Do Not Forget
"You okay?" Lee Crane asked his XO, Chip Morton. Chip had just come on board after a visit home. It must not have been a pleasant visit. The blonde sat in the nose looking very downcast. Lee didn't want to be intrusive, but they would be heading out first thing in the morning. There didn't need to be any distractions.
Chip sighed, but didn't say anything. The minutes dragged by and Lee was about to repeat his question.
"Spent a good deal of my leave dealing with a funeral."
Lee was taken aback. "Not…."
"None of my family members. One of my friend's father. Ben Rosenfeld was my best buddy growing up. I was close to his dad, too. Found out he wanted me to give the eulogy."
"How did you find that out?"
"He left me a letter. I knew Ben's dad had been ill for some time. He was a planner and had everything detailed. Ben was supposed to get in touch with me and hand over the letter. Just so happened I got there the day after Dr. Rosenfeld died. The letter explained that he never told his family the things that he had confided to me years ago." Chip saw the look on Lee's face and continued. "About his involvement in WWII."
"Seriously? Never told his family?"
Chip nodded. "I suspect he may have told his parents, but they are dead."
"But he told you. A kid?"
"It was when I was accepted into the academy, so I wasn't really a kid. We were sitting on a bench in a park near Lake Michigan. I was walking our dog, Ranger, the day before I flew out and he wanted to come along with his dog. There was no one else around. He looked up at the clouds and started talking about his two months in a concentration camp."
"Two months?"
"I know what you're thinking, but I knew he had been an Army medic captured near the end of the war. I asked him how he ended up in a concentration camp. I thought prisoners of war were sent to POW camps. For a minute he didn't say a thing. I wondered if I had overstepped." Chip turned to his CO. "Did you know there were GI's sent to concentration camps?"
"No, I didn't."
"There were. Benjamin's dad was picked to go to a place called Berga. They needed to fill a complement and Dr. Rosenfeld was Jewish."
"I have heard of the place. Supposed to be a building project for an underground factory for some of Hitler's new weaponry."
"Yeah. The Americans and Jewish inmates worked in shifts to blow tunnels in the mountains and pull out all the debris. He said the plan was to work them to death. Replace 'em when they died. They were given about 400 calories of rations a day. Dr. Rosenfeld said he didn't know how the guys who had been there longer had lived. Some of the GI's didn't make it, even in that short time."
"I have heard some accounts of the concentration camps. It appalls me what that lunatic did back then."
"There are still lunatics in the world. Especially those who want to say the Holocaust was made up,"
"That's ridiculous!"
"Ben said his dad would sometimes be up all night after a nightmare just sitting on the porch looking at the stars. Told me the only thing his dad ever told him was that when he looked at the stars after he had been captured, he wondered if his folks were looking at the same stars. Ben said he'd choke up and not say anything else; just stare at the stars. Up until his dad died, he just thought he'd had been in a regular, if you can call them that, stalag."
"I'm glad he told you so you could tell his family," Lee said.
"He told me that only about a quarter of the GI's were Jewish; many were picked simply because they looked Jewish."
Lee said nothing, just gazed out of the herculite windows. What was there to say?
"When the allies got near," Chip continued, "The Nazi's forced them on a death march. The ones who couldn't keep up were shot. One night while they were resting in a barn, Dr. Rosenfeld said he and his buddies agreed they wouldn't come out when the guards called them the next morning. Fortunately, by then the Allied troops were so close the Germans took off. Dr. Rosenfeld said he cried when he saw that tank with the star come around the bend. The soldiers couldn't believe it at first that these were GI's." Chip shook his head, his eyes glistening. "All these years, he kept it to himself. The letter he left me said that now it wouldn't hurt anymore to talk about it." Chip turned and flashed a tight-lipped smile. "In the letter, he said he wanted me to be his spokesman, tell his family what he couldn't say himself. So I sat down and wrote it all down; everything I could remember. That was tough. Then Ben asked me to read it at the funeral. That was harder, but he said people needed to remember."
"He's right. We should always remember. Maybe if enough people remember, there'll be a day when it never happens again."
"I sure hope so."
(This story is based on a documentary I saw about the Concentration Camp Berga made by National Geographic in 2011, and was propelled by the fact that this week is Holocaust Remembrance Week. I also was able to visit Dachau back when I was a teenager. It made a great impression on me.)
May we never forget….
I am a Jew
I am a baby in my mother's arms, surrounded by the sound of laughter from my older two brothers and the shining eyes of my father's gaze upon me.
I am a little toddler running in the park, picking up chestnuts that fell from the tall trees whose branches and leaves cover the light of the sun.
I am the little girl who is in the circle of friends, boys and girls, our hands clapping, our feet stomping, our voices loud in song to the Lord above.
I am the preteen walking on the path of roses, smelling the sweet fragrance and aroma of the flowers around me.
I am the girl who is caught in the horrible storm. The lightning, the thunder, and the blowing wind. I am the child trying to hold onto my mother's hand but am torn away by the storm. I am walking on the road covered with thorns searching for the roses and the aroma of the flowers. I am the teenager walking on that road, nothing but corpses and the smell of death around me.
I am the walking skeleton surrounded by strangers, women who grab my bony hand and give me hope to go on.
I am holding on to those outstretched arms that help me walk and fight that storm.
I am sick. I am cold. I am hungry. I am ready to give up.
I am listening to the sounds of hope, a sound of a commandment.
Do not let us be forgotten.
Tell the world what this terrible storm did to the world.
Tell what hatred and indifference can do.
I am almost at the end of that road covered with thorns.
I am out of the storm.
I am looking for the path with the roses and aroma of the flowers.
I am alive. I am never going to forget that storm. I am not going to allow that path to be covered with thorns. I am going to remember the last commandment that I was given by the women around me.
I am a Jew. I will fulfill this commandment. I am a Jewish woman, feed the hungry,
I speak up for the oppressed, I love all the children of the world, I praise the Lord for all that he gave me.
I am a Jew. I will never forget that storm.
Nesse Godin,
Holocaust survivor,
© 2001 courtesy of the United States Holocaust Museum