Yom Ha-Shoah
Apr. 29th, 2003 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidIt's Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In college, I ended up on the vigil, sometimes reading, sometimes listening to names of victims read over the course of the whole (halachic) day. I always seemed to end up with one of the middle of the night slots, which was just that much more intense (so many late night things are, somehow). Just me, the other person on that shift, and some lit yahrtzeit candles. Reading the names, at times struggling to pronounce tricky ones correctly, desperately wanting to do this right. Listening to the names, overcome by the sheer numbers of people, whose names are usually not remembered individually, wondering who these people were, who they would've become, had they escaped their fate. Wondering how different the world would be, not just for all their individual contributions, of which there would've been so many, but for the world not to have gone through such a horrible experience (though I suppose that the world has had other atrocities to accept since then; do people never learn?)[1]. I wonder if all the funds spent on Holocaust memorials and remembrances would be spent on Jewish education instead; it bothers me that so many people have the Holocaust as their tie to being Jewish, when there are so many other parts to it.
I vividly remember the traveling exhibits of Holocaust memorabilia that I saw as a child. There were two. One was a series of black and white photos, that hung in the local JCC for a while. The picture that I couldn't keep myself from looking at, over and over and over, was a pile of bodies stacked in the corner of two walls, each body merely skin stretched over skeletons, a horrible distortion of the human form, and so horribly treated, both when alive, and dead (Jewish law includes respect for the body after death, honoring that it once housed a person). The other exhibit was more artifacts than photos, temporarily being shown in one of the local shuls (I think the big Reform one, down by Worcester State College; it has tons of space available). In that exhibit, there were piles of shoes taken from people before they were gassed. That was horrible enough, seeing all the different sizes and all, but worse was the pair of braids, chopped off some girl's head. That stopped me in my tracks. They were blond, too. Whose braids? I don't know, and perhaps it was unknown. But somehow seeing them was even worse than seeing the pictures of bald, starving people.[2]
Since then, I've gone through periods when most of my reading has tied back to the Holocaust or WWII, heard survivors speak, read about liberators' reactions to the camps. I wonder at times if this is normal (yeah, yeah, what's normal, anyway?). Do I do this because there is nothing else I can do, just keep the facts alive by reading? I don't know.
Like other modern (= since the establishment of Israel, though realistically there weren't any additions to the calendar before that for about the last thousand years (someone correct me if I'm wrong?)) Jewish holidays, there is no set ritual for the day, no set additions to prayers, no community-wide fast, etc. Each community does what it feels it should, be it a study session, a memorial service, an interfaith discussion, lighting of yahrtzeit candles, reading of names, a talk by a survivor (though this will become less and less possible over time). All of which seem appropriate, but in some ways it's strange to have something that is still so... unformed. Of course, this particularly contrasts with just-ended Pesach, perhaps the most involved holiday on the calendar.
At Brandeis, there was a week's worth of activities, and though I understand why, that feels like too much emphasis to me. This was a horrible time in Jewish history, but it is not the only such time, only the most recent. Most of the others are commemorated on Tisha B'Av (the 9th of Av), a full fast day in the middle of the summer.
And so. This year, the local Hillel is doing a reading of names, but only from 8 to 5 (or so), times that I will be at work. Instead, I'm hoping to get tickets for a production of The Dybbuk at the Loeb Experimental Theater, a contemporary adaptation of an older work, of Jews putting on a performance while waiting to be transported to Auschwitz. I don't know if there are any tickets left, even, but I can hope, even if I don't end up seeing it on the "right" day.
[0700 addenda
[1] Without the Holocaust, Israel wouldn't have happened when it did, though.
[2] Thinking about it later, there were a couple of reasons it seemed so horrible. Though someone could've gotten a haircut that drastic, this involved someone who knowingly cut off a girl's braids, knowing that she'd likely not survive. Even if she did survive, not only her braids, but also her innocence would be gone forever. And the reason for the shearing, too: they were not going to be used to make some Victorian jewelry to remember a loved one by, but were more of a by-product of people being treated as animals, their parts to be used however (there were lampshades made of skin, after all). And realizing that it was likely that these braids (did they really have red ribbons at the end, or is that a false memory?) are all that is left of a young girl from Germany over 50 years ago made me shiver, and be scared, and angry, all at once.]
