Thursday, April 12, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
One week after Passover is Israel’s Holocaust
Memorial Day, Yom Hashoah. Once a year the nation takes a day to remember, to
listen to the stories, to cry and contemplate.
In other countries (those that bother), people talk
about commemorating the Holocaust. In Israel the day is officially named “The
day of remembering the Holocaust and remembering heroism.”
Memory is a tricky thing. Can you remember
something that didn’t actually happen to you but rather to your grandparents?
Or your great-grandparents?
Part of the ritual of the Pesach holiday speaks of
remembering being slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. The Passover Seder is a tradition
deliberately designed for children, to pass on the memory of being personally
rescued from slavery in Egypt.
The Jewish people have not designed a tradition or
ritual to help us pass on the lessons of the Holocaust as we have the story of
the exodus. Memory of the Holocaust is tattooed on some of our bodies. The
survivors that are still alive can teach us. First generation children of
survivors and for the second and third generation have, to some extent or
another, the horrors of the Holocaust seared into our souls. The effects
reverberate through the generations.
It is for the third generation and those who come
after to define how to pass on what we have learned. Remembering does not only
mean focusing on the horror, it is also about acknowledging the extraordinary
heroism of those who rose from the ashes.
Like a painful letter shoved in an attic corner,
the memory of the Holocaust is something that Jews rarely look at. It is
terrible and gut-wrenching but when we move to a new home, like all other
memories, our possession, this too is packed up and brought to the new home.
Memorial Day is the day we force ourselves to go up into the attic, shine light
on the letter and read it. The pain is raw but this is the fire that forged us.
We are who we are because we rose from those ashes.
Actually, to be more accurate, and it is crucial to
understand this – we were able to rise from the ashes because of who we
are. The fires of the Holocaust did not forge us, it is those fires
that brought out the greatest qualities of the Jewish people: heroism, hope
even in the darkest places, love and sacrifice. Like metal heated to the point
of glowing, the example of the Jewish people, shines for the world to see.
I heard a Holocaust survivor say that the one thing
he wants his granddaughters to remember is the experience of their now deceased
grandmother. When the concentration camp was liberated their grandmother, then
a young girl, did not want to come out of her hiding place. She was alive and
there was no one to tell. No mother, no father, no brother, no sister… This
survivor didn’t continue speaking because he couldn’t; he was too choked up to
be able to express himself.
That is one tiny example of why this day is called “The
day of remembering the Holocaust and remembering heroism.”
I’m sure most people think of people like Oscar Schindler when they hear the
words Holocaust and hero together in the same sentence but that overlooks so
much heroism and nobility of the human spirit.
Heroism is in the fact that the girl who had no one
in left in the world to care that she survived DID leave the concentration
camp. How much strength and dignity does it take to walk out of the horrors of
such a place? After humiliation, starvation, torture and psyche twisting
experiences we can’t even imagine? How is it possible to create a life for
yourself after your world was so cruelly shattered, smashed to smithereens?
That girl did it. So did millions of others.
THAT is heroism.
That girl not only left the concentration camp –
she moved to Israel, grew up, married, and had children and grandchildren. She
rose from the ashes of her parents’ corpses to create new life.
Israel was built on heroism and survives because of
it. This is the legacy of that grandmother and others like her.
Living, surrounded by enemies threatening the very
existence of Israel is very difficult. Living well, full of hope, happiness and
always striving to improve the world while under existential threat is a
breathtaking accomplishment.
And that is what the people of Israel do, every
day.
We remember and we
LIVE in their honor.
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