In the summer of 2019 I stood outside the entrance to Auschwitz next to columns of shiny granite engraved with the faces and stories of Holocaust survivors. Every story I read that day brought in me a desire to have coffee with these people. An intimacy with their life came through the words used to articulate what had happened to them. One name stayed with me, will never leave – Irving Roth.
I was 14 years old. It was the day before Yom Kippur. I was hungry, frightened. I couldn’t eat my piece of bread. I could not drink the coffee. Looking back, as a religious man, I ask myself today how did I live through this? I decided that my quarrel was not with God, but with man. It was man that created the gas chamber. Not God. In spite of all that the Nazis took from me, I made choices in the midst of this meaningless terror. I made decisions about how I would conduct myself. Faith was the only thing left. I took comfort in it.
Allow me to say what I think is amazing. Irving went on to survive the camps, the gas chambers even a death march designed to kill him. He lived till 90 and had two children, 4 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. Amongst the many things he did in life he founded a Holocaust Resource Centre in New York. He also wrote a book of reflection on the Psalms.
As I began the tour of Auschwitz my soul was numbed as I thought about Irving and the other stories I’d read. There is little I could say here which would carry the impact of standing in one of the remaining gas chambers or staring at a pile of shoes or teeth. In parts the tour of Auschwitz is more akin to a mass slaughter house where thousands of animals are processed.
For less than 5 hours 30 years ago my wife worked in one of Britain’s biggest animal processing factories. The animals arrived and were washed, stunned, shaved, gutted and all the other processes reducing those living creatures to a shrink wrap packet in hours. The scale of the mass murder you observe at Auschwitz and Birkenau has a sense of industrial scale that reminded me of the meat factory, and is deeply disturbing.
Arriving back at my hotel I lay on the bed – room spinning – mind afire. Something inside wanted to be angry with God yet the words of Irving Roth would not permit it. ‘I decided that my quarrel was not with God, but with man’. By God’s good grace, later on that evening, I found myself at a Chopin concert listening to the sounds created by a man of deep emotional intelligence and passion. The pianist that evening was Bartiomj Kominek a celebrated Polish professional. It was the closest I have ever come to understanding how Saul felt when David played the harp to soothe his troubled soul. Each key stroke lifted and massaged my breaking heart. Half way through the hour long recital I quietly wept for Irving. For his parents and siblings leaving Auschwitz through the chimney, I wept for the families of the German guard’s years later having to reconcile what uncle Hinerich or granddad Franz had done to the Jews in those camps. I wept for the fissures in our humanity where, unchecked, hatred and lack of empathy creeps in. I wept for the lies which fertilize our fears eventually bubbling over into prejudice and murder.
As Bartiomj paused on the last depression of the keys I felt a flood of thanksgiving wash through me. Whilst every one waited for a long moment before standing to applaud, the voice of Irving came in ‘faith was the only thing left, I took comfort in it’.
It seems to me that the human condition is one of brokenness which can develop into hatred or forgiveness, love or loathing. We are capable of and on occasions fail ourselves and the world we occupy. Faith is not a crutch to replace thinking or a last gamble when the chips are down. What Irving and millions of others found and find is that faith is as real as any other human experience.
The story of Job in the Bible is summed up in one of his own sentences – “We take the good days from God—why not also the bad days?” I hate what happened to Irving Roth but I learnt a great deal from his response to unimaginable pain – mostly that our ‘quarrel is not with God.’
Rob Wykes 