In most Israeli schools, both religious and non-religious, it is a tradition to fly to Poland during senior year or in the summer before senior year to explore the remnants of the Holocaust.I went on such a trip last summer.
Our first day was a pretty horrific way to start the trip. We visited Majdanek, one of the infamous extermination camps. One of my most memorable moments that day was standing around a concrete table in a room adjoining the crematoria. Our guide explained that, on that table, Nazi “doctors” had performed vile experiments on pregnant women. He then asked us to sing Eshet Hayyil, to honor all those Jewish mothers who were tortured and then murdered heartlessly. We sang, a tikkun (rectification) for the degrading manner in which those women were treated, the words echoing off the damp walls.
After spending the afternoon in gas chambers and crematoria, we drove to the old yeshiva in Lublin.
There, we suddenly found ourselves dancing and singing Hebrew songs at the top of our lungs. I was shocked at the sheer joy of life that erupted in that room after such a despairing day. We had traveled from a place that lay heavy with the silence of death, to a center for limmud Torah, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940. And yet, standing in the Beit Midrash, we did not have to dig deeply to find a drop of happiness inside ourselves; rather, the joy burst from us with an intensity that threatened to knock the walls down.
A similar thing happened on Friday. Returning to the hotel from AuschwitzBirkenau—too close to Shabbat to shower and still make it to shul on time—we opted to have our own davening in the hotel’s courtyard. Our tefilla was one of the most moving I’ve ever heard. Our kabbalat Shabbat that evening must have set the angels crying, for after three beautiful summery days, that night the heavens tore open in a downpour.
The days took on a pattern: throughout the day we would drive from place to place, comforting each other and mourning the terrible loss we were witnessing for the first time in our lives. At night, we would sing songs, joke, and generally just experience joy in being alive.
I spent a lot of time thinking. While most girls fell apart at the death camps, I, along with a few others, remained dryeyed. I hurt for the destruction we saw, but I did not cry.
One late night, on the way back to our hotel, we watched a short documentary on the bus. During Israel’s military memorial ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, three Israeli F-15 planes made an aerial demonstration over the death camp, a salute to the six million who perished. Among the six pilots, some were children of Holocaust survivors.
Watching that film, I broke down. The tears that had not come at the death pits in a forest came at the sight of the little blue magen davids painted on the tails of those F-15’s.
Following my trip to Poland, Yom haSho’ah this year was a different experience. I had a new perspective on things said at my school’s memorial ceremony. When our principal, Shira Breuer, got up to speak, she left us with food for thought: “Okay,” she said, “so somebody decided that today is Yom haSho’ah, a national day for mourning. But how do you personally mourn for those six million on the remaining days of the year?”
The little blue magen davids came into my mind again, and I had my answer right away – I mourn the six million only one day a year. And on the remaining 364 days? I say “Barukh ata…She’asani Yisrael” in the morning blessings— “Blessed are You…….who made me a descendant of Israel.”
When losing a loved one, people left behind often tend to feel guilty and saddened by everything they didn’t get a chance to do with the departed. My great-aunt told me recently how awful she had felt when her mother, my great grandmother, passed away nine years ago. “I was so upset that I would never get to do the mitzva of Kibbud Horim, of honoring my parents, ever again,” she remembered. “Then my cousin said to me, ‘Everything you do honors your mother.’ And she was right.”
That, in my mind, makes all the difference. One day a year, Jews all over the world mourn as one, focusing on the past. The rest of the year, the focus is on the present. In Israel, we hang Israeli flags from our windows. We send representatives to the Olympics. We fly our very own Israeli planes over Auschwitz. By living proudly, by strengthening our Jewish identity, we are honoring those whose freedom to do so got taken away.
ויש תקוה לאחריתך נאם ה׳
ושבו בנים לגבולם.
“And there is hope for thy future,” says the Lord, “that thy children shall return to their own border.” (Jeremiah 31:17)
God promises the people of Israel through the prophet Jeremiah that one day there will be an end to their exile, that they will overcome their crisis, their struggles and sorrow, and Jerusalem will be rebuilt.
I once read an interpretation of this pasuk that explained, “And there is hope” – where there is yet hope, there is strength enough to move on and rebuild. A person who is in constant mourning has lost hope.