It is my custom, for the Yizkor before Yom HaShoah, to talk about the
Holocaust.
I do so in part because there are many who say Yizkor for members of
their family who were lost during the war, and for members of their family who
were survivors of the Holocaust.
And I do so because in the Yizkor before Yom HaShoah, it is everyone’s
responsibility to remember the 6 million, even 75 years later.
But why is it so important to remember? We do so for three reasons.
The first is never again:
we have a responsibility to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens
again.
This promise is seen as a responsibility of the international
community and institutions like the United Nations. Unfortunately, it is often
a hollow promise. In Rwanda, Darfur and most recently in Syria, the wholesale
massacre of civilians has gone on without any response from the international
community.
However, this idea is deeply rooted in Jewish thought. The very story
of the Exodus is meant to warn us about the power of tyrants. Indeed Torah goes
out of its way to limit the power of kings and limit the institution of
slavery. After Egypt, the Torah tells the Jewish people never again; do not let
the values of Egypt become your own.
The second reason is never
forget. Entire families, even entire villages were destroyed without a
single living remnant.
There is an ethical responsibility for us to ensure that the memories
of those whose lives were taken away live on. The ritual of Shiva, and
prayers of Yizkor and Kaddish, all
articulate the same idea: we must continue to remember those whom we love. A
loving family and a caring community must remember, and make sure that those
who perished did not die in vain.
The third reason, which is more important today than ever, is: we will outlive them.
This line comes from a powerful story related by the Holocaust historian
Moshe Prager. When the Nazis entered Lublin, a Commander by the name of
Glovoznik took a group of Jewish men into a field, and for his sport, ordered
them to dance and sing. The men, improvising on the words of a popular song,
came up with the following lyric:
"Mir
veln zey iberlebn, Ovinu shebashomayim,” “We will outlive them, our Father in
heaven.”
When the Nazi commander recognized that they were singing in defiance,
he ordered his men to beat the Jews. The Jews continued to sing anyway.
We will outlive them has been part of the Jewish spirit for the last
75 years.
William Helmreich z”l, who passed away 2 weeks ago, published a book
in 1992 entitled: Against all Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful
Lives They Made in America.
Helmreich conducted 170 in depth interviews with survivors, and went
through tens of thousands of pages of archives from relief organizations that
brought the survivors to America. He tells a remarkable story of people whose
lives were shattered, and through the sheer force of will, rebuilt in a new
country.
These survivors truly outlived their adversaries.
But how? This capacity for hope is remarkable. Elie Wiesel, in an
interview with the New York Times that appeared on June 7, 1987 said this:
"I must
confess that, of all the mysteries that characterize the Jewish people, its
capacity for hope is the one that strikes me most forcibly. How can we think of
the past without foundering in the abyss? How can we recall the victims of fire
and sword without drowning in our own tears?"
And yet these survivors found hope after staring into the abyss. And
this powerful hope is so much a part of what it means to be a Jew.
In the Haftarah that is read on Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach, we are
told about Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones; these bones are
resurrected by God's call. The dry bones represent the Jewish people, who will
be brought back to life, even after many years in exile. And the keyword of
this entire text is the word רוח, spirit, because the secret to the endurance of the Jewish
people is their spirit and soul.
It is this spirit of endless hope that propelled the survivors.
Helmreich, at the end of the book, lists 10 traits of survivors that allowed
them to rebuild. They include a sense of community and a search for meaning, as
well as courage, optimism, tenacity, and flexibility. These survivors had a
sense of destiny, that whatever might happen, they would be able to overcome.
Helmreich quotes from the memoir of Luba Bat, who tells about a group
of young women being marched to the gas chamber and Auschwitz. As these young
women are walking to their deaths, they break out in the singing of Hatikvah,
the Zionist national anthem. In the last moments of their life, they sang a song whose name literally means
hope, and expressed hope for a better future for all of us.
Such is the spirit of those who hold on to hope even when everything
seems hopeless. Such is the spirit of a people who can say Mir
veln zey iberlebn, we will outlive them.
Today we find ourselves facing a challenge of our own. The coronavirus
which took William Helmreich's life threatens us all.
But it is in the stories of these survivors that we can find hope 75
years later. Helmreich ends his book with the following words:
The story of the
survivors is one of courage and strength, of people who are living proof of the
indomitable will of human beings to survive and of their tremendous capacity
for hope. It is not a story of
remarkable people. It is a story of just how remarkable people can be.
Let me repeat those words: It is not a story of remarkable people. It
is a story of just how remarkable people can be.
This is our lesson as we say Yizkor. We come today to remember those who continued to hold on to
hope in the most hopeless times.
May we be inspired by their legacies each and every day.
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