WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH

Alice Lok Cahana, imprisoned in Auschwitz as a teenager, spoke on The Bluff recently, and no one will ever forget it.

By Alice Lok Cahana

I want to tell you the miracles that happened in Auschwitz. And the people who despised the Nazis and how they turned around from despising.

Here is one story. I met a man in Israel who told me: I was fourteen years old when the Nazis came into my house, and we had prayer exactly at that moment, and my father said: Take the Torah and put it around your body and go out from the room. And the boy went and did exactly what his father said. And he arrived to Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, first they undress you, he went up to one of the Polish people and he said, I cannot undress, I am carrying a Torah, the Torah is the most sacred book we have. The Polish man got scared and he went around saying the boy has a Torah on him, we cannot let him into the crematorium. Soon everyone surrounded the young man. They said to him, you cannot undress; pretend that you are finding some work in the clothing. Because people undress, they left their clothes on the ground, and then into the crematorium they go. The young SS soldier who was waiting outside the crematorium, he said to them, you must tell me what you are hiding, because all of you will die anyhow. And the young SS soldier found out that this little boy was carrying a Torah, and he went to the boy and said: Listen, I know what you are doing. Listen, every morning you come to me I will help you get food and you don’t go to work. And guess what happened? This young man survived and the Torah survived, and it is in Jerusalem. The moment I heard that story I decided to create scrolls. I don’t know how to do it but I want to celebrate the scrolls. The sanctity has to go with us no matter where we are. And so I made scrolls, and each one has a name, and I made one with that boy’s name.

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Here is another story. When I was in Auschwitz, I kept asking, why am I here, what did I do wrong? What did my grandfather do wrong? What did my father do wrong? And I decided I knew what we did wrong: We read the letters backwards, that was our mistake. The letters that always revived me! They killed us because we read the letters backwards! But after Auschwitz, when I read the Torah, the letters revive me again and again, so that could not be it. That could not be. And a young American man, he put me in the right knowledge. You didn’t do nothing wrong, he said, the world did something wrong, terribly wrong. This young man, he went to Budapest in the beginning of it all, and he saved Jews, he gave out passports of Sweden, and because the Hungarians didn’t know how to read Swedish, this was how my father was saved. And thousands of others too, with these pieces of paper. I am here to tell you that one man can make a difference, and that man can be you, any of you. Your task is to better the world.

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I made a painting that has holes in it. Why is there holes? Because God says to us, I can not do all. I can create you, but I cannot do it all. You have to help Me fix the holes and put everything together. This is the learning from the Holocaust. That each of us is here to fix the holes. My little brother, they put him in the crematorium. What did my mother, undressing in front of strangers, holding this little boy by the hand, what did she say to him? What? No one knows. There is a hole.

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You know everything was terrible in Auschwitz. There was no food, there was no water, there was cold, you didn’t know whether your father or mother lives. I worked in a factory in Auschwitz. One day in the factory, it was almost Christmas, and the snow that fell was like a table set for guests, it was so beautiful, it was so white. And of course we had to work inside, starting at five o’clock in the morning and finishing at five o’clock at night, and not having food or anything we need. The foreman watching us every minute making sure we are making every ammunition supposed to be made. And the foreman looked at me and called me over. I was sure I was to be punished because all the way walking there the SS man is whipping his whip. You don’t work fast and you don’t do the work like it is supposed to, they beat you. I was fifteen years old and my legs are shaking. I am trying to tell him please just don’t hurt me. Please I will work faster. And the foreman says bend down bend down bend down and I feel that he is about to be beating me he says take that white bread, put it under your coat, and go out fast. That was my Christmas. What an incredible man. The SS man was behind him. He bet his life to give a child a chance. You know what a slice of white bread meant? Could you imagine that I am starving? Instead of beating me he gave me bread I could share with my sister. So you see, everywhere there are good people, everywhere.

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I don’t know how much you know about the Holocaust. What is your interest in it? What do you want to do with your life, where do you want to go? What is hurting in you? What are your holes to fix? What is now important in my life, and in your life also, is that after the Holocaust, we shaking hands with each other, that we are nobody lesser than the other. That we understand the real meaning of what God created us for. You have the task. You have the task to better this world. There are holes in people also but those we create and we can fix with love. God wants us whole. We should fix the hole and make a good human being. Use all of your hands. One time I gave a painting to the Pope, Pope Benedict. He said to me come, come!, and he held my hands. I tell him the painting is us arriving to Auschwitz, we were so frightened, and the first thing they did, they took away your name, so that you are not a person, you are a number. When you don’t have name, you are nobody. The Pope asks why is yellow in the painting and I tell him that is the yellow stain, that is the odor in Auschwitz, that odor never left me. That wonderful man had tears in his eyes. He held my hands for nineteen minutes. Then they put my painting by the Sistine Chapel.

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My grandfather was a wonderful person and he said about the Nazis, it cannot happen in Hungary, maybe in Poland, maybe they didn’t know, maybe, maybe, maybe, and we had all kind of maybes, you understand, and we didn’t want to believe. Because just like you are sitting here, you would not believe. What, Germany? Germany is wonderful, they wouldn’t do that. When I arrive to Auschwitz, I say to my sister, you know, somebody made a mistake. Very soon they will come and apologize. Somebody will apologize; we don’t belong here. People running around in pajamas, what is this? Insane asylum, what is this? It cannot happen. We did not believe like you would not believe, you would not believe that it can happen in your town. We didn’t believe. And unfortunately because we didn’t believe, this is where we got.

