We must relive our past every day and every hour
Photo: Index Open
A race against time
As Shoah survivors pass away, we must make sure to keep memories alive
Every few weeks I visit my grandfather at his nursing home. “Hi grandpa,” I say, and kiss him on the cheek, yet he no longer remembers me. He can barely remember his own name. Without noticing it he keeps on stroking his own arm, and gapes with surprise every time his fingers discover the faded number etched into his skin.
Before the Alzheimer digested his brain, I sat with him and wrote down everything. Where he was born, what he was wearing, and how many apple and plum trees grew in his backyard. I wrote it down, and I told the stories to anyone willing to listen and hear how everything ended.
How his parents and siblings were taken away, how he escaped on his bicycle, and how he found himself at Auschwitz, rubbing lotions into dying skins.
I did not quite understand why I was doing that, but about two years ago, when my eldest daughter was born, and when I saw grandpa’s smile in her big eyes, I finally got it. I am documenting and telling the story so that he won’t die.
And they are disappearing at a rapid pace: Dozens of them every day, thousands of them every month. They, who were able to stand up to the greatest form of human evil, are surrendering every hour to the stubborn ticking of time. Soon, within 10 years perhaps, there will no longer be anyone who would be able to speak, with a cracked voice, about that farewell at the town square, about how cold it was on the train, or about the barking dogs.
In 10 years, all that will remain from the living memories are headstones, yellowing photographs, and ceremonies devoid of tears.
We must salvage every word
A sigh of relief will be heard at many locations across the world upon the death of the last survivor. It is difficult to deny the Holocaust when you are facing a wrinkled and determined old man, with a number on his arm and the fire of 65 years of memories in his eyes. Yet after we recite the Kaddish for the last survivor, bishops in England will raise a toast to forgetfulness.
Racist conferences “against racism” will gather time and again in Geneva in order to compare us to our executioners. French, Spanish, or Russian intellectuals will claim that the Shoah was a mere footnote in the war, and that the Jews, as Jews tend to do, must have exaggerated it.
In order to face up to them, we must relive our past every day and every hour. We must salvage every word, photocopy every photograph, and memorize every trace of memory, while it is still possible to do so. We must do it so that years from now, when the last survivors pass away, we would still be able to throw their stories in the face of hate-filled creatures like that guy from Tehran.
