Recently my church played host to Dr Philip Riteman who is a Jewish holocaust survivor born in Poland. Dr Riteman was captured by the Nazis in 1939 at age thirteen and endured the most hellish things, which human beings should never have to go through, in Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps. As he put it about these horrors, “I hope you never have to find out.” More information about Dr Riteman can be found here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Riteman
All of my life I was taught about the Nazi atrocities, saw the archival footage and the taped survivor interviews, as well as the movies that many said were very accurate portrayals. My Dad’s best friend was a soldier who helped to liberate a camp in I think Belgium. (He didn’t talk about it.) I’ve read books, seen the photos and many different accounts of all of this but seeing Dr Riteman in person giving his own account hit me in a way that none of these other accounts did before. Until now I thought I understood how bad things were.
Looking into those eyes that saw first hand what happened, and then seeing the number tattoo when he rolled back his sleeve as he was describing things, like what happened inside of the freight car on the way to Auschwitz, in common everyday no beating around the bush English brought this to a new reality for me with a huge slap. There are a lot of things that do not translate from video, photos and even history books and now I’ll never see these things the same way again. We usually think of the six million Jews who were exterminated but Dr Riteman also mentioned that twenty million Christians, twenty-five million Gypsies (who were mostly Roman Catholic) and many others were murdered on top of all of this as well as all of the Allied soldiers that died fighting. That is a LOT of humanity snuffed out by evil.
I’m not going to go into much of his story because there is no way I would do it any justice. Dr Riteman has written a book called “Millions of Souls: The Philip Riteman Story” that tells it. http://www.flankerpress.com/millions_souls.shtml He also travels around to schools and other venues telling his story to educate people, especially the youth. If he comes to your town don’t miss this opportunity!
Dr Riteman also told us that people living in Canada, The United States and Great Britain have never had to live like this and will never know what it’s like. The Nazis wanted to take over the whole world and it’s because of our veterans who fought and died that we won’t have to. He admonished us to thank our veterans.
When I see the recent events unfolding in the Middle East it’s more important than ever for the newer generations to learn of the past atrocities. If we forget our history we will repeat it – God forbid!
Thank you so much to all of our veterans!!
