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Auschwitz, concentration camps, death camps, Elie Weisel, Final Solution, free will, God, history, Hitler, Holocaust, Jews, Judaism, Kristallnacht, memoir, Nazis, Nazism, Primo Levi, Rabbi Akiva, religion, Shoah, Survival in Auschwitz, Writing
“Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen.
Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking any more? Can Kuhn fail to realize that next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again?
If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer.”
__________
From Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi.
I tried but failed to find a full text of the book to post here. So pick up a copy for yourself. Just don’t start it late at night, because you won’t get to sleep.
While I believe Levi’s unflinching moral outrage and existential cynicism are legitimate, even admirable, I think they should be counterbalanced by Elie Weisel’s somber reflection that, “after Auschwitz, I did not lose faith in God. I lost faith in mankind.” These takes on the Holocaust are divergent ways of grappling with Rabbi Akiva’s paradoxical epigram that “all is foreseen by God, yet free will is given.”
Kristallnacht, the attacks which intensified the rabid persecutions leading to the Final Solution, broke out 75 years ago tomorrow. Something on which we should all spare at least a moment’s reflection in the next few days. The German novelist W. G. Sebald remarked, in a hyperbolic but effective line, that, “no serious person ever thinks about anything else but the Holocaust.”
The above shot is one of my favorite photos, now hanging in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, “Diaspora” by Frederic Brenner.
mimijk said:
My mother and her family were in Vienna on Kristalnacht.. Her father’s response was to go to the local synagogue with others and pray.
cindy knoke said:
I have read every book there is (practically) on the subject. I have visited Dachau and Struthof, The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and Hitler’s bunker and Eagles Nest in OberSalzburg. . I still cannot wrap my mind around any of it. The ignoral of the Roma during the holocaust and their treatment today is also something that I cannot understand. I have posted on all of this.
Thank you for your kind comments to me and for your exceptional blog. It is always worthwhile visiting here~
Ray Rothfeldt said:
Reblogged this on Political Baseballs.
Eric Alagan said:
A shameful chapter of human history – but one that must never be forgotten!
Food,Photography & France said:
Elie Weisel’s pronouncement resonates with me ….not the faith in God but the loss of faith in mankind.
DecorusDea said:
I was just watching The Pianist this morning and had read Elie Wiesel’s Night several months ago. Every time I watch a movie or read an article or book related to this period in history, I still find it too difficult to finish. My grandparents were relatively safe from the Japanese in the 1940’s but my grandma had always told me to encourage my peers to learn everything we can from it and, if we are able, to never let it happen again.
john said:
Thank you, and thank you again for the Rabbi Akiva quote!
navigator1965 said:
Reading of the Holocaust as a boy was one of the primary factors in my 30 years in the military. Indeed, in whomever or whatever one puts one’s faith, it should not be in any work of man. Thank you.
Inger-Kristina Wegener said:
Reblogged this on Art & Writing and commented:
when we talk about the art trove found at Gurlitt’s house, we also talk about these men, we also talk about the crime against humanity and to this day we, descendants of perpetrators, are committed and bound to the memory of the people who perished during the Holocaust, who were tortured and murdered in the concentration camps that our grandfathers built. we talk about these men and women and children as we talk about art works and the so called action “degenerate art” and about millions of dollars and legal and moral responsibilities.
ladydanie said:
Reblogged this on My Two Cents.