Many died, and some survived

I just read these sentences at the beginning of an LPLP article by Humphry Tonkin (2011):

"The Holocaust had a profound effect on the Esperanto movement. Many of the
leading members of the Esperanto language community perished, and some
survived."

My first instinct was to say "well, duh."  It seems redundant to say "some survived" - after all, he didn't say *everyone* died, did he - just "many"...

But, on reflection, those are two very different tragedies which both deserve acknowledgement.

Many scientists and scholars died in the Holocaust.  So did a lot of other people, but the scientists and scholars had their ranks thinned rather considerably.  Losing your thinkers in a bloody war is a tragedy for any field of study - I think you can't look at any area of scholarship in Europe without wondering how it would have progressed if so many of the researchers, inventors and ground-breakers hadn't been stripped away.

But... some survived.  Living through the Holocaust and losing family, friends and colleagues has got to have an effect on the way you see the world.  The scientists and scholars that survived would have been altered in ways we can't even begin to imagine.  How did that alter the paths they chose, the things they studied and the conclusions they drew?

Many died, and some survived.  Both the deaths and the survivors had a profound impact on the way their fields were researched and the way the science moved forward.