EDITH
KURZWEIL
77
those lucky survivors who reads the literature and watches the films
(others find it too painful to be reminded), I thought I knew all that
could be known. But I was not fully aware of the fact that had it not
been for the childrcns' transports, many fewer Jews would have escaped
the Nazi death traps. (Nor did it occur to me then that Franklin D.
Roosevelt, whom I cast in the role of savior, might have saved many
more by easing immigration laws.) In my mind, I compared the round–
ups in Vienna after the Anschluss to the huge fishnets I had seen the fish–
ermen pull into the harbor of Viareggio, during the summer of 1937. So
I wonder once again at my luck, at arriving in America on one of the
last ships.
When lumped together, these books disprove that there is a best
way of getting to understand what is beyond human understanding.
Neither explanations blaming bureaucracy or evil, cowardice or oppor–
tunism, Weimar excesses or weaknesses, capitalism or socialist dreams,
Hitler's charisma or fear of communism suffice. None of these explana–
tions can come to terms with the blatant disregard for human life and
the danger of ideology. If anything is to be learned from the Holocaust,
it is that we must strengthen democratic dialogue and nip demagogy in
the bud. But this will not bring back the cousins and other relatives we
lost, nor keep us from wondering why we live and they died. Nor will it
do away with the perpetrators' shame and guilt or answer their children's
and grandchildren's insistent questions about "What did
you
do during
the Nazi era?"
