Stanisław Aronson, 93, veteran in the Polish resistance and survivor of the Holocaust, wrote to warn the generation that is to become the future.
Stanisław Aronson, 93, veteran in the Polish resistance and survivor of the Holocaust, wrote to warn the generation that is to become the future.
Given what I’ve learned over my lifetime I would, first, urge future generations of Europeans to remember my generation as we really were, not as they may wish us to have been. We had all the same vices and weaknesses as today’s young people do: most of us were neither heroes nor monsters.
Those people and millions of others, including my immediate family, were killed by lies. My country and much of the continent was destroyed by lies. And now lies threaten not only the memory of those times, but also the achievements that have been made since. Today’s generation doesn’t have the luxury of being able to argue that it was never warned or did not understand the consequences of where lies will take you.
Confronting lies sometimes means confronting difficult truths about one’s self and one’s own country. It is much easier to forgive yourself and condemn another, than the other way round; but this is something that everyone must do. I have made my peace with modern Germany, and hope that all Europeans can do the same.
Stanisław Aronson, 93, veteran in the Polish resistance and survivor of the Holocaust, wrote to warn the generation that is to become the future.