Tonight begins Yom HaShoah.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the day the international community remembers the horrific atrocities, the worldâs indifference, and the victims of the Holocaust. Ideally, anyway, but thatâs a conversation for another time.
This is not that. This is the day Jews around the world mourn our 6,000,000+ dead. Two-thirds of European Jews. One-third of the worldâs Jewish population.
Our population still has not recovered.
Those are big numbers. So let me bring them home to smaller ones. My grandmother (zâl) was born into a family of eight (she made the ninth). My grandmother and four others survived the Shoah. Four perished. Two in KZ RavensbrĂźck. Two more at the hands of the SS Politzei. May their memories be for a blessing.
The survivors? Two hidden children. A young seamstress that survived brutal work camps. A boy told to ride his bike as far away as he could that found a way onto a kindertransport. A young woman whoâd been on a teen trip to the British Mandate who heeded her parents warnings not to go back home. Two of them are still alive today, and the rest lived to ripe old age and saw their lineages pass down to children, grandchildren, and, in my grandmotherâs case, a great-grandchild.
They were the lucky ones, but what they survived left permanent marks. They cannot forget the Shoah and neither shall I.
There are only two of them left, and their biggest fear is that the Shoah and its tragedies and lessons will be forgotten.
Remember them. Remember their family. Remember the Shoah.
Never forget. Never again.
May the names of the millions be for a blessing.
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
amandla
