Will We Ever Be Able to Forget?

Remarks by Sigmund Strochlitz on the occasion of receiving an honorary fellowship from the University of Haifa on May 9, 1982

Thank you for the award and thank you for your comments. They deeply touched me. In my eyes, words hold great importance. Throughout my life, I have come to know, and surely many of you have also learned, that words have the power to destroy and even to kill. Tonight – they brought joy and happiness, but in a rather strange manner, they brought to the surface memories that were hidden in the depths of the soul.

If forty years ago, someone had told me that one day I would stand here, in the independent State of Israel, and receive an award from an Israeli university, I would have shrugged and continued on my way silently. However, if I had been told then, forty years ago, that I would receive the award with my study fellow, Professor Yehoshua Prawer, with whom I was educated and who left our city Będzin before World War II and made alyi’a to the Land of Israel, I would have likely burst into laughter or perhaps tears.

Indeed, our history is filled with similarities, and we have chosen history over geography. Imagination triumphed over reality. Therefore, here I am, and with me are my family and friends, and yet I feel myself compelled, because of the symbolism of this event, to bring before you the memory of the thirty thousand Jewish residents of Będzin and to describe their tragic fate. For generations, families like the Prawers and the Strochlitzes lived in this city, and studies always held a place of honor in their lives, even if it meant sacrificing daily needs. Thus, it happened that one day Yehoshua made aliya to Israel to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and I remained in exile and enrolled in the university in Krakow. A few years passed, and suddenly World War II broke out, the Nazis invaded our city, wiped out the Jewish quarter, and set fire to the synagogue and the surrounding houses. Anyone who tried to escape from his burning home was shot on the spot. Although the entire synagogue was engulfed in flames, a few Jews dared, led by a man named Schlesinger, he, his son, and his son-in-law, to break inside. They made their way to the Holy Ark and came out, each with two Torah scrolls in their arms that they managed to save from the fire. The moment they were seen outside the flaming synagogue, the Nazis shot and killed them. That was the beginning of the end for the Jewish population of Będzin.

Those flames that engulfed the synagogue continued their rampage in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, and in the other extermination camps, and they consumed the Jewry of Europe. Six million of our people.

Everyone who survived must tell the story over and over again, tirelessly and relentlessly, both in times of joy and times of sorrow. There is no end to this story, and it will never suffice. We must invent a special language and a special dictionary, so that what has never been said before by any human being, and perhaps never will be said, may be uttered. The horror in the eyes of the elders, the children’s lips turning cold as they walk to their death, the festive and silent procession of the victims being dragged into the flames, the selections, the mass graves and the recitation of Kaddish by people on their own death, or on the death of those who are still alive. Will we ever be able to forget? Please forgive me for bringing all this up even on this evening, at an event meant only to make us celebrate.

However, it is not only the curse of our generation. We have also received a blessing. Although we suffered greatly, we were also blessed. We were eyewitnesses to the tragedy, but we were also blessed with the miracle of resurrection, even though the dangers are still many and the non-sacred covenant of the hatred of Arab lands, of communist hypocrisy, of Europe’s forgetfulness and indifference, and of the alarming wave of assimilation, still looms over us. Among the people living in Israel or in the diaspora, there is no sense of pessimism, and there is no sense of despair or loss of hope. Your steadfastness is our strength, and your achievements in the fields of society, culture, and technology are a source of pride and inspiration for all of us, especially in our present day, when the communities of European Jewry are nothing but history. Our people acquire a rare and wonderful spirit of survival, and I am confident that this spirit will pave new paths and means to ensure the continued existence of Israel and all our people, wherever they are.

 

Once again, I express my gratitude to you for honoring me with this award, in the presence of my dear wife, and in the presence of my daughters and grandchildren, some of whom live here in Israel, and some in the United States. This fellowship is the highest honor the university can bestow.

For me, this award will be a source of joy and strength for my continued activity. I accept it with great pride and hope that I will be given the necessary strength to help build this university that I greatly appreciate for its achievements so far, and that I respect and love for its aspiration for academic excellence, combined with a sense of responsibility that finds expression in the relentless pursuit of ways to create a society built on consideration for others and on justice.