“The 614th Commandment:
Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to remember the victims of Auschwitz lest their memory perish. They are forbidden to despair of man and his world, and to escape either into cynicism or otherworldliness, lest they cooperate in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz. ”
Most Holocaust survivors do not have any possessions from their former lives because as a rule, the Nazis confiscated all of the Jews’ property. Some survivors were lucky enough to recover items from their vanished beginnings. After the war, all were forced to start over, building new lives for themselves while searching for remnants of their past. Survivors have constant reminders of their losses, sometimes in the form of physical objects. My grandmother had only one tangible link to her past life, a photograph of one of her sisters. The remainder of her lost world existed in her grieving mind. Now survivors’ homes are filled with all their accumulated belongings, telling their stories.
As the number of living survivors dwindle, it is extremely crucial to document their history. I rely on these objects to act as physical memories of the past. As time progresses, these stories must be passed down from generation to generation. We cannot let these memories die along with the witnesses.