In college, I ended up on the vigil, sometimes reading, sometimes listening to names of victims read over the course of the whole (halachic) day. I always seemed to end up with one of the middle of the night slots, which was just that much more intense (so many late night things are, somehow). Just me, the other person on that shift, and some lit yahrtzeit candles. Reading the names, at times struggling to pronounce tricky ones correctly, desperately wanting to do this right. Listening to the names, overcome by the sheer numbers of people, whose names are usually not remembered individually, wondering who these people were, who they would've become, had they escaped their fate. Wondering how different the world would be, not just for all their individual contributions, of which there would've been so many, but for the world not to have gone through such a horrible experience (though I suppose that the world has had other atrocities to accept since then; do people never learn?)[1]. I wonder if all the funds spent on Holocaust memorials and remembrances would be spent on Jewish education instead; it bothers me that so many people have the Holocaust as their tie to being Jewish, when there are so many other parts to it.
I vividly remember the traveling exhibits of Holocaust memorabilia that I saw as a child. There were two. One was a series of black and white photos, that hung in the local JCC for a while. The picture that I couldn't keep myself from looking at, over and over and over, was a pile of bodies stacked in the corner of two walls, each body merely skin stretched over skeletons, a horrible distortion of the human form, and so horribly treated, both when alive, and dead (Jewish law includes respect for the body after death, honoring that it once housed a person). The other exhibit was more artifacts than photos, temporarily being shown in one of the local shuls (I think the big Reform one, down by Worcester State College; it has tons of space available). In that exhibit, there were piles of shoes taken from people before they were gassed. That was horrible enough, seeing all the different sizes and all, but worse was the pair of braids, chopped off some girl's head. That stopped me in my tracks. They were blond, too. Whose braids? I don't know, and perhaps it was unknown. But somehow seeing them was even worse than seeing the pictures of bald, starving people.[2]
Since then, I've gone through periods when most of my reading has tied back to the Holocaust or WWII, heard survivors speak, read about liberators' reactions to the camps. I wonder at times if this is normal (yeah, yeah, what's normal, anyway?). Do I do this because there is nothing else I can do, just keep the facts alive by reading? I don't know.
Like other modern (= since the establishment of Israel, though realistically there weren't any additions to the calendar before that for about the last thousand years (someone correct me if I'm wrong?)) Jewish holidays, there is no set ritual for the day, no set additions to prayers, no community-wide fast, etc. Each community does what it feels it should, be it a study session, a memorial service, an interfaith discussion, lighting of yahrtzeit candles, reading of names, a talk by a survivor (though this will become less and less possible over time). All of which seem appropriate, but in some ways it's strange to have something that is still so... unformed. Of course, this particularly contrasts with just-ended Pesach, perhaps the most involved holiday on the calendar.
At Brandeis, there was a week's worth of activities, and though I understand why, that feels like too much emphasis to me. This was a horrible time in Jewish history, but it is not the only such time, only the most recent. Most of the others are commemorated on Tisha B'Av (the 9th of Av), a full fast day in the middle of the summer.
And so. This year, the local Hillel is doing a reading of names, but only from 8 to 5 (or so), times that I will be at work. Instead, I'm hoping to get tickets for a production of The Dybbuk at the Loeb Experimental Theater, a contemporary adaptation of an older work, of Jews putting on a performance while waiting to be transported to Auschwitz. I don't know if there are any tickets left, even, but I can hope, even if I don't end up seeing it on the "right" day.
[0700 addenda
[1] Without the Holocaust, Israel wouldn't have happened when it did, though.
[2] Thinking about it later, there were a couple of reasons it seemed so horrible. Though someone could've gotten a haircut that drastic, this involved someone who knowingly cut off a girl's braids, knowing that she'd likely not survive. Even if she did survive, not only her braids, but also her innocence would be gone forever. And the reason for the shearing, too: they were not going to be used to make some Victorian jewelry to remember a loved one by, but were more of a by-product of people being treated as animals, their parts to be used however (there were lampshades made of skin, after all). And realizing that it was likely that these braids (did they really have red ribbons at the end, or is that a false memory?) are all that is left of a young girl from Germany over 50 years ago made me shiver, and be scared, and angry, all at once.]
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-02 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-02 11:13 am (UTC)It felt a bit strange posting, since I had posted something about it last year, and I don't think I've changed my views very much since then.