Where Were the Rescuers? A Message for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is the wrong day for commemorating the Holocaust. The United Nations first adopted an International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27th in 2005; Silvan Shalom, then Israel’s Foreign Minister, championed this much overdue initiative.  The date of January 27th was chosen to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, in order to honor the Allied efforts on behalf of the Jews. And that is precisely what’s wrong with this date; before the liberation, there was apathy, insensitivity and abject failure.

The Allies had multiple opportunities to do something - anything - to save the Jews of Europe, both before and during the war. The Evian Conference of 1938, the Karski Report of 1942 and the Bermuda Conference of 1943 all came and went, and the Allies continued to do nothing. The plight of the Jews of Europe was ignored.

Larry Weinberg, who was a past President of AIPAC, tells of his experience as an American GI during World War II. Larry was asked to meet with a Jewish member of the resistance who had been hiding in the forest. Larry proudly explained to the man that he was a Jewish soldier, and had come to liberate him. The man spit in Larry’s face and shouted: ‘You came too late!’.  The Allies did too little, too late, to help Jews in Nazi-controlled territories. If we are going to choose a date to mark the international response to the Holocaust, it should commemorate one of the conferences and meetings when the world refused to act, and chose to look on while Germany murdered Jew after Jew.

The genocide of six million required the complicity of the entire world. Even the Allies, who were fighting for the cause of freedom, did next to nothing to save the Jews. And this raises one of the most painful questions about the Holocaust: where was man?

During the Holocaust, humanity failed, 6 million times over. My mother didn't speak much about her experiences in  the Holocaust; but she would tell us about one episode that happened right after she arrived in Auschwitz, because it shocked her so deeply. A mother and daughter were talking to each other, and a Nazi, observing their obvious affection for each other, shot the daughter in front of her mother’s face. What shocked my mother was the complete lack of emotion the Nazi showed, as if he was taking target practice.

Eliezer Berkovits explains that before we wonder where God was during the Holocaust, we need to ask where was man. Why God allows bad things to happen to good people is a disturbing theological problem, but at the same time, we understand that our knowledge of God is limited. It is far more difficult to comprehend how our fellow man can be so cruel and bloodthirsty.  How could the Nazis perpetrate these indescribable crimes? How could the rest of the world look on? Neither a sophisticated culture, nor Christian values, nor the utopian ideals of the 20th century prevented Germany and her helpers from perpetrating the greatest genocide in history.

The Holocaust reminds us that our faith in man is misplaced; and this lesson is thousands of years old. This week’s Torah reading tells about the surprise attack by Amalek on the weak and wandering Jews in the dessert. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains that Amalek despised the needy and held the spiritual in contempt; to Amalek, it is power alone that matters.

Our job is to struggle against the Amalek ideology, generation after generation. There is a tendency to underplay pronouncements of hatred as “mere rhetoric”; that is a mistake. As the Jewish people have learned, time and again, those who promise violence should be taken at their word.  And at the same time, we also must find more Jethros.

Right after the attack of Amalek, the Torah tells us about the visit of Jethro. He travels from Midian, and offers support to his son-in-law Moses and the freed slaves. The 12th century Rabbi, Abraham ibn Ezra explains that Jethro’s story is told immediately after Amalek, in order to show another side of humanity: there are those who are unconditionally helpful and good. Man is capable of inhumanity, but also capable of heroism. And we must remember the Jethros who stand up for what is right.

Yad Vashem has been recognizing the Righteous Among the Nations since 1963. There are 27,712 such people who are recognized, even though there certainly many more people who helped save the lives of Jews. These rescuers include people Oscar Schindler and Irina Sandler who saved thousands of lives. Personally, I am drawn to the less famous rescuers, uneducated rural peasants who saved lives without thinking twice.

Years ago, a friend of mine was visiting Yad Vashem while there was a ceremony inducting a rural Polish couple into the Righteous Among the Nations. The couple were being interviewed about what they had done, and they were asked why they risked their lives to rescue Jews. The answer was so moving in its simplicity:

They (the Jews) were running, and they needed a place to stay. So we took them in.

