What is happening in the world outside? Where is God? Where is the pope? Does anyone out there know what is happening here to us? Do they care?
Russia was devastated. England was resisting, her back against the wall. And America? She was so far away, so divided. How could she be expected to save civilization from the seemingly invincible forces of darkness at this late stage? I was almost 16 now and I wanted to live....
Today we, the last living survivors of the greatest catastrophe ever perpetrated by man against man, are disappearing one by one. Soon, history will speak about Auschwitz at best with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists, and at worst in the malevolent register of revisionists and falsifiers who call the Holocaust a “myth.” This process has already begun. That is why we feel a visceral duty to transmit to our fellow men the memory of what we have endured in body and soul; to alert our children that the fanaticism and violence that is spreading again in our newly enflamed world could destroy their universe as it has once destroyed mine....
Meanwhile, we remain divided and confused, we hesitate, we vacillate, like sleepwalkers at the edge of the abyss. But the irrevocable has not yet happened. Our chances are still intact. Let us hope that mankind will somehow seize them and learn to live with its diversity in better harmony.