A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (25 page)

Over the years, contemporary events have triggered images in my mind of my camp experiences. During the Balkan conflict in
the 1990s, for example, it was a common occurrence for TV stations to broadcast pictures of columns of exhausted refugees
fleeing from combat zones. As I watched these scenes, I recognized myself in the frightened faces of the children. The pictures
brought back memories of approaching German tanks on those Polish country roads, where our little group of refugees huddled
in fear. When listening to the sole survivor of the El Mozote massacre, I was transported back to the liquidation of the Ghetto
of Kielce and the shooting and screams that engulfed us as the sick and infirm were being murdered. At another point in El
Salvador, while inspecting the courtyard of the residence where the Jesuit priests had been executed, I was told that the
view of a distant observation tower that was relevant to my investigation was obscured by rosebushes planted in memory of
the priests. As I tried to look through the rosebushes, they gave way in my mind to the images of the beautiful wildflowers
I had seen a year earlier on a visit to Auschwitz. The flowers covered the once barren ground of the camp as if to hide the
horrendous crimes that had been committed there, just as the roses in that Salvadoran courtyard seemed intent on covering
up the murders of the innocent priests. A few years earlier in San José, Costa Rica, I had a somewhat similar experience while
hearing the testimony being presented to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights about the torture and killings that had
been committed in Honduras in connection with forced disappearances. As I listened to the witness, I found myself remembering
the brutal beating of Spiegel in that barrack in Auschwitz, the killing of the young Poles who had been caught looting during
the liquidation of the Ghetto of Kielce, and the beating and subsequent hanging of the prisoners who had tried to escape from
the Henryków work camp.

These and similar experiences have frequently accompanied me in my human rights activities. They have forced me to reflect
on what it is that allows or compels human beings to commit such cruel and brutal crimes. It frightens me terribly that the
individuals committing these acts are for the most part not sadists, but ordinary people who go home in the evening to their
families, washing their hands before sitting down to dinner, as if what they had been doing was just a job like any other.
If we humans can so easily wash the blood of our fellow humans off our hands, then what hope is there for sparing future generations
from a repeat of the genocides and mass killings of the past? Was the Holocaust merely a practice run for the next set of
genocides of other groups of human beings? Of course, I am very troubled by these questions, especially when I hear of new
atrocities being committed in one part of the world or another.

These reflections might turn me into a cynic or have the effect of making me give up on my human rights work. But they do
not have that effect. While I do not believe that I survived the Holocaust in order to devote my life to the protection of
human rights, I believe that, having survived, I have an obligation to try to do all I can to spare others, wherever they
might be, from suffering a fate similar to that of the victims of the Holocaust. It should therefore not be a surprise to
anyone that the terrible crimes and cruelties experienced by human beings in many parts of the world since the Holocaust do
not weaken my commitment to human rights. Instead, they reinforce my belief in the need to work ever harder to promote human
rights education on all levels and to strengthen international and national legal and political institutions capable of making
it ever more difficult for governments to violate human rights.

I also consider it a mistake to assume, as some do, that no significant progress has been made since the Holocaust in protecting
human rights. The large body of international human rights laws in existence today and the many institutions established to
enforce them, while they have certainly not put an end to all genocides or crimes against humanity, have tended to prevent
or reduce large-scale human rights violations in many parts of the world. Here I think, for example, of the end of Apartheid
and the emergence of democratic regimes in Latin America and elsewhere. The demise of the Soviet Union with its gulags is,
in part at least, attributable to massive international efforts to put an end to that repressive regime. And who would have
dared to dream in the 1970s or 1980s that eastern Europe would now be part of a democratic Europe? Admittedly, much still
remains to be done, but the fact that some progress, however slow, is being made suggests to me that to give up hope now on
efforts to improve the human rights situation around the world would only increase the suffering of an ever greater number
of human beings and leave them without any prospect for a better future.

I tend to believe that had our contemporary international human rights mechanisms and norms existed in the 1930s, they might
well have saved many of the lives that were lost in the Holocaust. The vast numbers of United Nations and regional human rights
treaties, declarations, and institutions have created an international climate that expects governments to protect human rights
and has made it increasingly more difficult for them to defend policies that result in serious violations of human rights.
These laws and institutions have in turn contributed to the growth of nongovernmental human rights organizations that alert
the international community to serious human rights violations almost as soon as they occur. Some democratic governments have
over the years also developed national policies and practices that promote human rights on the international level. All these
efforts have been helped by the contemporary communications revolution, which permits news of human rights abuses and unattended
natural catastrophes to be broadcast around the world in almost real time. Mankind’s yearning for human rights and human dignity
has benefited from political and technological developments that gradually rob offending governments of the legitimacy and
support they need to persist in violating human rights over the long term. That we can point to this or that government impervious
to these developments proves no more than that progress is slow; it is equally true, though, that the number of such governments
is decreasing, if only because in today’s world these governments frequently pay a heavy political and economic price for
engaging in practices unacceptable to large segments of the international community.

