Today is Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. A day steeped in the deepest of contrasts where we seek to honor the lives and souls of six million people, but doing so in whispers so to keep their lives sacred.
Back in college, I participated every year in a reading of the names. This reading would go on for twenty-four hours as candles burned, and we would recite names and ages of those who have left us.
Yacov Gottlieb, age 32
Channa Gottlieb, age 27
Abram Gottlieb, age 4
“Baby” Gottlieb
Names of an entire family, existing now in hushed and choked utterances.
There’s an irony there…almost an innate refusal to acknowledge such tragedies, but to let this event escape our collective memory is to tread on some very dangerous ground. For many survivors of the Holocaust, it is literally unimaginable to try to remember those years, and yet they are driven to. I was honored to have spent a few hours with a survivor a couple years ago. He spoke of being sustained by dreams of something better. He said he was fed by scraps, yet nourished by hope. This was a man who had to erase the word “never” from his vocabulary. He said that word exists at the root of all pain. The second we believe that a tragedy could never happen is the same moment where we drop our guard. Conversely, if we believe that joy will never return, we squelch that divine spark that resides in us all that represents the fight. Nietzsche once said (popularly quoted by Viktor Frankl) “he who has a ‘why’ can bear almost any ‘how.'” That is to say, we are capable of enduring just about anything if we can identify a reason, a dream, a person, or ideal to fight for.
Only a generation or two separates us from one of the worst seasons in human history, where countless individuals were trapped in a literal and daily fight for their lives. But if you had a chance to talk to a survivor, they would tell you that the fight is far from over. Atrocities against human dignity are happening today. Uganda, Rwanda, and Darfur, the sex trade (both domestic and abroad), addiction, AIDS, human rights, and mental health. These are all issues that demand our attention. These efforts must extend past simple awareness campaigns, and words must be coupled with action.
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons to be learned from one of our darkest chapters is that your life matters. The entire cannon of our existence can boil down to the fact that the thoughts in your head and the dreams that you swear could be real make you sacred. The foundational crime of the Holocaust was that people, human beings, were forced to accept the lie that they were somehow less than human. Today is a rally cry for the human spirit. Today is a starting point, where we can vow to not let discomfort stand in the way of affirming one another. A day where we can celebrate that this world is a different and better place for the simple fact that you call it home, and where we dance to the unheard rhythm of your heartbeat. Take time today to find ways to validate this in one another. Tip a janitor, pay for a stranger’s coffee, open the door for a complete stranger, leave a friendly message on a phone, or in a book, or in the pollen of an unwashed car. There is so much more that connects us than could ever separate us.
In the constant memory of the six million, I stand for those who have ever felt less than “worth it.” You are priceless, and I hope that you feel that today.
ברוך דין האמת
Chad