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Walking in, and then out of a concentration camp

How does one walk into a concentration camp, treading hallowed ground that bears witness to tragedy of unparalleled magnitude?
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January 27, 2015

How does one walk into a concentration camp, treading hallowed ground that bears witness to tragedy of unparalleled magnitude? Where the green grass belies what happened there. Where just outside the camp, people go about their daily business. Where the atrocities committed there are common knowledge affirmed by countless photographs, documentaries, and stories. How do we walk in? A heavy thought to contemplate.  But here is a more profound one: How do we walk out?

Earlier this month, a group leader posed this very question to me as I toured Nazi concentration camps in Poland. I was struck by this question of how we “walk out” of tragedy, as it is a vital one also applicable to the recent attack on French Jews. And today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, this question is more pertinent than ever.

After the Holocaust, some survivors renounced their belief in God because they couldn’t reconcile such suffering and destruction of the Jewish people. Some went on to raise Jewish families. Some chose to talk about the Holocaust, and others never spoke about it, even to their families. Some even became leaders of the Jewish community. There are no right or wrong responses, only personal choice.

Those who suffered in the Holocaust were stripped of just that—choices. They could not choose whether to live or die, what career to pursue, or even when to use the bathroom. They were stripped of choices because the power of choice is what makes us human, and the Nazis wanted their victims dehumanized.

Following the recent anti-Semitic attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris, many have expressed their opinion on how French Jews should react. Some say they should move to Israel, the only Jewish state in the world. Others say that French Jews should stay in France, or else they are letting the terrorists win. I would argue that one size does not fit all—each individual has the freedom to decide how he or she reacts.

Touring the concentration camps, I was inspired by hopeful stories that portray humanity in the few choices that Holocaust victims did have. Even during the Holocaust, there were many stories of selflessness and love. One such story involved an anonymous man risking his life for a young boy he had never met by jumping into sewage and saving the boy who was thrown into the trough by a pair of Nazis. Another more famous story involved Janusz Korczak, a Polish children’s rights activist who had many chances to escape the Holocaust but instead decided to stay with a group of children, even following them to a death camp and finally a gas chamber. All the time, he led the children in song to comfort them.

Each of us has the ability to choose how we react to tragedy, be it a seven-year Holocaust or a one-day hostage murder. As well over a million marched in France, denouncing terrorism and extolling freedom of expression, I walked out of the concentration camps arm in arm with my fellow Jews, singing “Am Yisrael Chai,” the Jewish People Live.

How will you walk out?

Eliana Rudee is a Fellow with the Salomon Center. She is a graduate of Scripps College, where she studied International Relations and Jewish Studies. She published her thesis in Perceptions and Strategic Concerns of Gender in Terrorism. Follow her @ellierudee.

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