Survivors All: Yom Ha-Shoah.24

Survivors All: Yom Ha-Shoah.24

May 6, 2024

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

I used to think of myself as a 2nd Generation survivor.  What that meant to me was that my parents and the only two grandparents I was blessed to know had lived through and seen terrible things—which I did not, but only learned about through their stories, habits, high-strung emotions and even nightmares. Growing up in Israel in the 1950’s meant that every adult around me was a survivor. With one exception: a neighbor who as a child escaped the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929. But that’s another story. Or is it.

There is a difference between 2nd generation survivors and those who have followed us. We grew up with our parents’ memories implanted in our minds, tattooed in our souls. My children, on the other hand, grew up with memorabilia: Tattered letters, photographs hidden deep inside drawers, artifacts that were later donated to Holocaust museums. Some survivors wrote books, always short like novellas—for how could anyone who lived through the most horrific experiences express all the horrors they had seen, all the emotions, the heroic escapes, the frightening times when they hid in barns, forests, and sewers. On occasion, as a late afternoon would slip into dusk, my mother recalled those times when she would wonder where she would be sleeping that night. My mother gave testimony to Yad Va-Shem. It’s more than 3 hours long. She remembered almost everything. Her memories lived on within her—or should I say, she lived in her memories. 

Somewhere I read that we Jews forgive quickly but never forget.

That is true. We learn to live with our previous hunters. For his whole life, my father, who lost his entire family in the Shoah, refused to buy anything German-made. In the mid-1950’s, when Israelis were urged by then-Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to accept reparations from Germany, my father refused. Later, he became very unhappy when he realized that some parts of the car he owned were made in Germany (a Volvo, it was supposedly made in Sweden, but by then globalization changed everything, and you couldn’t buy hardly anything that didn’t contain parts made in Germany).

Reality dictates many of our choices, and we can either accept that or make life miserable for ourselves and those around us. And so we learn to forgive. 

However, what we never, ever, do is forget. We live with our memories, two universes that coexist and often collide. We remember people long gone, and we commemorate events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago. To forget the past is to lose a part of our humanity.

But lessons learned from history teach us much more than just how to avoid repeating mistakes. We learn how to do things not only differently, but better. Our experience as slaves in Egypt taught us to abhor tyranny and oppression; our suffering through the ages has taught us compassion and empathy.

It’s been proposed that the Shoah—the Holocaust—led to the creation of the modern State of Israel. That is inaccurate. Zionism—the return to our national homeland and the rebuilding of Jerusalem—has always been part of Judaism. It became a political reality in the 19th century, long before the Shoah. However, our history and theology taught us to try to make Israel a “light unto the nations.” Israel has never kept to itself the many technological, medical, agricultural and other innovations that it is known for. Instead, it shared them freely with other people—often third-world countries that have benefitted greatly from this close cooperation. Tikkun olam—repair of the world—has long been a Jewish value, and the world is a better place for that.

We Jews have learned much from our past. Yet one thing we did not learn—or at least failed to internalize—until recently: that the Shoah was not the end of antisemitism. Though we have always been aware of its presence on the fringes of society, we did not for a moment imagine that it would become mainstream again, that calls for Judenrein would become current again; that screams for the destruction of Israel, effectively meaning genocide, would resonate from campuses all over the United States and elsewhere in the world. Somehow we allowed ourselves to believe that we were living in a sort of pre-Messianic era, at the dawning of an age which would lead to a loving embrace of all people, including Jews.

What we’ve learned since October 7 however, is how wrong we were. The horrors we saw on that day, are not new. The pogrom that took place—not by coincidence—on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, carries a clear message. Past horrors are no longer just a receding memory. October 7 is here-and-now, part of a continuum that goes back millennia. The Ukrainian and Polish pogroms, the Inquisition, forced conversions, expulsions and ghettoes are all links in a chain of events going back to ancient Egypt.

So what lessons will we take going forward today? First, that we are no longer 2nd or 3rd generation survivors. With our own eyes and ears we have become first-hand witnesses to terror and evil, and from now on we must see ourselves—in the words of the Haggadah, “as though we ourselves had been freed from Egypt”—eternal, all-generation survivors. Today there is no talk of forgiveness. Yet. But without a doubt, if not in five then in 50 years, that will happen, and Israel will be glad to participate in the rebuilding of Gaza. Hope for peace will revive, and we Jews will do everything in our power to turn that possibility into reality. 

The next few years will give us answers to questions we are only now beginning to ask: How shall we rebuild our relationships with our neighbors, with colleagues at work, with fellow students at schools and colleges, with causes and groups we once were proud to be part of but find ourselves excluded from today? 

What we make of these lessons will determine our identity as Jews. We can, of course, disappear. God forbid. Or we can become even stronger than before—ethically, spiritually yes; but also and no less—physically as well. Judaism isn’t only about being good. It’s about being strong. Am Yisrael Chai, we are told; the People of Israel yet lives. it’s a line we repeat over and over again, in complete amazement at the sheer miracle that it truly is.

But it’s even more than that. It’s not only the divine hand of God that has wrought this miracle. It’s our own stiff-necked determination to stay Jewish, to remain loyal to our Covenant with our God and our ancestors.

Never Again became a slogan after the Shoah. One of the most important steps we must take now is to inscribe this watchword in our minds and upon our hearts, to etch these words deep into our doorposts, and live by them.

We are Jews—a people with a history that is as rich, creative and unbelievable as any story ever told, with a difference that this story is true. How we became that is our history. The future—the continuity of the Jewish People—is now in our hands.  We must not let the past—or the future—down.

Adonai oz l’amo yitein, Adonai y’varech at amo bashlom—may God give us strength, may God bless us with peace.

 

© 2024 by Boaz D. Heilman