How do we fathom it when numbers take the place of human beings? How do we move individually from six human beings to six million? One way to understand it is to look around and regard the members of one’s own family: parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins, each with his or her own face and facial expressions, mannerisms, distinctive laugh and sneeze, and odd or conventional ideas. Now multiply these dozen or so people by 500,000. Does the loss sink in? Or imagine if each one of the six million were a tiny razor cut on your skin, how many such nicks would it take before you'd be a raw exposed mass of nerves and capillaries? Ten thousand nicks? If so, that’s one six-hundredth or 0.167 percent of those who died.
—Arthur Krystal, “My Holocaust Problem”
More on Yom HaShoah from MyJewishLearning.com.
In my senior year, our high school choir took part in the world premiere of Shalom Secunda's Holocaust oratorio, "Yizkor." It was a moving experience to have spent time with the composer during rehearsal and the resultant performance, both of which took place in a Cleveland-area synagogue that was the spiritual home to hundreds of survivors. It's one singing experience that will remain with me always.
Posted by: Paul | 25 April 2006 at 16:34