My father, Chaim Rotenstein, a survivor of the Shoah, died on June 28, 2008. Long before his death he had asked me to call a list of fellow survivors to attend his funeral. With many attempts I could not reach any of the friends on his list. The burial took place in an area of the cemetery dedicated to the town of his birth, Czestochowa Poland, and was marked by a large stone monument he and others had dedicated to those loved ones who perished but had no gravesite. After the funeral , I looked around at the gravestones near my father’s grave and realized that all the survivors that were on his list … were already buried there. For my father’s chevra, he was the last survivor.

An Ode to the Last Survivor

By Deborah Rotenstein

When the last survivor dies,

there will be no one to say Kaddish

for those the living have forgotten

or never knew.

For some,

a book chapter closed

an era over

a generation lost to those who remain.

When the last survivor dies,

who will speak for the children,

the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers-

all dead and denied by those who seek to rewrite history…

When the last survivor dies,
museums and memorials will remain

as physical testament to the past,

But it is in living that we defy death.

The generations that might not have been

must return to their roots to survive and grow,

to heal, to watch and protect,

to learn, to teach, to understand.

So that when the last survivor dies

to join the countless souls in return to the Eternal,

their rest will not be marked by a deafening silence-

rather a cacophony of creation.