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Yom Ha'shoah

Remember, zachor.

On this day we remember the most devastating episode of our history. From year to year it recedes a little further into the past, but the magnitude of it remains beyond our comprehension, and the pain of it beyond consolation. All we know for certain is that we have a duty to remember: for the sake of those who perished, so that they may not be forgotten; for the sake of those descendants who survived them, so that they may know they are not alone in sorrow; for our own sakes, so that we may not be blind to the evil of which human beings are capable; and for the sake of future generations, so that they may consider well what is needed to prevent such a sho'ah - such a destruction- from happening again to our people, or to any people.

Human remains found in the Dachau concentration camp crematorium after liberation. Germany, April 1945.

Do not forget, lo tish-kach.

Denmark 100
Norway 750
Italy 9,000
Belgium 40,000
Bulgaria 40,000
Yugoslavia 58,000
Austria 60,000
Czechoslovakia 60,000
Greece 60,000
France 65,000
Latvia 70,000
The Netherlands 104,000
Lithuania 104,000
Germany 180,000
Rumania 500,000
Hungary 700,000
The Soviet Union 750,000
Poland 2,600,000

Two young brothers, seated for a family photograph in the Kovno ghetto. One month later, they were deported to the Majdanek camp. Kovno, Lithuania, February 1944.

"Let us ask ourselves about silence, the silence of God and the silence of man. We listen to the testimony of survivors and witnesses, stammering their haunted words, struggling to explain. Through their words the silence becomes still thicker, more terrifying still. For behind the silence we know this deepest human sin will be found: the sin of indifference. What pains were taken to protect cathedrals and museums lest treasures of art be destroyed! Meanwhile in the streets and camps of Europe an infinitely greater treasure lay dying - mothers and fathers and their children, while many looked away. To look away from evil, is this not the sin of every generation?"
Rabbi's Chaim Stern and Albert Friedlander

You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces

Consider whether this is a man
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no
Consider whether this is a woman
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house,
When you walk on your way
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

Primo Levi, 10 January 1946

For more on the Holocaust visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington's web-site on www.ushmm.org.

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