That is the lesson for today. All of the well educated men in the U.S. Department of State had less heart and heroism than this simple couple. We need to learn from this couple that if people need help, we need to be there for them. In times of moral crisis, we need to think less, talk less, and do more.

And we need to get there on time.

 

 

 

Between Karl S. and Pharaoh: A Meditation on the Limits of Grace

 

Can one forgive the unforgivable? This is a question posed by Simon Wiesenthal in his book The Sunflower. During the Holocaust, he was interned in a small concentration camp near his hometown of Lemberg. One day, he and the other prisoners were brought in to clean out the medical waste from a makeshift hospital; the hospital was actually housed in the technical high school that Wiesenthal had attended. A nurse pulls him away from the other prisoners and brings him to Karl, a 21-year-old SS officer who had been injured in battle and was on his deathbed. A year earlier, Karl had taken part in an atrocity in the Ukraine. Hundreds of Jews were crammed into a house, and then he and his comrades threw grenades into the house until everyone inside was dead. Karl describes the anguish of his victims; guilt ridden by the mental images of the torture he inflicted, he turns to Wiesenthal and asks him for forgiveness on behalf of the Jewish people.

Wiesenthal is uncertain how to respond to Karl, and remains silent. He returns to his fellow concentration camp inmates, and that night they debate what he should have done. The Sunflower, which was published in 1969, is Wiesenthal’s account of his experience, along with responses from multiple theologians and intellectuals.

The responses sift through a variety of questions. Can you ever bestow forgiveness on behalf of others? Who has the right to offer forgiveness on behalf of the victims of murder? Was Karl actually contrite? Does offering forgiveness to Nazis undermine our vow of “Never Again”?

Many of the responses disagree, and at the heart of the disagreement is a simple question: Can this mass murderer ever be forgiven? Some argue emphatically for the importance of forgiveness. Cardinal Franz Koenig, the Archbishop of Vienna, writes that "This was an opportunity to put forward an act of almost superhuman goodness in the midst of a sub-human and bestial world of atrocities." Father Edward A. Flannery, a Rhode Island Priest who was a leader in Catholic-Jewish dialogue, went much further. In the 1976 edition of the book he wrote: "While conscious of the vast differences in the respective situations and culpabilities involved, we may ask whether Wiesenthal and his advisers did not themselves participate in Karl's sin." Yes, Flannery is saying that Wiesenthal’s refusal to forgive Karl is a sin! (He omitted this sentence in a revised essay for the 1998 edition.) On the other side is the view of those who see forgiving a horrific crime as a crime in itself, something that perverts the concept of justice. One proponent of this view is the author Cynthia Ozick, who ends her essay with the following words:

"Let that SS man die unshriven.

Let him go to hell.

Sooner the fly to God than he."

Wiesenthal's dilemma engenders intense debate because it sits at the fault line of two theological concepts: justice and repentance. To extend forgiveness to a mass murderer is an injustice; by offering him your grace, you disrespect his victims. At the same time, it is impossible for us to turn our backs on repentance. Ezekiel reminds us that this is what God wants of sinners: “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” The value of repentance is intuitive; all humans make mistakes, and all of us must overcome our failures. Without a second chance, we would sink into the abyss of moral failure.

Justice and repentance both make sense. Justice represents our way of restoring moral order to the world, and the criminal must be punished even if they are apprehended years later. But repentance is also part of the moral order. Rav Soloveitchik explains that the forgiveness bestowed upon a Baal Teshuvah, a penitent, is more than an act of divine grace. The Baal Teshuva has transformed his identity, and deserves to be judged according to his new reality.

It is precisely for this reason that justice and repentance are at a tension with each other. Repentance looks at a snapshot of the person’s soul, and who they are today. Justice looks at the totality of a life, and all actions, past and present, are judged equally. Both lay claim to our sense of right and wrong; the Baal Teshuvah deserves our respect for what they have become, yet the criminal deserves to be punished for what they have done. We can overlook this contradiction in ordinary lives, with ordinary transgressions. But when a mass murderer decides to change his ways, the contradiction looms large, and that is why Wiesenthal is stymied by Karl’s request.

