Never forget
28/01/25 02:02
Over a lifetime of studying and teaching the bible, I have frequently quoted a passage from Deuteronomy that is the centerpiece of morning and evening prayer in observant Jewish homes. Known as the Shema, it is a commandment to remember God and the relationship between God and the people of God:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down, and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NRSVUE
Our people's traditions and the Bible's existence come from a commitment to multi-generational memory. Before the Bible existed as a written document, its contents were transmitted orally for generations. This passing of the story from parents to children was seen as a sacred responsibility, and the faithful were commanded to remember that responsibility twice daily. Who we are and what we believe are the product of thousands of years of commitment to truthful memory.
When an event occurs, those who have experienced it have a deep commitment to preserving the memory of that event. Over and over again, I sat in the homes of people who were planning a funeral while going through the initial stages of processing their grief. I almost always heard one phrase: “I’ll never forget.” The stories that flowed from loved ones might be funny, sad, poignant, or illustrative of character. They were always treasured by those who had directly known that person. Often, I would lift those stories or parts of them in an eulogy delivered at the service.
However, the commitment to never forget faces a challenge when the first generation who experienced the events comes to the end of their lives. Memories can be lost in the transition from eyewitness to those entrusted with their stories. The world stands at a critical moment in terms of our memory, and yesterday’s observance of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was a stark reminder of the depth of our responsibility to keep the memory alive. At a ceremony marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, world leaders gathered with 56 survivors of Hitler’s genocide of Jews, Romas, gay men, and others. Four of the survivors told their stories at the event. Leon Weintraub, who spoke, is 99 years old. He was a child when she first saw the Death Gate at the Birkenau extermination camp. Tova Friedman, who was five and a half, recalled watching from her hiding place at a labor camp “as all my little friends were rounded up and driven to their deaths, while the heartbreaking cries of their parents fell on deaf ears.”
The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1941 and 1945. They were part of over six million killed by the regime. The majority of those murdered there were Jews. There were also 70.000 Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and an unknown number of gay men.
The survivors will be at the end of their lives in just a few years. While they have been powerful witnesses and kept alive the commitment to never forget, it now falls to those of us who did not see what they saw or experience what they experienced to pass their stories on to succeeding generations. To do so, we must keep their stories in our hearts.
The warnings from these stories are explicit. The risks of intolerance and antisemitism continue to be real today. Weintraub specifically appealed to young people to be “sensitive to all expressions of intolerance and resentment to people who are different.”
Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz museum, told those gathered, “Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides . . . without memory you have no history, no experience, no point of reference.”
For me, Holocaust Remembrance Day brings to mind the day in the summer of 1978 when I visited Dachau. It was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one. It opened in 1933 and remained open until liberated by U.S. forces in 1945. There were 32,000 documented deaths at that camp. Many more died during death marches to and from the camp. After liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery by starvation and untreated illness continued to die.
I can remember the feel and the sound of the gravel beneath my feet as I walked silently from building to building, peering into the rough wood platforms stacked five high, which were the sleeping quarters for prisoners and the gas chambers and crematoria ovens where killing was an assembly line production. As we left the camp, the words “Never Forget,” inscribed on a marker in four languages, remained in my memory.
The call to memory, however, is more than a call to silent contemplation. It is a call to action. The Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany was not the end of human cruelty and genocide. The world has witnessed and continues to witness the deaths of innocents. Here in our own country, where we once believed such cruelty could never happen, we have witnessed angry mobs stirred to violence without concern for their victims. We have seen the pictures of children forced into cages at the borders of our own country. We have listened to hateful rhetoric from our nation’s leaders.
If we would be faithful to the memory of those killed in the Holocaust and to the memories of the survivors. If we would be loyal to the commitment to teach the stories of our people to our children, we cannot be silent. When the last survivors die, other voices must continue to speak.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down, and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NRSVUE
Our people's traditions and the Bible's existence come from a commitment to multi-generational memory. Before the Bible existed as a written document, its contents were transmitted orally for generations. This passing of the story from parents to children was seen as a sacred responsibility, and the faithful were commanded to remember that responsibility twice daily. Who we are and what we believe are the product of thousands of years of commitment to truthful memory.
When an event occurs, those who have experienced it have a deep commitment to preserving the memory of that event. Over and over again, I sat in the homes of people who were planning a funeral while going through the initial stages of processing their grief. I almost always heard one phrase: “I’ll never forget.” The stories that flowed from loved ones might be funny, sad, poignant, or illustrative of character. They were always treasured by those who had directly known that person. Often, I would lift those stories or parts of them in an eulogy delivered at the service.
However, the commitment to never forget faces a challenge when the first generation who experienced the events comes to the end of their lives. Memories can be lost in the transition from eyewitness to those entrusted with their stories. The world stands at a critical moment in terms of our memory, and yesterday’s observance of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was a stark reminder of the depth of our responsibility to keep the memory alive. At a ceremony marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, world leaders gathered with 56 survivors of Hitler’s genocide of Jews, Romas, gay men, and others. Four of the survivors told their stories at the event. Leon Weintraub, who spoke, is 99 years old. He was a child when she first saw the Death Gate at the Birkenau extermination camp. Tova Friedman, who was five and a half, recalled watching from her hiding place at a labor camp “as all my little friends were rounded up and driven to their deaths, while the heartbreaking cries of their parents fell on deaf ears.”
The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1941 and 1945. They were part of over six million killed by the regime. The majority of those murdered there were Jews. There were also 70.000 Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and an unknown number of gay men.
The survivors will be at the end of their lives in just a few years. While they have been powerful witnesses and kept alive the commitment to never forget, it now falls to those of us who did not see what they saw or experience what they experienced to pass their stories on to succeeding generations. To do so, we must keep their stories in our hearts.
The warnings from these stories are explicit. The risks of intolerance and antisemitism continue to be real today. Weintraub specifically appealed to young people to be “sensitive to all expressions of intolerance and resentment to people who are different.”
Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz museum, told those gathered, “Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides . . . without memory you have no history, no experience, no point of reference.”
For me, Holocaust Remembrance Day brings to mind the day in the summer of 1978 when I visited Dachau. It was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one. It opened in 1933 and remained open until liberated by U.S. forces in 1945. There were 32,000 documented deaths at that camp. Many more died during death marches to and from the camp. After liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery by starvation and untreated illness continued to die.
I can remember the feel and the sound of the gravel beneath my feet as I walked silently from building to building, peering into the rough wood platforms stacked five high, which were the sleeping quarters for prisoners and the gas chambers and crematoria ovens where killing was an assembly line production. As we left the camp, the words “Never Forget,” inscribed on a marker in four languages, remained in my memory.
The call to memory, however, is more than a call to silent contemplation. It is a call to action. The Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany was not the end of human cruelty and genocide. The world has witnessed and continues to witness the deaths of innocents. Here in our own country, where we once believed such cruelty could never happen, we have witnessed angry mobs stirred to violence without concern for their victims. We have seen the pictures of children forced into cages at the borders of our own country. We have listened to hateful rhetoric from our nation’s leaders.
If we would be faithful to the memory of those killed in the Holocaust and to the memories of the survivors. If we would be loyal to the commitment to teach the stories of our people to our children, we cannot be silent. When the last survivors die, other voices must continue to speak.
