A Future and a Hope

.עָזִּי וְזִמְרָת יָהּ, וַיְהִי-לִי לִישׁוּעָה; זֶה אֵלִי וְאַנְוֵהוּ,  אֱלֹהֵי אָבִי וַאֲרֹמְמֶנְהוּ

The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will glorify Him; my father's God, and I will exalt Him. 

―Exodus 15:2

Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?
―Leon Uris (via Ari Ben Canaan), Exodus

In the summer between Grade 6 and 7, just before I turned 12, I read Leon Uris's novel Exodus. I was a prolific reader, and within a few months, I had read most of his then published novels; QBVII, Battle Cry, Topaz. After reading Mila 18, I didn't want to go to the bathroom late at night (when I did my reading) because I was suddenly afraid Nazis would find me outside my bunker. I was fully aware that: a) the war was long over, b) I wasn't in a bunker, and c) I really needed to pee. 

But it was Exodus that hooked me. I didn't realize then, at age almost 12, that this was not great literature. (I read the book many times between the ages of 12 and 20, but it was only when I read it much later in life, well into middle age, did I realize, not only, just how much it wasn't great literature, but also just how far it was from the truth it was supposedly based on.) Nonetheless, it was my first exposure to both Zionist Literature and Holocaust Literature. That summer, I knew  that I wanted to live my life in the Land of Heroes such as Ari Ben-Canaan. That summer, I also intuitively understood that learning about the Holocaust was imperative.

Exodus was my first exposure to Holocaust literature, but not to the Holocaust. At some point, long before the summer of Leon Uris, I had learned about it at school. I don't know when that was, but I can't remember a time I didn't know. Of course, back then, at the beginning of the last quarter of the 20th century, when I was in high school, the word Holocaust was only just beginning to be used. We, as students, were not encouraged to ask too many questions. In Grade 12, we had a course on the Holocaust. Mrs. S., the 'Holocaust' teacher, told of the forced relocations and the ghettoes, the difference between a 'death camp' and a 'concentration camp'. We learned their names: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau. She told us about cattle cars and, after we read Anne Frank's Diary in English Class, about Bergen Belsen where Anne had been murdered. But Mrs. S didn't tell us how Anne had been murdered and she probably didn't use the word 'murdered' either. She might have said killed, but most likely she used the word 'died'. The course was all about numbers and places and dates. Few people were mentioned. Anne Frank and Janusz Korczak seemed to be the only two real people who died. As part of the course on Holocaust, we were absolutely not exposed to any survivors. Only later did I discover that my hometown had a statistically large survivor population. (It also had a Nazi population that nobody discussed and an absurdly large antisemitic population that was shrugged away.)

Once, when I was about 15, after Exodus but before the Holocaust course, my father and I were watching a locally produced documentary. One of the speakers was a man my father knew well. The man, I think his name was Phil, was speaking of his experiences 'during the war.' That's what it was called by everyone I knew of my parents' generation (except those who had actually been 'in the war'). "He forgets things", my mother would tell me about an old person I knew – a teacher, a neighbour, someone from the shul who talked to himself – "because he went through the war". They died in the war was another sentence I heard regularly. My siblings and I were named after people who died in the war. At one point, I thought my great uncles and aunts and cousins I had never met died in an airplane bombing, or perhaps while they were blowing up a bridge. (My family, had in fact, been murdered either at the Belzec Death Camp or shot into a mass grave.) What's more, the words were said in whispers. Sometimes, the whispers were accompanied by a slight shake of the head. We never asked questions. We didn't want to make people feel bad.

But watching the documentary, listening to Phil describe what happened to his parents and to his siblings and sitting next to my father, I dared to ask him, 'Did you know about this?'

My father looked at me and answered, "your mother's family was also killed in the war ". 

I stared at him, unable to speak. What I had meant by the question was did my father know that Phil had been in the ghettoes and camps? (The word 'survivor' was not yet used). Because I certainly had not. These things were never discussed. My father's answer bewildered me.  Did he think that I, at age 15, was unaware of the Holocaust?  Did he think I hadn't understood the euphemism 'he died in the war'? Did he think that by using the word killed rather than died he had explained the Holocaust to me? I did what any good daughter of those years would do. I nodded my head and turned back to the TV, the conversation ended. 

Today, of course, things are very different. Now we use words like survivors, murdered, genocide. There are memorials and museums and university courses on the subject. High school kids go to Poland to see with their own eyes the places where it happened. There are dozens of movies and books depicting real events. Nobody is talking in whispers. 

And yet. 

More and more movies are sanitized so as not to offend viewers. More and more are showing 'the war' from the German (Nazi) perspective.  'The Germans also suffered'. More and more stories are being told that are totally false. 

But worse. 

Nazi-like antisemitism is rising again, this time in the form of anti-Zionism. False 'narratives' and false histories are being taken for truth. Outright lies are being told of the Israeli government, of its people, of Zionists. Zionists (aka Jews) are being shunned from cultural, academic, and business events. 
Their products are being boycotted.
It is ok to kill a Zionist (Jew), especially if that Zionist (Jew) is in the wrong place.

Evil is seen as good and good as evil. 

The world seems to be forgetting what happens when lies are taken for truth, when hatred is taken for tolerance, when Jews are targeted. 

But worst of all, JEWS seem to be forgetting what happens when there is no Israel, when there is no Jewish Government and no Jewish Army to protect them. It is so easy to forget what happens when there is fighting between brothers, when there is hatred and violence, when God is forgotten. 

Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day (יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה) reminds us of what we must never forget; of what we no longer speak of in whispers, of what we no longer use euphemisms for; of what we can no longer shrug off.  

We remember our shared history, its glories and its tragedies. But mostly, we need to remember our shared destiny; 

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

While we remember the worlds that we have lost, let us never forget to respect, to honor, to listen to, and to love the worlds of each other.