The Center (Canto XXXIV)

Lo! he exclaim'd, lo Dis! and lo the place,

Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength.

How frozen and how faint I then became,

Ask me not, reader! for I write it not,

Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.

I was not dead nor living. Think thyself

If quick conception work in thee at all,

How I did feel. That emperor, who sways

The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from th' ice

Stood forth; and I in stature am more like

A giant, than the giants are in his arms.

Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits

With such a part.

Canto XXXIV

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

If I were tasked with teaching others and telling the horrors of the Holocaust, I would tell them everything there is to know, and just when they were feeling the deepest sympathy, the sincerest sorrow, the most dire disbelief, aghast beyond contention, just then - I would tell them this:

"All you now think, all you now feel - none of it is adequate. There is no reprieve for the sins humankind has perpetuated against itself. There is no comfort, no consolation, no confession that can free us of this guilt. For we are not the Jews. We are the Germans. We are the Nazis. We are Hitler. You and I and everyone else. We have done this. There is no going back. There is no redemption. Honoring their memory? How could we ever remember adequately? All the worst - this is the truth, but more so. Do not comfort yourself, for that is a betrayal of their memory.

"It is not easy to be honest. Few have the stomach for it. It is the task for a lifetime, and it shall never be complete. We must remember even beyond remembering. Nothing we can feel will do justice to the past, nor to the present which bears still heavy this terrible memory. You will leave today, but I give you this most impossible of challenges: do not console yourself. If you can live without consolation of this, the worst truth, then you may just be capable of becoming a better human - perhaps even, a human worthy of a future.

"For humanity is severely lacking in a future. If there is anything like moving past the past with justice, it lies in just this, avoiding consolation and bearing the full truth in all its horror upon yourself, each and every day. I challenge you to live thus, that we may yet do justice for our kind."