REMEMBERING
WIESEL, ELIE
REMEMBERING ELIE WIESEL Let us remember, let us remember. For that is all we can d o for those young boys and girls who, on a sunny April day, 32 years ago, rose in the Warsaw ghetto...
...Read the Ringelblum archives, miraculously preserved...
...And yet, and yet...
...Theirs was the Kingdom of Night...
...We let them suffer alone, fight alone...
...Only the Jewish resistance organization received nothing...
...No: three days after the start of the uprising, reports about it were published in the New York Times and in every major American newspaper...
...And the victims were Jews...
...A frantic Governor General Hans Frank discussed the uprising with his military staff at an emergency meeting which had originally been scheduled to plan Hitler's birthday celebrations...
...There were other Jews, in other ghettoes...
...And anyway, the priorities were elsewhere...
...Most of the ghetto population of 500,000 had already vanished into the death factories of Treblinka...
...Forgotten by mankind, forsaken by God, they lived alone, suffered alone, fought alone...
...REMEMBERING ELIE WIESEL Let us remember, let us remember...
...We have rejected the German ultimatum to capitulate because the enemy knows no pity and we have no choice . . . As we feel our last days approaching, we ask you to remember how we have been betrayed...
...Its members were the loneliest and saddest soldiers of the war...
...And they were so many that they could people an entire kingdom which, indeed, they did...
...Alone they faced mighty legions — among the mightiest of all time...
...Uninformed...
...Now we realize, wrote Goebbels, what we could expect from Jews if they were armed...
...But nobody cared...
...People had but to read...
...All were condemned by the executioner not for what they had done but for what they were: Jews...
...Every underground movement received financial help and military assistance from special headquarters set up in London...
...Totally, desperately alone...
...The Warsaw ghetto was but a symbol...
...And they knew it...
...All over the world, Christians celebrated Easter and Jews observed Passover with song and prayer — as always...
...On April...
...Unbelievable but true: the German attack against the Warsaw ghetto lasted longer than the initial invasion of sovereign Poland, with its armies and resources...
...They were few...
...That the German leadership was concerned and even worried, has been ascertained...
...A single air-drop, a single rescue attempt would have shown them that their struggle and their sacrifices were not in vain and that people — even if they could not effectively help'—at least cared...
...Enjoying the spring weather, many strollers went to watch the burning ghetto: the most exciting spectacle in town...
...What happened there, happened everywhere...
...The ghetto fighters, most of them in their early twenties and some of t h em in their teens, lived and died with no illusions: they knew that for the outside world they were expendable...
...Everybody was too busy to remember the handful of Jewish warriors who had turned every house in the ghetto into a fortress...
...Warsaw was too far...
...Those who took up arms and fought but also those who did not, those who had the strength to resist but also those who chose to die in silence...
...Alone — that is the key word, the haunting theme...
...not one dinner party was cancelled...
...Detailed accounts: the German onslaught, the fierce Jewish resistance, the step by step annihilation of the largest ghetto in Europe...
...Their pleas — to the Allies and their leaders, to the free world and its conscience, to the Jews and their heart — leave one shivering...
...Unfortunately the impact was not as strong on the outside world...
...It was all there...
...For even the heroes perished as victims and even the victims were heroes...
...They paid no attention...
...Goebbels noted in his diary that the Fuhrer was extremely disturbed by the Jewish rebellion and that he had asked to be kept constantly advised of its developments...
...Yes—they were betrayed...
...They all shared the same fate...
...In those days and nights of destiny, the solitude of the Jewish people was matched only by G o d ' s . We let them down...
...26, as the insurrection entered its second week, Mordechai Anielewicz, the young Commander-in-Chief of the most extraordinary army in Jewish history, wrote a letter to a friend—Yitzchak Zuckerman (Antek)—on the Aryan side, a letter filled with prophetic anger: " . . . For a week we have been involved in a life and death struggle...
...Our losses are enormous, our end is imminent . . . But while we are in possession of arms, we shall continue to resist...
...Let us remember all of them — all the six million...
...Roosevelt was busy fighting the war and so was Churchill...
...Only some forty thousand were still alive...
...For that is all we can d o for those young boys and girls who, on a sunny April day, 32 years ago, rose in the Warsaw ghetto and made a desperate last bid to l i v e — o r at least d i e — as free human beings...
...People attended theaters, concerts, movie premieres...
...The world knew and kept silent...
...It was April and the mood was festive in the sunny streets of Warsaw...
...They did not die alone—not q u i t e— for something of all of us died with them...
...Old and young, rich and poor, scholars and workers, beggars and dreamers, sages and artists—all were marked...
...In print...
...Read their appeals, their letters...
...Alone—with no allies, no friends...
Vol. 1 • May 1975 • No. 1
