How the History of the Holocaust Shapes our Future

In 1943, my wife's grandfather, Marek, returned to the Warsaw ghetto apartment where he had been trying to survive with his wife, father-in-law and 5-year-old son. He found the apartment empty. Marek immediately assumed that his son and father-in-law had been removed for rail transport out of Warsaw. He grabbed loose diamonds he had hidden and ran to the area of the ghetto, Umschlagplatz, where Jews were gathered before transport.

Marek found his father-in-law and son about to be put on rail cars. He begged a guard to spare their lives, offering the diamonds in return. The guard said only one life could be saved. Marek had to choose between his son and his father-in-law. Marek chose his son. His father-in-law was put on a train and Marek never saw him again. He likely died on the horrific train ride or in a concentration camp.

Visiting Warsaw recently, my wife and I spent an hour with friends at what remains of Umschlagplatz. Only a small railcar-shaped memorial commemorates the spot where several hundred thousand Warsaw Jews were sent to their deaths. The obscure memorial is surrounded by apartment buildings and, ironically, a billboard extolling the benefits of a German brand of paint.

We visited the Jewish Cemetery with its tens of thousands of graves, its tombstones fading and its handful of caretakers struggling to keep some semblance of care. There we found
Marek's ceremonial tombstone and reflected how less than two years after saving his son's life by condemning his father-in-law, he died offering himself as a Jew to fight in the Warsaw uprising.

With much trouble we found one of the few remaining walls of the

Warsaw Ghetto. Buried inside an apartment complex with a ceremonial Israeli plate of remembrance, the fading, old, red bricks seemed too small an homage to the wall that encased several hundred thousand Jews, most of whom died within or in concentration camps later. A few meters from the wall, near the back of the apartment complex where his wife was calling him for lunch, we met a 92-year-old man who told us in Polish that he was there so people could sign his book of remembrance. My wife signed a page in the sixth volume, and we cried as we read what others had written and for his dedication to preserving the wall and his memories.

We wondered why the city of Warsaw had left so little of the wall and seemed so intent on obscuring the small remaining portion, painting over some and putting garbage containers around another portion.

We felt better as we spent most of the next day at the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, where we participated in a Polish Chamber of Commerce conference on innovation. We appreciated how the museum served as a brilliant tribute to Polish Jews, to enlighten visitors of the both the tragedy and the promise of the Jews: the outside design reflected light, hope and promise, while the interior facade referred to the parting of the Red Sea.

We visited the 10-year-old Museum of the Warsaw Uprising and learned about heroism as Warsaw citizens rose up in 1944 against the Nazi occupation. The Russians stood across the river and their expected help never came. Tens of thousands died as the Nazis bombed all of Warsaw until few buildings stood.

We traveled by train to Krakow. We expected drabness in Poland's second largest city, famous for being near Auschwitz. Instead, we were surprised by its energy, vibrancy and delicious food.

We traveled by car to Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp. In the morning, we learned how the camp transformed from a Polish prison to a Nazi prison to a place of horror where Nazis experimented on Jews, Catholics, gypsies and homosexuals. We had no appetite for lunch as we traveled a short distance and saw endless, neat lines of the foundations of barracks and crematoria. Knowing that two uncles of my Catholic mother-in-law died there made it personal. We found the remnants of increasingly large and efficient gas chambers that allowed up to 2,000 people to be killed in one 15- to 20-minute shower. We even chanced upon a plaque noting the location of the first Auschwitz gas chambers, which are now a small field surrounded by homes and watched by a loud, barking dog.

We learned how Auschwitz served as an incredibly efficient killing machine, with some 1.3 million people dying there in less than two years. The numbers were shocking and disgusting, but incomprehensible to me was the intentional starvation of the prisoners and brutality by the guards, and the "living" conditions that were so awful that prisoners sharing wooden bunks would bite and kick each other for a bit of room or a scrap of food.

I cried at the pure evil of the Nazis and kept wondering how the world ignored this largest area of human death for so long, even if only for self-interest. The Nazis planned to use Auschwitz

and other camps to exterminate not only Jews but Europeans of every type who were not Aryan.

At Auschwitz, we met and spoke with a 90-year-old Auschwitz survivor who returned to the death camp for a ceremony with several Israeli military. I asked him what message he would give Americans and I was moved by his response.

When survivors say “never again,” we all should listen.

We should choose good over evil. We should demand government be open, follow processes and not intimidate, harass and target whatever group the current officeholders do not like. We should encourage diversity in every government. And we should examine our role as citizens, especially as Americans, in ensuring that genocide, torture and evil are met with our resistance.

For me, Auschwitz reflected the darkest of human evil, and it is an image and lesson I will never forget.

I can't help thinking that if my father-in-law had not had his life saved at Umschlagplatz, survived the horror and bombing of the Warsaw ghetto, and successfully hid in Warsaw during the remainder of the war, my wife would never have been born. Nor would our 6-year-old son, Mark, and 2-year-old son, Max, be alive. The horrific acts of the Holocaust make me incredulous, but I’m also hopeful that the lessons of the past will lead to a much brighter future for Mark, Max and millions of other children like them.