Remembering Auschwitz, 60 Years Too Late

When allied forces liberated Auschwitz, 60 years ago today, they had arrived too late. Today, as world leaders converged to commemorate this day, fateful to the few who survived, their unanimous recognition of the Holocaust and the unspeakable atrocities perpetratedprovided little comfort for a people whose legitimacy, one again, has been called into question. It is foolish to compare contemporary European anti-semitism to the anti-semitism that was a precursor to the slaughter of 6 million Jews. But it is similarly foolish to dismiss serious concerns about the rising tide of anti-semitic sentiment in Europe and on American campuses nationwide (not to mention throughout the Middle East). CNN's feature on Auschwitz http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/01/27/auschwitz.anniversary/index.html includes photographs of camp survivors attending the memorial, some of them wearing the white and grey striped hats that have by now become trademarks of the Holocaust and the Nazi obsession with humiliation and extermination. And in just about all the feature articles and essays on CNN and other news media, there is a certain urgency that accompanies these poignant photographs. Now, 60 years after the Holocaust, its survivors are dying out, and without living memory, there is a very real fear that the Holocaust will be forgotten. This is not a fear inspired by the worry that the murdered will have died for nothing, because to argue otherwise is senseless. No moral lessons, no UN, or European Union can ever give meaning to the deaths of the millions of men, women and children, many of whom left no family or friends behind to grieve and remember them. The Nazi killings, and the Jewish (and other) deaths, were cruel and senseless and to assign them an ultimate meaning, or value, as though they were sacrifices offered on the altar of a future world peace is callous. The problem with forgetting the Holocaust is not that then the dead will have died in vain, they did die in vain and the world watched undisturbed. The danger in forgetting the Holocaust is that the survivors will have shared their story with us in vain, they will have broken their silence, clearly a difficult and dangerous step for many of them, pointlessy. Having joined civilization and participated in its development, becoming fully integrated members of society despite the immeasurable distance they felt from those who had not lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, their decision to tell, to expose, to dig up horrific memories and the intense emotional upheaval it must have caused will have been wasted on people who have eyes but cannot see, who have ears but cannot hear, who can feel pain but do not feel another's pain. This is why we must remember, to honor the courage of the survivors who despite the urge to remain silent, to close the door behind them and move on, dared to speak up, to open their wounds and let them bleed, if only so that their memories will not die with them.