Turning the Page

New Years eve 1945

Watching the revelers at Times Square last night on TV, my own glass of champagne at the ready for the midnight countdown, I couldn't help but reflect on the power of the future tense. With the turning of the page, everything seems possible. An open, as yet uncharted year. A chance to finally put those long-held aspirations into action.

This transition to 2022 is happening parallel with a surge of COVID cases. The pandemic has taught many of us to be more present in the here and now. And yet, what would we be without our dreams for the future?

Many of our parents and grandparents, in their struggle to stay alive, day by day, were able to reclaim the future tense only after liberation. But it was as yet a very uncertain future.

We have the report of a young American soldier, who attended a "liberation concert" given by concentration camp survivors, at the former Benedictine monastery of St. Ottilien, on May 27, 1945. The monastery had been repurposed as a military hospital by the Wehrmacht, and now a few hundred concentration camp survivors had found their way there. Dr. Zalman Grinberg, himself freed from a Dachau convoy, was head doctor of the survivors.

The musicians, skeletal and dressed in their striped uniforms just days after liberation,

played Mahler, Mendelssohn and others whose music had been forbidden for years. At the conclusion of the concert, Dr. Grinberg said, "We are free now, but we do not know how, or with what, to begin our free yet unfortunate lives. It seems to us that for the present mankind does not understand what we have gone through and experienced during this period. And it seems to us that we shall not be understood in the future." It became clear to them, the survivors, that they needed to take charge of their own destiny and forge a path forward. Weeks later, Dr. Grinberg became the Chairman of the newly-established Central Committee for Liberated Jews in the US Zone. And quickly,

the survivors accounted for the largest post-war baby boom in any known population. We are all the beneficiaries of their faith in the future. Whatever it is that we are facing, may we also hold on to this faith that after the final no, there does come a yes. And on that yes, the future world depends.