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If in this 70th-year commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz I were to recommend one book about the Holocaust, it would be Night (originally published in 1958) by Elie Wiesel. He wrote it for a variety of reasons, but certainly one was to understand the terrifying madness that exploded in the days of Nazi Germany. Wiesel, who was a teenager when he and his family were herded into Auschwitz, was both a direct witness and victim of the Nazi crimes. His book is a personal testimony of those crimes centered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The writing felt like a victory; his testimony retained the memory of those years of horror and served as a memorial to the rest of the world.
Just as Wiesel knew that he must bear witness, Jon Mills, upon visiting the very same death camp, found himself an unexpected and unprepared witness. As a visitor seven decades postliberation, he struggles to find words to describe his own experience of terror in the essay “Reflections on Auschwitz.” We assume that he, like Wiesel, wrote for multiple reasons. Perhaps one reason Mills wrote the essay was to find meaning in the madness he felt in response to his visit. Or perhaps he had to tolerate temporary disorientation in order to understand the madness of the Nazi mind.
Mills’s thoughtful and powerful writing demonstrates once again the power of witnessing that results in revelation and transformation. Those who are silent about their victimization or about their witnessing empower the tormentor with victory. And now the reader will become a challenged witness, part of the witnessing community.