Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501240053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
Estie Li-Dar, 47, daughter of two Auschwitz survivors, found that growing up amid the shock and shadows of such shattered lives had traumatized her as well.
``I didn't have nightmares. My parents did. I heard them screaming at night,'' Li-Dar recalls. ``In their gloominess and sadness, I had the feeling of really being a Holocaust survivor.''
About 3,000 Auschwitz survivors living in Israel will hold their first national gathering today. They will inscribe their names and tattooed identification numbers into a special book as part of Israel's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis' most notorious death camp.
But the enduring terror of its gas chambers and starvation, torture and malevolence lives on, wreaking damage down through the generations.
For Jews the world over, and for Israelis whose nation emerged from the ashes and horrors of the Holocaust, this anniversary triggers more trauma than joy.
It comes amid Israeli soul-searching over the faltering peace efforts with Palestinians, increased Arab attacks against Jews and a re-examination of the role the Holocaust should play in defining the national identity and agenda.
It unsettles the souls and psyches of survivors and the so-called ``second generation'' - the children born since the Allies freed concentration camp prisoners in a drive across Europe.
By then, approximately 1.5 million people - including more than 1 million Jews deported from all over Europe - had been exterminated systematically at Auschwitz and the adjoining Birkenau camp in Poland. The skeletons of the living and corpses of the dead greeted Soviet army troops who stumbled into the snowy camp 50 years ago on Jan. 27.
In all, about 6 million Jews - a quarter of them children - were slaughtered in the gas chambers, pogroms and butchery of Adolf Hitler's ``Final Solution'' during World War II.
Hungarian-born author Elie Wiesel called Auschwitz ``the kingdom of death'' and wrote chillingly of the dehumanizing effects of the Nazis' largest death camp.
There, at age 15, he watched his mother and a younger sister disappear forever, he lost faith in God and he heard friends recite the kaddish (the prayer for the dead) for themselves.
He even survived the horrific life-or-death ``selections'' of Dr. Josef Mengele, the ``Angel of Death.''
Like Wiesel, Italian writer Primo Levi survived to write damningly of Auschwitz, where he was told on arrival, ``The only exit is by way of the chimney.'' Levi was so haunted by his experiences he committed suicide in 1987.
``Auschwitz was the largest industrial enterprise for killing people ever,'' declares Reserve Brig. Gen. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's poignant Holocaust memorial sprawled on a mountainside in Jerusalem.
Yad Vashem's halls hold the ashes of Jews martyred in the camps. Its vaults are filled with sad testimony, its exhibits with artwork of camp survivors and its photos with horrors of mass graves, crematoriums, gas chambers and the leftover piles of human hair and eyeglasses.
``It was one of the lowest milestones of human civilization, a time when moral values disappeared. For me, it's the open mouth of a volcano,'' Shalev said.
Amcha, an Israeli organization founded by Holocaust survivors in 1987 to provide counseling and support, is gearing up to deal with an expected upsurge this week in depression, loneliness, isolation, guilt, anxiety and insomnia.
``As with other significant Holocaust-related events, such as the trial of John Demjanjuk or the neo-Nazi outbursts in Europe, we expect that this anniversary will awaken long-suppressed emotions in many people who lived through these traumatic times in Europe,'' said Amcha Director John Lemberger.
by CNB