What These Eyes Have Seen

Our youngest daughter, Maggie, has been studying Anne Frank in school and wanted to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington this week. I had taken her sister down to the museum about three years ago, and like every other visitor, we were stunned by the harrowing images that assaulted us almost the moment we walked through the doors. Chris and I had decided Maggie, who was 10 at the time, was too young to go along, and, of course, she felt left out and was somewhat indignant - if her sister could go, why couldn't she? Now, at 13, she was not going to be denied, so having put it off once already over Christmas vacation, there was no getting around it this week. So we braced ourselves, devoted a day to being a tourist, and headed into DC to face the past.

Before we went in to tour the main exhibits, Maggie wanted to attend a presentation by a Holocaust survivor, a 95-year old man named Herman Toube, who has written over 40 books and papers on various periods of his long life; his seminar was part of a museum series called First Person. After a halting start, Mr. Toube started talking, and talking and talking, telling stories about his life, and finally he became so at ease on the stage that the moderator couldn't get a question in edgewise! He had so many things to relay, so many memories, so many stories he wanted to recall while he still could. He was a man who knew he only had a certain amount of time left, who was acutely aware that he had survived for a reason, and watching him, you understood that he was not about to squander a single moment of the rest of his life.

Although his thick Polish accent and well-worn voice made it hard for Maggie and her friend to understand him, his story was, for me, fascinating. In 1935, he was a young Polish medic who enlisted in the army to learn medicine and almost immediately was sent to a Siberian labor camp when the Russians invaded Lodz. He spent a good part of the war simply trying to survive the harsh Russian winters, and was finally liberated when the Germans invaded Russia. He spent the rest of the war trying to return to Poland, only to find nothing remained when he finally got there.

When he told his story you could hear the sadness in voice, and even though he undoubtedly has told his stories hundreds of times before today, he still became overcome with emotion at times, stopping to clear his throat, apologetically saying, "I get so emotional." His emotions were truly genuine, his sadness was real and remains close to the surface, there was not an insincere bone in his body. He had no time for that, he had survived the Holocaust and he had information to impart.

He had met his wife, another survivor, right before he returned to Poland, and they are now grandparents and great-grandparents, relaying their stories to generations who will never fully comprehend what they lived through. The Toubes believe they survived for a reason and that it's their responsibility to tell their stories, to never allow the memories to die along with the millions who were unable to tell their own stories.

Mr. Toube was signing books after the lecture, and I stood in the back and snapped this picture of him. I didn't realize until much later that he had looked up, right into my lens, and his look seemed to say so much. Grasping his glasses and a small toy someone had handed him, he might have been that 16-year-old medic whose life was turned upside down in Poland that day long ago when the Russians invaded his hometown. His eyes look both trusting and wary - who was pointing a camera at him, and why? His smile is kind, yet careful, and the knowledge behind his gentle look would be staggering, if we could grasp even a part of it.

But mostly I'm struck by his eyes, and just from the hour we spent with him, it occurs to me that we, of this generation, no matter how much we read or watch or listen to, and no matter how many museums we visit or stories we hear, will never ever comprehend what these eyes have seen.