Religious Intelligence Ltd, UK
Jan 28 2008
Analysis: Holocaust Memorial Day
Monday, 28th January 2008. 2:30pm
By: Rabbi Rachel Montagu.
In 1998 middle school students at Whitwell, a small town in
Tennessee, were bemused by the sheer scale of what they were learning
about the Holocaust in a course on tolerance.
Because during WWII some Norwegians wore a loop of metal as tacit
protest against the Nazis, they decided to collect a paper clip for
each Jewish victim of the Holocaust so they could see what 6 million
of anything looks like. After publicity about this project, many
people (including Presidents Clinton and Bush) sent paper clips. Then
they established the Children’s Holocaust Memorial; a railway goods
coach like the ones which ferried Jews to the camps, containing 11
million paper clips, 6 million for the Jewish victims, 5 million for
the non-Jewish victims including Roma and disabled. Any commemoration
which ignores the Jewishness of many of the victims is unrealistic
but so is any that suggests the Nazis murdered only Jews.
The mind-boggling enormity of the Holocaust is a difficulty for us
all. Lyn Smith’s anthology `Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust’
demonstrates that many of those going through it were also full of
disbelief that such things could be happening, such cruelty and
horror. Many theologians have wrestled with the difficulty of
offering any explanation. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovitz talks of God’s face
hidden at what human beings do with their God-given free will. But
the impossibility of understanding the Holocaust makes all the more
urgent the need to remember it.
Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on January 27, the anniversary of
the liberation of Auschwitz. After it was instituted in Britain and
some other European countries in 2001, the United Nations passed a
resolution in 2005 designating January 27 International Holocaust
Memorial Day. It is often but mistakenly suggested that the Jewish
community lobbied for its creation.
Actually the government initially proposed it and the Jewish
community reacted cautiously. Jews commemorate the Holocaust on Yom
HaShoah, Holocaust Day, which usually falls in April near the
anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Why another day?
Eventually the Jews in Britain realized the importance of a national
opportunity for everyone to reflect on the significance of the
Holocaust and of all the other genocides commemorated. It is good
that this year the Muslim Council of Great Britain will be joining in
the commemorations.
How, if the Holocaust is beyond comprehension, can we commemorate it
before God? Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks described the Holocaust as
`a mystery wrapped in silence’. Rabbi Irving Greenberg wrote: `… over
a million innocent children were savagely killed. No statement,
theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible
in the presence of burning children. Any easy affirmation of God
would appear to mock the burning children. Any easy denial of God
would appear to turn the children’s deaths into a gigantic travesty.’
This sets a formidable challenge for any Holocaust Memorial Day
service. For those daunted by the prospect of creating such a
liturgy, The Council of Christians and Jews has produced resources.
Ever since Abraham asked God, `should not the judge of all the world
do justice?’ Judaism has had a tradition of prayer that challenges
God. A well-known story describes how one night, in a packed
concentration camp blockhouse, the prisoners put God on trial and
declared God guilty of permitting their terrible situation — then
prayed the evening service. A similar story by Elie Wiesel describes
a group of prisoners in Auschwitz who decided that they would eat
their usual meagre rations on Yom Kippur because fasting would hasten
their deaths. Their leader, who had encouraged the rest to eat,
fasted, later explaining that he had acted from defiance not
obedience: `Here and now the only way to accuse him is by praising
him.’
A story by Zvi Kolitz, titled Yossel Rakover’s Appeal to God
describes the last moments of a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto: `It is
a time when God has veiled his countenance from the world … I cannot
extol You for the deeds you tolerate. I bless You and extol You for
the very fact of Your existence. … You may take from me all I cherish
and hold dear in the world… – I will believe in You, I will always
love You!’
If one of the strongest responses to the Holocaust was to say, `Never
Again’ to exterminating people because of their race, how are we to
understand those genocides which have happened since and the rape and
torture now happening in Darfur? Rabbi Hugo Gryn said that the real
question was `Not where was God in Auschwitz but where was man?’
The Sufi Muslim Council, Faith Matters and the Three Faiths Forum
have a current project, Bridging Beliefs, with the theme Never Again.
Up and down the country, meetings took place where a Jewish Holocaust
survivor and a Muslim Bosnia survivor described the atrocities they
had experienced because of their faith to a Jewish and Muslim
audience to create better relations between communities and help to
prevent potential deaths.
Yad VaShem UK has a project called Guardian of the Memory. Churches,
schools and individuals undertake to commemorate annually the death
of one person who was killed in the Holocaust. The inspiration was
David Berger, a boy who wrote shortly before the Nazis killed him in
Vilna in 1941, `I should like someone to remember that there once
lived a person named David Berger.’
The Holocaust and other genocides unquestionably show human beings at
their most vile but some people responded with great spiritual
nobility to the Holocaust’s challenge. Those who risked their lives
to hide and help Jews, described in books like Michael Gilbert’s The
Righteous. Those who refused to be dehumanized or to cease to
practice their religion, described in Eliezer Berkowitz’ book With
God in Hell: Judaism in the Ghettoes and Death Camps. Those who wrote
this prayer found at Ravensbruck: `Eternal, remember not only the men
of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the
suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we
have brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty,
our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart
that has grown out of this. And when they come to judgment, let all
the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.’
Jane Clements has written about the importance of education about the
Holocaust. Nothing can justify the Holocaust, nothing can excuse the
Holocaust, no one can comprehend the Holocaust, but if we can learn
something from it, then that may go somewhere to redeeming what
happened, and ensure that no one ignores or denies the Holocaust and
the other genocides, those of the Armenians, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda
and Darfur, commemorated on this day.
Yad VaShem UK Guardian of the Memory Campaign email:
office@yadvashem,org,uk 020 7543 5402
Council of Christians and Jews
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust