ONE DAY, WHILE STANDING ALONG THE SIDE of the swimming pool\nto start my workout, a man twice my age walked up to me and, with an accent I\ncouldn\u2019t place, asked if he could share my lane. His smile was genuine and I\ncould have sworn I saw one of those Hollywood twinkles in his eyes. Getting in\nthe water is by far the worst part of swimming, so, in an e\ufb00ort to stall the\nchilling e\ufb00ects of immersion just a moment longer, I nodded my head and waved\nhim in ahead of me. In he plunged, and for the next \ufb01fty minutes he never\npaused once to rest along the pool\u2019s edge. I was intrigued by his good nature,\nnot to mention his stamina, and hoped to strike up a conversation at the end of\nour workout. As I approached the wall to do a \ufb02ip turn, he tapped me on the\nfoot, waved good-bye, and jumped out of the water, heading for the locker room.\nBy the time I \ufb01nished my workout, he was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several days passed before I saw him again. Once more he\napproached me, motioned to my lane, and this time, without saying a word, dove\nin and started swimming. As he entered the water, I noticed a tattoo on his\nleft forearm. Throughout my workout, I was puzzled by the engraved numbers,\ndistantly familiar, yet beyond my immediate recognition. In fact, it bothered\nme all day long. Just as fast as he entered the water, he jumped out \ufb01fty\nminutes later, but not without tapping my foot, waving good-bye, and smiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My curiosity now heightened, I began an inquiry as to this\nman\u2019s identity. I learned that, like me, he was a faculty member of the American\nUniversity. His name was Arnost Lustig. But unlike me, he had a very di\ufb00erent\npast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Originally from Poland, Arnost was about seventeen when he\nand his family were rounded up by the German Nazis and sent o\ufb00 to the notorious\nconcentration camp, Auschwitz. Like all prisoners who entered that camp, he was\nseparated from his family, stripped of all his belongings, robbed of his\nessence, and denied his humanity. I was told by those who knew Arnost that the\nhorrors of Auschwitz can never be put satisfactorily into words. The tattoo I\nobserved on his forearm was his o\ufb03cial identi\ufb01cation number. About a year after\nhe was interned there, the American Forces liberated the camp and hell came to\na gradual end. Arnost was a free man in a world riddled in chaos and grieving\nlost innocence. Like many Holocaust survivors, he emigrated to the United\nStates to start a new life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next time I saw Arnost it was in the pool locker room.\nHe approached me and introduced himself to me. We exchanged names and then he\ngave me a big hug, kissed my forehead, and, with another big smile and twinkle\nin both eyes, said, \u201cYou are like a son to me!\u201d On that day we started a\nbudding friendship, enjoying several workouts and conversations. I later\nlearned that his last name, Lustig, means humor or laughter in German, a name\nhe wears well. Putting his hand to his mouth, he whispered, \u201cIt\u2019s how I got\nthrough that horrible ordeal in Auschwitz.\u201d Then he put his arm around me and\nproceeded to tell me a joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until the day I met Arnost, the Jewish Holocaust was a distant event in history to me. From the \ufb01lm footage I saw in high school to the works of psychologist Victor Frankl to Steven Speilberg\u2019s, Schindler\u2019s List<\/em>, the stories of the Holocaust were disturbingly moving. Yet on that day, Hitler\u2019s \u201cFinal Solution\u201d became a living memory. For those who survived, it is said that the atrocities of the Jewish concentration camps were the worst hell on earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same semester I met Arnost, one of my undergraduate\nstudents shared with me this story during a classroom discussion about anger\nand forgiveness. Her grandmother, also a concentration camp survivor, had moved\nto New Jersey after the war. She returned to Europe two decades later with her\ndaughter. Crossing a street in Poland, she saw the face of a man she could\nnever forget, a Nazi concentration camp supervisor. Filled with emotion, the\nwoman grabbed her daughter\u2019s hand, and walked over to the man, with the intention\nof slugging him. As she got within a foot of the decrepit old man, she looked\nhim straight in the eyes and quickly changed her mind. Instead she said \u201cI\nforgive you,\u201d then slowly turned and calmly walked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently my intrigue with Holocaust survivors led me to a book titled, The Triumphant Spirit<\/em>, by Nick Del Calzo, a collection of portraits and stories of Holocaust survivors. Although the common theme of hope, the internal sense of a positive outcome is evident amongst all survivors, there emerges another theme as well\u2014and that is the theme of forgiveness. From the thoughts of many survivors, it is explained this way\u2014we had to learn to forgive and move on. To hold disdain and hatred toward a person or people for such horrible atrocities only perpetuates hatred. There are many lessons to be learned, forgiveness is one of them. In the words of Paula and Klauss Stern, Auschwitz concentration camp survivors, \u201cWe didn\u2019t survive to hate\u2014but to hope that the world learned something from the experience, so that atrocities like these will never happen again.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yom Kippur is a Jewish\nholiday, the Day of Atonement. It is a day to make peace with our mistakes,\ninjustices, and wrongdoings. Although not a national holiday, many of my\nstudents excuse themselves from class to honor the day. I honor the day too.\nFor me, it is a day of forgiveness, and a day to remember.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n By Brian Luke Seward<\/a>, from Stressed is Desserts Spelled Backward<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ONE DAY, WHILE STANDING ALONG THE SIDE of the swimming pool to start my workout, a man twice my age walked up to me and, with an accent I couldn\u2019t place, asked if he could share my lane. His smile was genuine and I could have sworn I saw one of those Hollywood twinkles in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n