I always have and will always capitalize the word Holocaust. To not do so, would be an intellectual and moral failure.

I grew up with the Holocaust, the German one, front-and-center in my then-recent history, and, consequently, upbringing and education. Both my parents were survivors of the camps. Very few of their extended families survived.

They survived but never entirely overcame the scars.

To this writing, I have not been able to explain the Holocaust to my now-adult children.

Much less to others who in some way were touched by it, and asked. Certainly, not to those who were and remain removed from it by race, gender, religion and geography. And alarmingly, never to “deniers by choice.” The latter attempt, were I to ever make one, is laden with inexorable consequences to both: somebody is going to intensive care and somebody is getting handcuffed.

And there are the classic psychopaths who simply lack empathy for other living, well, anything.

There is a snippet from my life, herein-below, I offer not as an explanation. Rather, an otherwise really small event, to make a likely failing attempt to demonstrate the enormity of the inhumanity, the perversion of heart and thought, the ungodliness, the incomprehensible, yet, entirely realized massive potential of human perversion.

Clearly as demonstrated by the Holocaust, and genocides et al preceding and following it, there is no limit of cruelty of people to people.

There have been many – repeating myself, incomprehensible – genocides of astounding scale prior and remarkably after the Holocaust. Some, again, unbelievably more efficient than the Holocaust, even if lesser as absolute numbers of people murdered. To be clear, some less than the likely 11 million Jews, Christians, and others thought essentially faithless, like Gypsies—thought by the Germans not any less human, literally exterminated by Hitler and his monster-squad of sycophants.

Crimes against humanity of massive scale, genocide, insane—inexplicably perverted power-hunger driven, and even hybrids of those, have preceded the German Holocaust. And, remarkably have followed it.

I read about all those with bewilderment. Not just their grotesque perversity but their inconceivable enormity.

Idi Amin (Uganda) was more efficient and thorough. Pol Pot (Cambodia) not any less so. Nearly 1 million Tutsis slaughtered in Rwanda in less than two months—90% of that population. Serbs gave genocide a yeoman’s try in Bosnia. And Holodomor (5 million people), Kazakhstan, Armenia, Bangladesh, Brazil. Although each lesser in scale, in countries all over Africa, remarkably (and shamefully)—too many to enumerate here.

In absolute numbers, there is no way – and we pray that there will never be – any other shining examples of the limitless cruelty of people to humans, than the unfathomable mass murders committed by Mao and Stalin. They both made a heck of an effort to get to 50 million people. Each. FIFITY MILLION.

At this writing, thinking and feeling human beings all around the world must consider the possibility of another Chinese pogrom. Even genocide. Perhaps limited to the 1.5 million Uyghurs interned in concentration camps, enduring at best, temporary survival—existence. What happens to the millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of their population who in short-order will accumulate “social-scores” below minimum. I fear that by Chinese standards, infanticide à la the past 2,000 years, will just not suffice.

To my mother and the best I have ever come up with in re. explain the enormity of the Holocaust…

In 1948, a group of friends, all Hungarian women, Holocaust survivors, refugees to the US, at their regular card game decided to contribute all their winnings—single dollar bills— to a pot, with the hopes that it will grow in time. And be used for good-works. A decade later, they were the backbone of the new Shelters For Israel. Working tirelessly and without any compensation for great benefit to genuinely downtrodden people. For decades, and still at this writing, they soldier on! And, thankfully, so do their progeny, the next generation.

My mother was drawn to that cause. And contributed to the best of her ability, with the meager funds she had. Me? I chose the easy ways: did a bunch of speech-writing, and helped raise money from the membership.

Shelters has an annual event to celebrate their anniversary, install new officers, take stock in their successes. An evening to appreciate each other for a righteous job exceptionally well done. The one time of year when the ladies, still the backbone of the charity, and their spouses, children and families, don formal wear and dance into the night.

On November 6, 1965, we attended our first affair in our new country, the U.S.A. The annual Shelters ball. I recall the gown my mother borrowed. I also recall the ill-fitting suit I wore, acquired rummaging through a massive Red Cross donations pile at Porta Portesi in Rome. We survived there for some time while working hard to get a visa to come to the US.

I spied my mother and father, dancing on the full dance floor, at the Grand Ballroom, at Merv Griffin’s  Beverly Hills Hilton. Then, it seemed as if that world slowed down and stopped. On the middle of the floor, there was my mother and another woman I had never seen before. They were just staring at each other. Then a first tentative embrace, growing into a bone-crunching hug, to some very quiet and dignified tears. For some minutes! As the room came to a halt and the band stopped, those women held on to each other as if to survive.

Then they separated. Amazingly, next, they very gently touched each other’s faces, traced their features with delicate fingers. Stared at each other. That, for even just a few minutes, is an eternity in a room with many stone-silent people.

As slowly and quietly that unfolded, is as they separated and moved on.

Not a word transpired between them!

Wow.

On the way home, I asked her what that was about.

The other woman and my mother shared barracks for six months in Auschwitz.

Neither was aware that the other survived.

And there, on November 6, 1965, they saw each other, found out about each other, and re-lived Auschwitz for a few minutes.

I was shocked by the fact that they did not exchange any words! For sure, I would have gushed forth with all sorts of questions, once I got past the excitement of the discovery. Ask about everything that has happened to her the past 20 years since Auschwitz! How? Family? Oh … how many questions!

Mother, one of the classiest, most intelligent, beautiful, warm and generous souls ever to walk the earth, asked Father to pull over to the curb. She asked that we get out.

She put both of her hands on my face, kissed me on my forehead and “explained” the Holocaust to me. In English.

Quoting her: “Darling. There is nothing at all in the world, in the past 20 years, that could have happened to us that can in any way be more important and life-altering than the experience Marta and I had together in Auschwitz. Nothing. Except know this: there is no limit to the will to live and live again. There is no limit to what strong people can endure. There is no limit to what one will do if the spirit is willing. Your father, your sister and you are ME living-again.”

This long account, as I hope and pray that thinking and feeling people everywhere in the world, contemplate the growing plague of all manner of hate.

Cruelty of people to people.

©2021. Steven J. Manning. All rights reserved worldwide. Any reproduction, in whole or part is strictly prohibited.