November 01, 2017
by Jacqueline Mendels Birn
On May 19, 2014, there was an op-ed piece in The Washington Post written by Michael Gerson titled, “Teaching the Holocaust.” A boy who had his bar mitzvah was the grandson of four survivors. One of the grandfathers had said, when the boy was born, “Hitler, you bastard, I beat you.”
That reminded me of a project I work with called “Remember Me,” in which I interview Holocaust survivors. Most of them are orphans who tell me how they survived, but their father or mother or both were shot or rounded up and deported and never came back.
In the course of those interviews, I often ask my interviewee, who is usually about my age, if he or she married and has children and grandchildren. Whenever I hear that a survivor has grandchildren, I always say, “You see, Hitler did not win! We are alive, and we have young people in our families who prove that Hitler failed in his devilish attempt to murder us all.”
Whenever I speak to groups of young people at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or at schools or synagogues, I end my presentation saying, “You can touch me. I am alive; Hitler did not kill me. Even though Hitler tried to kill me and my parents and sister, he did not succeed. Every day was a miracle, and now it is a joy for me to have the most adorable granddaughter.”
I remind young people to do good in their adult lives. I tell them that every good deed, however minuscule it is, will show that there are good people on the earth. I encourage them to choose a job, a profession in which they can help, in which they can prevent evil. I tell them that it is their responsibility to share the stories of their relatives and their friends. I tell them to remember what they have seen in the Permanent Exhibition here at the Museum, and I add that they should never, never forget what was done by a monster like Hitler.
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