Seventy years ago to this day there was a young boy - I was standing next to an electric fence at the end of January crying in my heart praying to G-d let me get out of this hell because it is my Bar Mitzvah. I was born in southern Hungary, a family of eleven, from a Chassidic family, and only my brother and I survived. We had a fairly happy childhood and normal life, despite anti-Semitism was a norm in Eastern Europe in the 1930s. My day started at 5 in the morning, learned Hebrew studies, had lunch and then resumed studying. That was my life until March 1944. In 4 months, until July, Hungary found the infrastructure for 400,000 Jews to be sent to their death. It was when Admiral Horthy tried to make peace with the allies, the Germans invaded Hungary, the Fascists took over, and within days laws came in and pushed the Jews into ghettos and then into Auschwitz with cattle trucks taking nearly five days with just two buckets for their needs. We spoke Yiddish and that saved my life. When we arrived all we saw were people with blue stripes and they were shouting in Yiddish ‘all children must say they are sixteen years old and not to save any food’.
We saw the selection and I saw my mother and sisters on the women’s side. I ran to their side and my mother told me
go back to your brother. It was the last time I saw the rest of my family. At selection, Dr. Mengele asked in German ‘how old are you?’ and because of what I was told in Yiddish earlier, I answered ‘sixteen’ and was sent to the showers with those selected to work. We ran into the showers, after being told to leave our clothes neatly on the side and that we will get them back on the other side. We had all our hair shaved, men and women, standing naked, and we were given wooden slippers and the blue uniform. We arrived at the barracks and at the centre stage a capo, selected from the prisoners, was standing there and said you have arrived at Auschwitz, you will be given a number, no names any longer, and I suddenly started crying for my mother. I knew then that this was not an adventure after all, as being a child that is what I had initially thought. After about ten minutes in the line waiting to be tattooed they ran out of ink. The next day, again, there was an air raid siren and we were dispersed. When we were walking we saw a Hebrew prayer book in a ditch. We were then taken to Dachau camp number 4 for a few months and my brother Yitzchok came over and said that our father was also there. We had roll calls morning and night and after the roll call we were taken out to work. On one particular day, we were put into different lines and my father never came back.
One day the planes were coming over and we were told to march in order to liquidate the camps with just one loaf of bread to be shared. My brother and I began fighting over the loaf of bread and we suddenly saw the butt of a rifle and we thought we were to be shot. The soldier said, why are you fighting, you will be liberated soon. That was the only feeling of comfort we ever received. We arrived at a second Dachau camp but there was no room at the camp. We were supposed to have been shot in the field but the commander didn’t want to be a war criminal as the war was coming to an end. We were left in the open air with the American planes over head and we ran. We saw machine guns opening but we escaped. We were then liberated by the Americans and had our first proper meal.
professor alister mcgrath on einstein and faith
Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University Alister McGrath delivered a lecture on science and religion in honour of 100 years since Albert Einstein discovered his general theory of relativity. The title of the lecture was "Albert Einstein on Science and Faith: The Eternal Mystery of the World is Its Intelligibility", in which McGrath presented Einstein’s view on faith, based on an interview he gave in 1930, in which he said there is something overwhelming of the universe that we cannot fully understand. He insisted that ‘I do not want to be referred to as an atheist because I think that is unhelpful. I don’t know if I can define myself as a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. The human mind as much as it is trained cannot grasp the universe. It’s like a child in a vast library. We see the universe marvelously arranged but we can only understand this dimly.’ According to McGrath, Einstein was astonished we can understand anything about the universe and the eternal mystery of the universe is in fact its comprehensibility.