Page 109 - Witness

There is an old saying that maintains with the birth of every child, the world begins to hope anew.
Each group of students returning home after spending time overseas, traveling with survivors, studying and learning from the history of genocide, reflects this optimistic notion.
In the applications submitted by many of the students, we see similar questions: What was the real nature of this terrible event? How could people act this way? And how could the world let them? Could it happen again? Are our own friends and neighbors capable of the same actions? Are we?
A second theme, also prevalent in the students’ motivation, is this: It is not enough to study, to learn, and to read about the tragedies of the past. There is a need to examine the event in its place of origin, and to somehow begin to mend the world now, and to begin in the very place where the evil was perpetrated. This journey had to conclude on a note of hope.
In one extraordinarily memorable moment on the last day of one trip, a young man who had been silent most of the time revealed that, to his great shame, his grandfather had been a Nazi during WWII. Without hesitation, a young woman – a student he and the entire group knew was the granddaughter of three Holocaust survivors – rose up to comfort him.
“My intention,” the young woman reflected later, “was to tell the young man this: ‘Let’s not bring prejudice into a new generation. I don’t blame you for what your grandfather did. You are not your grandfather, and I don’t blame you for his history. This is not your fault. You didn’t do these things.’
“He was sobbing – so emotional. It was almost like a confession and I felt compelled to show him empathy and to absolve him of his guilt.”
She then proceeded to hug him, as the entire circle of students applauded through their tears.
Indeed the students on this trip are not only studying history, they are also repairing history, creating and shaping a new future together, one where the grandchildren of perpetrator and victim embrace one another in a startling contrast to the murderous dynamic that existed on the very soil barely a few generations ago.
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