HeritageandHistory Zurich

You can gather people around a table on Erev (Eve of) Pessach, you can place a plate with all the symbolic foods in the center of the table, read from the Haggadah (narrative), perform all the ritual, recite the prayers and even have the festive foods for dinner. If there aren’t any Jews sitting at this table, this not a Seder (ritual meal), but a staged act. This is true to most rituals or commemorations within the Israelite nation: it is through the person or the community that these events acquire their fundamental meaning.

 The Shoah was, by definition, the systematic annihilation of Jews. There is no other denomination. There are other victims, there are! But there is only one Holocaust.

The establishment of the date on which the Holocaust should be remembered in Israel generated heated discussion in the Knesset (Parliament) in 1951. Until then, in 1949 and 1950, Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Day) was celebrated on the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet, which is already a day of mourning, by determination or influence of the more traditional wings of the Knesset.  The Warsaw Ghetto survivors and heroes pleaded that it should be on the day of the Uprising, April 19th.  But on that date, in 1943, it was Erev Pessach. On the one hand, the more orthodox currents wanted to remove the date from the Hebrew month of Nissan, as it is the festive month of Pessach, and on the other, deputies insisted that it should be on the Day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

It is on Passover evening, April 19th, 1943, that Jewish resistance reaches its highest point. On the very night of the first Seder (ritual meal), when those Jews were supposed to be sitting at the table with their families, they were hiding in dark holes/pitches, exhausted and hungry, in fear and anger.

On April 12th, 1951, the balance between the two positions prevailed: Yom Hashoah should be on a day that falls after Pesach, but before Yom Haatsmaut (the Independence Day of the modern State of Israel), and never on Shabbat. History records the agreed date: 27th of Nissan!  Eight years later, in 1959, gevurah (in Hebrew, heroism) was added to the name, in remembrance of those who fought bravely against the extermination of the inhabitants of the Ghetto, and a national holiday was declared. Yom Hashoah Vehaguevurah was set – Day of the Holocaust and Heroism, as we celebrate today.

Yom Hashoah only really makes sense if it predates Yom Haatsmaut.  Although the Shoah is not the cause of the foundation of the modern State of Israel, Yom Haatsmaut, on the 5th of the Hebrew month of Yar, only reaches its full significance as a national date if the remembrance of the Shoah precedes the celebration of Independence. Yom Haatsmaut is not an effect of the Shoah, but a firm positioning in response to the Shoah.

These 49 days between the feasts of Pessach and Shavuot, in which we find ourselves now, have such a distinguished role in the identity of the Israelites as a nation, that we count them day by day, with the Omer (reference to the wheat offering in the Temple in Jerusalem). In these 49 days, we leave Egypt on Pessach, we remember the Holocaust and we praise the bravery of the heroes, we solemnly honor those who fought and fight for a free nation on Yom Hazikaron (Remembrance Day), we explode in joy for the sovereignty of the Jewish State on Yom Haatsmaut, and on Shavuot we celebrate as a people our decision to embrace the Torah.  In these 49 days, it is clear that historical chronicity, especially of the Torah, is inexpressive to amalgamate the Israelite nation.

We are the ones who give purpose to the celebration of Pessach, it is we, as a people, who have chosen to accept the Torah. Holocaust Remembrance only reaches its full meaning when we Jewish people dedicate ourselves to it.

 We can’t and shouldn’t do it alone, of course. This struggle must belong to all democrats and all humanists beyond political, social, religious or ethnic differences.  And intellectual, but above all ethical rigor demands that we extend this struggle to all forms of racism and denialism.

However, we are the ones who give it a soul. Just as each of us must feel as if we were liberated from Egypt, so each of us must feel as if he/she had been a victim of the Holocaust, a protagonist of bravery, and graced with the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps, and with the survival.

I feel abandoned and desolate every October 28th, when in 1938 Polish Jews living in Germany were expelled and pressed on the border of Poland, which also did not receive them as citizens. I am shocked and saddened every May 10th, when in 1933 bonfires burned with Jewish books or books by Jewish authors which were ripped from libraries. I feel helpless every November 9th, when in 1938 stones were thrown and synagogues burned in Germany. I feel as if I myself have been cornered in a street and beaten, or confined in a ghetto, or transported to a camp; as if I myself had had my head shaved and been cold, hungry and humiliated in one of those barracks.

I feel as if I myself have been cornered in a street and beaten, or confined in a ghetto, or transported to a camp; as if I myself had had my head shaved and been cold, hungry and humiliated in one of those barracks.

And putting myself in that place, because that place is also mine, I honor my grandfather’s brothers, his cousins, his parents. Relatives I’ve never even heard of.  And also his neighbors, synagogue friends, near and far, just like us, you and me!  People who were enslaved in factories, dishonored, chased away, and ultimately murdered.

In my work, however, I do not research or study the Holocaust, nor its effects. I dedicate myself to those who escaped the Holocaust, who managed to escape their fatal sentence and who were lucky enough to be able to rebuild their lives. It is a fact that they capitalized on their energies and resources for themselves and for those they were close to in the post-war period—the spared and the survivors. But we are witnesses that their efforts were dedicated to the memory of those who were no longer here. Family, friends, community, cities and towns. The survivors scattered around the world and in the new independent homeland took on the moral mission of “not letting it be forgotten”, because “not to forget” would not have been enough.

I don’t believe in coincidences. I have faith in fate, perhaps in chance. Coincidence is like coexistence and cooperation: in them lies a manifest desire or a latent intention. I do not believe that, in 1951, the Knesset deputies, men and women who certainly had the Jewish calendar setting the pace of their new lives in the new homeland, did not take into account the passage from the Torah that would be read in the week of the 27th of Nissan. I do believe that they found in Acharei Mot (after death, in Hebrew) the appropriate background to remember those who were killed.

All would be remembered equally, regardless of the degree to which they opposed the regime and the persecution. For unlike other situations in the history of the Jewish people, the Nazis did not give the Jews any alternative or way out, regardless of whether they were observant or assimilated, whether poor or rich, right or left – regardless of their intention, practice or desire.  No Jewish person had a chance.  Not only those who bravely stood up to the Nazi officials would be remembered, but everyone equally, for no Jew abandoned their faith and all kept Kiddush Hashem – they did not blaspheme and remained faithful to the God of Israel. Thus they sanctified His name, the ineffable name that can only be pronounced in the innermost precincts of the sanctuary, by a priest, on the holiest of the days, Yom Kippur, as described in the Torah portion we read this week—Acharei Mot.

I am not referring to the biblical Day of Atonement, when Aaron atoned for himself, his family, and the people.  Those sacrificial rituals have not found resonance in the Jewish liturgy for centuries.  It is not possible to speak of oxen, sprinkling of blood, animal sacrifices, incense bowls or the drawing of goats in our contemporary context.

The atonement has been democratized, and each of us must actively, not as passive bystanders of biblical priestly ritual, atone for our transgressions, intentional or not.  Today, we don’t slaughter animals, we don’t have a high priest. Our liturgy brings us together to fast, pray, ask for forgiveness, reconcile with the essence of an ethical and meaningful life – no longer a life for a life, but life for life.

Today, in addition to reflection on our study, I propose remembrance.

 I invite everyone to go to https://www.illuminatethepast.org and light a candle for someone whose life was lost in the Holocaust. You can thus honor the memory of people who do not have a living relative to remember them.  Remember yours and make yours an unknown.