Perhaps the best response to Wiesenthal's dilemma was written 750 years before the Holocaust. Our Torah reading tells us that during the ten plagues, God hardened Pharaoh's heart and didn’t allow him to change his ways. Maimonides struggles with this narrative. Free will is a foundation of Judaism; if so, how could God take away Pharaoh's free will? Maimonides answers that Pharaoh and others like him are so evil that God punishes them by preventing them from repenting.  There is a limit to how far repentance extends, and Pharaoh, Karl, and their ilk are undeserving of repentance.

When I first read The Sunflower, my intuitive reaction was that Simon must not forgive Karl; I feel the same way now. The horror of the Holocaust is so overwhelming that the thought of extending forgiveness for any of its perpetrators is impossible. This is very much in line with Maimonides, who reminds us that easy forgiveness will ultimately undermine the cause of justice.

However, this simple answer is not so simple. Maimonides is not the final word on this question. Many other commentaries, such as Seforno, defend free will, and assert that Pharaoh could have repented. To assert justice unequivocally has costs as well, because we would then lose our own sense of forgiveness and generosity, and with it, our humanity. In the end, the dilemma of Pharaoh’s heart remains without a satisfactory solution, because we cannot live in a world without justice, and we cannot live life without repentance.

 

The Secret of Resilience, From Egypt to the Holocaust to Today

We Need Chanukah More Than Ever This Year

It is easy to dismiss Chanukah as relatively unimportant. In America, what has made Chanukah prominent actually diminishes its value; it is an also-ran holiday that only achieved importance as the Jewish counterpart to Christmas. But Chanukah has a universal message, one that is more meaningful than ever. Eight months into a pandemic, our morale is already wearing thin; and now we face a challenging winter, where we are forced indoors just as a new spike of cases arrive. Chanukah reminds us to never let hold of hope, no matter what.

“What is Chanukah?” It is surprising to see this question posed by the rabbis of the Talmud, as if the origins of the holiday were unknown to them. By the time the Talmud was written almost 2,000 years ago, the holiday was well known, and the story had been recorded in the  Book of the Maccabees in the Apocrypha. There had been a war of independence fought by Jewish rebels, the Maccabees, against the Seleucid Empire, and afterward the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated. The celebration of this event was called “Chanukah,” the Hebrew word for dedication.

Yet if this were the rationale for Chanukah, the holiday should have disappeared once the Temple was destroyed. It would have been irrelevant. Why celebrate the rededication of a Temple that no longer existed? This is what the Talmud is wondering when it asks, “What is Chanukah?”

The Talmud offers an alternate reason for Chanukah. It tells of a miracle involving the menorah, the Temple’s candelabra. During the rededication, the Maccabees found just one jar of the High Priest's olive oil, enough for one night; but miraculously, the menorah remained lit for eight nights. With this explanation, Chanukah no longer depends on the rededication of the Temple. Yet this explanation prompts a question of its own: Why institute a holiday for a miraculous jar of oil?

The Talmud is actually reinventing Chanukah. For Jews in exile, this holiday celebrating a former triumph was transformed into a festival of hope, and the relatively unimportant miracle of the menorah now took center stage. One small jar of oil lasting for eight nights became a metaphor for a small community overcoming the odds against them. Jews in exile could take heart in the fact their Maccabees ancestors were able to overcome all odds; they were inspired to think that they could too. 

Hope is a puzzle; many observers are unclear as to what  value it has. To some, like  the Roman Philosopher Seneca, hope is a denial of reality, which prevents us from “adapting ourselves to the present”. Others see a value in hope as a useful myth, one that prods people to feel more confident, and to aspire to build a better future. This certainly is enough of a reason to be hopeful. But a Jewish theology of hope goes much further, and sees hope as part of the divine blueprint. Hope is based on the belief that the world is always taking another step in the direction of redemption. And even one small Menorah miracle can serve as a reminder of that blueprint.

For nearly two millennia, the ritual of lighting candles on the longest, darkest and coldest nights of the year gave an embattled people hope. And it is the very smallness of the ritual that makes it so powerful. Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement said: “A little light pushes away a great deal of darkness.” The same is true of hope. Even a bit of hope gives us the strength to continue onward and pursue redemption.

