January view on "Carlsheaven"

“You can not live without hope”. I just have followed a breathtaking interview on German TV (Alpha-Forum) with Zwi Katz. He survived the Holocaust as a young boy between fourteen and sixteen years old. Perhaps he spoke the word “survive” instead of “live”. But what could this difference “mean” under the circumstances under which he was forced from Latvia where he was born, through a Polish Ghetto to Dachau. And from there on Death March finally liberated by the Americans in April 1945. He had been saved by luck, luck and luck. And by not losing hope.


But still you, we cannot comprehend the total abnormality of circumstances, the need to look away from the omnipresence of horrendous suffering of masses of dehumanized people destined to be exterminated. But without sheer luck and hope life or survival would have been impossible for Svi Katz. Now, in his eighties, he still travels from Israel to Germany to tell and give his testimony at schools, conferences, interviews. He has written his story to commemorate the dead in a German book “From the Memel banks into the uncertain”.

Tonight I will go outside for a while and look into the dark, perhaps there are stars to see. And I hope to stammer some words of deep gratitude for being so lucky to receive this opportunity to live here with my dear W. at the banks of the Weser river. In a Germany now so different from the times of Nazi-dictatorship. This Germany where we can feel safe and at home. Where President Gauck today in his Memorial speech before Parliament has warned against the tendency to leave the Holocaust behind. May I share his call for a neverending duty to remember, to commemorate by listening to and reading the words of people like Primo Levi, Victor Frankl, Rahel Mann and Zwi Katz.