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When I’m asked to
answer this question

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- what the Holocaust means to me -

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I have

4
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a very short sentence:

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Holocaust has simply become my life.

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All the more does it preoccupy me,

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and every survivor,

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why I, of all people, survived.

9
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That’s a very

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agonizing question because there

11
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was no rule for

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whether you survived or not.

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It was so ...

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When I went back to Birkenau
sixty years later ...

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and I also talk a lot
about how it struck me

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that I didn’t find anything
there that I had left behind.

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My mother was thirty-nine years
old and in the best of health;

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my cousin was twenty-six.

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Both of them had the same
chance of surviving that I did.

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They also fulfilled the requirements
of being between sixteen

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and forty-four years old and healthy.

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But they didn’t survive, and I did.

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Why?

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I think the reason I
survived is precisely

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because I have set
myself the life goal,

26
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or chosen as my life’s calling,

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to talk about the Holocaust for
as long as I can talk at all.

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And I do talk about it a lot.

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The one thing I, as a survivor, can do

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to live at all

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has to be the decision

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to live with my traumas.

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I don’t want them to break
me, to drive me mad.

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I want to live a
relatively normal life,

35
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so I have to acknowledge

36
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that I can’t cope with my traumas.

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I have to live with them.

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But that wasn’t a must.

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You could have said no,

40
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but you didn’t say no.

41
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When you now look back
after so many years,

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it’s very hard to explain,

43
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but our lives these days are full

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of questions that aren’t so hard, but
then are really very hard after all,

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questions you have to
answer with yes or no.

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And where do you get

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the moral basis for saying no
in one case and yes in another?

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That’s the eternal question
every human being faces.

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All over the world,

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a common thought has to be
created against the worst things,

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things that are not allowed to be,

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and if that doesn’t become
part of the world’s yardstick,

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then the world can’t be improved.

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In my opinion, it’s the weapons.

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The production of weapons
should be stopped.

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No more weapons -

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in my opinion, that’s
the only solution.

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There must be no weapons.

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Everything passes; after all, in the
end money is also spent on weapons,

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and that’s the worst thing, because
they always stop working at some point

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and then new ones have to be produced.

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And they keep inventing more and
more terrible weapons, don’t they?

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And when that’s no longer possible,

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then all that money will be available,

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and you can do anything with it,
you can free the world of misery.

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But if this common
thought never comes ...

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Yes, that is my hope.