Shooting is proof Holocaust could happen again

Bernard Scheer didn’t cry when he saw his father shot and killed by Nazi soldiers.

His mother sat in the packed wagon next to him and stared straight ahead. “Don’t cry,” she whispered. “If you cry too loud, they will kill you.”

Bernard took a deep breath and looked down at the yellow star he wore.

He was 13. The boy had lived with his family in Podhajce in what was once Poland until the Jewish people were rounded up into a ghetto.

They had been forced into these wagons bound for a work camp. Dozens were executed on the way. A crying woman was dragged off by her hair. A shot silenced her.

Bernard didn’t cry. Not when he was separated from his mother. Nor when he was beaten or starved. Not at the horrifying things he saw.

Maybe he was too numb to cry, Bernard said Saturday, from a wheelchair at Westminster Village in Scottsdale, where 200 people heard him speak.

It is how he feels now, at 92. Numb at the news a gunman killed 11 and injured six others at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors are left.

“It is my duty to be a witness,” he said.

He has spoken to thousands at schools and gatherings like this.

Someone always asks whether the Holocaust could happen again. Maybe not in the same way, he said. But Saturday’s shooting, the deadliest at a U.S. synagogue, is proof that it could.

“This is just the beginning,” Bernard said. “If you hate someone, you either find a way to love them — or kill them. “The hate is unbelievable.” Bernard pulled the microphone close and cleared his throat.

“We cannot be silent,” he said. “Silence means approval.”

He doesn’t cry, though he wishes he could.

“Perhaps I should learn to cry so my tears could witness my sadness.”