At Dachau

On the infamous “Night of Broken Glass” November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a savage against the Jews of Germany. Leo Fuchs, my father was one of the 30,000 Jewish men arrested in Germany that night and among the 500 arrested in his home city of Leipzig.

Historians called that night, Kristallnacht, or in Germany Reichspogromnacht, the clear boundary in time after which no one could any longer doubt Hitler’s ultimate plan for Europe’s Jews.

That ultimate plan condemned one-third of all the Jews in the world to death. Two-thirds of Europe’s Jews and three-fourths of Europe’s Rabbis Cantors, Jewish educators and communal leaders perished.

Out of the 18,000 Jews who lived in Leipzig in 1935, Hitler killed 14,000, seven out of every nine.

Upon their arrest on Kristallnacht, Leipzig’s captives had to stand in the stream that flows through the city zoo. There Nazi soldiers commanded citizens to spit on them, curse at them and throw mud on them.

Then they took my father to Dachau where they shaved his head and beat him.

But my father was one of the very fortunate ones. He had an older brother and an uncle already established in the United States. They petitioned Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, a Jew with German roots, and on December 3, 1938, my father was able to sail for New York City.

There he met and married my mother, and my sister Rochelle and I were born. I am very grateful.

I have never visited Dachau, but Dachau visits me often. My father’s two older brothers lived into their 80’s; my father died at 57.

Yes, I blame Dachau.

If someday I physically go there, these are the words I shall say:

 

Sometimes silence is the only appropriate response.

When we confront the depths of depravity to which humans can descend,

And the depths of despair that humans can inflict on others, Slack-jawed silence is the only response that is not flawed.

Entering Dachau is such a time.

The questions, “Why? And “How?” are all we can utter.

But there are no answers.

But if we believe,

In spite of what this place represents,

That there is a God, or a force within us that bids us to do what is

       just and right,

Then we must act—

     as God’s eyes that see the pain around us,

     as God’s ears, that hear the anguished cries,

     as God’s hands that reach out to comfort

           those who suffer

     and as God’s feet that run to those

     Whom life has wounded—

To walk with them

Away from the shattered past

       Of yesterday

Toward tomorrow

       And the promise of hope!

Amen