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In Auschwitz, there is a thousand people in a barrack, can you imagine that? In the barrack there is a bunk and six people are on it, nothing, no pillow, no cover, no nothing. Just one little piece of cloth, and if any of us wanted to turn on our side, the others had to turn to that side also. It was so cold, unbelievably cold. In the beginning, you know what I did? I gave away my bread. I say, I will not eat this, this is terrible bread! I got shiny brown shoes on me then, and somebody said they give sometimes a little margarine here, I said, margarine? We never had margarine, we ate butter, you know. And I put the margarine on my shoes, until I realize this is our food. So you slowly adapted yourself to something so horrendous that you cannot believe the human being can be like that, or do that to each other. So this is what we have to do, beautiful people, this is what we have to do: not to hate, not to hate, not ever.

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Now you cannot imagine what it means to go out to freedom after Auschwitz. How do you go to freedom? How should I enter freedom? I did not even have a dress. I was sent to Sweden and someone invited me to Passover. Someone gave me a blue dress. I went to the door and I could not enter. I walked around in the flowers. Finally I went and opened the door, and it was beautiful halls and beautiful tables and people, you know, and the lady who invited me, she says, there is a little room there, why don’t you just go and change? Ha, I didn’t have anything to change into! But I went to the little room and saw a calendar and I said to myself, I will learn the days in English, and so I learned all the days until all the guests arrived. Finally everybody sat down, and they started to talk, and guess what they talked about? The price of the gold on the international market. And I thought, my god, this is how you celebrate the Passover? You know how many people were put in the crematorium a day? So very quietly I took my coat and walked down into Stockholm until I had no tears. I thought, what will I do with my freedom? Will I be quiet or will I scream? But it cannot happen again! At that time, I decided, I will not be silent. But of course my art is very silent, because some of the things you want to say, words are not enough, and only the art can talk.

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I was very embarrassed what I did, very embarrassed. I thought if my mother would be alive she would never permit me to get up from any table and leave the house. And when I met my husband I said I have only one wish, take me back to Sweden so I can apologize this family for being so rude and leaving them, and my husband said, I do it for you. We went to Sweden back and I went to the same house and the lady say to me, I don’t remember you. And my husband holding the flowers and I’m crying. So life is very interesting. Because you cannot expect everything. I had the task to tell you my story, and now I am eighty years old and it’s very hard, because I am crying every day. Where is my brother, where is my mother, what happened to them? And so I have the task, nobody else. I have the task, no matter how hard it is, to come here, and tell you my story. I will tell you one more story: Steven Spielberg in his film about five of us who survived [The Last Days], did something colossal for me. I told him I will do what he asked me to do, go back to Auschwitz, but he has to do me one thing, he has to help me find my sister, this is 56 years after she dies. And guess what happens? The German person who was in charge of who died and who was alive opened the books, and here is my sister’s name. And so after 56 years, I found my sister. My husband and I put down a stone for her and there she is under a tree and leaves cover the tree.

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You know why I give the Pope the painting? Because the first thing he did, when he became a Pope, he went to Auschwitz and he kneeled and prayed and asked how could this happen? When I read that in the paper I thought to myself, this is it, I have to thank him somehow, because after all these years he could easily do nothing and be quiet. But he didn’t.

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How did I deal with God in Auschwitz? This is a very strange story. My sister Idit and I decided that we would pray every Friday for the Sabbath. But they didn’t let us pray, they didn’t let us speak. We had to be quiet. We had to be nothing. So one Friday night I say, why don’t we pray inside the latrine? So we went to a corner in the latrine and started to pray, and the Hebrew songs, you know, are almost universal, and more children came, from all over the world it was people there, and the children heard us praying in Hebrew and singing, and for a moment, a moment, God was with us there, and we all prayed, and every week, more and more people prayed. We discovered that the SS would not go into this filthy place. So this is where we prayed. And it is also very beautiful thing of Steven Spielberg, when I went back to Auschwitz, I saw the latrine still there, and I started to scream, and he says what are you talking about? So I told him the story, and he got some Jewish boys to sing the same songs in the latrine, if you listen carefully you will hear them, young children singing. The song they sang means, Angels who come here, bless these children, bless them and bless the world.

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Here is one more story. When they took us from our home they put us in a cattle train and there was two buckets there, one with water for drinking and the other for sanitary use. There were eighty people in the train, men and women and a woman who was pregnant. Idit and I could not bear to use the bucket in the corner. So when we got to the border there was a young soldier who opened the door for fresh air. I said to him, please please let me go down for a minute under the wheels, my sister and I cannot bear to going to the bathroom in the bucket. And he understood and let me down. Wasn’t it a miracle?

Alice Lok Cahana, on The Bluff this year as a guest of the Garaventa Center for Catholic Life, is an artist who lives in Houston, Texas. The quietest smilingest lady you ever saw. How could she not be bitter? And yet she is not bitter. There are many teachers.