Page 65 - Witness

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines as survivors all those “who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, and political policies of the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945.” Today there are approximately 350,000 Holocaust survivors still alive around the world. Many of these survivors overcame their trauma, and began their lives again – starting new families, launching careers and founding businesses, becoming active contributors to their communities and their societies as a whole. Yet, as any survivor will readily acknowledge, they live constantly with their tragic memories. Not a day goes by when they don’t think of – and deeply miss – their lost family members and communities. In the twilight of their lives, many survivors have taken to recording their life stories, so that the memory of their family members is preserved, and so that the record of their extraordinary experiences – and the lessons to be learned from them – is not lost to future generations.
Some survivors have also been moved to record their stories because of the large number of Holocaust deniers, whose actions are a source of tremendous pain for the survivors. These deniers simultaneously refute the historical truth of one of the world’s most tragic and extensively documented events, while continuing to blame the Jews for all the world’s troubles, past and present. It should be remembered that in some countries – most notably Germany – Holocaust denial is treated as a crime.
In deciding to rebuild their lives, survivors demonstrate exceptional fortitude, courage, and faith. To quote Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, “To be a survivor after the Holocaust is to have all the reason in the world to destroy and not to destroy. To have all the reasons in the world to hate and not to hate... to have all the reasons in the world to mistrust and not to mistrust. To have all the reasons in the world not to have faith in language, in singing, in prayers, not in God – but to go on telling the tale, to go on carrying on the dialogue and have our own silent prayers and quarrels with God.”
Despite their disappointment in the world, most survivors did not become embittered. While many did and still do wrestle with their faith, the vast majority of survivors did not give up faith in life itself, in the capacity for
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