I am the son of two holocaust survivors.

My father, Sam (Szmuel) Goldberg was one of the very few (about 60) survivors of Treblinka. Treblinka was the death camp established to kill the Jews of Warsaw. It was part of the Aktion Reinhardt , the plan for the systematic slaughter of the Jews and Gypsies of Poland.

My mother, Esther Bryndl Goldberg, hid in the woods. Aided (and/or tolerated) by local Christians she survived as a feral person, a vagabond, in the woods near the shtetetl that she was born in.

They did not speak about the holocaust very much, but it was always present in our home. My mother cried over her murdered parents and siblings every day of her life. When my parents had friends over, they would shoo away the children and cry over their recalled experiences. When I was a small boy, 4 or 5 years old, my mother would tighten her grip on my hand when we passed a police officer.

Occasionally, they would let their feelings show. Usually they would each affirm that G d had saved from the horrible death and cremation that was the fate of almost everybody they knew, almost everybody they grew up with, almost everybody they loved.

Rarely, perhaps once or twice,my father asked the question. Where was Gd. O think I only heard it once, but that was enough. By the time I read Eli Wiesel 50 years later, I had repeated the question thousands of times.

At this point I must say that it would be extremely disrespectful of my parents, as survivors to do anything but honor their oft stated opinion that Divine intervention rescued them. It is not my place, nor anyone's place to question their opinion, an opinion based upon their personal and unique experiences.

The global question remains.