On this 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we honor the memory of those who were brutally murdered and those who bore scars throughout their lives – as we find ourselves and our communities confronting new challenges.
The call to action is immediate, loud, and clear, as poignantly articulated in the opening lines of the one-man play, “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski”:
We see what goes on in the world, don’t we?
Our world is in peril. Every day, it becomes more and more fractured, toxic, out of our control. We are being torn apart by immense gulfs of selfishness, distrust, fear, greed, indifference, denial.
Millions are being displaced, impoverished, denied justice simply because of who they are beaten, murdered, silenced, and forgotten.
We see this, don’t we? How can we not see this?
So what can we do? What can you do? What can I do?
What can we do that we are not already doing?
Do we have a duty, a responsibility, as individuals…to do something, anything?
And how do we know what to do? How do we know what we are capable of?… 1
These words, spoken in the one-man play, by Clark Young and Derek Goldman, remind us that history is not only something we study — it is something that shapes our moral choices.
Jan Karski’s testimony was an appeal to conscience. Today, it continues to challenge us to look closely, to resist indifference, and to ask what responsibility means in our own time.
At the Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning, we understand memory as an active practice — sustained through education, dialogue, and encounter.
Remembering the Holocaust is inseparable from asking difficult questions about the present, and from cultivating the courage to respond.
- This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the play’s co-author, Derek Goldman. ↩︎
