When I see videos of the holocaust, I wonder how the world has managed to move on past this horrific event. As a human being, I can only feel totally defeated. When I see emaciated bodies pilled in heaps, I feel, as a human being, plunged into an infinite abyss of darkness; I feel a total loss of hope. The truth of these images expose me in ways beyond my ability to comprehend. I see myself in these images, yet, I was not there. Or was I? I can’t tell. The darkness is too dense. How can we go on; I don’t even know how I can go on. That I didn’t do this, that I wasn’t alive when these events were accomplished provide me no refuge.
But how could we have moved on? The question repeats itself in my imagination. Another day is beginning, but I return to bed to hide in my unconsciousness. All night I have watched videos of these gruesome scenes. They stretch my imagination until it breaks. These scenes are not something my imagination can contain. My mind is left in a void. I am stripped of my humanity. I have never been left so naked and exposed. I don’t know how it is possible to move on into the night. My whole being is engulfed in an intense pain without a locus. I fall into the blackness. I don’t know how it is possible to move on into the void.
When I see videos of emaciated, entangled bodies heaped in huge piles my being freezes as in a block of impenetrable ice. A coldness too deep and dense for life. Yet, I am alive. How can I go on into this darkness? After the furnaces at Auschwitz no longer burned, the world did go on into the night. For almost a century, the world has gone on while Auschwitz has lain in a sacred silence, too profound for the human tongue. But my question is how can it? I know it does. Can there be a philosophy that can answer the questions the holocaust asks? Can there be a psalm that expresses the silenced voices from Auschwitz? There is no blood that can restore what the holocaust destroyed. There is no anguish that can express the silence of six million.
Do I join the crowd that moves on? What would I have to sacrifice? The silence from Auschwitz paralyzes me. The crowd moves on without me and watches in anguish. Is it only I who hear the silence? Do I enter Auschwitz as a tourist with the crowd? I fear deeply there is no work that will free the soul. How can one step onto the grounds of Auschwitz and survive the silence of six million? Did the killers feel this unrelenting silence as they killed? Can anyone write a liturgy for the gas chamber? What punishment could cleanse us of this awful deed?
If we move, what are we leaving behind? The tourists come and go through this space more sacred than any god. It is a sacredness that descends to fill the emptiness of their hate. It is a sacredness too profound for words. It is a sacredness that we must encounter in our lives. We must not stand long in this holy place. Someway we must move. I don’t understand how to move from this sacred ground. Where would I go? After Auschwitz, there is no legitimate destination. At Auschwitz, the world lost it’s center. What knowledge can withstand the experience of six million souls. What knowledge can withstand the hate of one. The knowledge of five thousand years filled the black clouds that hung over Auschwitz.
We deceive ourselves if we think that knowledge still stands. What really happened at Auschwitz? Who were those who created this space? Why do I tremble when I think of these things? Can six million words answer these questions? Do I tremble, because I cannot leave this sacred place? Do I tremble, because I fear the answers to these questions? Or do I tremble, because I fear there are no answers? If I am honest with myself, that is what I fear most. Yes, I fear the truth most of all. Is that truth our ultimate destination? Is that truth a forgotten silence”
It is the answer to the questions that I fear most. There are six million questions; there is only one answer. This is my ultimate fear. I smell the answer in the black cloud that hangs over Auschwitz. The blackness of the cloud is too dense for my eyes. I stand in Auschwitz unable to move, unable to pray. No one can escape this silence. People unknowingly move past me. Do they know where they walk? Though they move, do they know their destination? Are they also terrified?
I feel my identity crumbling in the silence. I struggle to find something I can still call mine. I begin to wonder who I am. The things that encapsulated me have lost their reflection. I no longer can see myself. The black clouds of Auschwitz have descended. An awful cloud of unknowing. My mind screams to run, but I cannot move. How did I get here? This is not the destination I sought. Am I a perpetrator? Is there something about me I don’t know? Why has this awful cloud descended upon me? Like them who move past me, I only came here to look.
I try to scream, but the silence swallows my scream. Am I the only one who hears this sacred silence? Am I the only one incapacitated by its divinity? Am I alone in this abyss? I cut off my ears to quieten this sacred silence. Its voice sears my imagination. My soul is tortured by my thoughts. My thoughts search for an oasis in this desert of relentless torment. I feel the scorching heat from a sun I cannot see. What terrible bird of paradise has gouged my eyes with its angry talons?