When you’re a Jewish kid at a Jewish school in one of the largest Holocaust survivor communities in the world, the concentration camps aren’t just the setting for a Roberto Benigni film.
They’re a tangible history lesson invoked in classrooms by teachers whose parents likely survived the hells of Auschwitz, or regularly by survivors themselves.
I’ll never forget these frail but impossibly brave people, numbers still imprinted on their arms, recounting how they survived Hitler’s ovens by hiding in a drainpipe or being pushed into the right line at the right time.
There was no such thing as too young to be exposed to the images of bodies piled up in ditches or children in striped pyjamas, emaciated and malnourished, but with piercing fearful eyes and features that looked just like yours.
When you’re Jewish the Holocaust is everywhere, and there’s no escaping it. I remember once telling one of my teachers — whose own parents survived Auschwitz — I was “sick of hearing about the f***king Holocaust”. A detention seemed like a soft punishment for such a disrespectful act.
It was only later that I understood the purpose behind all this grim repetition.
Never drop your guard. Never get too comfortable. Never turn a blind eye to hate. Never ever again.
Read the article by Darren Levin in the Herald Sun.