This is the 60th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. My mother and her three sisters survived that place. My grandfather did not. His wife, my grandmother, was transported from there to Bergen—Belsen in Germany where she died two days after the British Army liberated the camp. My three aunts live in Israel and my parents came to the US on an Army Liberty Ship in 1949.

In the 1980s, my mother related this story to me about her winter experience in Florida. One day, while listening to a call—in talk radio program in West Palm Beach, my mother heard a young male caller say there was no Holocaust, that it was all propaganda and lies. My mother, who never spoke publicly about her experiences, later told me that this got her angry enough to call the radio station where she was put on the air to argue against him, a reaction the station no doubt assumed it would get in that part of Florida. She never told me the full content of what she said, but I bet it was plenty. The last time she had been called upon to talk about Auschwitz was when she applied to enter the United States and she was required to describe and draw the physical layout of the camp by a man she believed to be from US Army Intelligence. This makes sense because the US was concerned about Communists agents entering the US under false pretense after WWII. The number tattooed on her arm was not proof enough: the Soviets could create a false tattoo. By the way, she did not complain to the newspapers or the ACLU about "ethnic profiling" or discrimination.

One question my mother asked the young Holocaust denier on the radio was how did he have the time (and money) to not be at work that day supporting himself, instead of calling a radio station with his lies. I don't believe he answered her. Later, an Italian—American US veteran called the show and spoke movingly of his personally liberating a concentration camp in Germany and what he saw.

When my mother retold this story to me, she said I would be proud of her, how she stood up to this young Holocaust denier.

She was right.

Jack Kemp   1 26 05