Never Again, Part Three...

In the frenzied instant everything world of America 2000 the ability of people to discriminate between what is good and what is bad - between what is worthwhile and what is trash - has been swept aside in the onrushing drive not to miss out. In a world of promotional hype and mass market hype, momentum is everything.
Christopher Byron

Stan Winfield, one of the first Canadian soldiers to see Auschwitz survivors, said yesterday he could not find anyone interested in listening to his accounts of the horror when he returned to Canada after the war.

"I think people could not fathom the magnitude of what had gone on," he said in an interview. "They said, 'It cannot be true. It must be propaganda.' "

He was especially struck by the reaction of young Jewish people he met. "They were not the slightest bit interested in my stories," he said. "I was hurt; I never talked about those things again for a long time. Why would I, when I could see their eyes glaze over? "

Mr. Winfield said he was not critical of those who turned away from the horror. "People wanted the war to be over," he said. Outside of family members and other veterans, he did not find anyone interested in hearing about the camps until the mid-1980s.

David Ehrlich, a Hungarian-born Jew who was at Auschwitz from April, 1944, until it was liberated the following January, said most people just wanted to get on with their lives. Even the survivors kept quiet. They wanted to settle in secure places and raise their families.

Holocaust survivor Rudolf Vrba, one of only five who ever escaped from Auschwitz, said he could not offer any explanation for the world's silence during four decades.

"I do not know why. It's a puzzle," said Mr. Vrba, who escaped in April, 1943. "That is how it was. I do not understand it."
Robert Matas, Toronto Globe & Mail