William & Rosalie: A Holocaust Testimony

twelve: The future of hate

156 Warsaw ghetto fighter Alexander Donat did not consider the Holocaust the last chapter in the book of human cruelty. He saw it as the preface to a future age of total chaos. With great passion and urgency Donat warned that a new generation would destroy the world with nuclear war unless mankind could keep hate from seizing power again. Near the site of the Kennedy assassination, the West End district in downtown Dallas is a collection of old warehouses that have been redone as restaurants, shops, and nightclubs. The temporary quarters of the Dallas Holocaust Museum occupy a corner by an old railroad track. William and Rosalie lecture here at least twice a week. In the auditorium today they tell the short version of their story to eighty-three seventh graders from a suburban school district. It’s a tale that museum director Elliott Dlin is careful to put in context. “The Schiffs are very much the exception,” he says. They survived the Holocaust; most did not. So we shouldn’t look for patterns or models of survival. The chapter twelve The future of hate WRStxt.indd฀฀฀156 5/9/07฀฀฀10:18:58฀AM Chapter Twelve 157 truth is that many other victims probably did exactly what they did and were killed, while others survived by making very different choices. Their stories show that one never knew and never could know what to do or what was coming next. In Goeth’s camp, William stood third in line and survived. At Belzec his brother Bronek snuck into the wrong line and was murdered. Searching for patterns or explanations in the testimony of survivors is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with six million missing pieces. It’s hard for Rosalie to re-tell her story and re-live her pain over and over again. Each time she speaks at the Museum her blood pressure goes up and she has trouble sleeping that night. But she has a mission and her testimony makes a big impression. Uniformly quiet and attentive, the kids today scrunch up their noses at the gruesome parts of the narrative. Questions from young Americans in the twenty-first century are revealing . One girl asks Rosalie what she missed most in the camps: dresses or makeup. “Food,” laughs the eighty-four-year-old. The kids nod. They are ten minutes away from a field trip lunch at the Old Spaghetti Warehouse. When a small shy boy asks William why the numbers on his left arm haven’t rubbed off after all these years, a stout classmate scoffs loudly enough for all to hear: “It’s a tattoo, stupid.” Rosalie uses her microphone to explain and correct. “They pushed the ink all the way down into his skin, honey, so it’s going to last as long as he does. And let’s not be making fun of one another, okay? That’s how the Holocaust WRStxt.indd฀฀฀157 5/9/07฀฀฀10:18:58฀AM 158 William & Rosalie got started. Harsh words lead to hard actions. That’s the message here today, kids.” The tattooed man intrigues the children. William addressed them earlier in front of a display that includes the uniform he wore at Buchenwald. “You weighed sixty-nine pounds?” a pixie girl gasps. “I weigh more than that.” Onward to their pasta, the rosy-cheeked students file out into the heat past a large photo of pale Jewish corpses. Balancing against her walker, Rosalie steps off the curb in front of the museum and settles gingerly onto her scalding car seat. It is 102 degrees outside. “Pretty please, sun, go away,” she huffs. As the car climbs up on a highway she has a chance to critique her performance. “That was a lot less nerve-wracking than the teleconference yesterday. Yesterday it was three schools and 300 students on three different TV screens. The kids were shooting questions so fast I could never figure out who was talking.” An hour later the Schiffs relax at their kitchen table. At eighty-eight, William has diabetes and must perform his blood sugar ritual. “Yesterday I went to a new doctor,” he says, pricking his finger and daubing the blood drop on the test paper. “He said, ‘You look great, Mr. Schiff. I can see you’ve had a very easy life.’ I said, ‘You’re right, doctor, every day just like a...