As a Boy through the Hell of the Holocaust

Zvi Helmut Steinitz Memoirs for eternal remembranceFor years I was preoccupied with the thought of documenting the tragic fate of my family members, all of them perished in the Holocaust. Yet for almost my whole life, I tried to suppress the sorrowful past, wary of resurrecting the years of tears and suffering. I rarely spoke of the wartime atrocities. I never returned to the country where death resided, where streams of Jewish blood saturated the earth. I couldnt bring myself to stand before the silent mass grave in Belzec, where my parents, my brother and my aunt lie buried together with hundreds upon thousands of Jewish victims. I couldnt face the death of those I loved, couldn't look into their eyes. In my mind, they live on. Many years later, vivid images from the monstrous war years began to appear frequently, images that cast a shadow over my day-to-day life and burdened my mind. I gradually became aware of my age, too. I was no longer young, and already I felt under pressure to finally write down the story of my family. All my life I had been haunted by the question of how I had survived the war, where I had drawn the mental and physical strength that helped me to survive those tortuous years. There is no explanation for my survival, and yet I am certain that the upbringing that my parents gave me had a significant influence on my steadfastness and determination, particularly in critical situations. My parents brought my brother and me up with love and human values that I have carried with me through my life. In moments of deepest despair and deadly peril, hidden strengths awakened in me, strengths that sharpened my senses and saved my life. I strongly believe that the values installed in childhood will always stay with a person and develop into principles that a young person can take into independent life. Had I not possessed these principles, not even blind luck or sheer coincidence could have saved me. As the only surviving member of my family, I felt a moral obligation to immortalise in writing the fate of my family and their lives before and during the war up until their tragic deaths. I had the extraordinary fortune of surviving, and I have enough mental strength today to enable me to address the horrors of that time and to tell the story of my family. The Nazis will not succeed in their appalling attempt at erasing my family's existence from this earth. My parents and brother have no personal graves and no gravestone.