When he’s being interviewed or brought to speak, he relishes the attention. He appreciates being heard and being treated like a celebrity. He’s also a salty old dog, accepting nothing that isn’t to his liking, pushing back when things are not as he expects. He has, I’d say, earned it. His memory is a vast, deep cache of intimate details and timelines of the events he witnessed and endured. He has been re-living the nightmare for all these decades, and is one of the last of a dwindling number of people who can give a first-person perspective of what it was like.
Soon enough, the world will lose Erich and his sharp memories. Leben und Überleben (To Live and Survive) will preserve some sense of him and what he suffered. It’s startling that over 80 years later, we still have not yet heard everything about the Holocaust, and it continues to shock and disgust us to know the vile ways people were treated.
“We must heed the call…”
Vienna was permanently scarred by the war, while we in the U.S. view these events as distant history, with no immediacy, it still hangs in the air there. In many ways, it is still not over for survivors, and never will be while they live.
This should serve as notice that in our time, there are powers rising to commit the same abuses suffered by prisoners of the Third Reich. Regardless of how we measure our own humanity, the impulse to purify populations seen as “less than” through oppression and death is a persistent human failing that seems to always come back around. The CECOT prison in El Salvador and the South Florida Detention Facility, referred to as “Alligator Alcatraz,” are the first two new concentration camps.
Leben und Überleben (To Live and Survive) is an affecting snapshot of the Holocaust ordeal of Erich Finsches, which in its specificity illustrates more intimately the human suffering that targeted groups faced than any dry chronology ever could. Erich’s resilience kept him alive with his memories, a vital resource he shares for the benefit of the world. Our obligation is to internalize his warnings. We must heed the call when he exhorts us to show no mercy to inhumanity and fight against it, ensuring all people have a chance to live and survive.
Learn more at the official Leben und Überleben website.
"…an affecting snapshot..."
