Holocaust Remembrance Day: The Fissures We Tried to Hide

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It has been 7 dark months for the Jewish people.

Our generation grew up bouncing on the knees of Holocaust survivors listening to Yiddish lullabies. We saw the numbers tattooed on the arms and we knew they had been through hell. We knew they had deep pain. We knew they were the toughest people in the world.

Throughout my life, I mourned my mother’s family murdered by the Nazis and their neighbors who turned on them. I grew up angry and aggressive thinking I could make up for the victims. I got resentful at the victims for not seeing the signs and not fighting back. I would have fought back or died trying, right?

How could they have been so powerless?

But that was in the past. It was another time and another continent. We didn't live in the past and we have lives to build. On Yom Ha'Shoah, we remembered the murdered and survivors, and then we looked away because we were busy building.

But, we were raised by damaged parents and we are damaged as well. There were deep fissures we hid with meteoric economic successes. Our communities flourished, we built beautiful homes, took luxury vacations, and pretended our generation was not damaged.

On Passover, we read the words, “in every generation they rise to destroy us and God saves us from their hands”, but it never had much meaning because look at the buildings we own and the donations we make to the opera houses.

But, 7 months ago, the fissures turned to cracks in every single Jewish person.

Around Shabbat tables, families bang on the table and shout, can you not see the signs??

The cracks have all risen to the surface now and this Holocaust Remembrance Day does not feel like a historical event. It feels more like our annual warning.

But, we are a strong people. Those cracks did not stop the Survivors from rising from the ashes and building beautiful families, synagogues, and success. That damage did not stop Jewish partisans from fighting the Nazis.

Me and my family exist today because my Grandmother escaped Germany. My wife exists because her grandfather hid under a barn in Poland. They made difficult and courageous decisions. We live because of them.

While each Jew has been irreparably impacted, it will not stop us from loving life, creating, building, and flourishing. We do not descend from those who perished, we descend from the fighters who stayed alive through immense hardship. That is our heritage and our DNA.

To each Jew who now contemplates whether they have the courage to make difficult decisions, know you are the ones descended from the survivors. We are the ones who took action despite being deeply broken.

Today, we remember those who were murdered, but we also remember those who survived and we draw on the strength of those who we come from. 

May their memory be for an eternal blessing.

~#LawDad