Marchers Hear ‘The Screaming’
Fire burned once again Thursday amid the twisted steel and crumbled bricks that half a century ago served as crematories at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
But this time the flames were candles lighted by Jews to honor the memory of the more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, who died here during World War II.
“If those who were here could raise their voices, it would sound like a deafening scream,” said Halina Brill, a Polish-born Jew who scaled the rubble to light a candle for her sister, the victim of a nearby gas chamber.
“That is what we can hear as we walk here now,” said Brill, who now lives in Sweden. “The screaming.”
Hundreds of Jews from around the world, many of them frail survivors of this and other Nazi death camps, gathered here on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. A Ukrainian division of the Soviet Red Army freed the camp from the retreating Germans on Jan. 27, 1945, ending nearly five years of torture and murder at the largest extermination center known to mankind.
Two days of official ceremonies have been planned by Polish authorities, with the main events scheduled today. But some Jews complained the Polish program did not place enough emphasis on the suffering of Jews, who historians estimate accounted for 90 percent of the victims at Auschwitz.
In response, Jews organized the solemn gathering Thursday at Birkenau, the sprawling section of Auschwitz where most Jewish prisoners lived and where the gas chambers and adjoining crematories were the scenes of their deaths.
“God of forgiveness, do not forgive those murderers of Jewish children here, do not forgive the murderers and their accomplices,” prayed Elie Wiesel, a camp survivor who headed the official U.S. delegation. “Remember the nocturnal processions of children, and more children, and more children. Frightened. So quiet. And so beautiful. And if you could simply look at one, your heart would break. Did it not break the hearts of the murderers?”
Later, the wintry air was filled with the grieving song of cantor Moseh Stern, singing the traditional Jewish prayer recited over the dead. His anguished voice cracked with emotion as he called out the names of the Nazi death camps, while many near him, heads bowed, openly wept.”You see, we have no graves to visit,” he finally offered, his feet planted firmly in the red-brick debris of a blown-up crematory. He then reached to the ground, picked up a small brick fragment and silently slipped it into his pocket.
xxxx A survivor’s prayer “Remember the nocturnal processions of children, and more children, and more children. Frightened. So quiet. And so beautiful. And if you could simply look at one, your heart would break. Did it not break the hearts of the murderers?”