A Never-Ending Night
“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.” - Elie Wiesel
A few years ago, I read a book that forever changed my life. Reading it once, was for me, enough. I didn’t think I would ever have to open it again, because its contents were so profound, so haunting, that it would mark my soul forever.
I only read it once, because it only took me one time to understand. I couldn’t bear to put myself through the agony again, although my personal agony was only an echo, far removed by time, location, and the actual experience of the author, and so many like him.
In his harrowing memoir, Night, of his journey before, during, and after captivity in Auschwitz and Buchenwald Nazi death camps, Elie Wiesel wrote:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night
Since October 7th, we have been living in a never-ending night.
On that day, I was with my husband and two-year old son at a county fair. It was a beautiful, crisp fall day. My son rode around in little trains, jumped in bouncy castles, and held our hands as we walked through bustling crowds. It was a happy, carefree kind of day. Leaving the fair, the skies were indigo and blue, with streaking clouds, against a backdrop of ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds.
The next day my husband and I became aware of what had occurred while we were at the fair. In my little four-inch screen, I saw and heard with my own eyes unfathomable evil I could never have imagined in my very worst nightmares. I am sure that many of us who watched only a portion of Hamas’ sadistic torture and execution, or the mutilated and bound innocent people burned alive by these sick humans, are scarred for life.
And we were not there. We were not the victims. We are only the witnesses, the ones who have to know.
“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”
― Elie Wiesel
One of the most haunting videos I saw was of a paramedic, describing the horrors he encountered.
If you are reading this still, I do not need to explain to you the feelings I have about all this. I do not need to make a list of all the atrocities committed. You have read from the same book, you have felt the same feelings. You have viscerally imagined the families hiding in their safe houses before being burnt alive. You have imagined yourself as the women raped, maimed, mutilated and shot. You have been terrorized with intrusive thoughts about your spouse, your family, your children being tortured and slaughtered. You have felt your heart break every single day for babies, children, women and men held hostage underground, never to see the light of day until they are at last released, if they all make it out alive. You understand that they are in concentration camps, awaiting their fate.
You feel for the victims, you empathize, you put yourselves in their shoes, as far as your soul will permit you to go. You also know that it could have happened to you, too.
And so, it is still night.
“We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly if it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide.”
I wish that the day after the fair, I could have carried on with my life, with my plans as normal. I wish I did not have to dedicate my time to thinking, reading, writing and speaking about something so dark, so evil, so excruciating. But it is real. It happened. I will not remain silent — I could not remain silent.
All those who have not remained silent have been vilified and attacked. We see now that the ‘cultured people’ of our world have not only remained silent in the face of massacre with genocidal intent, of crimes equal to or more barbaric than the Nazis, but cheer them on. They whitewash them, excuse them, justify them, create false equivalencies, rationalize them, deny the crimes, and worst of all, accuse the victims of perpetrating the crimes that they are victims of.
“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.”
At best, they remain neutral, but as Elie Wiesel remarked, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
“And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
I no longer have any questions or illusions in my mind about how ordinary people participated in, enabled, or remained silent while Jews were being shunned from society, persecuted, and then finally put into cattle cars headed to death camps. I have no questions about how ordinary men in concentration camps tortured and murdered innocent people, women, men, and children, simply because they were Jewish. And once the world could no longer hide from the truth, I have no question in my mind as to why boatloads of Jews fleeing the Holocaust were turned away and sent back to their deaths, while Nazis were welcomed into those same countries at the end of the war.
I now have the answers, not just from a book that was seared into my soul many years ago; I now know from experience. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have felt it in my own heart. And I have read the words of those courageous survivors who are taking pen to paper.
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
— Elie Wiesel
One day, the surviving victims of October 7th and the Jewish people will have inherited the extraordinary task of writing books like Night, telling their stories and hoping the world will somehow try to understand, so that they never let it happen again, once more. They will have the great responsibility of keeping the memory alive of those who have perished.
The grandchildren of people who have lived to see these times will crawl up on their laps and ask them, “Why?”
When they grow up, their actions will determine whether one long night will begin again.
Read Night by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel below.
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"We are only the witnesses, the ones who have to know."
Kate's poetic and evocative testimony will provoke your conscience and open your heart.
I have chills reading your article. I
read Night many years ago and naively believed Never Again.
Humanity is so disappointing.