Tonight, we will begin our commemoration of Yom HaShoah,
Holocaust Remembrance Day. In a world so
full of hatred and violence against Jews, philosopher Emil Fackenheim’s “614th
mitzvah” to ensure Hitler never wins is more important than ever. He wrote:
... we
are, first, commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. We are commanded, secondly, to remember in our
very guts and bones the martyrs of the Holocaust, lest their memory perish. We are forbidden, thirdly, to deny or despair
of God, however much we may have to contend with him or with belief in him,
lest Judaism perish. We are forbidden,
finally, to despair of the world as the place which is to become the kingdom of
God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or
irrelevant and everything is permitted. To
abandon any of these imperatives, in response to Hitler's victory at Auschwitz,
would be to hand him yet other, posthumous victories. (To Mend the World, p.
213)
While some take issue with using the terminology of mitzvah in
relation to specifically responding to the Holocaust, Fackenheim essentially
reinforces important Jewish principles of memory, continuity, optimism, and
Jewish pride. These are certainly critical
tenets of our identity.
Often, on Yom HaShoah, we invoke the words, “Never forget.” It sometimes seems unnecessary. How can the world forget the atrocities of
the Shoah? Maybe there are some ardent deniers,
the insane, and anti-Semites who deny the Holocaust, but how can anybody
forget?
Many have.
A study commissioned
last year by the Claims Conference
found that 31% of all Americans and 41% of Millennials believe that
substantially less than 6 million Jews were killed (two million or fewer)
during the Holocaust. In addition, while
there were over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos in Europe during the
Holocaust, 45% of Americans cannot name a single one – and this percentage is
even higher amongst Millennials.
Obviously, these numbers are different in our community. At the same time, can we be so sure that we
won’t forget even a little bit? The
number of survivors is dwindling, and it seems that fewer and fewer communities
can draw large crowds for Yom HaShoah events.
I believe that we need to place as much emphasis on Fackenheim’s
second directive of his 614th commandment:
...to remember in our very guts and bones the martyrs of the
Holocaust, lest their memory perish.
We need to find ways to actively remember and incorporate the
memories and legacies of those who were murdered as well as those who survived
into our very beings.
Never forget will never be enough. We need to actively, passionately, and
forcefully remember.
“EVEN WHEN THINGS ARE GOING WELL, REMEMBER
THE SHOAH” – Yaakov
The above message was crafted by Yaakov
Weinberger, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who made his way to
Israel. He posted this sign all over his
city of Nahariya and was dedicated to disseminating this message to all. Yaakov believed it was forbidden to be
silent, and he felt that it is not enough to “Never forget.” People must internalize the Shoah as part of
their being and always – always – remember.
Yaakov Weinberger went even further to encourage people to
remember. He and his wife legally
changed their last name from Weinberger to Weinberger-HaShisha,
explaining that “HaShisha” (the Six) was being added to “identify with the six
million sacrifices of the Shoah.” From
then on, any time someone was introduced to Yaakov, they would remember the
legacy of the Shoah.
We must never forget. We
must also always remember. We need to
introduce the stories and lessons of the Holocaust into our everyday lives, our
dinner table discussions, and, in particular, find ways to share these with
those outside our immediate circle. Seek
out the stories of survivors you know or explore the many stories available online. (See HERE for full length
testimonies of survivors collected by the USC Shoah Foundation.)
One way to reinforce the need to remember and feel the urgency
in sharing these stories is to see ourselves, in a way, as survivors.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau describes meeting NYC Mayor Ed
Koch in the early 1980’s:
…He is a warm Jew, sensitive and emotional, a great lover of
Israel and the Jewish people. At our
first meeting, he introduced himself to me and declared that he was also a
Holocaust survivor. Out of politeness, I
refrained from asking him what exactly he survived and where he had been during
the Second World War. I wanted to give
him a chance to tell his story himself. He
said that he had been born in the Bronx and had lived his whole life in New
York, but insisted that he was a real survivor. Smiling, I dared to ask how that could be -
and Ed Koch began to explain.
Years earlier, he had traveled to Germany for an educational
trip. At one of the stops, the guide
showed the group the globe that had sat on Hitler’s desk. “It reminded me of Charlie Chaplain’s movie
about the great dictator. But unlike the
one in Chaplain’s movie,” Koch recounted, “that big globe had lots of numbers
written on it in black marker…The guide explained that when World War II broke
out, Hitler recorded the Jewish population of each country. After all, they represented his life’s goal.
Albania, for example, bore the number 1 for the single Jew living there…The
territory of the United States bore the number six million. That includes me,”
said Ed Koch with undisguised anger. “So
I am also a Holocaust survivor-if the Allies hadn’t stopped the Nazi beast, no
doubt I would have been destroyed.”
I shook his hand warmly and said, “Today I have learned an
important lesson from you, and I will carry it home with me to Israel. I’ve heard that not all Jewish communities
feel a connection to Holocaust Day. From now on, I’ll tell them about the Jew
born in New York who lived all his life in an American city, but who feels like
a Holocaust survivor…” (Out of the Depths, p. 241-242)
Each of us is connected enough to the Holocaust so as
to feel compelled to “Never forget” while, at same time, to “Always remember!”
This way, we can keep alive the memory of what happened while also
incorporating the legacy of the Holocaust into a meaningful present and ensuring
a vibrant future.
