A meeting with a kind professor

I've just had a long meeting with a professor of German at the University and in a short space of time he explained many things to me in addition to translating several letters from the period of the war and the period just prior to the war.

I didn't know that both families were in touch with each other. I didn't know that Heini was such an important go between in the whole affair. I didn't know that the Prague ghetto was even worse in some cases than the Warsaw ghetto and that Regine was living with all her important possessions taken away from her in a ghetto with very little food and certainly no protein.

Regine confided to Heini, forbidding him to tell Else or Lisa that she was in such a desperate situation. She was considering suicide because it was so bad. Pathetically, she offers to help Heini. "Some things are available here which you might need." she says, and sends Heini and Caroline her bedding and a few other things. Carolin is 67. She berates God and given the depth of sorrow he would have to look down upon she doubts he exists all.

"We have to face things with Stoicism. We have to face what life presents us with, but my courage is not equal to this situation.", she says, and she questions: "Why do we humans clasp onto life when it is so debased? If I had the courage I would commit suicide but I don't have the courage. Please don't tell the children this."

And then she apologises profusely for having importuned Heini and says that in her brief meeting with him and Carolin Göbel she realises that they are noble people and that they have their own problems too.

It's hard to read this, but it was a million times harder to live it. The professor told me that Theresienstadt was the "model" concentration camp. But Treblinka, says my colleague and friend who curated a holocaust museum, was a charnel house where people were burned alive.

My great Grandmother was terrified by what was happening to her. Heini, who met her just before she was taken away said that she was full of extreme anxiety - shaking with it. And then they took her away and did all the horrible things they threatened to do to her and millions of others.

And when my mother talked about God it was very simple; she echoed her Grandmother's words who implored God to help her, but at the same time doubted that a God could ever exist. "How could there be a God when he permits such suffering? It's not possible to have a good God who can allow this to happen" she says.

My Catholic wife tells me: Why torment yourself about the past. It doesn't matter to these people now. They are in heaven. That's what we believe. That's where they deserve to be. And I really don't understand that reaction.