In Their Memories: Rosh Hashanah 5780
I will never forget the early morning in August this past year. I was in Poland and I woke up crying. It was a moment when the tragedy of the Holocaust was transformed for me from history to memory.
It was the first time I remember such a palpable sadness for the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The previous day, we walked on the path taken by the trains in Treblinka where hundreds of thousands of Jews emerged to a ticket booth adorned with flowers, a receipt for their clothes and then escorted down the Tube where they were gassed to death. There are no remnants in Treblinka. There are monuments of the cities from where the Jews lived but no names except for one whose identity I will share soon. Their names are lost forever.
The tears flowed, not only for the horror but also from the realization that I had not done enough to perpetuate their memories. I sensed a deep personal responsibility to insure the Jews who were murdered were not forgotten and did not die in vain.
I share this reflection with you today as Rosh Hashanah is called Yom Hazikaron in the Torah, a day of memory. Note it is not a day of history but a day of memory. It is not simply an opportunity to change the date of year or mark the passage of time on a calendar but to reflect on how the events in Jewish history are part of our conscious memory.
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs explains the difference between history and memory as follows:
“There is a profound difference between history and memory. History is his story – an event that happened sometime else to someone else. Memory is my story – something that happened to me and is part of who I am. History is information. Memory, by contrast, is part of identity. I can study the history of other peoples, cultures and civilizations. They deepen my knowledge and broaden my horizons. But they do not make a claim on me. They are the past as past. Memory is the past as present, as it lives on in me. Without memory there can be no identity.”
This past summer, the Holocaust became part of my memory. It is crucial for all of us.
I am confident everyone here can identify the major concentration or extermination camps, the number of Jews murdered or the names of three villainous Nazis. I could do it. It is not enough. We have an obligation to keep their memories alive and be inspired by the values they embodied. Having the Holocaust only as part of our history and not our memories is a posthumous victory for the Nazis.
The goal and mission of the Nazis was not only total destruction but to wipe the existence of the Jews off the face of the earth. Holocaust denial started during the Holocaust. The Nazis sought to remove all evidence of their mass murder of Jews.
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS party, articulated the historic mission of the Nazis, “We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? – I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men only – the difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth.”
Yet, the Jews sought to fight back.
Shimon Dobow, a Jewish born Russian activist and writer who lived in Riga was evicted from his home, in 1941, losing his entire library, and was placed into the Riga Ghetto. While there, he would repeat a mantra to the ghetto inhabitants in Yiddish, “Jews, write and record”. It became his last words as he was rounded up for the Rumbula massacre and murdered on December 8, 1941.
In November 1940, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, a secret band of journalists, scholars and community leaders decides to fight back. Led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and known by the code name Oyneg Shabes, this clandestine group vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda, not with guns or fists but with pen and paper.
The materials submitted included essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters, and other materials describing life in the Ghetto. The collecting work began in September 1939 and ended in January 1943.
Ringelblum had the archives stored in three milk cans and ten metal boxes, which were then buried in three places in the Ghetto. Two of the canisters, containing thousands of documents, were unearthed on 18 September 1946 and a further ten boxes on 1 December 1950.
Shimon and Nathan and many others dedicated their shortened lives to perpetuating the memories of the Jews who would be murdered.
Are the Six million Jews who died part of our memory or only our history?
The very first words we heard when arriving in Poland was the phrase “Every person has a name”. We learned that the most important number in the Holocaust is not in fact 6 million but one.
Each Jew possessed an unwavering yearning to touch eternity and live on through the power of Jewish practice, ritual, Torah and kindness.
We are blessed with so much freedom to practice the values of our faith. Yet, we often fail to seize the opportunities. The names and brief stories I will share with you now serve as inspiring models for all of us and we must insure they did not die in vain. They must be ever present in our memories.
