“…There are very few survivors and we are all so to speak messengers… The most frightening thing that I remember is the thought that one would die without anyone knowing it…”
The theme running though Malka’s evocative program is compellingly simple: the Holocaust, a seminal event in world history, must not be forgotten.
This message is underlined by Kuper, Emil Fackenheim, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, and the late Bernard Laufer, a third survivor of the Holocaust.
As Laufer put it, “all of us – the survivors – are messengers to tell the world what happened.” Fackenheim argues forcefully that Christians recall the death of one man, Jesus, after 2,000 years. Why shouldn’t Jews remember the cold-blooded murder of six million?
One of the characteristics of survivors is that some of them live their lives in the past, gnawed by the horrible nightmares of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Laufer gave voice to this condition. He did not witness the death of his family in a concentration camp, but “for me, in my imagination, they’re still alive.”