Buchenwald Exposed

I did not record after Rabbi Lau at the JLI “Buchenwald Exposed” event tonight, as is usually my habit to support aging memory.  It was dark in the auditorium and the speech was too breathtaking to be able to write, we could only listen in shock as Rabbi Lau calmly retold absolutely horrific details of his childhood, that has v’shalom none of us can imagine.  I cannot even write all the details, but will try to relate some key points of what was said. 

Nikamuh – Revenge – was the word that the nameless prisoner scraped with his nail on the wall of the torture chamber in Buchenwald.  On the Kristalnacht, November 9^th 1938, organized Nazi mob destroyed a thousand synagogues across Germany, burning Torah scrolls and seforim, along with killing three thousand Jews and destroying numerous Jewish homes and businesses.  They did not go for the banks, after Rothschilds, their first and main target were the synagogues.  They did not just fight Jews as individuals, they fought Judaism, Jewish spirit, Jewish ideas and ideals.

How can we revenge?  We’ll never forget, and never forgive the Germans and their helpers.  But the main way of our revenge is to continue the life of the victims, follow in the footsteps of the martyrs al kiddush Hashem, bear the light that the evildoers were trying to extinguish.  Learn Torah and teach it to children, observe mitzvoth, do good deeds.  Succumbing to cynicism, inertia and fatigue is to hand them the victory. 

We are all survivors, all Jews in the whole world are survivors of Holocaust, because they tried to kill all of us and we survived, as klal Israel, as a nation.  This is what Rabbi Lau heard from Ed Koch, former mayor of New York. When Mr. Koch visited Germany, with the delegation of American mayors, they were shown the former office of Adolf Hitler.  And there stood a large colorful globe.  And on this beautiful globe on each country there were numbers, handwritten in plain black ink.  He asked the tour guide curiously what were the numbers.  The tour guide said that three years before the war started in September 1939 Hitler asked his assistants to run a research as to how many Jews were living in each country in the world.  The numbers were the up-to-date amout of Jews as of January 1939.  The number written across the U.S.A. was Six Million.  The number on the tiny obscure country of Albania with the capital Tirana was one.  One Jew!  And Hitler was even after this one Jew.

/DM: The research was in many ways powered by IBM, one of their many praised enterprise solutions.  The president of IBM at the time, Thomas Watson, was rewarded an iron cross medal by Hitler himself.  See IBM and the Holocaust./

Hitler’s last will and testament was written and sealed in the last days of war, spring 1945, when he was already living in the bunker.  There were detailed instructions on who should lead the next German government and how.  The last paragraph of his will was not about his family, or his country, or himself.  The last paragraph of his last will said “Pity less the poison of humankind, the universal Judaism”.  His last words were the expression of hatred towards Judaism. 

 

DM: Raised by the child survivors I used to avoid the topic of Holocaust.  Thinking of it made me feel like a hunted prey. My parents gave me the Greek name of a huntress to counteract that state of fear. Hearing tonight’s speech gave me a new awareness that I am not alone seeking shelter from evil forces, all of us are targets, including the tranquil, the beautiful and learned, the overfed and self-indulgent, those who see and who hide their eyes, we are all in the same boat, all part of the family of Israel.
Both Nazis and Soviets, Hitler and Stalin, tried to destroy Jews and Judaism.  There must be some power that threatened both of them. Power of ideas against the brutal force.  Power of Torah against evil.

Out of the Depths: The Story of a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last
by Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, 2011.