Lucky days

And taking threats seriously

“Prisoner 56314! Step forward! Report to the Kommandant immediately!” (”Haftling Sechs und fünfzig drei hundert vierzehn! Einen Schritt vorwärts! Dem Kommandanten Bericht erstatten!”)

Martin Rosenschein, 25, stepped forward, petrified, grasping today was his turn to die. The Nazi Commandant of Buchenwald Concentration Camp was not a desirable place to be dispatched.

“You exchanged a piece of bread yesterday for a razor blade! Correct?” It was true. Though starving, he’d reluctantly made the trade with a new inmate from the Netherlands, to keep up a semblance of his human dignity. He made a lame excuse. The Commandant looked him over — but spared him. “Get out of my sight, Jew.”

Any Holocaust survivor can recite his brushes with death, but their descendants don’t think much about how we might never have been born. During WWII, half the world’s Jews were fed to the industrial death factories. Those lucky enough to be born in the Americas did not (want to) know what was happening in Europe.

As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter remarked to Jan Karski, who informed him of the scale of the mass killings, “It’s not that I do not believe you, it’s that I cannot believe you.”

My parents survived dozens of nearest family members. They were later accepted as refugee immigrants by the Jewish Community of Harrisburg, PA, where my brothers and I grew up, hardly knowing.

We were spoiled, raised in a culture that frowned upon throwing the first punch. But Dad taught us a troubling lesson: “If someone really threatens your life... Just. Believe. Him.”

We live in an age where people desperately choose to believe that certain countries are not really committed to exterminating us again. Even when they’re crystal clear about it. There’s actually a clock in Tehran that counts down the days until Israel is annihilated.

Yet people debate if the danger of developing an atomic weapon is really “imminent”. Kick it down the road, they say, or treat it with the same denial we treat North Korea. As if nobody could ever hurt us with intercontinental ballistic missiles from across a big ocean. (Out of sight, out of mind.)

As Rabbi David Wolpe said, “The belief that rational self-interest is a governing principle — is a belief common to rational people.”

Luckily, Jews are no longer helpless. We will stand up for ourselves, even when it makes people uncomfortable. Don’t worry, those who hate us when we’re strong will also hate us when we’re weak.

I’ve written about my father elsewhere and recorded a video about my parents’ story. But after both my parents were gone, a cousin from Montreal told us about an archive of “admission records” to Buchenwald. The Nazis were oh so organized: typed records and photographs. I located those of my Dad, two uncles, and even a grandfather whose picture we’d never seen (see above).

Their crimes listed were simple: “Jews”. (In those days, people were honest enough not to substitute “Zionists” :)

Today is the 35th yahrzeit of Dad’s passing, and I still miss him.

So I received a phone call from my oldest son. “Abba, do you want to hear something amazing? I was listening to your father’s interview, and his 5 digit concentration camp prisoner number was identical to my IDF army ID number, except I have two extra digits.

Funny coincidence, right? [probability < 0.02%]

Anyway, I think Dad would have been proud of the next generations. יְהִי זִכְרוֹ בָרוּךְ .

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