I'm reading a book with my students called "Surviving Hitler" and with that, looking at other areas of the genocide, etc. We are watching the movie "Escape from Sobioborg" as I write. A few thoughts have been on my mind:

1) I don't think I could have survived one of these. I have read many accounts of the will it took to stay alive, I don't know if I have that fortitude. The labor, starvation, etc. would have been too much.

2) Elie Wiesel in "Night" says the eight hardest words for him to digest were "Women to the left, men to the right." That would have done me in right there. Being separated from my family, watching them die, I just love them too much to carry on with life after that.

3) I don't know, having survived something like this, how I could forgive the enemy. That is why forgiveness may be the highest level of humanity.

More to come...