DOWNLOAD Genocide in Our Time - NewFoundations

'Why was I saved?'" burst out one survivor. Andanother: "Why me? Okay, I can see my [old] parentsor the child, but why not my brother or my sister?"In this demanding entreaty, the survivor seems toacknowledge the standards of Auschwitz: yes, theparents and children were too old to work, but whynot the healthy young man and woman, his brother' andsister? To whom is the question addressed? Does hequestion himself, or the interviewer, or God? Behindthe questions lurks awareness of arbitrary, indiscriminateluck.A bizarre sort of guilt lurks, too. Like much aboutthe Holocaust, the guilt remains paradoxical: irrationaland logical. Irrational for obvious reasons — no victimhad choices; the selections may have been random intheir perception, but Dr. Mengele and his ilk had theirown insanely logical criteria. At the base of some"survivor guilt" — another inadequate term — lies Borowski'sbrooding recognition that life depended on death.The monumental uncertainties, deeply irrational guilt,and the recollection of impotence in the face of overwhelmingforces remain irreducible and immovable.Intimations of the inadequacies of language, theprospect of exacerbating anguished memories, thedisquieting implications of guilt which do not considerthe realities of the Nazi system, along with myriadother factors coalesce to constrain speaking. Survivors'silence about their experiences ought not mystify us.Yet, after years of relative silence, some survivors havetaken their cues from Elie Wiesel who admonishedthem to be witnesses. He echoed the Jewish historianEmmanuel Ringelblum's call from the Warsaw Ghettothat Jews witness the catastrophe and "write andrecord" it.A witness transforms memory into history, andsome survivors intuited the prospect of sharing theirmemories in order to preserve the historical record.For others, witnessingbrought the prospectof retellingin order to regain dignity and meaning, or to discovera reason for their turmoil and their survival. If speakinghas not freed them from their nightmares or unburdenedthem of their memories, if it has not uncovered themystery of the meaning of Jewish suffering during theHolocaust, if it has not conferred a lost dignity, it hasrevealed new, deeper levels of Holocaust history.With or without testifying, survivors have creatednew lives for themselves. They have not, because theycannot, completely freed themselves from their pasts.Nevertheless, for all that they carry with them, theyendured, bore children, in some cases overcame postwarurges for suicide, and became vital parts of theircommunities. Their stories and their voices present therest of the world with profound questions about thehuman spirit, endurance, and survival. They rarelyprovide affirmative answers, hope, or inspiration simplybecause of the nature of the Holocaust, a process whichdisallowed avenues for martyrdom and heroism, fortriumphant joy at final victory.For survivors, Elie Wiesel has said, the questionis not "to be or not to" be, but "to be and not to be. "One woman, a survivor of Auschwitz, compared herselfto a hollow tree that still lived, "still alive, but emptyinside. " They adumbrate our present and future andtacitly challenge us to examine what their heritage ofpointless murder means for our own lives and the livesof our children.NQTEs1. Raul Hilberg, "The Statistic, " in UnansweredQuestions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews,ed. by Francois Furet (New York: Schocken Books,1989), 155-171.2. Martin Gilbert, The Macmillan Atlas of theHolocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1982), 236.3. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the EuropeanJews (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1961), 729-737.4. All quotations from survivor testimonies comefrom interviews on audio and/or videotape housed inthe University of Michigan-Dearborn HolocaustSurvivor Collection of the Mardigian Library.5. See, for example, Lucy S. Dawidowicz, "HowThey Teach the Holocaust, " Commentary (December1990): 25-32 and "Interview with Lucy S. Dawidowicz," Booklist (15 June 1989): 1753-1754.6. Benzion Dinur, commenting on the value anduncertainty of survivor memoirs and testimonies,argued that the reason behind such misinformation"need not be any desire to 'amend' or to 'improve'upon actual events for any ulterior purpose. " Dinurcontinued that such errors grow naturally from thenature of such reminiscences. Benzion Dinur, "Prob-lems Confronting 'Yad Vashem' in Its Work ofResearch, " Yad Vashem Studies 1 (1957): 7-30.7. Nachem Blumenthal, "On the Nazi Vocabulary,"Yad Vashem Studies 1 (1957): 49-66.8. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans.by Raymond Rosenthal (New York and London:Summit Books, 1988), 11-12.9. Elie Wiesel, "A Plea for Survivors," in A JewToday (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 218-247.The Victims Who Survived 71