Finding Healing

Recently I caught the last portion of a documentary film "Facing Arthur" and was completely intrigued. The film chronicles the relationship between Centenarian Arthur Lederman, a survivor of the Holocaust, and Christoph Erbsloeh, the grandson of a Nazi soldier. Christoph, an exchange student, was sent to Arthur from an aid agency to provide him with some companionship. The two build a friendship grounded in a commom love of classical music.

Arthur was actually the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. One of the first questions to Christoph as he walked in the door upon their first meeting was "If you were born 50 years ago, you would kill me?"

It is amazing to me the pain that still remains...but should I be amazed? If my entire family and 6 million people of my same race were murdered based upon their religion and culture, would it be easy for me to let go?

Even if we were not living during the time of the Holocaust, I hope that we are all able to learn from it.

Amazingly enough, in an interview with Marian Marzynski, Christoph says there was an element of guilt that he carries. To combat this guilt, Christoph says that it is best for the descendants of Nazi soldiers to build relationships with Jews.

The only thing I think we can do today is really to try to foster a natural relationship between non-Germans and second-generation Germans and Jews living today. I mean [there won't] be any Holocaust survivors in a couple of years. So the only way to get over this sin … is to try to establish a normal relationship.

Christoph was able to talk fairly openly with Arthur about the Holocaust, something he was unable to do with his own grandfather.

No, that was also part of the documentary ["Facing Arthur"]. My parents basically told me not to talk to my grandparents because they won't talk about it. My father tried to talk to his father, and he would never really tell him about it because he was not able to speak about it. He was basically keeping this all for himself, and he died with it. He really was not even able to talk to about it to his own wife.

So let's keep the conversations going...and keep building relationships with those that may be different from us. Otherwise history will repeat itself.