I went with a religious school class to the Holocaust Center of Northern California (http://www.hcnc.org/) last week. The center is more a library then a museum. The current exhibit of letters from that era was both touching and poignant. A woman who is a refugee told us her story of being a twelve-year-old in Vienna when the Nazis rolled in, and how she was given away by her mother to a family in England. She crossed the Atlantic on a troopship during the war to be reunited with her family in New York.
These holocaust related experiences always evoke strong reactions in me.
My first reaction is always a vacillation between extreme anger and extreme sadness. Part of me wants to seek vengeance against those whose cruelty was almost unimaginable. Another part of me just wants to sit quietly and cry for those whose lives were changed so radically, or taken, for no reason other then their existence.
The living memory of the holocaust is leaving us rapidly due to the aging process. It is both happy and sad to witness those who often committed acts of heroism, ending their existence in such an ordinary manner. I am forever thankful that many of the survivors and refugees live seemingly normal lives. They are no longer called upon to perform heroic acts of survival. Somehow, however, it seems they should be given “extra credit” for what they have been through. Somehow its even better that they are not required to fight against those who wish an unnatural end to their existence.
Those of living memory remind us how ordinary the victims were. It is not the duty of everyone to become a hero (and we only hear from those who survived.) It is the right of all peoples to live in peace and attempt to live their lives to the best of their abilities. We honor, as we should, heroism but we cannot forget that this heroism was forced on them. Most would have been perfectly happy to live ordinary lives.
We remember these events in the next few weeks. There is the traditional remembrance at Passover as we discuss slavery and liberation. Communitywide Yom HaShoah (holocaust memorial) observances will be held at Mosaic Law the evening of April 30 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Never forget, and never again.
