One, then One, then One Again

Friday, January 28, 2005

I read an article today about Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where some 1.1 to 1.3 million Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Soviet POWs and others were murdered. The article had had a part that I thought very insightful:

At the height of the Nazi implementation of assembly line killing, 381,661 Hungarian Jews arrived over the two months to the end of June 1944, with another 18,000 from other countries. The number murdered is beyond comprehension, for in appraisal of human life the greatest number with meaning is one, then one, then one again.

It’s the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and the numbers of dead keep rolling across the headlines. Some hundred thousands killed by the tsunami, another hundred thousand by the American military, still more by preventable starvation and disease. But the number with greatest meaning, as the author quoted above reminds us, is one…then one…then one again.