The Loneliness of Ignorance Samuel Goetz I began watching Samuel Goetz’s testimony one night, just like with any other english project, bored and wishing I could be doing anything else. That began to change once I was a couple of minutes into the video. Instead of just letting the video pass before my eyes without any thought, I made myself remember that this story is about him, a real person, not just a made-up character I'm listening to. What made it more personal was the fact that at the time that this all happened, he was an eleven-year-old child. From then on his account seemed more disturbing, and I genuinely started to feel emotional about his story. A memory of his that caught my attention was when he lost his parents. He went to his apartment window, and watched as a train carrying his parents disappeared to an unknown destination. Samuel was shocked with this tremendous feeling of loneliness. Through the rest of the Holocaust, a cold loneliness weighed him down. He lost his family, and even though he was surrounded by …show more content…
If you grew up in a tightly knit family like Samuel’s, it must have been terrifying and the staggering loneliness would have been enough to make most want to just hide and cry. Samuel somehow made it through the Holocaust, which even he, himself admits was partially luck. But even after it was all over, the loneliness still enveloped him for many years. In the beginning of Samuel’s testimony, he began by conveying his feelings on people who didn't believe that the Holocaust was real. At first I thought that it was odd, but now I think I’m finally beginning to realize why he started off this way. By passing off Holocaust testimonies as just another English project, or worse, not believing them, we are abandoning the survivors once again, and making them as lonely and hopeless as they might have been during the