Twice a survivor

A chilling thought struck me when I heard the news of the massacre: Some of the victims might have been Holocaust survivors. To have escaped that inhumane genocide and then be shot in cold blood while celebrating one of the most joyous ceremonies of your faith, the covenant of bringing a new child into the community, would be an unimaginable horror.

I heard recently that one such Holocaust survivor was running late and barely missed being among the congregation during the attack. I recognized his name because in 1972 I used to drive his then-4-year-old daughter to nursery school. I did not know at the time that her father was a survivor who had spent his infancy and young childhood trapped in the Nazi conflagration, including several years in the Bergen-Belsen death camp. He was 7 when the war ended.

I do remember the joy this man took in his daughter, an incandescently beautiful and cheerful child. Had I known what he had suffered when he was the same age, I would have had a better sense of why he was so unself-consciously loving. What a relief it must have been for him to trust that his precious child was safe from the horrors hehad known at her age.

My heart breaks for him, twice a survivor, now knowing that those same demons who brutalized his childhood are not only still with us but are steps away from his community. And his own government not only turns a blind eye to forces that foment this violence but covertly encourages it, even enacting polices that brutalize innocent families and individuals here and worldwide.

When people can’t be confident that they, their children and grandchildren will be safe from brutality, we have failed as a civilization and in fundamental humanity.

KERRY PARSLOW

Forest Hills