Catharsis

One day, while FB chatting with Nicki, I was browsing the NY Times (something I never do). I stumbled onto this article by a Samuel Pisar, a man who survived Auschwitz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/opinion/29pisar.html?scp=1&sq=pisar&st=cse

I am always brought to an acute awakening when I read first-hand accounts of WWII concentration camp survivors. As most people, I am enthralled by the survival of such a person let alone the achievement of living beyond that horror. In the article, Mr. Pisar spoke of the great need for survivors to tell their story. For a split second he showed us a vision of what accounts of WWII would be like as told by historians.
He said, "Today, the last living survivors of the Holocaust are disappearing one by one. Soon, history will speak about Auschwitz with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists at best, and at worst in the malevolent register of revisionists and falsifiers who call the Nazi Final Solution a myth. This process has already begun.
And it is why those of us who survived have a duty to transmit to humankind the memory of what we endured in body and soul, to tell our children that the fanaticism and violence that nearly destroyed our universe have the power to enflame theirs, too."

Wow. Is this charge limited to those who live through events that horrify and entrance people throughout the century? The more I thought about this quote, the more I thought about my journal. I thought about the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I thought about the Ensign. I thought about my children and my friend's children. Is it only the Holocaust that falsifiers try to prove is a myth? I was once told that history is only what is written down. From the time of Adam, events of the day were written down, which many people consider to be a myth. What can these records teach us?

"The fury of the Haitian earthquake, which has taken more than 200,000 lives, teaches us how cruel nature can be to man. The Holocaust, which destroyed a people, teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason."

To tell of what one endures when the world loses its moral compass and reason, or when nature unleashes its fury, is catharsis of the soul. There is so much pain in the thought of exploring the depths of iniquity done in such a time. The Holocaust was an experience of life. As is the earthquake in Haiti, or the economic crisis, or the death of our loved ones. It was not something that all had to witness, but of those who did we wait- for all to tell their story.