Rob McElhaney

I found fascination in the concept that the victims of the holocaust “wanted to survive so as to live one day after Hitler, in order to be able to tell our story” yet telling their story was what helped them survive. Everyone has a natural desire and need to share their story, yet those who need to tell it the most are unable to get it out. They either choose silence and accept a denial of the trauma they have experienced, or they opt to try to tell their story but are often unable to reach satisfaction no matter how many times they let that story out. Col. Dr. Menachem S. chose silence. As a child he felt abandoned as he was smuggled out of the Plashow labor camp and into the streets to fend for himself in order to escape execution. His main source of comfort came from a picture of his mother and the promise that his parents would leave the camp and find him one day. They did, but they had changed to the point of being unrecognizable as the heroes and saviors he had idolized for so long. It only added to his trauma. What interests me about him is that he denied the trauma to a point where he felt some sense of invincibility and felt absolutely no fear. His trauma voided him of natural human emotions until he confronted it and shared his story. He felt a sense of satisfaction but it came with a sense of fear. I would imagine, though, the ability to feel anything after years of silence and denial must have been fantastic. The man held in his story for over 35 years, which clearly affected him in life, but he found the truth that he had buried and was finally able to live his life with some sense of normalcy.