H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941-1945: The Face of a Coerced Community, translated from the German by Belinda Cooper, general editor Amy Loewenhaar-Blauweiss, with an afterword by Jeremy Adler (New York: Cambridge U. Press, 2017) (This is a foundational work in the field of Holocaust studies. From the text:
"Humanity and Judaism, as a basic form of humanity, are values that stand above this history. They did not fail it, but they have nothing in common with it.
"The human being is everything in his history. That is certain. But he must also know what presides over him and over all history. The human being becomes the herald of a higher mission, and he continues to form the history that forms him. At the limits of his ability to act, spurred on by his task, he also hopes to abide. In the words of a mother sent to Theresienstadt to her distant children, this tendency is recognized and is transformed into an effective message:
"ONE MUST BE CAREFUL NOT TO ATTACH TOO MUCH IMPORTANCE TO ONESELF. ALL OF US ARE MORE OR LESS ON THE FRONT LINES AND TEND TOO MUCH TO CONSIDER OURSELVES AS THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION."
Id. at 601.
That should be food for thought for all of us in early decades twenty-first century where we are experiencing the rise of various forms of neo-fascism, white-supremacy, nationalism, and such. We are all on the front line!).
