Yitzhak ben Moshe, Editor/Reporter, New Mexico 

It’s three in the morning. Outside, it’s cold, dark, and overly quiet. Within moments, you are awoken by the sound of your door being kicked in. It’s German and SS soldiers. 

You’re pulled out of bed. You and your family are pushed down your hallways, punched, and kicked the whole way. An SS officer tells you to grab your things and report to the square below. You’re given five minutes.

What to take? Where are you going? What’s happening?

You’re pushed onto trucks and driven to a train station in the dark. The Ghetto is being closed. 

You are crammed into a cattle car. There is barely any room to draw a breath. It’s cold, it’s dark. The ride goes further and further into the country. 

The train stops. Doors slide open, and people wearing striped clothes push ramps up to the doorway of the cattle car. You are created by chaos. 

More yelling, screaming, running, family separation – you’ve arrived at Auschwitz.

You’re now bereft of all hope. 

We are all familiar with the events and tragedies of the Holocaust. If the world had its way, we would again be rounded up into Ghettos and Camps. We would be removed from society, from the world. What hope do we have today?

Before his death, I was able to speak with Eve Mozes Kor (may her memory be a blessing). I wanted to know how she found hope then and how we can find hope today. 

Her advice is even more relevant for us today than it was when I recorded this interview.

“There is a lot of hope in the world,” Eve told me. 

“There are two ways of looking at it. When a person, when I was between life and death,” begins Eva. “I don’t think that the word is hope. The word is that I was not going to die. I never, ever, from the moment I saw the first dead body, I have made a silent pledge that I will not die.”

To stand there, just off the trains, and making a pledge to live is a powerful thing. We must make that pledge today, to ourselves, our family, our community.

“And that is an interesting thing because you can put in your,” started Eva. “I get up every morning, the last few years, and I say, wow, I am still alive. That’s pretty good. Now let’s see what I’m going to do. And what I’m going to do is always put something positive in my mind. So, you can call that hope, but I am calling it more than hope.”

What she does is find a reason to live.

Today, we need a reason to live, thrive, and bring light into the world. It doesn’t matter if we are called all manner of things. We require that reason to live.

When I was attacked and stabbed for simply being a Jew in the wrong part of town, I had a solid reason to fight back and live – my survival would bring light into the world.

“What I really think instead of putting hope, that I would say that I am not willing to give up on my life or my happiness,” said Eva. “And that thought always keeps me going. I am an unbelievable optimist. I always am convinced in my heart that things will turn out okay. That doesn’t mean that always they have, but I believe that they will.”

I invite you to listen to the conversation with Eva. We can learn quite a bit.

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Have a story you want to share? Get in touch with Yitzhak at [email protected]  or call +1.929.554.0153.  

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