Yom Hashoah Vehagevurah – Holocaust and Heroism Day

“Given all these circumstances, about the only effective form of resistance the Jews in ghettos could exercise in the short run was to defeat the Nazi effort to starve them to death.”
—–Peter Hayes, Why, Explaining the Holocaust, 2017

It is hard to imagine
there was a time and a place,
if someone spoke up,
or refused to follow an order,
or helped another —-
they were shot,
as was the next in line,
the next after that,
and the next after that.
This was a time
when fear filled every crack and crevice of the day,
starvation sapped strength to resist,
and isolation stole the will to go on.
It was a time
where disease drained energy,
cold captured resilience,
and the crush of human flesh, foundered fortitude.
A time
where the future was a mirage,
control an illusion,
and denial was required
to put one foot in front of the other.
It was a time
when the search for survival,
occupied every corner, of every person’s mind.

We like to think we are different,
that we would speak up,
or do something heroic,
or somehow resist,
but really, would we?
Would we not make the same bargains
to keep our families safe,
go along, to avoid something worse,
stay silent, to not become targets ourselves,
or look the other way, because our own self-interests
outweighed the interests of others?
From the safety of our homes,
secure in having food on the table,
shelter from the cold,
a wage being earned,
the freedom to vote and even protest,
it is hard to understand
more people not fighting back.
When people’s lives were wedged
between atrocity acting too swift,
and rescue remaining too still,
sitting in judgement is too easy.

As we mourn the murdered,
let us also honour our heroes:
the 27,000 Zionist youth
who joined the British army,
the 25,000 Jewish fighters
who fought in the forests of eastern Europe,
the thousands who fought in the mountains of Greece and Yugoslavia,
and the Jews in the French resistance.
Let us honour those
inmates who killed staff at Treblinka,
those who freed deportees headed to Auschwitz,
and the armed Jewish undergrounds
in ghettos, forced labor sites, and death camps.
Let us honour those
who kept a people alive
by organizing religious services, schools, and cultural events,
those who thwarted Hitler
by keeping someone else alive,
and those who summoned the will to live,
and, against all odds,
kept themselves alive.
Let us honour those
for whom survival became defiance.

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