Last December, paramedics were called to the home of an elderly couple in Lakewood, N.J. As they were taking the wife to the ambulance, they noticed that alongside the Chanukah menorah there was a burning wick embedded inside a half of a potato. When the paramedics asked what the potato was for, the husband explained that during the Holocaust, he was on the run from the Nazis, hiding in different locations. He had very little, but for Chanukah he was able to improvise a menorah from a potato, some oil and a wick. After his liberation, the man explained, he continued to light a potato Menorah, to remember the miracle of his survival.

This December, hope is on the horizon, with the first deliveries of covid vaccines. But there will be much worry and suffering to come before the end of this pandemic. Right now, the lesson of the Lakewood man’s Chanukah potato is especially useful: A little hope can go a long way, and a little light pushes away a great deal of darkness.

When Redemption Comes in Small Packages: Thoughts for the Worst of Times...

Too Much Holocaust?

My thoughts on the way we remember the Holocaust, the ethics of memory, as well as my own personal transformation regarding Holocaust memory. The article is linked here.

Smiling on Yom HaShoah

Hi! I had an article published on the Times of Israel website on Yom HaShoah. you can access it by clicking here

(in case the Times of Israel website has any issues on April 6-7, I've also posted the article below)

Smiling on Yom HaShoah

Yom HaShoah is the saddest day on the calendar. It is not only the deaths of 6,000,000 that overwhelms us; it is the barbarity with which they were murdered. Each atrocity shocks the soul. Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground who was one of the first witnesses to report about the Holocaust, described an atrocity he witnessed in Izbica, Eastern Poland. There, multiple groups of 120-130 Jews were forced into train cars made to fit 40 people, and the doors were slammed shut. On the floor of the train was quicklime powder, a chemical that generates enormous heat when mixed with water. The human sweat dripping down to the floor caused the quicklime to bubble, and painfully and slowly, the inhabitants of the cars began to burn. These poor victims cried in agony for over a day until they met their inevitable deaths. Remembering the Holocaust forces us to recall some of the most barbaric massacres in the history of mankind.

It’s beyond painful to contemplate the Holocaust, but we do so out of a sense of obligation.  Remarkably, for many years the Holocaust was ignored. Peter Novick documents in The Holocaust in American Life the lack of interest American Jews showed in the Holocaust during the 50's and 60's. There were no communal commemorations, just small inconspicuous events organized by survivors, for survivors. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg describes the experience of being a young American attending an early Holocaust memorial service as similar to “crashing a funeral”. In the 50’s and 60’s, survivors felt pressured to remain silent about their experiences, and were urged by their American contemporaries to “stop dwelling on the past”. Novick points out that this phenomenon was due in part to the myth that the victims of the Holocaust were weak, docile sheep lead to slaughter. In a postwar atmosphere of confidence and self-reliance, the survivor was an “embarrassment” because he was considered an example of “cowardice”.

Today the Holocaust is no longer marginalized. Holocaust education is a staple of public school curriculums, and Yom  HaShoah is widely commemorated around the world. Holocaust survivors are no longer marginalized either.  Survivors have been able to bear witness. Tens of thousands of them have told their -stories, ensuring the history of Holocaust is neither denied nor forgotten.

But what is often overlooked is the remarkable achievements the survivors have had after the war. A full account of the impact Holocaust survivors have had on the postwar Jewish community has not yet been written; but their contributions are nothing short of heroic.

Yes, many survivors did not fully recover from their traumatic wartime experiences. Some could no longer function, and lived solitary lives supported by distant relatives. Others were dysfunctional and carried lifelong scars, scars that still affect the lives of their children and grandchildren. But contrary to stereotype, there were many Holocaust survivors who flourished after the war. A list of the of successful survivors would read like a Who’s Who, and would include the winners of the Nobel Prizes in Peace (Elie Weisel), Literature (Imre Kertesz) and Chemistry (Walter Kohn), a Brigadier General who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe (Sidney Shachnow), technology innovators (including Andy Grove of Intel), corporate titans, real estate magnates, and the like. Even those who didn’t achieve fame and fortune have left powerful impressions. My late mother, a survivor of Auschwitz, was widowed at a young age and raised four children on her own, in a home filled with warmth and compassion.

