Thoughts to reflect:

Witness

Anguish, humiliation

200-300 calories a day (Bagel is 400 Calories). Diet, unless supplemented, led to death by malnutrition with 3 months.

“Real hunger is when you look at another human being as something to eat.”

Conscience of today’s living versus what had to be abandoned to live or survive. Not much to be proud of that new moral code. Certain rules of conduct began to disintegrate. However, few forgot the value of sharing and mutual concern

Think about staying alive daily, hourly.

Nazi ideology infected formerly healthy social instincts that Christian neighbors and friends began to cross the street to avoid them. Journey began with bigotry to indifference and hostility to camps of torture and death.

The saddest legacy of all for those still alive is an inability to escape from the tainted memory that still hovers over their daily existence. When one survivor exclaims that the Passover she celebrates with family and friends is not the same. That something is missing she finds herself lost in an absence that still fills her with yearning. The violence separated her from her family without leaving even a grave to go and mourn to reminds us that the Holocaust deprived the victims of lives and but also of their deaths. Lasting imprint of unreconciled heritage, sorrows and goodbyes.
All have different stories, different perspectives even of the same event.

Faith-some had none and cursed God; others had a considerable amount of faith, but it’s hard to say whether having or not having faith in God made a difference. No explanation or rhyme or reason to it. Many do not know how they survived. Luck, not bravery, stupidity or we might have been brutal and too inhuman.

Many in the camps drew pictures of “Butterflies.” —— Many saw the angels around them!

Recent interview with a Holocaust Survivor will be posted shortly.

_Conor