Our life as a nation began in a concentration camp. Mitzrayim was our very first slave labor camp. The Torah describes the radical turnabout that occurred in the life of the Jewish People in the land of the Nile a sea change that dragged the people down from the pinnacle of honor and prestige they had enjoyed during Yosef’s time as viceroy of Egypt to the abyss of enslavement humiliation and oppression: “And they appointed over them tax collectors to afflict them with their burdens….” (Shemos 1:11).

Why this choice of words “tax collectors to afflict them with their burdens”? The Netziv in his sefer Ha’amek Davar explains: “And these officials would be wicked and deliberately inflict torment on them not only for the purpose of collecting tax but in order ‘to afflict them with their burdens ’ thus taxing their strength… through torture abuse and beating.”

That is to say tangible gain was not Pharaoh’s aim but rather the humiliation of the Hebrew race and the erosion of its self-image. Trampling their honor was much more important to him than any benefit that would accrue to him from their labor in building the cities of Pisom and Ramses.

In modern times Auschwitz operated on the very same principle.

“For what purpose” asks French Jewish philosopher Professor Andre Neher in his classic The Exile of the Word “does Pharaoh refuse to supply the slaves with straw without which they cannot make bricks? And moreover he demands that they meet the same daily production quota as before…. This forced labor for its own sake was meant to oppress the people doing it…. We are entering therefore into the dark and murky realm of the concentration camps….

“Drowning the male infants in the Nile clearly evokes an association with modern genocide…. The demeaning labor is all a show. The victims are the actors while the taskmasters are the spectators looking on gleefully. In Mitzrayim as in Auschwitz the whip indicates the spectator’s lively attention to the victim’s performance.”

Yet it is precisely here in this Egyptian concentration camp at the bottom of the world at their darkest hour that these beaten broken slaves are described as “a people” — “And I shall take you to Me a people and I shall be to you a G-d” (Shemos 6:7).

From now on they will be a people. Now the time is ripe for forming the new nation a nation unlike any other a nation born in the midst of incongruity. A nation that emerged at the lowest point in its life at a point where any other nation would simply be obliterated. A people that upon casting off the shackles of Egyptian captivity would demonstrate total freedom from laws of history that under similar circumstances spelled the end of mighty nations and empires. By its very existence it would proclaim its independence of its physical surroundings proclaim that it could exist as a cohesive nation even without a homeland a structured government a flag a language or an army — and since they were a nation even without these things they would know what to do with them when they acquired them.

The fact that Jewish nationhood was proclaimed specifically in such a time and place created a people who were free in the full sense of the word not as Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch writes dependent on the conditions which had determined the events of world history up until that point. Thus the Egyptian exile and liberation came to teach something about the Almighty G-d Maker of all laws Who infused this nation with its spiritual freedom. Not for nothing did the commentators compare Yetzias Mitzrayim the story of the nation’s formation to the story of Brias Ha’olam the world’s creation.

Deep in this primordial historical reality lies a multifaceted message — the question of why Am Yisrael needed to suffer in exile has been addressed by many commentators. But let us also look to the side effects of galus Mitzrayim and the geulah that ended it for these facts too are of major historical importance.

One of these side effects was the contribution of the Jewish People to humanity as a whole:

“The appearance of Avraham’s nation would reawaken consciousness of liberty and release the whole world from its shackles” (Rav Hirsch on the Torah).

Today we know that the Exodus — Yetzias Mitzrayim — made a deep impression on humanity and not only on people of faith but also on those who received the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam as well. The glory of Yetzias Mitzrayim shone over the entire globe. It kindled the imaginations of freedom fighters all over the world promoted the ideal of equality of all who are created in G-d’s image and set the wheels of revolution moving many a time throughout the generations. In the era of slavery in America the black slaves sang songs of freedom inspired by the Biblical story of the Exodus (e.g. “Let My People Go”) and the abolitionists who fought on their behalf were equally inspired by the Bible.

To us as a people galus Mitzrayim insured our perpetual existence within human society. The character of our nation’s birth which seems to contravene all historical logic is the character of the nation itself. Today in the post-Auschwitz era our nation still draws its vitality from the powers it was endowed with long ago in that ancient Auschwitz. This was described amazingly by a 19th-century French Catholic writer named Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre who contemplated the Jewish People’s history and was reminded of the attributes of… the hawk (without the modern political connotations “hawks and doves”). He wrote:

“Like the hawk in the clouds this little nation does not come to life except when it is buffeted by storm winds that sink mighty ships. It rediscovers its wings and renews its strength its potency and its energy and recovers the strength of its first foundations. It rides the storm winds holding on tight while great states fall into the depths as they foolishly attack one another. That which is liable to destroy any other human society tends to revitalize this one and restore it to its original form.”

Because the secret of our solidification as a people — specifically in Mitzrayim — lives in us eternally. Time and again after every period of descent that deeply embedded power restores us to our original form.