What is remarkable is how the survivors succeeded after experiencing such profound trauma. William Helmreich, a sociologist, wrote a book based on a study of 170 survivors called Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America. He explains that he conducted this study in order to answer the following questions:

“How do people who have experienced such cataclysmic events pick up the threads of their lives?…what lessons can the rest of us learn from the survivors about coping with tragedy and adversity?”


Helmreich found that survivors were able to thrive because of a combination of personality traits, including flexibility, assertiveness, courage, optimism, tenacity, and the ability to find meaning.  Because of these attributes, survivors were able to overcome tragedy and rebuild their lives. Looking back, the slur that survivors were cowards has been more than disproven by the exemplary courage with which they lived after the war. And 68 years after the Holocaust, Jewish communities around the world are far stronger because of the contributions of survivors. They deserve our appreciation for all they have done.

Each year the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre conducts a Yom HaShoah service at our synagogue. In recent years, the format has included a section where six survivors tell their testimonies on video, and then each survivor stands up to light one of six memorial candles. The video testimonies break your heart; you hear about the horrific losses these survivors experienced, how their parents and brothers and sisters were torn away from them a tender age, while they were left alone to fend for themselves.  The survivors speak --with profound emotion, and while listening to their words, tears start to roll down my cheeks.

But then the survivor gets up to light the candle. At our service, each survivor lights the candle accompanied by a child and a grandchild. For me, that is when I both cry and smile. Despite all that these survivors have gone through, they still didn’t quit; and they’ve not only survived, they’ve thrived. Here they are, 68 years later, standing with their children and grandchildren. 68 years later, they have rebuilt their families and homes, and made profound contributions to our community. Even though it is Yom  HaShoah, I cannot stop myself from smiling as I watch them, with a little bit of joy and a lot of pride. Thanks to these survivors, we can still declare “Am Yisrael chai”, the Jewish people live on.

Eddie's Kaddish

There are no words.

The Survivors vs. Hitler

In a recent article in Newsweek’s My Turn, Shirley Paryzer Levy writes about her late father:

"When my father felt the end was near, he started to obsess about his past. He decided that if he didn't start talking about the Holocaust, who would remember? He made a series of audiotapes beginning with his life in Europe, leading up to the Holocaust and ending with his wedding to my mother in Germany in 1946……
I don't know if he felt the Nazis would rise again, but I know for sure Hitler never left him. A friend of mine who recently lost her mother told me that two weeks before her death, her mother started acting in a way that made my friend think she was hallucinating about being back in a concentration camp. She was once again being tormented by the Nazis. We agreed Hitler got her in the end. Just as he got my father. Hitler didn't end at 6 million. He is still killing the Jews. It is 6 million and counting."

While I can feel her pain, I cannot accept Paryzer Levy’s conclusion. Hitler killed 6 million, and scarred millions more. Yes, some survivors were so emotionally crippled they were unable to reenter society. However, most did their utmost to triumph over Hitler. Indeed, this week I officiated at a funeral of someone who lost his entire family in the war, yet immediately after the war started all over again, intent on rebuilding his life and his family.

So why do so many survivors fixate on the Holocaust? Wouldn't it be emotionally healthier just to "get over it"? I think that for many survivors memory is a personal responsibility. Having faced the ultimate evil, they feel uniquely responsible to live. For them, the biblical responsibility to “remember what Amalek did to thee” spurs them to live, to ensure that evil is defeated. These memories are not the reminiscences of bitter people consumed by inner demons, but rather a motivation for the wounded and scarred survivors to summon the courage to triumph over evil. Success was far from uniform; indeed, the great chronicler of the Holocaust Primo Levy, committed suicide in 1987, 42 years after the end of World War II. But by building families, retelling stories, and recreating Jewish community, the survivors emerged victorious in their encounter with Amalek.

The Holocaust ravaged the Jewish community; Hitler very nearly succeeded in his goal to destroy world Jewry. However, looking back at the last 63 years, the survivors have shown that they had the commitment and toughness to outlast the unimaginable and rebuild a community. Or as Benjamin Mead, a survivor, said to a gathering of fellow survivors in 1995:

“He tried to kill us, and he lies in the ground. And we are here”.