It’s difficult to capture in a few hundred words the nature and goodness of a life like the one Ernie Marx lived. But the knowledge he dispensed and the friends he left behind will testify to the value of his 81 years.

John Donne noted years ago that “any man’s death diminishes” the rest of us. If that is a verity — and surely it is — then Marx’s passing July 8 is a great loss not just for those who came to know him but for those who would have profited by knowing him in the future.

A lot has been said and written about the drama and tragedy this Holocaust survivor encountered when that horror erupted years ago. Marx was arrested and detained on “Kristallnacht” — the “night of broken glass” — that marked the beginning of the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. That was Nov. 9, 1938, and Marx, then just 13 years old, and his family were among the nearly 20,000 Jews imprisoned by Nazi storm troopers that night.

His father was the rabbi at a synagogue near Frankfurt, Germany, when the violence erupted. The synagogue was burned, one of 200 destroyed on that one night, and the rabbi later died along with other members of the Marx family in ovens at the Auschwitz death camp.

Ernie Marx spent two years in Nazi prisons, the infamous Dachau at first and later at a less-well-known camp in France. He escaped from the French camp and as a 15-year-old boy joined the French Resistance.

It all sounds like a movie, but the sadness in Marx’s eyes as he recounted those events in later years revealed the reality of it all.

It was a reality that Marx wanted to ensure no one would ever forget. And therein lies the real gift Ernie Marx gave to the rest of us, and especially to his “buddies,” the children in Archdiocese of Louisville schools.

For decades after he came to the United States, Marx didn’t talk about the Holocaust or the personal tragedy that hatred and bigotry visited on his family and his life. But about a quarter century ago, he decided that his story needed telling, that the Holocaust was such an evil, such a testimony to darkness that those who experienced it should educate those who hadn’t.

Ernie Marx dedicated his life to making sure young people would know the truth about the Shoah, as the Jews call the Holocaust. He wanted to shine the light of knowledge on that nightmare so young people — and adults — would make certain it would never happen again.

Over the years, this slight wisp of a man accompanied nearly 80 groups of school children to Washington, D. C., to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. There, he would translate German inscriptions, read Scripture and poetry, lead prayers — and cry.

“I can’t keep from it, every time,” he said in 2005. “No one who knows about what happened can keep from crying. But the tears will also bring knowledge of the truth so we can keep hatred from getting into our hearts ever again.”

Back in 1998, the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews released a document called “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.” At the time of the document’s release, Pope John Paul II said it was intended to “help heal the wounds of past misunderstandings and injustices” present in the relationship between Jews and Catholics.

“May the Lord of history guide the efforts of Catholics and Jews and all men and women of good will,” the pope said, “as they work together for a world of true respect for the life and dignity of dignity of every human being.”

That’s what Ernie Marx worked for, too. That’s why he reached out to Catholic school children, especially those at St. Francis of Assisi. The school made Marx an honorary graduate in 2005; he wore a gown and marched down the aisle with the rest of the graduating class of eighth-graders that spring night in May, his face beaming right along with the rest of his fellow “graduates.”

It made him proud, he said. And now at his passing, those fortunate enough to have met Ernie Marx can also say they are proud — proud to have known this bearer of the truth.