Why We Commemorate Yom HaShoah

Friday, May 2, is Yom HaShoah, a day when the entire Jewish world will pause in reverent memory of and tribute to the sacrifice of the Six Million. Jewish fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and more than 1.5 million children perished in the darkest "Night" perhaps, of human history, for the "crime" of being Jewish.

As Elie Wiesel explains on a program we air the week of April 27, when Shalom TV will join the Jewish world in Yom HaShoah commemorations, Jews were murdered in the Holocaust not because of anything they had done, or had said, or had acquired; but only because they were Jews. For the first time in human history, "Being" became a crime punishable by death.

Even when the Nazi war machine knew it was to lose in its attempt to dominate the world, the Nazi obsession to implement "The Final Solution"--to eradicate the Jewish People from the face of the earth--drove the Nazis to move expend necessary war material in order to transport entire Jewish communities to death camps for "extermination."

I never feel like attending a Yom HaShoah commemoration. I always feel I'm too busy--and the day is almost always too beautiful to want to step back into the darkness of the Churban, "The Destruction." I never want to relive the camps and the crematoria and the bitter cold and horrible loneliness and the terrifying inevitable end.

But this is what Jews do; Jews "relive" both the triumphs and tragedies of the Jewish People throughout history--from the triumph of the Exodus from Egyptian slavery, to the miraculous Maccabeean victory over the Syrian forces of Antiochus Epiphanes, to the Destruction of the First and Second Temples.

And for every Jew who lives after the Churban, we now "relive" the horrific, solitary journey of the Six Million.

Some people say that the purpose of Yom HaShaoh is "Never Again"--that if the world "remembers" the Holocaust, it will never happened to Jews or any other people on earth.

For me, it is a misplaced emphasis. I do not participate in Yom HaShoah commemorations because of "Never Again." Indeed, if the Messiah promised me that there would never be another Holocaust, I would still want to be present for Yom HaShoah.

Because Yom HaShoah is the pain and tragedy of my family.

Personally, I was extraordinarily fortunate. My entire family had come from Eastern Europe to America before the German people elected a demon who would lead them into hell.

But on Yom HaShoah, every mother ripped from her child was my mother; every father who grew weak before his son was my father; every brother sent to the showers was my brother...every wife who stood naked in the cold was my wife;...and every child....

I cannot utter the words--my heart breaks...and I am filled with tears.

I stand with the Jewish People on Yom HaShoah because the Churban is the tragedy of my family. This is my family's pain. This is my pain.

I could not be with the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the children in their darkest night.

I will not let them be alone on Yom HaShoah.

I will remember them. I will honor them. I will cherish them.

And if there is any Survivor attending a Yom HaShoah commemoration I attend, I will do my very, very best to comfort them--now.

And that is why I always am glad that I attend Yom HaShoah commemorations.

To be sure, Jewish "pain" is not qualitatively more excruciating than the pain endured by any other people. Yom HaShaoh is not about the "supremacy" of "Jewish suffering." But to the Jewish People, the Holocaust is the greatest inhumanity our people has ever known or witnessed; it may well be the greatest inhumanity ever perpetrated on another people.

Yom HaShaoh, then, is simply a moment when today's Jewish community stands with all those who perished in the flame.

Yom HaShoah is just being with the Six Million--in sacred, reverent, silent memory.

For on Yom HaShoah, we can do no more for our precious family members who lived the Night; and we will do no less.

-- Rabbi Mark S. Golub