His name was Marc Berkowitz, and he was twelve years old when he came to Auschwitz in March 1944. He tells it himself, and now I quote:
“We who lived in the concentration camp remember those people who went around comforting others, who gave their last bread to others. They weren’t that many, but they are proof in themselves that most things can be taken from a person except their freedom to choose how to respond to what meets them in life, a person’s freedom to choose their own path. Because there were always choices one could make. Every day, every hour, was given an opportunity to make choices, choices that determined whether you would bow to that which wanted to steal from yourself, your inner freedom, that determined whether you would renounce your humanity and be cast in the mold of the typical camp prisoner”. Marc Berkowitz survived the Holocaust, and then came to live in New York.
The Holocaust is a horrific event at the center of our culture, but what makes it unique was not the brutality. Genocides are always brutal.
What makes the Holocaust unique is that there was not a single rational reason for doing it, nothing real to gain, unlike some other genocides.
With the extermination of the Jews, there were no pragmatic gains to be made. The Jews had no army and they had no land. They posed no threat to anyone. Moreover, many of them did not even see themselves as Jews, they sometimes did not even know that they were Jews. In short: they posed no threat to anyone. They were killed solely because of ideology. Only because of its culture.
Even when it was at a great financial disadvantage to the Nazis themselves, as it was in several cases, it was still ideologically necessary to carry out the Holocaust. It was an end in itself. At any cost.
Tips!
On Holocaust Remembrance Daytoday January 27, the Värmland County Administrative Board, ABF, Agera, the Church of Sweden and the Värmland Museum organize a program together.
At 11 o’clock, candles are lit at the Mosaic cemetery in Karlstad and the names of the women who came to Karlstad fleeing the Holocaust in 1945 are read out.
At 1 pm there are two lectures in the auditorium at Värmland’s museum. Karolina Dzieciolowska and Erika Bergkvist talk about the project They are here and diocesan theologian Jesper Svartvik talks about anti-Semitism in history and the present.
At 4 o’clock there is a conversation in Karlstad’s cathedral, where diocesan theologian Jesper Svartvik talks with Eva Lecerof, who came to Sweden in May 1939 as a quota refugee. Music from Sundstagymnasiet’s aesthetic classes.
The exhibition Fading storieswhich consists of 16 life stories from Holocaust survivors, is shown in the Cathedral in Karlstad until February 4.
Today, January 27, is Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day when we remember the Holocaust and honor the victims. But we also remember the Holocaust for the simple reason that we are obliged to learn from history, so that it does not repeat itself. Not least this is important in our time, which in recent years has gone half-crazy in a way that few could have predicted.
As citizens and as leaders, we simply must muster a greater moral standing than some of our international leaders are currently able to do.
Because if there is anything that the study of the Holocaust has taught me, it is that the world knew about the intention already in the 1930s. They just didn’t want to take it in.
They simply lacked the moral standing that we – you and I – must muster today. And here today we can learn from Marc Berkowitz, and his words about “a person’s freedom to choose his own path. Because there were always choices one could make.
Every day, every hour, was given an opportunity to make a choice, a choice that determined whether you would bow to that which wanted to steal you from yourself”.
Choose your path. Choose life.
Remember.