Yom Ha Shoah

This Thursday was Yom Ha Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, rather than reading long and somber lists of names of people killed in the camps, we heard from survivors in the congregation about their personal experiences in the Shoah. That was really fascinating, hearing a whole different side of people I had known for years. I was particularly intrigued to hear the stories of elderly people who spoke again as the children they were, experiencing the incomprehensible during Cristallnacht and the Kindertransport.
One person described her incredulous, very assimilated father, a doctor, receiving a call from a gentile friend warning him to take his family and leave Dusseldorf right away because there was going to be trouble. Being a law-abiding citizen, one of the lucky ones, in his own mind, he called the police, who thanked him, then turned up at the front door to arrest him and his oldest sons. The rest of the family took refuge in a non-Jewish neighbor's house . When they came back, everything was broken... the windows, the dishes, the paintings on the walls slashed. And particularly poignant, the glass coffee table. The woman described her mother covering the table with a tablecloth and serving tea and cake to a visitor. As they sat drinking their tea, the children watched the cake and teapot slowly sink into the broken table, and tried hard not to laugh... or to cry.
All too often, Yom Ha Shoah turns into a sort of unhealthy fixation with death. This was about life, about survival, and the uncanny luck of finding oneself alive in terrible circumstances.