How does one recover stability or hope or dreams of a future after walking through Yad Vashem, the world's largest memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, seeing, no - feeling - every blow, every tear, the stink of fear, of poison gas, deafened by every scream sounding silently, forever, within these halls. It is a most frightening, 'must see' for everyone. Why? In the midst of all the 'exhibits' one realizes that the Holocaust, the Shoah, is not over. Despite the slogan of "Never Again", it is starting up, gaining momentum anew. The warning signs, the awful attacks, the threats, Dear G-d - again? Again?!
It is not to G-d that we must turn, but to the humans who think these damned thoughts, who feel the hatred which blisters their souls, that harden their hearts much as the heart of Pharaoh hardened, unable to hear the truth, unwilling to do so - and reaped the 'reward' he earned and deserved. Rather it is to ourselves and all others that we must question: "How can you do these things? How can it be justified? How can you inflict these conditions on people? How can you kill, beat, torture, whip, burn, kill all day long and then return to your home, pet your dog and hug your child? It is not human!! Yet it surely was.
I must confess that this is a most difficult posting to write. While possessing much knowledge of the Holocaust, its cost in human life, its loss of humanity, it was one thing to vaguely know that I had family killed, butchered, gassed, burnt, shot into ravines, marched to death. It is another to know the names, to hear stories, to attach a personal note into the awful mess. The pilgrimage we had taken, draining as it was, now had distinct human faces and names attached, personalizing it, easier to visualize than a great number like 6,000,000.
Little did I know when I began genealogical research, trying to trace my Bubbie's lost family, that I would actually find some alive, miraculously surviving, some even unaware of other branches which had survived. Nieces, nephews, cousins of my Bubbie. The joy, the immediate kinship felt was overpowering. The detailed information, the intimate vignettes painted by my newfound family twisted my very guts, broke me in so many ways. To know which sister was shot to death. Which was gassed along with a child. Who died in the Death march - more than one. The awful death of my great grandmother, undeserved, cruel, inhumane!!! The family dead in the ghetto at Lviv. And they joined together in my heart, in my soul, with the family of my father, the hundreds slain, dropped into an abyss like trash. My cousin the partisan shot. And my Zayde. No wonder he never spoke of his family left behind. The sorrow would crack, break, anyone. Over two hundred found once I found, once I traced his name in Europe, one more syllable than here in America.
Yes, my blood was spilled, and my heart was broken. My fear of the future grew exponentially. When I read in the papers, online, that there is a 43 year high in assaults against Jews in New York. When I read that this surge is merely a part of a nationwide trend, a trend that has grown in violence. When even the reluctant police and authorities are forced to admit these attacks were hate driven. Well, then I shiver in my shoes.
There are signs of hope. The March of the Living today, the thousands of kids there, along with grandparents, great-grandparents, adult children, survivors, and a group of 103 Arab-Israeli kids, there is hope. When I see the demonization of Israel by Right and Left wings alike, the fear grows. Always a target for the haters, the noncontributors to society but rather the destroyers of society, of humanity.
Where does it end? When does it end? A Holocaust - from the Greek language meaning a huge burning. Shoah, the Hebrew word for an unimaginable catastrophe. Hate at its most vicious. Humans treated as less than garbage. Ordinary people buying into this campaign of hatred, this obscene murder, ignoring the sights, the sounds, the stink, of burning bodies at the place right across the road. The sight of emaciated, walking skeletons being forced to march for kilometers to factories where they were worked to death. Volkswagen. Mercedes Benz. Siemens. Krupp. Name any big German company of today, and there you will find the slave labor of the Jews. No one saw. No one cared. Evidently, for ask the people; they will tell you no one knew anything. No one was a Nazi. No one benefitted from the looting of Jewish homes and businesses. No one stole any artwork. No one slammed a baby's head against a wall or speared it on a bayonet - in front of the mother - and then laughed. No one. Yet, apparently there was a someone, many someones, were there not?
Denying the truth does not make the truth disappear. The survivors are driven to tell the story, before they all die. They need to combat the deniers, those angry, hateful and hate filled people who wish only to recreate that world again. We must do this, for if not we are all lost.
Again, I state the clear and absolute truth - hatred knows no bounds and when the books are burnt, the hatred abounds and grows. There will inevitably be people burning and when one group is done, well, there are always more victims to be had. Why? Because no one will call out. No one will oppose. No one will understand, until too late, that the damage to themselves has been done and more awaits.
Read the words of a liberator of a camp, the name unimportant, for its conditions were mirrored in all the other camps, death camps, slave labor camps, factories, ghettoes, wherever there was a "need", an "opportunity" to embrace hate, to become a murderer. To be less than human.
"... was unique in its vile treatment of human beings. Nothing like it had happened before in the history of mankind. The victims of this infamous behavior had been reduced to a condition of subhuman existence, and there we were ... trying to save those who could still be saved and to allay the sea of suffering and the depths of agony."
The haunting sound of the kaddish, the prayer said in mourning, will echo endlessly over the killing grounds of Europe, the blood of the slaughtered Jewish people soaking the lands.
I ask - why? I ask you and you and you and all of us- what can be done to end this horrific cycle right now. Now! Enough. No more. Still, the fear in me grows. Yes, it can happen here. We have seen the signs, the precursors. I have. So have many others. The main question - Have you? And what do you feel about it?
Yitgadal, veyitkadesh, shemay rabbah...
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