TO REMEMBER TO REMEMBER TO REMEMBER

     I sat down this morning to write a posting, a strong one, but first checked some emails and then realized that there was another topic to be written about first. Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and today is the day to remind all that we do not forget and we do not forgive. We do not look away any more at those who would engage in genocide and the Jewish people have been at the forefront of providing aid to those who have been targeted, be they members of a tribe in Africa or even the wounded civilians in Syria.
     But first and primary, we remind the world that though that ugly specter of anti - Semitism has once more raised its snout in the world, that once more people think openly that it is okay to hate and beat Jews, that it is okay publicly to make statements, both oral and physically by deed, to demand the destruction of the Jewish people, though this is happening we will never allow it to bloom into another replay or replica of the Holocaust.
     As I watched a video of the three Israeli Air Force planes fly in formation over Auschwitz and heard the voice of the pilot speaking, I felt a burst of pride and defiance. Hate all you want but NEVER AGAIN will we be forced into death camps or worked to death or be experimented upon or have our children and our loved ones ripped from our arms, killed before our eyes, or watch their ashes fly into the air in the smoke from chimneys where they are burned in ovens. NEVER AGAIN.
      I have been on a pilgrimage to Eastern Europe and the villages and cities from whence my relatives were torn asunder, where they were killed, be it in the mass grave in the forest in Lithuania or the dirt of the Ponary forest or the ghastly cattle car where my namesake, my great grandmother, was tossed in to die, not of old age, mourned and beloved by her family, but as a piece of trash, consigned to the garbage heap born of the Nazis and anyone who allowed them to flourish, anyone who does not realize that Fascism in any and all of its forms MUST BE FOUGHT.
     I have cried more than my share of tears over this. I have wept, bereft of any comfort, as we walked, trembling, through the intake building at Maidanek, thrown up at Auschwitz, mourned at the mass graves, and looked sadly at the piles and heaps of stolen Judaica in the antique stores with the lies being told by the owners and quietly bought back what I could, to hold and cherish in a living Jewish home, to use the Kiddush cup once again, to light the candelabra once again, to show that WE ARE HERE AND WILL SO REMAIN.
     So people, today, at least for a moment of your day, remember who you are, who you might be at such a time, and swear in your heart, in your deepest soul, that such a horror will never again be inflicted on humanity, that anti - Semitism must and will be fought in all its representations and excuses, and that all must remember that no one is exempt for one after the other is taken, is demeaned, is destroyed under Fascism and no one escapes its hungry mouth and grasping arms - no one. Shed a tear for the child dead of starvation, alone on a street or in a ramshackle building, alone because all who would care are gone and all that remains are murderers, savage killers, cold misrepresentations and parodies of humanity. Shed the tear now for if not, we will all be shedding many more.
    Yitgadal v'yitkadash, shemay rabbah...
May their memory and their names be blessed and may they be  spokesmen for all of us before G-d.