The heart-breaking story of Joseph Tenenbaum who visited Poland in 1945 after the end of the Second World War in search of his Jewish relatives. I can only report fragments of what I saw and heard or read during my two and a half months abroad. But these fragments seem to me to be not only of moment to Jews. Despite all the investigating commissions and international committees on behalf of Jewry, the world knows little enough of the depths of human degradation or the great surges of spirit and individual flashes of heroic greatness that have been revealed. There is a clash of two worlds, a clash that has not ceased with the death of Hitler in the gasoline flames in the cellars of the German chancellery. The sparks from the body-burning stakes at the Janowska camp in Lwow, of the ovens at Majdanek, Treblinka and Belzec, and the flames of the chimneys at Birkenau, Sobibor, Oranienburg and Mauthausen, have seared the human soul and scarred the human conscience. We cannot avoid facing the truth simply by ignoring it or driving it underground. The sanity of man, his very soul, requires a thorough catharsis which can come only through frank discussion, through revealing the naked evil in all its deformity and horror. We must think through all the implications, past and present, and realize their full dimensions. Only thus can sanity and moral strength be preserved for future generations. In short, while this book aims at giving a frank presentation of facts and conditions, it is hoped that it may offer a modest educational contribution towards a better world.
