Bearing Witness, 70 years on.

And then he knew that he could do nothing more for anyone in the world, and in the flash that preceded his own annihilation he remembered, happily, the legend of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion, as Mordecai had joyfully recited it: "When the gentle rabbi, wrapped in the scrolls of the Torah, was flung upon the pyre by the Romans for having taught the Law, and when they lit the fagots, the branches still green to make his torture last, his pupils said, "Master, what do you see?' And Rabbi Chanina answered, 'I see the parchment burning, but the letters are taking wing.'". . . "Ah, yes, surely, the letters are taking wing," Ernie repeated as the flame blazing his chest rose suddenly to his head. With dying arms he embraced Golda's body in an already unconscious gesture of loving protection, and they were found that way half an hour later by the team of Sonderkommando responsible for burning the Jews in the crematory ovens. And so it was for millions, who turned from Luftmenschen into Luft. I shall not translate. So this story will not finish with some tomb to be visited in memoriam. For the smoke that rises from crematoriums obeys physical laws like any other: the particles come together and disperse according to the wind that propels them. The only pilgrimage, estimable reader, would be to look with sadness at a stormy sky, now and then.
   And praised. Auschwitz. Be. Maidanek. The Lord. Treblinka. And praised. Buchenwald. Be. Mauthausen. The Lord. Belzec. And praised. Sobibor. Be. Chelmno. The Lord. Ponary. And praised. Theresienstadt. Be. Warsaw. The Lord. Vilna. And praised. Skarzyko. Be. Bergen-Belsen. The Lord, Janow. And praised. Dora. Be. Neuengamme. The Lord. Pustkow. And praised ...


Yes, at times one's heart could break in sorrow. But often too, preferably in the evening, I can't help thinking that Ernie Levy, dead six million times, is still alive somewhere, I don't know where . . . Yesterday, as I stood in the street trembling in despair, rooted to the spot, a drop of pity fell from above upon my face. But there was no breeze in the air, no cloud in the sky . . . There was only a presence.

These are the final paragraphs of Andre Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just, first published in 1959, and one of the great imaginative acts of witness of the 20th Century. Schwarz-Bart's parents died in Auschwitz; he joined the Resistance and survived the war to write The Last of the Just, which uses the legend of the Lamed-Vav, the just men, 36 in each generation, whose righteous souls justify to God the purpose of humanity in creation, to create a chronology of Jewish suffering and of Jewish survival from pogrom in York in 1185, to Auschwitz in 1943. It is both profoundly tragic - a litany of death - and profoundly moving - the critical feature of the Lamedvavniks is that their righteousness is hidden, or concealed. Their goodness is ordinary. In this ordinary human goodness, Schwarz-Bart offers hope. This artistic act of active witness - which won the Prix de Goncourt in 1959 - provides an artefact of resistance against fascism, against tyranny, against death.

"The face, for its part, is inviolable; those eyes, which are absolutely without protection, the most naked part of the human body, none the less offer an absolute resistance in which the temptation to murder is inscribed: the temptation of absolute negation. The Other is the only being that one can be tempted to kill. This temptation to murder and this impossibility of murder constitute the very vision of the face. To see a face is already to hear 'You shall not kill.'"

Ernie Levy has a face. All those who died - those 1.1 million (thereabouts) who we remember today - the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - they had faces. Sometimes art is the mirror that reflects those faces back to us, so that we might see them more clearly.

Some locations for further reading - Yad Vashem has an excellent primary resource repository; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is also very good, with some great primary resources accessible for older children; this is a useful list of Holocaust reading - both fiction and nonfiction. What we all must do, as Schwarz-Bart did, is bear witness.