On " Beyond the last path", Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor by Eugene Weinstock
Henry,
I just finished reading your father's book "Beyond the last path".
One never gets immune to the Holocaust. Yad Vashem in Israel and the Holocaust museum in Washington present the facts in photos and numbers, illustrated by an occasional quote from survivors. Unsettling as our visits to these places were, reading "Beyond the last path" was even more upsetting. Here is the father of a friend, a person only one link removed from me, who gives a factual report of years of incredible cruelty alongside amazing compassion between prisoners.
Anne Frank's diary is more famous than "Beyond the last path" . Yet, as moving and personal as Anne Frank's story is, it is mere melodrama compared to your father's report. Her story ends when things get ugly; your father describes what actually happened, day after day. Such a concrete, detailed report was new to me. Sixty-four years later!
Common human craziness allowed SS-ers to do what they did. Tribal instincts run deep. Cruelty is universal. Given the 'right' circumstances, we are all able to commit atrocities against another tribe. Anyone who thinks otherwise did not learn an essential lesson from history. The only new element was the Nazis' industrial efficiency.
How can we ever enjoy life, knowing what we can do to each other? How did your father make a life for himself after all this? How were you able to make a life, knowing what happened? How do we dare to live? Your father touches on that as well; compassion is as real and ubiquitous as cruelty.
It feels inappropriate to thank you for lending me this eye witness report on horror. Let's meet again, let's live our crazy lives.
Jan
PS "Beyond the last path" deserves to be republished.