screams

KFAR HAROEH, Israel (AP) — When David Hershkoviz was a child, he used to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of his mother screaming in her sleep, knowing that she was reliving the horrors of the Holocaust....

When his mother, Mindel, died two years ago, he wanted to carry on her legacy by bearing witness to the Holocaust. He found help in a first-of-its-kind course teaching the children of Holocaust survivors how to ensure their parents' stories live on.

So many years later, the vile deliberateness of the human capacity called the Holocaust lives on. Or anyway there are attempts to make it live on in the consciousness of those who never faced such a human blasphemy. The cruelty is unspeakable and thus there are the screams and the attempts to assure a legacy of remembrance and, perhaps, wisdom.

Screams... the sound that anyone can understand.

Anyone.

Again, I return in my mind to the screams in the night of those who have been placed within a human blasphemy and blast furnace. How many combat veterans rend the night with their screams? Will anyone assure that the understanding of their experience -- so deliberately couched in flag-draped policy decisions -- will live on and serve as a reminder? Are their screams less heart-felt and rending than those likewise placed in impossible circumstances ... the impossible circumstances that are all too possible?

Don't give me excuses! Don't imagine that a flag or government can excuse the screams of a later day! Screaming in the night is ... is ... is ... inescapable and vile and 'beyond the pale.'

I am not trying to demean one thing at the expense of another. I am trying to say that screaming and the implications of those screams is vastly touching. Who, in a sane mind, would impose on others the circumstances that would leave those others screaming?

Holocaust? You bet. Whether at a distance or closer to home. The only way to lay claim to wisdom is the be wise.