Auschwitz, Then & Now

A survivor attends a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the camp's liberation at the Auschwitz-Birkenau former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp, in Oswiecim, Poland on Monday. (Oded Balilty/The Associated Press)

 We have been discussing a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum to see the current exhibit about Auschwitz, one of the Nazi death camps, a place of horror where approximately 1.1 million persons, mostly Jews, were killed in less than five years. It's called Auschwitz: Not Long Ago. Not Far Away. 

This extermination of human beings required a level of commitment unprecedented in the history of the world. Ruth isn't sure she wants to go so we will work out a compromise. We went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem in 2023 and she has been there before so its not as though she won't address the horror known as the Shoah, or Calamity, to Jews. But it is all profoundly disturbing and I understand how she feels. 

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians who won't be represented at the solemn commemoration because of their war of aggression against Ukraine. Leaders from many other countries, including Prime Minister Trudeau are present. 

We're hearing that a growing number of Canadian children and young people either don't know about the Nazi "Final Solution" or feel that it has been exaggerated -- about 20% for the latter. Shoah deniers have always existed but this is a disturbing development. So is growing anti-Semitism in Canada manifested in a number of ways and we should all find this troubling and unexceptable.

I also want to see the documentary The Last Musician of Auschwitz which tells the story of cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who at 99 is the only surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra at Auschwitz. This a portion of the description: 

The film also brings to life the testimony of other Auschwitz inmates who played and composed music at the concentration and extermination camp, to explore what music meant in the worst place on earth. 

Woven through the film are a series of new performances of musical works written by prisoners at the camp, and filmed in the shadow of Auschwitz today. Anita recalls how when she arrived at Auschwitz, a chance mention that she played the cello saved her life, by offering her entry into the camp’s official women’s orchestra – one of 15 orchestras ordered to play marches as prisoners forced to carry out slave labour went to and from their work. The film features a performance of Träumerei (Dreams), from Robert Schumann’s Scenes From Childhood, which the notorious camp doctor Josef Mengele asked Anita to play for him - performed here by her son and professional cellist, Raphael Wallfisch.

I will be leading a couple of sessions at Trenton United using the very good United Church document regarding Jewish-Christian relations in a few weeks as one small way of counteracting that trend. We must be vigilant and informed, remembering that Jesus, most of the disciples, many of the early followers, and the apostle Paul, were Jews. 

             White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall with a Jewish Jesus & Persecution in the Background