Understanding the Holocaust

Understanding the Holocaust

Braille Monitor

May 2004

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Understanding the Holocaust

by

Harold Snider

Harold

Snider

From the Editor: No

one with humane impulses enjoys thinking or talking about the Holocaust. We

take pride in the relative handful of individuals and groups who did what they

could to thwart Nazi cruelty or who risked their lives and reputations to help

people escape the genocide. But by and large nations and individuals simply

looked the other way or even consorted with the perpetrators to inflict suffering

on innocent people.

In recent years many

of us have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in our free time

during the Washington Seminar. Perhaps we are mindful of the admonition: "Lest

we forget." We also remember George Santayana's warning that "Those

who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But why should a consumer

organization of blind people in twenty-first-century America devote its time

and attention to the Holocaust? Dr. Harold Snider, a longtime Federation leader,

explains why in the following article. This is what he says:

I am prompted to write

this article as chairman of the National Federation of the Blind in Judaism,

an interest group that allows Jewish Federationists to come together to deal

with issues of common concern. Although World War II ended almost sixty years

ago, the death of more than six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps continues

to be an issue of concern to all Jews, blind or not. The hate and prejudice

that inspired the killing of more than six million of our people is very difficult

to comprehend, even more so because we as blind Jews cannot see the photographs

documenting the tragedy and can attempt to understand this catastrophe only

by reading Holocaust literature, visiting Holocaust museums, or talking to Holocaust

survivors themselves.

This

issue of the Monitor, with its articles about the Holocaust, permits

all of us, Jews and non-Jews, blind and sighted, Federationists and non-Federationists,

to get some small idea of what the Holocaust was really like from the perspective

of two blind Jewish survivors. The more scholarly article also illuminates the

nature and extent of the attack on blind people. It is important for all of

us to remember that Hitler and the Nazi killing machine did not want to eliminate

only the Jewish people. Blind people were also high on the list of the defective

who were to be eliminated. Therefore to be both blind and Jewish was particularly

unfortunate.

As

an eleven-year-old blind boy in the sixth grade in Jacksonville, Florida, I

came face to face with the effect of the Holocaust in my own family. My cousin,

Frances Hirschfeld, had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp along with

Julian, who later became her husband. Frances was visiting my great-aunt, and

I asked my mother if I could speak with her about her Holocaust experience.

I was doing a project on Germany in social studies.

In

September of 1939 Frances and Julian had been neighbors in Warsaw, Poland. They

were each married, and each family had two children. Frances was an accountant

by training, and Julian was a research chemist. These families suffered incredible

privation and discrimination under Nazi occupation. In April of 1943, after

having been displaced from their homes in Warsaw, Frances and Julian along with

their spouses and children were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp

on the same train.

When

they reached the camp, a selection process took place. Frances's husband and

two children and Julian's wife and two children were sent to the gas chamber.

Frances and Julian themselves were forced to work as slave laborers. Frances

was one of the inventory clerks who kept track of all of the items taken from

Jews on the way to the gas chamber. Julian worked as a chemist in a munitions

factory at Birkenau, a satellite work camp.

After

liberation in 1945, Frances and Julian made their way to Paris, where they eventually

married. Frances wrote to my great uncle, who assisted them to immigrate to

the United States, where they began a new family. Julian was employed as a research

chemist and invented many new artificial fibers.

Although

I have only briefly recounted their story here, the effects of my interview

with my cousin Frances will be with me as long as I live. The Holocaust is personally

comprehensible to me as a blind person only because of the love and patience

of my cousin in telling me her story. As a trained historian I think that it

is important for all of us to understand the lessons which this Holocaust or

any genocide must teach us. Like it or not, we as blind people are among the

most vulnerable in any such situation. The firsthand accounts of Max Edelman

and Hans Cohn as Holocaust survivors should make Monitor readers pause

to reflect.

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