Yom HaShoah

Today is the 60th anniversary of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a sacred day in memory of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust.  Therefore, the day is marked with many ceremonies and the Israeli national flag is flown at half mast.  At 10:00 am sirens sound throughout Israel for two minutes during which people come to a standstill, even stopping their cars and standing beside them in the middle of the street, in order to pay silent tribute to the dead.

Yom HaShoah also allows us the opportunity to learn the valuable lessons remembrance affords us.  Of course, first and foremost, we learn that most of the bystanders and onlookers were silent.  Survivor, Elie Wiesel said “what hurts the victim the most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”  We must never be silent again.

We also learn other valuable lessons.  For example, that we must stop movements of hatred.  There is not a more unifying motivator in mass movements than hatred of a demonized enemy.  Hitler understood that the ideal devil would unify Germany and would deflate the resistance of the surrounding countries he intended to occupy.

Ahmadinejad understands the power of mass hatred.  Leaders throughout the Middle East have been using this tactic for decades.  It must be stopped.

Antisemitism is the world’s early warning system and acts as a “canary in the mineshaft” warning us that a Pandora’s box of death and destruction is about to be opened and it will not end with the Jews.  In 2012 the world experienced a 30% increase in antisemitic incidents.  Are we heeding the alarm?

We also must learn the very painful truth that while Christianity did not cause nor carry out the Holocaust, centuries of Christian antisemitism paved the way for the Holocaust.  As a Christian, I have to admit the role that some of our church fathers' teachings and practices played in preparing the way for the Holocaust and the silence of the bystanders.

So beyond learning, our remembrance must include sorrow and repentance.

But our remembrance will also lead to pride and honor of those who did stand up and do the right thing.  This is when we reflect upon the Jewish resistance movements, the rescuers who risked their lives in order to save Jews, and the liberators who freed those remaining in the Nazi death camps.

I write today as the very proud daughter of a WWII vet who liberated the slave-labor camp called Flossenburg.  We have the photos that were taken the day his company entered the camp and encountered thousands of starving bodies of the dead and the dying.

There are many Americans who descend from that “Greatest Generation” who fought, and many died, bringing down the Nazi regime.  Most of them are no longer with us in this life, and so their children and grandchildren must tell the world what they saw and what they fought for.  For in the current move to trivialize and even deny the Holocaust they are denying the sacrifice that our fathers and grandfathers made.  They are denying what they saw in the camps and those they saved.

And so today we also honor the Holocaust Survivors living in our midst in many countries around the world.  We promise you that we will continue teaching others what we have learned, we will continue speaking out against hatred and antisemitism and we will not be silent.

For Zion's sake,

Susan Michael