At 10 am in Israel, the siren sounds.
Traffic and conversation come to a standstill. Cars and buses pull over to the side of the highway. Pedestrians stop in their tracks. The world is frozen in time and space. Two minutes is a very long time when the world is silent.
Six million Jews died when the world was silent.
Today is Yom Hashoah, Israeli Holocaust Memorial Day. With world antisemitism at its peak, it seems particularly appropriate to remember the six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust.
The world today is disheartening to say the least:
* In Europe they’ve covered up the Holocaust memorials, so they won’t be vandalized.
* In California, the anti-Gaza campus protesters have demanded that the university cut off ties, not only to Israel, but to mainstream Jewish groups such as Hillel. Schools across the US have bowed to protester demands.
* In NYC, synagogues are getting daily bomb threats.
* Jews across the U.S. have found it advisable (necessary?) to get guns and gun training (at least this is what I hear from my friends, not in Missouri and backwater states, but in New Jersey.)
* College students are screaming at their fellow (Jewish) students they they should go back — back to Poland.
“In focusing on Israel’s actions and dismissing those of Hamas, campus protesters are providing cover for October 7 denialism. This is a new version of the Holocaust denialism prevalent in parts of the Muslim world: The atrocities didn’t happen, you deserved them and we’re going to do it again (and again).” — Yossi Klein HaLevi
"The real test is not whether we cry over dead Jews, it is whether we are standing besides the live ones, who are under attack today." — Richard Marceau, former member of Canadian Parliament
Antisemitism in the US is at its highest level since the Holocaust.
And today is Yom Hashoah.
For those interested, there is a curious anomaly, in that there are actually two Holocaust memorial days, one worldwide, one just in Israel.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated worldwide on January 27. (That is also the date of several ‘local’ Holocaust Memorial Days, such as England’s.) It commemorates all the victims of the Holocaust, regardless of their ethnicity. It marks the day in 1945 when the allied troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
Yom HaShoah was inaugurated in 1953. Officially, it is called Holocaust, Rebellion, and Heroism Memorial Day. It is on the 27th of Nisan, in April or May. Its date commemorates the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the day when someone else rescued the Jews, and let them live.
Yom Hashoah is the day of Jewish resistance, when the Jews arose to defend themselves.
The same difference exists between Yad Vashem - the Israeli Holocaust memorial museum - and other Holocaust museums, such as the US museum in Washington DC. Some of these museums are much higher tech and spiffier than Yad Vashem.
But the critical difference is that the US museums’ underlying premise can be summed up with, Thank God for democracy and America, which served as a haven for so many Jews, and has allowed them to live such a rich Jewish life, here in the US. Someone has saved the Jews.
The essence of Yad Vashem is, we need there to be a state of Israel, so that there is an always-home for Jews worldwide, just in case. Israel is both the reason and the consequence: Had there been an Israel, the Holocaust could not have occurred; since the Holocaust occurred, there needs to be an Israel. Israel is the backup plan for a people otherwise without a refuge. Israel is the never-again homeland for Jewry worldwide.
Israel exists so that, since we can not count on anyone else, we can save ourselves.
So we won’t lose six million again.
Thanks for reminding us of this necessity.
It is the lesson that Diasporean Jewry, which had counted on alliances and cooperation and strategic partnerships, is coming to realize slowly, reluctantly. It is the lesson that none of us really wants to internalize. Because it is lonely.
And it is the reason they so rabidly scream “from the river to the sea.”
Yesterday’s double-whammy in Israel — 60+ rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, with another ten fired from Hamas at the Kerem Shalom crossing that killed several soldiers who were protecting the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza — combined with Hamas’ intransigence in not bending on a hostage ceasefire agreement, despite extensive (some said, ludicrous) Israeli concessions — effectively convinced many folks here who were wavering, who were hoping for negotiation — that we do, in fact, need to finish this war. Not despite the hostages, but because of the hostages. This multi-front war, that we are about to be embroiled in.
Because we can’t go back to Poland.
Because we have the right to this small sliver of land, even though we are apparently the world’s splinter.
Because no one else will try to rescue our hostages.
Because never again.
Never again. Whether or not the world stays silent.
May you have a meaningful Yom Hashoah.
If you’d like to learn more, Yad Vashem offers free Holocaust classes.
https://www.yadvashem.org/education/online-courses/chosen-issues.html