An Alert from the Ashes of Auschwitz, by Samuel Pisar

Since my internment in Auschwitz, Majdanek and Dachau, from which I was delivered at age 16 by American GIs, a rash of genocides, ethnic cleansings and religious assassinations has confirmed that humans are still capable of the worst as well as the best, of hatred as well as love, of madness as well as genius; and that the unthinkable is again possible, with toxic gas as with ballistic missiles and nuclear mushroom clouds. Yet contemporary tyrants and demagogues, calling the Holocaust a “myth,” persist in venting their animosity toward Jews and other vulnerable nations. If such reflections seem to me relevant and timely, it is because in the ashes of the death camps we can discern a specter of doomsday, a call to vigilance, and even inspiration to deal more effectively with seemingly unmanageable challenges of our time.

For last year’s commemoration I was invited to Auschwitz-Birkenau by “Project Aladdin” -- launched by the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and UNESCO – together with150 Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders, including heads of state, chief Rabbis, grand Muftis and eminent Cardinals. In that cursed and sacred place, where the proud ship of civilization once went under, where I suffered endless tortures and humiliations, my mission was to bear witness, in the name of the victims and the survivors, that far from being a “myth,” the Holocaust constitutes a supreme warning for mankind of horrors which might still lie ahead.

Surrounded by the mind-boggling evidence that was staring them in the face, united by common pain and shared moral values, that unlikely assembly transcended all political, racial and religious strife to pray together for a safer and better future. All of them rejected the cynical allegations that what we endured in body and soul had never happened, and agreed that such slanders were unworthy of those who worship the same God. In the wake of that extraordinary manifestation of solidarity among “sworn enemies,” I was invited to lead a group of the participants to testify before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, where similar sentiments prevailed.

These two events have strengthened my conviction that international organizations like the United Nations and UNESCO, where I began my career, are entrusted with global responsibilities of universal and existential importance and must not be abused or derailed from their lofty tasks by political or diplomatic skirmishes of an altogether different order. All the more so in the increasingly inflamed and destabilized global climate that is pushing us toward a fateful crossroads: either we will regress into a dark age of unmitigated terror and economic chaos, or the human adventure will resume with a new leap of imagination, innovation and creativity that can mobilize the energies and enthusiasm of younger generations.

I permit myself to say this as the direct witness of a pilot project for the enslavement and decimation of so called “sub-human” peoples, who in his new incarnation has learned and written that there is another horizon than the apocalypse we all fear, another way of extirpating the poisonous hatred among adversaries who consider themselves “hereditary foes.” A new renaissance – educational, scientific and cultural – can only emanate from the inexhaustible resources of the human mind, which belong in equal measure to blacks and whites, Asians and Europeans, Russians and Americans, Arabs and Jews. If we can equip our youth with the treasures of modern knowledge, information and know-how, they will rediscover the audacity of our ancestors when they emerged from their caves, and open a new era of peace, tolerance and prosperity.

We, the last survivors of the Holocaust, are now disappearing one after the other. Soon history will speak about it at best, with the impersonal voice of scholars and novelists, at worst, in the malevolent register of falsifiers and deniers. The International Day of Commemoration for the victims is a vital link in the transmission of our awesome legacy. Unless it is used collectively and wisely to espouse, through remembrance and education, the core of fundamental values inherent in all great creeds –be they spiritual or secular – the forces of darkness may return with a vengeance to haunt us again.

___________________________

*Born in Poland, a U.S. citizen by special Act of Congress, Samuel Pisar is an international lawyer with doctorates from Harvard and the Sorbonne. He is the author of “Coexistence and Commerce” and “Of Blood and Hope”.