OPINION:
The last survivors of the Holocaust are dying. One of them was my great-uncle Oscar. He died a month ago of ailments normal for a person his age. As his memory is a blessing in my life, I hope it can be for those with whom I share this story.
I got to know my uncle when I was a young man joining the Israel Defense Forces. I served in the IDF from 2003 to 2006, defending the only country in the world whose law mandates it keep us Jews alive and also defends its non-Jewish citizens with the same vigor.
I was honored to learn I served in the same unit that Oscar had, Golani 12. He was in the unit even before it got its name, and when he attended my tekkes (ceremony) at the completion of advanced infantry training, he told me how proud he was that I was serving our country, Israel.
My uncle was 75 years old then, give or take, and when he shook my hand, I knew that even though I was in the best shape of my life, he would still make a formidable opponent. I knew in his eyes and his grip that he would fight for survival. Not pride. Not glamour. Survival. He had done it all his life.
Oscar survived the death camp Birkenau during the Holocaust. He knew the stakes. And because of him, I do as well.
I was 9 years old when I asked Oscar about his experiences during World War II. I undertook a class project in elementary school and decided it should be on the Holocaust. I wrote a letter to my uncle asking questions a 9-year-old would ask. Another uncle, Svi, translated it into Hebrew and then translated the response back into English.
While Oscar was multilingual, he would often pretend not to understand a statement until it was translated into Hebrew for him — a salute to the only country in the world dedicated to keeping Jews safe. When my family visited him, he would chuckle at a joke made in English but wait to verbally acknowledge it until I translated the punchline into Hebrew for him.
In my letter, I asked him simply: “What happened to you in the camp?”
“In the Berkases ghetto, we were two weeks before we were taken to Birkanow. Upon arriving at the death camp Birkanow, we were gathered in the central court where Dr. [Joseph] Mengele and his assistants selected who would live and who would die,” Oscar replied.
“My father and grandfather were directed to the right, and I, who was 15 years old, was directed to the left with the women and children. We were lined up in groups of five each. I don’t know what prompted me to run and be with my father, but I ran over to the lines where my father was standing. My mother called me to return, but I ignored her calling; I was saved. She was taken to the gas chamber.”
I read those words at 9 years of age and knew there was nothing rational about this hatred. Nothing rational could produce that statement. Nothing rational could produce those actions.
That was the last time my uncle saw his mother before she was murdered as part of a Nazi genocide that killed 6 million innocent Jews — and many others.
After the Allies defeated Germany, it took nearly three years for my uncle to reach Israel. Russian soldiers who controlled the area mistreated Jewish survivors, and my uncle spent the next couple of years in a Czech orphanage, a preparatory camp in Germany, and a prison camp in Cyprus before he reached the Jewish homeland, arriving in time to fight for its survival in 1948.
Just a few weeks ago, my stepmother, a wonderful woman, bought T-shirts for my children adorned with the IDF logo but expressed concern about what may happen if they wore them outside our home in Washington, the nation’s capital.
“I didn’t think this would be the world they would have to grow up in,” she said.
She was talking about the events of Oct. 7, the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and the subsequent vitriol directed toward Jews here in the United States (though it is thankfully a minority position in this country).
Sadly, I was not surprised by Hamas’ savage assault, nor by the protests and media manipulations enabling their viciousness. I was familiar with the visceral hatred some have for my people because I had previously read about the same kind of antisemitism in Oscar’s letter in 1994.
People still ask how the Holocaust could have happened, but the answer is apparent in the Nazis use of propaganda in German media and schools — trusted institutions they used to normalize barbarism over civilization until evil was accepted — and ultimately applauded.
Since the Final Solution, we have been taught to say “never again” and “never forget,” warnings for the world to prevent the normalization of irrationality and false morality that justified genocide in Nazi Germany.
But words have to have meaning and context.
When I read my uncle’s letter about his journey through the Nazi death camps, it helped me understand that context, and I invite those reading this column to do the same.
It is ironic how many people — even Jews — have forgotten what happened to people like Uncle Oscar and his family.
Because when the world irrationally justifies the rape, murder, kidnapping and torture of 1,200 innocent people under the false pretense of correcting historical injustice or ideology, it is a rebirth of the same manipulative rationale used by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The choice is simple, as is the recognition of facts: The Nazis were evil. Genocide is evil. And Hamas, which seeks to exterminate my people “from the river to the sea,” is evil.
These are facts that we should never forget — nor ever turn a blind eye to again.
• Nathan Klein is a former infantry soldier of the Israel Defense Forces who now conducts political polling in the United States.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.