The Redhead of Auschwitz. A True Story

by Nechama Birnbaum

‘We can know that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.’ Tolstoy wrote that right here.

“All destruction comes from thinking about others as different than you. To be cruel to someone, you cannot think of them as yourself. So, we make them a stranger in our eyes. As if we don’t all have the same blood in our veins, as if we don’t breathe the same air. No one can be cruel unless they really view someone as different but that rips the world apart. We cannot be different. We are all part of the same God. We are never alone.”

Above all, I am grateful to God for letting us live this beautiful life, because while there is hardship, pain, and sadness, there is also beauty, happiness, and love. We cannot always prevent the bad, but we also cannot let it overshadow the good.

People speak of forgiveness, but it is not for us to forgive. Forgiveness belongs to the six million Jews who gasped for air, who were shot into mass graves, who were shot into rivers, who were abused, violated, and embarrassed—it is their choice to forgive, but they are forever silenced. While they cannot speak, we can speak for them. Instead of speaking of forgiveness, we can speak of remembrance and revenge. The greatest revenge we can inflict is to have tolerance and kindness for ALL peoples, all those that Hitler so strongly stood against. Hitler, who did not kill six million Jews by himself. Evil does not only happen when a person is abnormally bad. Evil happens when good people do not see the good in other people. Evil happens when we judge each other. Evil happens when we put ourselves higher than others. Evil happens when we stand by someone else’s evil and do not speak up.