Believing Again

Walking the paths of an Auschwitz sterilized by the time that has passed since the horrors perpetrated here, I begin to doubt humanity and its Creator. I stare at the lush green of a tree reflected in a puddle, battling the obvious fact that trees cannot be green here, and neither can water reflect. This is hell that came to earth. Yet, while conscious of this, I feel no blinding pain for the senseless murder of millions of my brethren. Just a void emptiness, the nothingness of a head that's not thinking. I feel suspended in a world I cannot comprehend.

I feel suspended in a world I cannot comprehendI first arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where at least 1.1 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. A sprawling camp with naked red chimneys. Only remnants of the barracks remain, because the inmates had stripped them for firewood, desperate to stay warm in the winter after liberation. A visiting group walks by, indifferent to the sanctity of this hallowed ground, and I hear laughter and casual conversation as they pass. Another young couple stands in a passionate embrace, seemingly unaware of the millions of last goodbyes uttered only yards away.

I arrive in Auschwitz proper. The entrance to Auschwitz: I've seen it a thousand times, in a thousand pictures and videos. It casts a heavy shadow, looming across train tracks, tracks that head straight into the mouth of the beast. I walk the length of the train track, my head abuzz with Elie Wiesel's description of vicious salivating dogs snapping at a shivering child just disembarking from a hellish ride.

I enter a low-lying building, innocuous-looking, as most buildings in Auschwitz are. It almost looks inviting on this hot day. The floor is covered by a glass platform that prevents you from touching the bare ground. In here, the inmates were deloused and shaved. Their blue and white striped uniforms were placed in a huge hot air oven to kill the lice burrowed deep in the seams. A sign outside the building reads "Disinfection."

In front of the gas chamber, a grainy black and white video of my great-grandfather -- Yaakov Shimon Lezerowitz -- plays in my head. He is turning for a last peek at a sky that will never turn light again. Zyklon B openings in the ceilings of the gas chambers mock me, allowing sunlight to beam onto walls that have been scraped and scratched at by hands straining to stay alive.

Even after leaving Auschwitz, the destruction remains in my mind, casting a shadow of doubt that leaves me frozen. Months later, I am studying chapter 18 of Genesis and a thought occurs to me.

Nothing is as impossible as it seemsWe find Abraham sitting outside his tent, in recovery from his recent circumcision. Through the blazing sun, three figures approach his tent. In pain from his surgery, but indomitable as ever, Abraham runs to welcome them to his tent. A feast of amazing proportions begins -- a bull per guest is slaughtered. Unmasking themselves as angels on a mission, one stands to bless Abraham's wife Sarah. The angel says, "At this time next year you will give birth to a child." Sarah, in understandable disbelief, laughs at the prospect of ever giving birth, doubtful that a body wracked by time and age could conceive.

Yet, despite her unwillingness to believe the unbelievable, Sarah ultimately gives birth to a beautiful child, Isaac.

Now, looking back, I remember a moment, one moment, of pristine clarity in Auschwitz that left me, once again, believing. It was as I stood at an oversized guestbook, its vanilla pages beckoning me to pen a thought.

I wrote: "You are remembered. You are survived. Your deaths were in vain, but your lives were not. I have come back to this place to declare that we, the Family Lezerowitz, lives."

It was at that moment I finally shed a tear, no longer doubtful or indifferent. The miracle of Isaac's birth, the miracle of my existence. In plain-sighted reality, nothing is as impossible as it seems.