Sublime

She was a harbinger of the sub rosa, the new world awaiting me in just a few weeks.

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. HAROLD S. KUSHNER

Most people thought that we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.

REMAINED IN BUCHENWALD until April 11. I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered. Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore. I was transferred to the children’s block, where there were six hundred of us. The Front was coming closer. I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no long

As it turns out, 1942 is far worse than anyone could have imagined. In this year, 2.7 million Jews are murdered by the Nazis. Within twelve months, every sixth Jew in the world is exterminated and every fourth European Jew dies of disease, hunger, shooting, or gas.

We also spoke often about Palestine. Their parents, like mine, had not had the courage to sell everything and emigrate while there was still time. We decided that if we were allowed to live until the Liberation, we would not stay another day in Europe. We would board the first ship to Haifa.

OUR FIRST ACT AS FREE MEN was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread. And even when we were no longer hungry, not one of us thought of revenge. The next day, a few of the young men ran into Weimar to bring back some potatoes and clothes—and to sleep with girls. But st

It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.