Many students undoubtedly know of Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel's public address in Spaulding Auditorium two weeks ago.
Fewer perhaps realize that his speech was the highlight of a weekend-long international conference on the Holocaust. As a research assistant to History Professor Leo Spitzer, the conference's co-chair, I was one of two Dartmouth undergraduates who attended the conference as an official participant.
The Holocaust has always been an interest of mine. Over the years, I have not only read about it extensively, but also visited several former concentration camps in Europe, including Auschwitz, in an attempt to know more.
Still, when the conference began, I felt out of place amidst the crowd of more than 100 professors and noted scholars. At the first formal dinner on Saturday night, I glanced hesitatingly at my counterparts around the table. I was the youngest by at least 15 years.
To my surprise though, conversation flowed easily. We had a common foundation of knowledge, and many guests freely shared their personal experiences. The woman to my right, a professor at Williams, immediately delved into her family history. She told me the story of escaping from Nazi-occupied Vienna to Shanghai, and the difficulties of growing up in the unfamiliar culture.
The woman across the table also captured my attention. She told a harrowing tale of fleeing Warsaw in the 1940's as a young Jewish woman. She described the loss of her home and her possesions, as well as the devastating realization that the culture she loved was being ruthlessly destroyed around her.
Throughout the night, I felt an instant connection with these people who shared my national heritage. So many places and names we discussed were familiar -- things I had known all my life. And yet something held me back from participating in the storytelling. What?
About halfway through dinner, it hit me. The stories that I had been hearing all had a common denominator. Persecution. Escape. Survival. And my family?
My grandparents were among the thousands of German and Austrian citizens who stood quietly by during the Nazi era. They were never party members, but my grandfather did fight in the German army. My cousins were in the Hitler youth. My father grew up living in Hitlerbau, a maze of yellow-plastered apartment buildings built by the Nazi government. Throughout the war, my grandparents' home was perhaps 15 miles from the infamous concentration camp at Mauthausen.
I suddenly realized that I felt out of place not so much because of my age, but because of my family history. At a table of survivors and children of survivors, I was the granddaughter of people who embraced Hitler.
As the weekend progressed, the unsettling realization from Saturday night stayed with me. In the shadow of my grandparents' role, the personal pleas of survivors to "never forget" suddenly seemed more urgent than ever.
Today, a thought from Wiesel's speech on Sunday continues to stand out in my mind. "Memory is the substance of human beings," he said. "Memory, if kept alive, is stronger than its enemy. The enemy of memory is apathy."
Apathy? The more I learn lately, the more I realize how insidious it can be. Having studied Nazi Germany for so long, I am in danger of letting the facts and details become routine to me. It would be so easy to say that I now understand and can, therefore, close the book on that page of history.
In reality, the tragedy remains beyond my comprehension. The Holocaust did not happen in a distant, barbarian world. It is just easier to forget sometimes that behind the numbers are people, and that behind each victim and each perpetrator is a face. A face of an ordinary person. A face that I might even know.
How could these ordinary people commit such extraordinary crimes? Despite all the books I have read, all the places I have seen, all the conferences I have atteneded, I am still no closer to an answer. I am beginning to believe that I never will be.
Even so, one imperative remains with me. We must continue to mourn, we must continue to know, and we must continue to teach the Holocaust to future generations. We must keep asking each and every person to recognize, to learn and to remember.
Because at the moment we sit back and say we have done enough, and at the moment we begin to say that the Holocaust is only past history, we will be, as Professor Wiesel said, in danger of replacing our memory with apathy. An apathy that will grow stronger, not weaker. In fact, an apathy not that different from what helped Hitler come to power in the first place.
My grandparents let it happen once.