Life after life, I remembered His eyes, but life after life, nothing changed.

It wasn’t working.

Finally, I agreed to be broken down, decrystallized.  It would not be pleasant.

Centuries ago, I was tortured and totally humiliated.  I became full of hatred, a toady; I would humiliate myself—-or others.  I became brutal and impassive.  I tortured and killed others, and was in turn tortured and killed.  I had become less than human, much less.  I was a repulsive, despicable monster, and I loathed myself.*   This went on for many lives.

Somehow, His look never left me, even then.

In the late 1930s or early 1940s, I was a Hasidic Jew, perhaps in Poland.  Along with thousands of others, I was put into a concentration camp.  I became a “kapo”, the head of a work crew.  I did what was necessary to save my own life, even abusing other prisoners.

One day, a rabbi was put in front of me and I was ordered to beat him.

The rabbi had His eyes.

I refused, screaming, “I saw Him!  I saw Him!  The one you claim to worship!  This is what He looks like!  I saw Him!”

This is the last thing I did in my previous life.  I was killed on the spot.  But I had finally overcome the last obstacle to my eventual freedom.

And that is why I am here.

I cannot begin to undo the harm I did in this nightmare, but in the words of a Hasidic saying “let us leave this disgraceful state and take service with the Creator.”

This I can begin.

.                    Lou Gottlieb                                        1/19/2006

* The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself — but you just can’t help it.   —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(If you wish to know more about my brief life as a kapo, click on this.