A-7713

"For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran.... It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city; it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming. The first song I heard was my mother's lullaby about and for Jerusalem. Its sadness and its joy are part of our collective memory." - Elie Wiesel (1928-)

When he was a young boy, Wiesel, his parents and three sisters, were imprisoned at Auschwitz where A-7713 was tattooed on his left arm. His mother and youngest sister were executed almost immediately. He and his father were later transferred to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where he survived until the camp was liberated in 1945 by the U.S. Third Army. Our uncle Alfred Satterfield served in this liberation action.

"Men to the left! Women to the right!
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. ... For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother's hand. I saw them disappear into the distance; my mother was stroking my sister's fair hair ... and I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever." - Night

How can the world forget? - JRC