_
I wearomartMiNrainncr---tr,
4
• -
•
70 Friday, May 2, 1986
-
.."."--"""`"
•
•••••,
•
•
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
he late Axel Springer
was the owner and publisher
of the largest chain of news-
papers in post-war Germany.
He took his son to Bergen-
Belsen to place flowers at
the grave of Anne Frank,
- and before they left he whis-
pered to his son: "Dig the
earth with your fingers un-
til you find some bones of
human bodies. Take one of
these bones with you and •
place it where you can al-
ways see it, where you will
never be able to forget what
we have done to the Jewish
people."
Can I do less with my own
son?
Yet, when it comes to tell-
, ing the story of the years of
atrocity (and tell it I must)
to my children, I am torn by
ambivalence. I feel compelled
to tell the terrible truth. My
generation was witness to a
nightmare of civilized crim-
inality, to man's awful capa-
city to hurt and to destroy.
Yet I am uncertain—not
over the psychological need
and moral obligation to re-
member those black years,
but whether it is enough to
stop there; whether it is suf-
ficient to relate the'disaster
ez and end it there.
As a father who must tell•
his children why and how
this unspeakable • outrage
was visited upon our people,
I wonder what I am doing to
their morale, to their will to
live as Jews in this world, to
their trust and belief in God
and man, to their moral
strength.
After the lesson is over,
the nightmare reviewed each
• year with greater detail and
more evidence, I remain per-
plexed. Do I lay a terror
4 upon their hearts, a stone of
fear; do I unwittingly cast
the shadow of the undeli-
vered punch across their des-
tiny? I grow uneasy with
the suspicion that inadver-
tently I may be leading my
children to succumb • to a
view of history raised to the .
-, heights of metaphysical fa-
talism. This is the way of
the world. This is the way it
was, and is and will always
alina•Olomucki's 1943 sketch "Figures in the Warsaw Ghetto."
The lessons of the Holocaust are
not only those of the unspeakable
evil of which man is capable. There
is an equally significant lesson
to be learned from the heroic
actions of the Righteous Gentiles.
Using History
To Restore A
ense Of Balanc
BY HAROLD M. SCHULWEIS
Contributing Editor
„,
be. We and they. We who
suffer and they who perse-
cute. Against my every in-
tention, do I endow hatred
of the Jew with an immor-
tality, and confirm the myth
of the Jew as the world's
eternal victim?
Memory is an ambiguous
energy; it can liberate or
enslave, heal or destroy. The
use of memory carries with
it a responsibility for the
future. How we interpret the
Holocaust holds serious con-
sequences for the character
and morale of our children,
not only for the Jewish child
but for the non-Jewish child
as well. I am concerned with
the reaction of Jews and
non-Jews to the revelations
of the Holocaust. How con-
structive has been our way
of relating the atrocity?
How as a Jewish parent
do I transmit memory of the
saddest chapter in Jewish
history without destroying
the nerve of Jewish trust
and hope! It is not enough
to quote biblical, rabbinic or
Chassidic texts to sustain
our faith in man. Morality
needs evidence, hard data,
facts in our time and in our
place to nourish our faith in
man's capacity for decency.
Villainy has ample empirical
evidence on its side. In this
period of impenetrable dark-
ness, was there no spark of
•human decency, of human
concern? Was there no one
who cared enough to move,
to act, to speak out, to help?
There was -- and the full
significance of that reality
and its potentiality for moral
education remains tragically
ignored. While yet in its em-
bryonic stages, the evidence
steadily mounts of an un-
known number of silent her-
oes who risked their lives
and jeopardized the lives of
their families to save our
people. Besides the signifi-
cant accounts of Philip
Friedman and Kurt Gross-
man, I have read and heard
the testimonies of Jewish
survivors who were rescued
by non-Jews: atheists, ag-
nostics,. Christians, peas-
ants, farmers, businessmen,
I I I •
•••
.
-,
-
.