A Field Of Buttercups

On August 5, 1942, an orphanage (called “Our Home”) in the Warsaw ghetto was emptied of its 200 Jewish children. They were to be marched to the little village of Treblinka to be put to death. The children of Our Home Orphanage were counted. Their yellow armbands bearing the Star of David were snipped off and thrown into the center of the courtyard. A Polish policeman who witnessed the scene later recalled, ‘It looked like a field of buttercups.” (“Treblinka,” by Jean Francois Steiner.)

We look with horror at this, and all the great calamities of history. We feel unable to grasp the immensity of the human suffering they represent. Our humanity will not let us forget them. But we know we cannot undo them. And the inescapable, nagging question-“Why?”-pierces our souls. In our heart of hearts we know that without some reassuring word that the enormous slice of life we call sorrow and suffering” is unendurable in the absence of some word that…