Remembering the Holocaust

At 10 AM today, air-raid sirens sounded throughout Israel in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Poland, thousands of marchers - Jews and non-Jews - will walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau in a "March of the Living" to remember the victims of the unspeakable atrocities that were committed there.

"Life" and "living" aren't what we normally associate with the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. There may be no site in this world that more signifies pure, raw evil. The death marches...the gas chambers...the cold...and the despair. More than one million people - most of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis there on the Polish plains.

Leslie Schachter, a writer for the Jerusalem Post, wrote earlier this week about his first trip to Auschwitz:

A couple of days ago I took the bus from Krakow to Auschwitz. The inevitable awkward feeling of requesting a bus ticket to Auschwitz, the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, was almost as surreal as actually being there.

I felt I had to go, not to educate myself; I already knew enough of what took place there. I needed to go more out of a sense of respect to all those who perished there. Walking past the barracks, large red brick houses, it was hard to believe that all of these horrible things really happened, and only just a few minutes away from the next village.

Yes, it is hard to believe that these things really happened. Even when you're right there and the evidence is staring you in the face, it's hard to believe that human beings could be capable of such evil. But, we know that they were.

On May 5, 1985, Ronald Reagan visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in what was then West Germany, and delivered this speech, which I've excerpted below. Reagan's visit was extremely controversial at the time: later that day, he would visit the Bitburg military cemetery, which served as the final resting place for about 2000 German soldiers, among them 48 of Hitler's Schutzstaffel - the SS. The reaction of various Jewish organizations ranged from disappointment to outrage, but Reagan went on with the trip, viewing it as a symbol of America's friendship with Germany and a clear expression that American would never forget about the Holocaust.

Here's some of what Reagan said at Bergen-Belsen: (He later delivered this speech following his visit to Bitburg.)

Today, we've been grimly reminded why the commandant of this camp was named "the Beast of Belsen.'' Above all, we're struck by the horror of it all -- the monstrous, incomprehensible horror. And that's what we've seen but is what we can never understand as the victims did. Nor with all our compassion can we feel what the survivors feel to this day and what they will feel as long as they live. What we've felt and are expressing with words cannot convey the suffering that they endured. That is why history will forever brand what happened as the Holocaust.

Here, death ruled, but we've learned something as well. Because of what happened, we found that death cannot rule forever, and that's why we're here today. We're here because humanity refuses to accept that freedom of the spirit of man can ever be extinguished. We're here to commemorate that life triumphed over the tragedy and the death of the Holocaust -- overcame the suffering, the sickness, the testing and, yes, the gassings. We're here today to confirm that the horror cannot outlast hope, and that even from the worst of all things, the best may come forth. Therefore, even out of this overwhelming sadness, there must be some purpose, and there is. It comes to us through the transforming love of God.

We learn from the Talmud that: ``It was only through suffering that the children of Israel obtained three priceless and coveted gifts: The Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come.'' Yes, out of this sickness -- as crushing and cruel as it was -- there was hope for the world as well as for the world to come. Out of the ashes -- hope, and from all the pain -- promise. ...

As we flew here from Hanover, low over the greening farms and the emerging springtime of the lovely German countryside, I reflected, and there must have been a time when the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen and those of every other camp must have felt the springtime was gone forever from their lives. Surely we can understand that when we see what is around us -- all these children of God under bleak and lifeless mounds, the plainness of which does not even hint at the unspeakable acts that created them. Here they lie, never to hope, never to pray, never to love, never to heal, never to laugh, never to cry.

And too many of them knew that this was their fate, but that was not the end. Through it all was their faith and a spirit that moved their faith.

Nothing illustrates this better than the story of a young girl who died here at Bergen-Belsen. For more than 2 years Anne Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis in a confined annex in Holland where she kept a remarkably profound diary. Betrayed by an informant, Anne and her family were sent by freight car first to Auschwitz and finally here to Bergen-Belsen.

Just 3 weeks before her capture, young Anne wrote these words: ``It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe that people are good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder which will destroy us too; I can feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I looked up into the heavens I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again.'' Eight months later, this sparkling young life ended here at Bergen-Belsen. Somewhere here lies Anne Frank.

Everywhere here are memories -- pulling us, touching us, making us understand that they can never be erased. Such memories take us where God intended His children to go -- toward learning, toward healing, and, above all, toward redemption. They beckon us through the endless stretches of our heart to the knowing commitment that the life of each individual can change the world and make it better.

We're all witnesses; we share the glistening hope that rests in every human soul. Hope leads us, if we're prepared to trust it, toward what our President Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. And then, rising above all this cruelty, out of this tragic and nightmarish time, beyond the anguish, the pain and the suffering for all time, we can and must pledge: Never again.

The sign over the entrance to Auschwitz, which is still there today, reads "ARBEIT MACHT FREI." Translated, it means "work makes you free." It's an innocent-sounding slogan, but those who passed through the gates at Auschwitz found that it was nothing more than a cloak - a cynical cover for the great evil that lay inside. To those who say that this sign never existed, or that the camp behind it never existed, or that the Holocaust didn't occur, the only response is this: - "NIE WIEDER" - "Never again."