Unlike Han and my father, I do not "do" Holocaust books or films. There are a few exceptions, as there usually are in life, but I do not actively seek out their company.
But since I'm the one who reads the Book Review, I introduced Han to Dara Horn's People Love Dead Jews, and Han is smitten (I might actually make PLDJ another exception). He prefers audiobooks, and he played me a segment he found interesting.
The essay he played I was able to find online, on the Smithsonian website.
Anne Frank's memoir has been insanely popular, worldwide. While it is about Jews hiding from the Nazis, it doesn't really deal with the genocide currently taking place. Other memoirs, that do recount the acts of horror, are not remotely as popular.
Horn cites the work of Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando who was later killed in a failed uprising. Reading a passage Horn inserted into her essay, I was breathless at how a man who was forced to be a part of such indescribable crimes can not only remain religious, but recount the murders of his charges with compassion.
Any other soul in such a position would have numbed himself, refusing to connect to the acts he is forced to commit. but Gradowski even details an example of a young woman who not only defies a Nazi official but manages to hit him too before she is taken away. She was no sheep led to the slaughter (a metaphor I have always disliked).
Sonderkommandos were dead men walking, on limited time (they were killed every three months and replaced). And yet, Gradowski managed to hold on to his humanity and faith, to use beautiful language to describe ugly actions. His empathy remained, even while the Nazis tried every way to burn it out of him.
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