At precisely 10 a.m. on Holocaust Remembrance Day, sirens sound across Israel. The nation stands at silent attention for two minutes and recalls what the Jewish people lost in the fires of the Shoah.
We don’t have sirens here. American Jews do not get out of their cars and traffic does not come to a standstill. Removed from the Holocaust by time and space, the Bay Area Jewish community nevertheless takes time to remember when Yom HaShoah commences at sundown on April 7.
Our cover stories this week highlight two astonishing tales of rescue from the Holocaust — one in the Philippines, the other in Austria. Both have local connections, and both are the subjects of new documentaries.
As much as Yom HaShoah is part of the Jewish calendar today, it was not always so. In the first years after the Holocaust, the Jewish people were still in shock. Many people — survivors and the general public alike — did not want to talk about the wartime atrocities. Shame mixed with suppressed anger to keep much of it under wraps.
With the Jerusalem trial of Nazi butcher Adolf Eichmann in 1961, victims’ testimonies poured forth, and the subject went public with sudden force. Jews needed to talk about it and the world needed to listen.
After that, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and archive, grew into a resource of incalculable importance. Other Holocaust museums and memorials sprung up in cities across the globe. Holocaust education became part of curricula in schools everywhere.
Most importantly, the testimony of survivors has been preserved for all time, thanks to Yad Vashem, the Shoah Project and similar initiatives.
But as we know, the number of survivors is dwindling. The day is not far off when the last of them passes on. Then it will be up to us to make sure future generations know what happened — and never forget it.
Yet there are voices from within the Jewish community who urge us to move on. Let’s leave the Holocaust in the past, they say, and not allow it to define us.
Certainly the Holocaust does not solely define us, but it is as central to our historical narrative as the Exodus, the destruction of the Second Temple and the founding of the modern state of Israel. All these momentous events helped shape who we are, in ways terrible and magnificent.
Whether one attends one of the many Yom HaShoah observances around the Bay Area, says a silent prayer, or even gets out the car for two minutes on Monday morning and stands at attention, all of us must honor the memory of the victims, and the survivors.
Never again. Never forget.