conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about War with the genre: History, World?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Legends of Our Time'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Legends of Our Time
  Actually, I should have been disappointed. I had in fact anticipated a certain letdown, and had even prepared myself for it. No holiday can be real unless it has something of the miraculous about it, and by definition a miracle must be a single, unique event. In this case, I had seen it all the year before: the ecstatic prayers of the Hasidim on the night of Shemini Atzeret; the processions in the Central Synagogue on Simchat Torah; the furtive questions put in a whisper to foreign guests; the communal singing; the sudden appearance of thousands of youngsters, demonstrating in public their unshakable solidarity with the Jewish people. Such images—sorrowful and sublime at once—had been indelibly engraved upon my memory from my last visit to Moscow in the fall of 1965. My experience then had been so strong, and so deep, that I feared a mere duplication of it would rob the event of one of its most important dimensions, and myself of a priceless memory. What would happen this year had already happened before. It would no longer be a mystery, or a surprise, but would seem somehow natural and routine. I had already seen everything to be seen, and had said about it everything I was prepared to say. There are some visions which I am convinced we must not behold more than once.
  Yet I decided to return. Why, I don't myself know. Perhaps because I needed to confirm, for myself, that what I had seen and heard the year before was not in the nature of a momentary dream that had suddenly ignited my imagination. Or perhaps I returned because I felt an inner need to spend this particular holiday with these particular Jews. Something, at any rate, drew me to them—to their songs, to their enthusiasm, to their pride. And once among them, I witnessed a second miracle. Far from being disappointed, far from having to undergo the mere repetition of a previous experience, I found myself caught up in new surprises, and overcome by a new shock of recognition. The report I brought back last year was true—that much has not changed; but now I have come to see that its import is both more valid and more serious than even I had thought at the time. It may even be for this new knowledge that I returned.
  During intermission I spoke with some of the youngsters I had spotted in the audience. Although I asked them dutifully why they had bothered coming to a Yiddish performance rather than attending a Russian play or ballet, I knew beforehand what they would answer. In fact, they will go to anything that is Jewish, and are irrepressibly curious about the fragments which still remain of a Jewish culture that was once quite powerful in their country. Should a Yiddish theater be established again in Moscow, there would be no difficulty filling the auditorium. Of that I am sure.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The reality of certain words escaped me and the weight of that reality as well. The people around me were talking and I did not understand.
  Now, I am more than twenty years older, and all paths leading to the cemetery are known to me. The discussion still goes on. Only the participants have changed. Those of twenty years ago have died and they know it now. As for me, I understand even less than before.
  I had just stepped off into unreality. It must have been about midnight. Later, I learned that executioners are usually romantic types who like perfect productions: they find in darkness a stage setting and in night an ally.
  The name evoked no memory, linked itself to no anguish. Ignorant in matters of geography, we supposed it was a small peaceful spot somewhere in Silesia. We did not yet know it had already made history with its populace of several million dead Jews. We learned it one minute later, when the train doors opened into an ear-splitting din and when an army of inmates began to shout: "Last stop! Everybody off!"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The reality of certain words escaped me and the weight of that reality as well. The people around me were talking and I did not understand.
  Now, I am more than twenty years older, and all paths leading to the cemetery are known to me. The discussion still goes on. Only the participants have changed. Those of twenty years ago have died and they know it now. As for me, I understand even less than before.
  I had just stepped off into unreality. It must have been about midnight. Later, I learned that executioners are usually romantic types who like perfect productions: they find in darkness a stage setting and in night an ally.
  The name evoked no memory, linked itself to no anguish. Ignorant in matters of geography, we supposed it was a small peaceful spot somewhere in Silesia. We did not yet know it had already made history with its populace of several million dead Jews.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They alone did not receive help or encouragement; neither arms nor messages were sent them; they were not spoken to, no one was concerned with them; they did not exist. They cried for help, but the appeals they issued by radio or by mail fell on deaf ears. Cut off from the world, from the war itself, the Jewish fighters participated, fully aware they were not wanted, they had already been written off; they threw themselves into battle knowing they could count on no one, help would never arrive, they would receive no support, there would be no place to retreat. And yet, with their backs to the burning wall, they defied the Germans. Some battles are won even when they are lost.
  Yes, competent elite existed even at Sobivor, where they organized an escape; at Treblinka, where they revolted; and at Auschwitz, where they blew up the crematoria. The Auschwitz insurgents attempted an escape, but in the struggle with the SS, who obviously had an advantage of superiority in weapons and men, all were killed. Later the Germans arrested the four young Jewish girls from Warsaw who had obtained the explosives for the insurgents. They were tortured, condemned to death, and hanged at a public ceremony. They died without fear. The oldest was sixteen, the youngest twelve.
  We can only lower our heads and be silent. And end this sickening posthumous trial which intellectual acrobats everywhere are carrying on against those whose death numbs the mind. Do we want to understand? There is no longer anything to understand. Do we want to know? There is nothing to know anymore. It is not by playing with words and the dead that we will understand and know. Quite the contrary. As the ancients said: "Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."
  But we prefer to speak and to judge. We wish to be strong and invulnerable. The lesson of the holocaust—if there is any—is that our strength is only illusory, and that in each of us is a victim who is afraid, who is cold, who is hungry. Who is also ashamed.
  The Talmud teaches man never to judge his friend until he has been in his place. But, for the world, the Jews are not friends. They have never been. Because they had no friends they are dead.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Because they had no friends they are dead. They cried for help, but the appeals they issued by radio or by mail fell on deaf ears. Cut off from the world, from the war itself, the Jewish fighters participated, fully aware they were not wanted, they had already been written off; they threw themselves into battle knowing they could count on no one, help would never arrive, they would receive no support, there would be no place to retreat. And yet, with their backs to the burning wall, they defied the Germans. Some battles are won even when they are lost.
  Yes, competent elite existed even at Sobivor, where they organized an escape; at Treblinka, where they revolted; and at Auschwitz, where they blew up the crematoria. The Auschwitz insurgents attempted an escape, but in the struggle with the SS, who obviously had an advantage of superiority in weapons and men, all were killed. Later the Germans arrested the four young Jewish girls from Warsaw who had obtained the explosives for the insurgents. They were tortured, condemned to death, and hanged at a public ceremony. They died without fear. The oldest was sixteen, the youngest twelve.
  We can only lower our heads and be silent. And end this sickening posthumous trial which intellectual acrobats everywhere are carrying on against those whose death numbs the mind. Do we want to understand? There is no longer anything to understand. Do we want to know? There is nothing to know anymore. It is not by playing with words and the dead that we will understand and know. Quite the contrary. As the ancients said: "Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."
  But we prefer to speak and to judge. We wish to be strong and invulnerable. The lesson of the holocaust—if there is any—is that our strength is only illusory, and that in each of us is a victim who is afraid, who is cold, who is hungry. Who is also ashamed.
  The Talmud teaches man never to judge his friend until he has been in his place. But, for the world, the Jews are not friends. They have never been.They alone did not receive help or encouragement; neither arms nor messages were sent them; they were not spoken to, no one was concerned with them; they did not exist.