None of the international human rights norms, mechanisms, or policies to which I have referred here existed in the 1930s.
The international law of that period allowed governments almost unlimited freedom to mistreat their own citizens. Nonintervention
in the internal affairs of a state was the norm. It not only protected offending governments against international pressure
but also provided other governments with an excuse for their inaction. Hardly any international nongovernmental human rights
organizations existed at the time, and the world’s media were neither equipped nor interested in stigmatizing violations of
human rights. Today it is therefore easier than it was in the 1930s to arouse the international community to act. That does
not mean that such action will always be forthcoming. But it does mean that we now have better tools than we had in the past
to stop massive violations of human rights. The task ahead is to strengthen these tools, not to despair, and to never believe
that mankind is incapable of creating a world in which our grandchildren and their descendants can live in peace and enjoy
the human rights that were denied to so many of my generation.

THIS BOOK
does not have the usual publishing history. I wrote it in English, but it was first published in more than half a dozen other
languages. While this is not a unique situation, it is rather rare unless political, religious, or other reasons bar the publication
of an author’s books in his native country or language. That was certainly not true in my case. My problem, as I learned on
more than one occasion from publishers in the United States and in the United Kingdom, was that “Holocaust books don’t sell.”
It is therefore ironic that this book was first published in Germany in 2007 and that it remained on that country’s bestseller
list for quite a number of weeks.

It troubles me that some publishers in the English-speaking world assume that there is nothing more to be said about one of
mankind’s greatest human tragedies that their readers will want to read. If this assumption were to become a self-fulfilling
prophecy, “Never again!” will lapse into a slogan devoid of the meaning it is designed to convey. We cannot hope to prevent
future genocides and crimes against humanity unless we seek to understand the truth about, and the causes of, the Holocaust.
Important insights about these questions can be gained not only from scholarly works but also from the memoirs of those who
lived through it. I am therefore most grateful to the publishers of this book, Profile Books in the United Kingdom and Little,
Brown and Company in the United States, for making my memoir available to the English-language reader.

My very special thanks and appreciation go to Andrew Franklin of Profile Books and to Tracy Behar of Little, Brown, for deciding
to publish the book and for their insightful editorial suggestions. I also wish to express my admiration to Penny Daniel of
Profile Books for so competently and pleasantly coordinating the publication effort between different parts of the world.

My agent, Eva Koralnik, of the Liepman Literary Agency in Zurich, Switzerland, deserves my appreciation for believing that
my story should be published and for promoting its publication with enthusiasm and personal commitment.

At all stages of the writing of this book, I had the indispensable assistance of my secretary, Mrs. Danielle Touffet-Okandeji.
I am profoundly grateful to her for the intelligence, professional skill, and, above all, helpful spirit with which she assisted
me throughout the many drafts of this book.

My wife, Peggy Buergenthal, has lived through each page of this book and its many revisions. She has been my most severe editor
and critic. As a result, she has enabled me to write a book that benefited immensely from her loving support, deep understanding,
and creative editorial suggestions. In so many ways, this is therefore as much her book as it is mine.

THOMAS BUERGENTHAL
has dedicated his life to international law and the protection of human rights. He has combined a career as a professor of
international law with judicial and investigatory activities devoted to the international protection of human rights and the
rule of law.

On his election in 2000 as the American judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Thomas Buergenthal retired
from an active academic career that began in 1962 at the Law School of the State University of New York at Buffalo and ended
with his tenure as Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School.
Before joining the George Washington faculty, Buergenthal had served as dean of the American University Washington College
of Law, Fulbright and Jaworski Professor of Law at the University of Texas, and I. T. Cohen Professor of Human Rights at Emory
University School of Law, where he also directed the Human Rights Program of the Carter Center.

Buergenthal served as judge and president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as a member of the U.N. Human
Rights Committee and the U.N. Truth Commission for El Salvador. He was chairman of the Committee on Conscience of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Council and vice chairman of the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland.

Buergenthal graduated from Bethany College, West Virginia, and New York University School of Law. He earned Master of Laws
and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees from Harvard Law School.

Corecipient of the 2008 Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize, he and his wife, Peggy, live in The Hague, Netherlands.

^*
Unlike American high schools, German students in my day were admitted to high school after four years of primary school and
a qualifying examination. They then spent nine years in high school.
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^*
Odd Nansen’s three-volume diaries, Fra Dag til Dag, were fi rst published in Norway in 1947. English-language abridged versions
of this book were also published in the United States (From Day to Day) and in Great Britain (Day after Day) in 1949. A much
shorter German translation of the book (Von Tag zu Tag) was also published in 1949.
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^*
Tommy: En sannferdig fortelling fortalt av Odd Nansen, published in Oslo by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1970.
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^*
No English translation of Tommy was ever published.
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