It seems lately we are asked to “remember” quite a lot. Earlier this week we experienced Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance day. In the coming week we will have Yom HaZikaron, Remembrance day for fallen soldiers and terror victims, and then Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli Independence day. All of these days commemorate events that have taken place in just over 60 years- a blink of an eye in the span of history. However to our kids, these things are ancient history. So how do we teach them to “Remember” things they have no memory of?
We are American Jews, in the land of the free. We’ve grown up in a time of economic flourishing, and most of us have benefited from the comfort of that stability. Even for us, it’s difficult to put ourselves in a mindset of a time when it was hard to be a Jew. Yet just over 60 years ago, we had no homeland, no security, and were being persecuted all across Europe. Times have changed. Our children will hopefully live in a world where they don’t know what it means to be discriminated against or subjugated based on their religion. We are the bridging generation between those who lived in fear and those who live in freedom. So how will we pass over the traditions? How will we merge the past, present and future?
We have to make it real for our children. One way is to really understand the facts. We have heard that “six million Jews were lost in the Holocaust,” so many times that the number has seemed to lose its meaning. Can anyone really comprehend just how many six million are? I remember when I was 13, our teachers gave the entire seventh grade a project. We had to “x” off boxes of graph paper until we had marked off six million. We were allowed to do it in class, even while the teachers were teaching. It took a grade of four classes, 30 kids in a class, several months to complete--and it gave me a new meaning for the number “six million.” To this day, I think about it every time I hear about the Holocaust.
When our children understand the impact, then they can feel a genuine connection, and begin to receive an education about our heritage. We have to show them how important it is for us to live as Jews and live in freedom. We have to raise them with an appreciation of our independence, and a gratitude for our liberty. We must educate them not to take their Judaism for granted just because they have the ability to blend in. We can instill pride, gratitude, and continuity. For those who have no memory of our past, we can build them a more beautiful future. We only need to recognize our role as the bridge, and step up to the plate in delivering the right message. Let’s start now. Bring it to life for them. Check out this beautiful new custom to make a meaningful Seder with your family on Yom HaShoa, and remember our survival of the holocaust and the birth of the state of Israel, our homeland. Watch this trailer for Out of Faith, a moving film about three generations of a Jewish family torn apart because the importance of Jewish identity wasn’t passed on (buy the film on DVD here). This May, bring your kids to the Salute to Israel parade, and expose them to the pride and excitement about our country. Spend time thinking about how you, your family, and your children value your Judaism and your freedom, and talk about it with them. The continuity of our people and our tradition is in your hands; pass it on with love and dignity.
(Special thank you to Jodi Samuels at MetroImma for sharing this column with us. Please visit www.metroimma.com for more!)
In 1941, at age 17, Hilda Stern was sent to the Lodz ghetto in Poland. She was later sent to Birkenau and then to Auschwitz. Three weeks after arriving in Auschwitz, she was transfered to the women's camp at Malchow, Mecklenburg. She was freed by Soviet troops in May 1945.
She credits her faith in G-d with her survival.
Lashed Is My Tongue
by Hilda Stern Cohen
Translation by Gerald Liebenau
Lashed is my tongue
to a language that cursed me,
hammered into
my ears
with sounds of love
and a devouring hatred.
Seared
into my soul
the colosssal specter of eternal writings,
the ancient towers of cities,
the streams, small and swift,
and the stars that guard the mighty.
Seared
into my eyes
the printed filth of haranguing pamphlets,
the confining barbed wire,
the walled-in dungeons of shame,
and the searchlights hounding poison into the dusk.
Love and hate delivered themselves
to the cross to which my heart is welded,
as is my tongue.
Original poems by Hilda Stern Cohen copyright © 2006 Werner Cohen and Estate of Hilda Stern Cohen. Used by permission. English translations by Gerald Liebenau, used by permission.
To learn more about her life and poetry, please visit www.hildasterncohen.org.
Last year , the President of Iran gave a speech in which he stated that he does not believe there ever was a Holocaust.
This terrifies me.
Not because of the zealots in Iran, but those people in America who may not know better. For the children, to whom the Holocaust is ancient history. We need to make certain that our children know.
When I was growing up, my best friend Rena's mother had numbers tattooed on her arm. I knew what they meant. The Holocaust wasn't a "long time ago"--it happened to Rena's mother. My friend's mother.
But the survivors are dwindling. There are few left to show their numbers and tell their stories. A few years ago, when my children were toddlers, I had the honor of driving two women to a brunch a service group I belonged to was hosting for Holocaust survivors. I brought my young children and explained to them that they were too young to understand who these women were, but that one day, they would be old enough to learn about the Holocaust and on that day, I would remind them of these women.
They were lovely women--warm and funny. I wanted to know their stories, but instead they fretted about getting in and out of my mini van and cautioned me to stop talking and concentrate on my driving and "please, darling, drive more slowly."
But, when the survivors are gone, who will tell the stories?
We must teach our children.
This Sunday, please read your children the book by Eve Bunting titled One Candle. It beautifully tells the story of a young girl's grandmother who makes a candle out of a potato during the family's Chanukah dinner. As she cuts the candle, and pours the oil and fashions the wick, she tells the story of when she and her sister were in Buchenwald. They carefully smuggled margarine and a potato from the kitchen where they worked. They did so, not to eat, but so that they could light a candle on Chanukah.
"My sister Ruth whispers close to my ear, 'Why do you think Grandma wants to do this every year?'
I shrug my shoulders because I don't know for sure. But I think it has to do with being strong in the bad time and remembering it in the good time. And for the women in Grandma's barracks and the others who didn't live to come out."
If your children are older, encourage them to read The Diary of Anne Frank, better still, buy it for them for Chanukah. And if your children are even older, buy Elie Weisel's Night and Day (and read them yourself if you haven't already.)
This year at Chanukah, I will make a potato candle with my family... for Rena's mother and "the others who didn't live to come out."
And, to make sure the President of Iran, and others like him, have no voice when they speak such evil. |
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