I Do Not Want and Will Never Forget

By NURIT GREENGER
Carrying on the Remembrance

The Holocaust started with words, it ended up with six million Jews murdered for being Jews.

Never before had a world power – Germany - deranged by anti-Semitism, made the eradication of an entire people its central objective and gone to such exhaustive extremes to achieve it. That is what makes the Holocaust so grotesquely, terrifyingly unique! The unexampled virulence of anti-Semitism, a hatred older than and different from any other hatred in human history, is at the heart of what the Holocaust is all about — that, and the role of the Jews as the canary in the coal mine of civilization.

The Holocaust took place because the local European populations allowed insidious persecution to take root. The vast majority of the population stood by silently – at best, afraid to speak out; at worst, indifferent.

Bystanders enabled the Holocaust. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel on bystanders:

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

We must never stop asking some disturbing questions about those who were never tried for their complicity in the world's worst genocide. It would have been impossible to carry out the mass murder of so many people without the complicity of so many governments, groups, and individuals. Perhaps there were too many guilty parties to put them all on trial, but it is not too late to hold the guilty morally accountable for what they did and failed to do.

The scales of justice remain out of balance. Perhaps this helps to explain why, since the world pledged "never again," more than 6 million people have been murdered in preventable genocides -- in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and other places.

Despite enduring force slave labor and concentration camps with minimal food, sleep and under cruel treatment, my parents managed to survive, others did not!

So for me, it goes without saying that “Never Again” is ineradicable moral imperative. I always have taken and will take the Holocaust personally, but the world will not. Eventually, everything is forgotten, even the worst atrocity and crime in history. A murderer eventually gets out of jail for “good behavior” too.

I do not want and will never forget and will not let others forget either.

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My grandparents, my father's parents, Grandpa Leib-Aryeh Gringer, clerk, born in Lodge, Poland, murdered by the Nazis in 1943, grandma Chaya-Lipschitz-Gringer, housewife, born in Tchechovitcha, Poland, murdered by the Nazis in 1943, older brother, my uncle Mordechai, youngest brother, my uncle Nachum-all 4 were murdered by the Nazis, only sister, my aunt Riva-Yosepha, survived-photo taken in 1920, sent by my grandfather to his brother, my uncle, who was living in Copenhagen, Denmark.As a child of Holocaust survivors. My father was born 2 years after this photo was taken; look at the dignity of these people. Can you tell me what did Hitler want from them to murder them?!

 My grandparents, my mother's parents, Rivka Gurewitz-Katz, midwife, born in Minsk, Russia, murdered by the Nazis in 1943 and my grandfather Yoseph Katz, merchant/military supplier, murdered by the Nazis in 1943; parents to 2 daughters, my mother and my aunt were Holocaust survivors When I look at my maternal grandparents’ photo, I see my Mom in my grandfather's face and I see my aunt, Chaya, in my grandmother's face. What a loss!