Holocaust survivor Ludwik Wrona, an 85 year old Polish man imprisoned at Auschwitz the very day it opened for business in June 1940 (the Nazis gave him the number 457,) died last week on a train trip meant to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the death camp. “The Train of Remembrance” was to take survivors and their families to the site of the concentration camp where as many as four million Jews and non-Jews were murdered during Hitler’s reign. The Polish Press Agency reported that Wrona was “overcome by the emotion of the trip” and died en route.
Certainly for some people, returning to the site of such trauma can be cathartic and vital to the commitment that the world must never forget what happened in Europe, but anyone who survived the Holocaust is old enough now to be excused from such dramatic exercises in remembrance, don’t you think?
Our sympathies go out to Wrona’s family and may he rest in peace.
(Photo c/o http://www.tertiomillennioseminar.org.