When They Came To Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust

In memory of the six million who could not tell their stories.

The 20th century has given us all too much opportunity to observe the human effects of mass killing and sustained cruelty. Yet, there is still much that we do not understand about survivors of such experiences and their lives after. Our ignorance has to do with an almost insurmountable barrier between their extreme suffering and our own ordinary existence. Overcoming that barrier with Holocaust survivors requires us to take in both their suffering and the ways that they have found to transcend it. 

When body and mind have been assaulted, the self tends to close down or open out – or, in some cases, a bit of both. As observers of Holocaust survivors, we have not paid sufficient attention to the impressive capacity of some to absorb their chronic pain and move beyond it into creative achievement and expressions of love. 

My own dialogues, over decades, with Holocaust survivors seem always to reveal this double possibility. Survivors can remain bound to the suffering and its residual symptoms to the extent of near immobilization; but they also can acquire profound knowledge and insight.