The Treatment of Holocaust Survivors

In response to your article by T.G. Rand, “Bearing Witness to Their Tortured Past” (Feb. 9), you report the mixed reaction by Holocaust survivors:

“I can’t go on,” he pleads. “Shut it off.”

The woman nods, but when she turns toward the cameraman, her whispered command is, “Keep it rolling.”

There is simply no reason to have a Holocaust survivor tell of his tortured past. The terrible effects of being a survivor speak for themselves. No non-survivor will ever truly understand the continued trauma and horror that has been passed on from a survivor to their old or new families.

This bizarre fascination with non-victims telling survivors that they must speak of the horrors done to them and their friends as a testimony is an abhorrence to normal thinking.

Remember the following excerpt from “A Jew Today” by Elie Wiesel:

Because they are decreasing in numbers and because they themselves feel misunderstood and unloved, and also because they have locked themselves into their sorrow, I thought it important to make this plea for them--for all of us. And for our children. So that they shall know. So that they shall remember.

This then is their request: Ignore them, don’t speak of them, grant them some respite. If you cannot communicate with them on their level, do not try to bring them down to yours.

RABBI ELI HECHT, director, Chabad of South Bay, Lomita