Religious debates aside about whether this particular observance is necessary, required or should be observed at all, nonetheless the world recognizes today as Yom HaShoah, and we, of all people, might be best served by taking a moment or two to remember what happened then.
For many in Klal, the Shoah is history, their connection many times removed from those who suffered through it. My connection is much closer, born in a DP camp, the child of Holocaust deathcamp survivors. There aren't all that many people left any more who were the first hand witnesses of the Holocaust horrors. My observance of the day will be to make sure I call my mother to tell her how much I love her and to let her tell me once again how much she still mourns the death of her parents and brothers, and to tell me once again stories of that family that have only been alive to me through her words. The Nazi beasts slaughtered my family but it is their names which are reviled worldwide, and will be as long as I have breath to draw, and as long as my children and their children down through the ages have the breath to tell the truth about what those beasts did.
May the neshomos of those who tragically died in the Shoah have an aliyah, and may their names stand before us as a remembrance that life may be good for us but it has also often been perilous.
1 comment:
Do you have your mother's (or other survivors) stories recorded? If not it would be a tremendous boon to your family and klal to do so.
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