War and Remembrance (TV Mini Series)

Part X (1989)

John Gielgud: Aaron Jastrow

Quotes 

• Aaron Jastrow : l, Aaron Jastrow the Jew, in my 72nd year, am going to my death. l have heard that strong young people are spared to work in Oswiecim, so my niece may survive. l began this record of a journey aboard a vessel docked in Naples harbor in December, 1941. Mischance and misjudgments brought myself and my niece to Theresienstadt. Here l have seen German barbarism and duplicity with my own eyes, and have tried to record the truth the best l could. Millions of Jews, l now believe, have already perished at German hands. A million or more of these must have been little children. The world will be a long time fathoming this fact about human nature, this thing that the Germans have done. l am terribly afraid of dying. l am bowed to the ground by the tragedy of my people, but l have experienced a strange, bitter happiness in Theresienstadt that l missed as an American professor and a fashionable author living in a Tuscan villa. Degraded, hungry, oppressed, beaten, frightened, l found my god and my self-respect. l have taught bright-eyed, sharp-minded Jewish boys the Talmud. l don't know whether one of them still lives, but the words of the Talmud lived on our lips and burned in our minds. l was born to carry that flame. Now l will return to Oswiecim, and there the Jew's journey will end. l am ready. These scattered notes, much more than anything else l have written, must serve as the mark over the emptiness that will be my grave. Hopefully, someday they will be discovered, but probably not until long after the war, when wreckers or renovators may come and let sunlight into the walls and crevices of these mournful old buildings. Earth, cover not their blood. Aaron Jastrow, October the 28th, 1944, Theresienstadt.