Holocaust survivor prays for the strength to remember

By David Daniels and ChristianWeek | July 17, 2009

His warm smile and gentle spirit belied the horrors he experienced as a young teen in Hitler's Third Reich killing camps. But when he offered to inscribe his book if I purchased it, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the powerful, persuasive spirit of the man I would encounter in the pages of Legacy and Redemption (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2005), the personal memoirs of holocaust survivor Joseph Tenenbaum.

Born into a Hasidic family, Tenenbaum saw his secure and comfortable life in Dzialoszyce, Poland destroyed when Hitler's armies invaded Poland. In the madness of Hitler's hatred of Jews, he lost most of his family. His mother was gassed in Belzec and his father froze to death in the snow. Tenenbaum himself survived four camps near Krakow, as well as the infamous Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee camps in Austria.

Prefacing his memoir with a letter to his children, Tenenbaum writes: "Before you were born, I lived through a nightmare that still haunts my sunny days. I want to leave you a side of myself that I haven't fully expressed….I am anxious to speak now because my memory of the past is beginning to fade. I become angry when I forget faces, events, names, and dates….Maybe I am also afraid of the memories. Are fading memories running away from me, or is it really I who am running away from them?"

Tenenbaum's portrayal of the daily life of a religious Jewish family in Poland—observing Sabbath and religious holidays, keeping koshrut, studying Talmud and making a living—transports readers to a time and a world long gone. Just as he enters adolescence the Germans arrive, setting in motion an unimaginable "dizzy descent into hell." Six million Jews and countless others perished.

Tenenbaum's story moves through Nazi-generated "expulsions, humiliations, separations, [and] breakups" into the militant Zionism of post-war European Jews, and finally to a new life in America and Canada. It is the incredible story of a man who, on the rubble of destroyed hopes and dreams, prevailed, building a successful family and life in North America.

Though much of the book covers Tenenbaum's post-war life in the United States and Canada where his entrepreneurial skills coupled with sheer hard work propelled him to amazing prosperity, there is more than enough from the dark years to convince readers of the shocking inhumanity that lurks in the hearts of those driven by irrational hate.

Legacy and Redemption, published under the auspices of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is part of the Holocaust Survivors' Memoirs Project. This project, writes Elie Wiesel, founding chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in his foreword to the book, "is a commitment to survivors to ensure that their experiences and memories are preserved for generations to come. The Holocaust must never be studied exclusively from the perspective of the perpetrators. Survivors' recollections are integral to the historical record. Each story is unique, and crucial to future understanding of the Holocaust."

Joseph Tenenbaum's story is but one person's account of the almost successful extinction of the European Jewish community. Tenenbaum remains a devout, observant Jew. But while many Jewish survivors jettisoned their belief in the God of the Tanach, the growing worldwide Jewish community, together with the 1948 founding of the modern State of Israel, offers convincing proof that God is real and that His word can be relied upon. "Thus says the LORD, 'Who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD of hosts is his name: 'If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever'" (Jeremiah 31:35-36 ESV).

Reflecting upon the challenge in writing his memoir, Tenenbaum says, "The task I have undertaken is a very difficult one for me. Throughout my life, steps appeared before me. Often, I only had to rise one step. Sometimes the steps were difficult or hazardous, but I considered them unavoidable. I refused to back down. The challenge of the steps has become one of the principles in my life. Occasionally the steps stopped, and I could not continue. Then I prayed to the Almighty to take me the rest of the way. I did not want to fall. I pray that He will not let me fall here so that I can tell you my story."

Given Christendom's history of anti-Semitic attitudes, books like Legacy and Redemption should be read by Christians. Information about the growing collection of Holocaust survivor memoirs can be found at www.ushmm.org.