NEVER AGAIN.

My father was in Krakow, Poland recently during the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Oddly, I had already been pondering the concentration camps thanks to a flawed but awe-inspiring film by Paul Schrader called "Adam Resurrected." It's funny how that place and what happened there have been so examined, wept over, appropriated by the goyim, become Oscar fodder, turned into tourist destinations (almost as if to say, "Here, look - this is as bad as we can possible be one to another").

Back in college my future wife found a book called "Holocaust Poetry" that does an excellent job of compiling not just poems by survivors, but also the second and third waves of responses to the Holocaust. (And any collection that includes Sylvia Plath's devastating "Daddy" gets points from me.)

This is one of the first things in the collection, and from my outsider's perspective I think it serves as a pretty good epigram for the Jewish experience: not just in the mid-twentieth century, but throughout history. From the Seleucids to the pogroms, from persecution during the Renaissance to Auschwitz and Büchenwald, there are lots of knives to be born with.

Heritage

Hayim Gouri

The ram came last of all. And Abraham

did not know that it came to answer the

boy's question- first of his strength

when his day was on the wane.

The old man raised his head.

Seeing that it was no dream and that the angel

stood there - the knife slipped from his hand.

The boy, released from his bonds,

saw his father's back.

Isaac, as the story goes, was not

sacrificed. He lived for many years,

saw what pleasure had to offer

until his eyesight dimmed.

But he bequeathed that hour to his offspring.

They are born with a knife in their hearts.

As my father says, we should learn to forgive. But we should never forget.