(April
2, 2005)
He wanders through the dense thicket of
trees and finally, when he finds a suitable area, he kneels down and gently
releases the rabbit, which freely leaps away into the forest. Standing up, he watches
the disappearing animal with a small smile on his face and begins heading home.
When I think of him, that image is always
the one that comes to mind. The story that I am about to tell doesn’t involve
an epiphany or any sudden history-altering moments; rather, it contains a
gradual realization that changed my life all the same.
He
was my uncle, and we had never been particularly close. After all, I was nearly
fifteen when he came home from the labor camp, and even though he tried his
best to put on a show of happiness, I was already old enough to see that the
smiles were often faked and the laughter forced. I never understood why he
would bother pretending, if only to make one or two people happy. I never
understood how he could keep his head up for the sake of someone else when the
darkness of the past never left his haunted eyes.
I’m
sure that after a while, he grew tired of being tired of constantly being
fussed over and he began taking to daily strolls through the woods behind our
house. When he encountered a rabbit or a young bird wandering in our yard, he
would pick it up and return it to the forest. Every day he would continue in
that manner, and what began as an act of kindness on his part became a habit
that lasted for the rest of his life. I remember asking him what difference it
made, when there were millions of animals that wouldn’t be returned home. He
had simply smiled a sad sort of smile at me, and murmured that I would
understand someday.
I
didn’t understand it then, but that was his way of moving on from the horrors
that he had experienced. He always gently refused to share his experiences with
us, but even I could see that his experience in the labor camp was constantly
on his mind. His daily wandering in the forest was an outlet; it was a way for
him to forget the death and destruction of his past, however temporarily.
Several
years after he had passed away, I discovered a letter addressed to me in the
corner of my desk drawer. As I was reading it, I found an excerpt that explained
exactly why he had taken the walks every day during the years after he had
returned home: “They say that it was of no use to save one of us anyway.
After all, what difference does it make when six million others perished?
Still, if I had been the one saved, I know that it would have made all the
difference in the world to me.”
Now, sixty years later, that lesson has
never left me. Despite all of the horror that he had suffered, despite all of
the sadness and despair, my uncle had forced himself to move on, and to see
that he could still do his little part in changing someone’s life. In today’s
world, we often look at the big picture and fail to realize how much the number
one is worth. Let us take the time to examine the importance of the
Holocaust’s lesson to us. One difference may not save the world, but
that one difference may easily save someone’s life…and to that one person, that
makes a world of difference.