Night, Redux: Hold the Pierogis

A teacher sent this text response to a group of college students studying abroad:

A teacher. An educator. In Poland. Poland. Where a Jewish community of three million was all but obliterated during the Holocaust. In a world where precious few remain to bear witness, fewer still since the death of Elie Wiesel last week.

The activity that had been prepared was a cooking class. Had my friend told me his niece opted out of a tour of Auschwitz to attend a Polish cooking class, I would have been surprised and, yes, a little sad. It was the other way around though. She and her friends had passed up the once in a lifetime chance to stir up some Polish delicacies and chose, instead, to visit the Nazi death camp, stirring up something a bit less palatable.

Less than a week ago, I quoted Elie Wiesel, a teacher as well. An educator, a scholar, a survivor against all odds, long gone from his homeland, where his mother and sister were killed at Auschwitz, where, as a teenager, he listened, helpless, as his ailing father was beaten at Buchenwald. Like so many survivors of the Holocaust, like so many survivors of humanity's greatest atrocities, Wiesel could not speak of his experience for years. Survival, for many, seemed a fate at least equal to death.

It is because of Elie Wiesel, and countless other survivors, that we have any hope of doing better. It is because of their bravery, their willingness to confront their real life nightmares and break their silence, that we have any sense of what happened there, all those years ago. Night, Wiesel's widely read account of his horror, is an abridged version of the first memoir he wrote. It was called And the World Remained Silent. It's what we humans tend to do.

The thoroughly modern Polish teacher was sad, she said, that a small group of students would choose remembrance over pierogis, the kind that would no doubt forever ruin, for them, American made pierogis.  Don't get me wrong. I'm all about the food when I travel. Real Parisian French bread has ruined, for me, what passes for French bread at home. When in Rome, I happily eat what Romans eat, and you'll rarely find me hunting down a good old fashioned American hamburger when I am somewhere else. But this was a bit of authentic cuisine I could easily pass up.

I suppose I get why she was sad. It wasn't the Polish people who killed the Jews. And, even though lots of them remained silent or looked the other way, many more risked their own safety to protect their Jewish neighbors, or at least not betray them. Certainly, Jews are not massacred in modern day Poland -- in part because few remain, and in part because, at least I hope, evil is the exception, not the rule.

But history repeats itself, and holocausts keep happening -- maybe not on such a grand scale, but that's beside the point. I have two left feet, but I'd much rather dance the polka or bake pierogis than tour the Nazi ovens and imagine the stench from those smokestacks. Like the Polish teacher, I prefer not to be sad.

We all need to hold the pierogis, though, especially these days. Evil may still be the exception, but it is persistent. We need to stop looking the other way, stop being silent, start paying better attention. Modern day Poland, like modern day anywhere, is what it is because of what it once was, and its future depends on the choices people make today. My friend's niece chose Auschwitz (described by her father as "the opposite of Disney World") over sweet smelling Polish delicacies. A hard choice, but not really.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Elie Wiesel, Night.