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1,
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• Celebrating 25 years
serving the community 5 day stays
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Important Lessons
From The Holocaust
High Schools in Oakland
County and the city of Detroit,
both parochial and public,
participated in CHAIM's
Holocaust Education Writing
Competition. The topic was
"Why should students learn
about the Holocaust? How can
this learning experience be ap-
plied to life today?" The win-
ners were: 1st place — Gabriel
Bolkosky, junior at Ferndale
High School; 2nd place —
Sarah R. Peterson, sophomore
at Sally Allan Alexander Beth
,
••
.
The small intimate nursing care and rehabilitation center
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,---7
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FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
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There were five honorable
mentions: Bryan Beck, Rob
Snavely and Mara Leichman,
all from Andover High School
and Tali Edut and Ophira
Edut, both from Ferndale
High School. The first place
essay is reprinted here:
For the Victims
GABRIEL BOLKOSKY
'`
Jacob School for Girls; 3rd
place — Shelley Finer, junior
at West Bloomfield High
School. These students receiv-
ed monetary awards and cer-
tificates of honor.
was standing with my
mother and a German
woman came and she
pointed at my mother and
they took her away." She
stared at her glasses, witness-
ing it all over again, delving
into the lenses. She fingered
the glasses, felt them as if try-
ing to feel a memory. They
clicked against the table, "I
wasn't able to say good-bye to
her . . . to kiss her . . . they
took her in the crematorium
. . ." She choked on the final
word as she wept. The glasses
clicked with remembrance,
"From then on, I didn't care
whether I live or die."
What lessons are to be
learned from such ex-
periences? A foolish question
for the victim who survived.
What can survivors learn
from the murder of their
mothers and fathers, brothers
and sisters?
The Holocaust happened for
innumerable reasons: anti-
Semitism, indifference and
failure to think only begin to
account for it. A person who
"just did his job" by counting
railroad cars full of people as
an employee of the German
Reich Railways or who de-
livered letters ordering Jews
to report for deportation as a
mailman working for the
Dutch postal service or who
installed oven doors on the
crematoria as a craftsman
working for Topf Oven
Builders — a company that
had built ovens for two hun-
dred years — bears some por-
tion of responsibility for the
death of Europe's Jews. The
architects who designed the
camps, the chemists who
developed Zyklon B, (the gas
used in the gas chambers at
Auschwitz), the combustion
experts who figured out how
bodies would burn fastest all
did their jobs knowing to
what they were contributing.
They may have known, but
they did not think or care
about the possible conse-
quences of their actions.
These people number
among the perpetrators of the
Holocaust. The perpetrators
turn out to be not monsters,
but normal, "civilized" peo-
ple. They ate with knives and
forks; cared for and raised
their children; admired art,
literature and music. They
lived as others did and as we
do. And that fact
demonstrates that almost any
people may be capable of
perpetrating horrible events.
A relatively small number
might be classified as
fanatical anti-Semites or
madmen: perhaps Hitler,
Himmler, Streicher, for exam-
ple, or some sadistic guards in
the death camps. Olga
Lengel, a Jewish inmate and
doctor at Auschwitz, wrote
that she believed 10 percent
of the Nazi guards were
psychotic and the rest were
"normal" men.
Why did such normal peo-
ple participate in mass
murder? They continued to do
their jobs, conducting
"business as usual," advanc-
ing their careers, making
money, using technology
without thinking. For these
and other reasons, average
citizens abandoned ethics and
concern for others — became
indifferent. Elie Wiesel,
Nobel Prize Winner, survivor,
writer, has said that the "sin
of the twentieth century is in-
difference." His words come
from his experience, from his
memory, described in Night,
of the indifferent observers
watching the starving
prisoners in an open boxcar
and throwing pieces of bread
at them so they might laugh
at their reactions. "Indif-
ference" is a word, but does it
explain the perpetrators?
Does it answer the question
"why" or "how did such peo-