On Tisha B’Av evening, we marched into Auschwitz, reciting Eicha inside the iconic guard tower. The camp was stark, engineered with precision to kill. Where was the outcry? Hundreds of years of culture and prosperity snuffed out prematurely. Bless the Righteous Gentiles, including our new friend Paulina, who said she’d do it again.
The country was clean, peaceful and we all felt safe. Odd but clear, the most robust vitality was felt in the cemeteries where we visited great sages of Europe as well as ordinary folk. It was there that we discovered life in a place of death. Scholarship and history memorialized in stone and underneath the earth. Nature’s beauty was felt in the magnificent yet rigid trees that witnessed the mass murders of our ancestors—who went like sheep to the slaughter.
The presence of our Israeli brethren soldiers was marked by the many wreaths strategically placed. The Torah I illuminated and held up to the heavens as we somberly walked into Birkenau along the railway tracks a symbolic gesture. A reminder that we will endure.
In the children’s forest, we spread soil from Jerusalem on top of the large graves, bringing a small part of our homeland to the deceased and penned notes to our own families:
“My dear children, I write this as I sit before a mass grave of 800 children. Youthful potential and laughter replaced with evil and murder. George Washington referred to us as the “ stock of Abraham” —I now realize our purpose in life—to improve it for those around us and preserve it for future generations. Despite our enemies, 400 years of Polish Jewry left a legacy of scholarship and an illustrious mesorah. Vibrancy and robust communal life can be felt in spite of the interruption of these young lives. Make your lives meaningful, become a soldier in seeing that this message is passed to your children. Actualize your potential, work every day to make your world a better place and one that helps the State of Israel—our only insurance that we can defend ourselves. Dad”
Michael J. Wildes, managing partner and former federal prosecutor with the United States Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn (1989-1993), has testified on Capitol Hill in connection with anti-terrorism legislation and is internationally renowned for his successful representation of several defectors who have provided difficult-to-obtain national security information. He is frequently a legal commentator/analyst for network television, most recently in connection with the terrorist threats facing the United States. He is an Adjunct Professor ofLaw at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York where he teaches immigration law, and writes a monthly column on immigration for The Jewish Press. From 2004 through 2010, Mr. Wildes was also the mayor of Englewood, NJ, where he resides.
