Don't Forget Their Stories

    A major curse in Yiddish is "May your name be erased."  In slaughtering millions of people, the Nazi regime tried to do just that.  Yad Vashem is dedicated to reclaiming as many names and faces and stories as possible.  Today's visit to the Holocaust Museum on the YV campus opened up so many emotions for me.  This post is my way of re-telling a few of the stories I learned today. 

    Note: photos were not allowed to be taken in the museum.  I have found images online, but I do not own them.  Whenever possible, I have included links.

    Take a moment and think of Jacob-Noah Lew of Estonia.  After he was killed in the Klooga labor camp in 1944, some items were found in his pockets.  As part of the attempt to make sense of the artifacts and give life back to the many slaughtered men, a young lady was questioned to see if she knew anything about any of the items found in their pockets.  Lucia Pintchuk-Shimel did her best, and eventually came upon this picture.

photo property of Yad Vashem, see link above

      Her face went pale, and she told the interviewer that the girl in the picture was herself. Imagine finding a photo from a dead man's pocket and knowing that he died with your picture so close.

   

       It turns out they had been friends at a youth movement summer camp.    Here's the clincher for me: when asked what they were doing in the photo, she said "Crossword Puzzles".  Ordinary humans, tragic endings.

       Take another moment and think of the objects that pull your family together.  Even in a secular way, my family's menorah is special to us for all the times we have sung by it.  It hit me hard to see this photograph of a menorah from the home of Rabbi Akiva and Rachel Posner.  

photo property of Yad Vashem, see link above

   Can you see just outside the window? There's a Swastika hanging out there, just across the street, above the fifth and sixth candles.  On a very visceral level, this is an act of defiance.  It says,  you may want to take my life from me. You might want to rid the world of my faith, of my people, of my memory.  But I will still light the lights, and I will not hide them.   But it is even more an act of defiance when you look at the inscription on the back:

photo property of Yad Vashem, see link above

   "'Death to Judah,' so the flag says.  'Judah will live forever,' so the light answers."

     Please note, this is a story of survival.  This rabbi was one of the prescient ones who got himself and many of his congregants out of Germany in the earlier years of the Nazi regime.  Though this menorah is housed in the museum, his descendants take it out of the museum and still light it for Chanukah each year.

    One room which haunted me was filled with photos from the Lodz ghetto.  I wanted to know about who took the photos, and so I learned about Mendel Grossman.   Here he is, eating soup with his nephew.

photo property of Yad Vashem, see link above

  You can see how cold it was in the ghetto from how they are dressed.  But his jacket benefited him. Mendel Grossman was literally a flasher! He hid the camera in his coat and snapped pictures whenever he could. This way, there are photos of so much devastation that the Nazis would not have allowed to be recorded.  Thanks to these risks, we have faces of so many more people and understand so much more about the best and worst of humanity.

    I never knew about the Kashariyot.  These were young ladies, not much older than my students, who were able to "pass" as non-Jews.  This enabled them some freedom.  Some people would run away with this liberty.  But not these resistance fighters.  Take a look at three of them right now, and see the power in their eyes.

photo property of Yad Vashem, see link above

   Instead of living a life for themselves, they risked everything to be couriers.   They smuggled items in and out of the ghettos.  Documents, forged identity cards, medical supplies.... they did what they could to get people what they needed.  And when it came time for the uprisings, they were ones who helped with the arms and ammunition.  Wow!

     Here was another act of bravery, this time from a Polish priest named Pawel Rys.    It was outside of his town that a massacre occurred against some 45 Jewish people who had already walked on the death march for over five days in the cold January weather of 1945.  The war was just about to end, but it was too late for these who died a few days too early.   

     The priest could have just buried the victims, but he knew that someone loved them. He knew that someone would want to know where they were, what happened to them.  So he took the time to record the numbers burned on to each of their wrists.

photo property of Yad Vashem, see link above

   A mass grave with all these numbers was placed there, and just recently, Yad Vashem has found the names of many of the victims.  Remember how it was after 9/11 to try to find any closure about the dead and missing?  Now, years later, because a priest knew that someone would care, there are tombstones with the NAMES of the murdered.

    I have one last story for tonight.  This one hit my heart the hardest, even though it is about a man who is still alive and speaking here in Jerusalem now.  It is a Kindertransport story, and I guess you can understand why I have a soft spot for these children rescuers.  I like to imagine I would have been part of that movement if I lived in England way back when.  (Who knows what anyone would have done in that era, though.  Humans are so complicated.)

    I want you to think about a little boy named Heinz Lichtwitz.  Or think about his father,  Max, who knew that the only hope for his son was to go to a family in England.  (Only children up to age 17 were allowed in; there was a concern that adults might take away jobs, and the economy was already bad enough as it was.)  

     Max sent postcards to his son, and even as Heinz changed his name to Henry and switched from speaking German to English,  the boy saved each postcard.  

  If you go to my first link, you can read some of the letters and you will see that Heinz/Henry called his British family "Aunt" and "Uncle".  You'll see that his father didn't express jealousy about that, but instead sent gifts and messages and reminders, and gradually switched to writing in English. He knew his son was growing away from him.  He knew his son would live.

    As he signed each card, "Love, Daddy", he must have known that he wasn't going to make it.  In 1942, the letters stopped coming, and later Henry found out that is father had been killed. Years and years later, an elder cousin shared a message for Henry from his father.  "Please tell him one day that it was only out of deep love and concern for his future that I have let him go, but that on the other hand I miss him most painfully day by day..."

   The Nazis killed millions of people. But we cannot conceive of "millions."  I don't think I can even understand "thousands."  Each story matters, each person matters.  Who lives, who dies, who tells our story?  Never forget.