I first will invoke the memories of Jacob Frankel and Rivka Cooper. We learned of their spiritual heroism while in the barracks in Auschwitz on Tisha B’Av,, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. Every Jewish male has an obligation to wear Tefillin daily. It is a mitzvah we can do. Women must light candles every Friday night. It is also a mitzvah we can do. For Jacob and Rivka, their lives were on the line if they practiced the mitzvot and yet they did and in the process inspired others who lived with them and all of us. Both of their testimonies were taken at the Eichmann trials.
Jacob shared that he got together with friends to eke out 4 rations of bread to use to acquire a pair of Tefllin in the camps. There were many pairs confiscated by the Nazis and now stored in the warehouses managed by other Jews. Jacob recalled that when he put on the Tefillin he experienced an ecstasy he had never felt before. When other Jews in the barracks saw Jacob and his friends with the Tefilin and they all lined up for a chance to make a blessing and wear them. Jacob explained that they had to limit the moment of time that each person wore Tefillin because so many people wanted a chance to wear them. Wear your tefillin or start wearing them in memory of Jacob Frankel and the Jews who would risk their lives to put them on.
Rivka Cooper smuggled two stubs of candles to begin lighting Shabbat candles in the barracks on Friday night. She had not lit Friday night candles in months. As she and her friends, gathered around the candles they sang the blessings together and more women joined them. She shared that from that night on, they never missed a Friday in Auschwitz lighting the Shabbat candles and each time were brought back in time to the peace of Shabbat at home.
Light your candles and invoke the memory of Rivka Cooper and in the merit of the countless Jewish women who would give anything to be at home and welcome the Shabbat with the light.
A third name is Janusz Korczak. He was a Polish Jewish educator, children's author and pedagogue known as the Doctor and true hero. He was the equivalent today of a Jewish Dr. Spock. He opened up an orphanage for both Jewish and non Jewish children. Remarkably, he was excluded from living in the Ghetto but declined as he wanted to stay with the orphans. Even more inspiring when the transports arrived to take the children to Treblinka to be executed, he insisted on staying with them.
The eyewitness report reads: on August 6th, 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 orphans and about one dozen staff members to transport them to the Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the "Aryan side" by the Polish underground organization Żegota, but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. On 5 August, he again refused offers of sanctuary, insisting that he would go with the children.
The children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy. Joshua Perle, an eyewitness whose wartime writings were saved in the Ringelblum Archive,[18] described the procession of Korczak and the children through the Ghetto to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point to the death camps):
Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar.
He told the orphans they were going out into the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able to exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was led by an SS man...
According to eyewitnesses, when the group of orphans finally reached the Umschlagplatz, an SS officer recognized Korczak as the author of one of his favorite children's books and offered to help him escape. Korczak once again refused. He boarded the trains with the children and was never heard from again. His name is the only one recorded at Treblinka.
Did Janusz Korckak die in vain? Are he and the orphans lost to history or will we commit to making them a part of our memory? The Nazis sought out every Jew in hate, will we redouble our efforts to seek out Jews and humanity with love?
Will we remember?
Will we insure that as they died as Jews, we will live as Jews in their memory?
The Talmud states that on the death of King Hezekiah, he was honored greatly by his people. The honor they accorded him was that they established a school upon his grave. We must remember the martyrs not by observing death alone but by being obsessed with perpetuating Jewish life and mending the world.
Our Jewish lives today must bear them in mind and memory. Not only for them but the millions of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren they might have had. This is our charge and this is our destiny.
One of the most moving experiences on our journey was reading the Torah we brought from Stamford on Tisha B’Av morning in Auschwitz. As we raised the Torah, we declared, “It is a Tree of Life”. The Nazis wanted to erase the memory of the Jews but we are here. We rested the Torah on an Israeli flag. Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, we declare Am YIsrael Chai – the Jewish people will endure with God’s help, forever!
Let us each recommit to insure that the millions of Jews who perished, each soul are truly part of our conscious memory. They live in us and through us through the mitzvoth that we do. Light Candles in their memory. Do acts of Kindness in their memory. We are the generation charged with filling the void left by their loss and God willing together we will embrace this mantle and mission with honor and passion to reinvigorate Jewish life for generations to come.