Humanity Lost .... and Found??

Humanity Lost .... and Found?
I  thought visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum was tough, but today was almost unbearable. Although we are snowed in, and we are bunkered down in the hotel, the course is continuing, and today we had the privilege of listening to two Holocaust survivors' testimonies. We were meant to meet four survivors but the weather conditions were too risky for them to travel. David and Daniel were both young boys caught up in this devastating genocide, yet because they had not lived in the same country in Europe, their experiences were markedly different, yet remarkably the same.

 They both bore testimony to the inexplicable cruelty of ordinary people. As they shared their stories with us, it is obvious that they are still trying to grapple, 70 years later, with how it was humanly possible that people that they had lived alongside with, suddenly turned into predators, with no semblance of humanity, and joined killing squads, humiliating and torturing Jews. They spoke of their terror; growing up without a childhood- of innocence lost too soon. David lost 30 members of his family and was orphaned; never had anyone to turn to or to rely on; had to be totally responsible as his life depended on it. Daniel was 'lucky' as a couple of members of his family escaped the ghetto in Lithuania and they hid underneath a house for 6 months, lying down and squashed with 6 others for 22 hours a day. They were being hidden by a peasant family who took great risks by this act, until they were finally liberated by the Russians.

 But their stories do not end in Auschwitz or in liberation, and nor does the trauma. At the end of the war, there were so many displaced persons, who had no homes to return to, who had no family left, or who had no knowledge of what had happened to their families. They had no documentation and were often deeply traumatised, sick and malnourished. They had lost out on many years of education, something that is so highly valued by the Jewish people. Both of them focused on their education, and both landed up in Israel. As Daniel said, it was only after several years of being in transition, in limbo so to speak, that he finally felt safe and that he had escaped the horrors and distrust of his fellow man as he now lived in a land that he could call home. Return to life after the horrors of a living death has been a slow but steady process. Both men are very high achievers, but are also men who have put service to their communities at the centre of their lives as they tried to forge new identities and a sense of belonging. Volunteering to share their testimonies with us is not easy - apparently most survivors go home and have terrible nightmares- but they are all supported by the team at Yad Vashem. And they are conscious of the fact that they are getting older and soon there will be no-one left to testify.  I'm in awe of their resilience!
I wept silently for them, tears just spilling relentlessly down my cheeks. As a mother, my heart went out to their lost childhoods; but as a human being, I once again felt so deeply shaken by the sheer evil, the systematic brutality and the complete lack of personal responsibility accepted by the perpetrators. We spent the rest of the day in lectures on The Final Solution and the sheer weight of numbers of people perpetrating killings; the callous and careful attention to detail as they maintained immaculate records, the systematic approach that caught everyone in its net; and the broad geography of complicity in mass murder - not just the SS but thousands of career policemen and often just neighbours- ordinary people who had been given permission to become predators- it is just too much to bear.

How can anyone have any faith in humanity when ordinary people can commit such extraordinarily brutal and essentially evil acts? Maybe the answer lies in the survivors who have gone on to live good lives and provide such inspirational messages to us? Maybe it is in the courage of people who chose life in the face of such tragedy? Perhaps those few and far between stories of courageous and humane individuals who risked everything to help those in such dire straits? Also in the generosity of spirit revealed by stories like one woman sharing her breast milk to save another baby's life in the ghetto, when she knew that her own milk could dry up at any time due to malnutrition? And it is certainly true of these passionate educators at Yad Vashem whose life's work is to share their knowledge, expertise and insight to help us all try to fight for a better world that teaches personal responsibility, kindness and compassion; a deep-seated acceptance of all people and an ardent desire for peace and humanity. Tonight, I find it hard to be optimistic about humanity but I guess we just have to keep trying to be a 'mensch'