The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Google remembered the liberation of Auschwitz today.  For those who grew up in the latter half of the twentieth century, Auschwitz is the edge of a remembered nightmare, a disaster our parents and grandparents witnessed and passed in their memories to us.  My mother saw the newsreels of the liberation as a child and the images haunted her forever but some of my friends were even closer to the tragedy.  One college friend’s great-aunt was a survivor of the camps and when I met the lady, I marveled that this happy cookie-jar of a woman had faced such evil and still lived so joyfully, dancing with a tattooed number on her arm.  Another friend was the child of camp survivors who married after the liberation and their tenacity and PTSD were visible in her character.  Auschwitz left a lifetime of suffering and long memories in its wake and those of us not directly affected have been trying to grasp the motives and magnitude of the Holocaust ever since.  This is the role more and more of the world has moved into over the last seventy years and it’s a role William Styron talked about in his novel, Sophie’s Choice. Styron…