Holocaust Survivor

Yesterday afternoon I had a conversation with Joseph, a Holocaust survivor, who as a young man in Poland was forced into slave labor by the Nazis and experienced all the horrors you can and cannot imagine. Even after 63 years he is still rather down on this whole humanity thing and feels that Genesis 26:4 was lie considering that there are fewer Jews today than there were in 1939. I wanted to reassure him and tell him that the world is a beautiful place filled with horrible things or a horrible place filled with beautiful things or some such nonsense, but what can even the cleverest of words mean to a man who has seen what he has seen? When one sees first hand the word stripped of platitudes and it's veneer of civility what's the use of words?