Page 73 - Witness

Drop By Drop By Drop
Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter chanted a traditional prayer in a restored synagogue in the village of Tykocin in northeastern Poland. “I always tell the young that I am carrying a torch of well-being and goodness. Despite the fact that it could have been a bitter one, I believe that my torch should be like the Olympic torch, a torch that brings goodwill on Earth.
“We had a person named Moses on our trip, a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. It was incredible how he bonded with me, by my being able to tell my stories. He wrote a letter about how it’s much easier for him to accept, to live in the future because I have given him another
Weltanschauung, another worldview. It’s very important for Holocaust survivors – or anybody else – to spread togetherness and goodwill and I think it’s the young people specifically who can create this. Because drop by drop by drop, like water on a stone, the world can become a better place.”
At the 20th anniversary dinner of the USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles on May 7, 2014, President Barack Obama had this to say:
“I think of Pinchas Gutter, a man who lived through the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and survived the Majdanek death camp...‘I tell my story,’ he says, ‘for the purpose of improving humanity, drop by drop by drop. Like a drop of water falls on a stone and erodes it, so, hopefully, by telling my story over and over again, I will achieve the purpose of making the world a better place to live in.’ Those are the words of one survivor – performing that sacred duty of memory – that will echo throughout eternity. Those are good words for all of us to live by.”
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