Consciousness, Not Memory

Part of me has a problem with the idea of a day to commemorate the Holocaust. It is a small part, but it is nonetheless there. I suppose that part of it has to do with the fact that I grew up with it in my house. (Google “Helen Yermus” for a background on that). I do not need a particular day to remember. I do think, however, that it is good that we have one. 

For one thing, not everyone grew up with it in the house. There are people born post-World War II whose parents were not born in Europe, whose exposure to and experience with the Holocaust was not first-hand. They and their offspring need to be informed about this period in our history.

Another reason is to put down the argument that it never happened. To let those who even call into question that a nation – with overt and covert assistance from an entire continent – rose up with the expressed intention of extermination of us as a people to continue to make the claims and the assertions of denial cannot go unchallenged. Ever. 

Then there is the myth of European guilt. Not the myth that it resulted in the creation of the state of Israel, but rather that European guilt over the Holocaust is an actual thing. It must be reiterated: there is no such thing. In the position that argues that Israel is a colonizer of the poor, hard-done-by, downtrodden Palestinians, European guilt is used to delegitimate creation of a state for Jews in this land.  I claim that there is not guilt, but there is European frustration over the Holocaust. Still so many Jews left over. What, Europe asks itself, can we do? Each country tells the other, “You take them; no, we don’t want them, you take them”. Then they realize, hey, let them go where they think they want to go, and let the Arabs deal with them. So, Israel declares its independence in the face of an impending invasion from six standing national armies. President Harry S Truman (who has a street named for him in Jerusalem – go figure) warned David Ben Gurion not to declare independence, as the Arabs are coming. The Arabs themselves boasted that they will push the Jews into the sea. 

The space between this sentence and the last is the list of European countries who, laden with the burden of guilt for having done nothing to help Jews during the war, sent weapons and supplies to the newborn Jewish state so it could defend itself. 

Yeah, they felt really bad. 

It is also important that those non-Jews who understood the evil that is Nazism and took the risk to their own lives to hide, aid and protect Jews not be forgotten. It is often commented that there were too few of these indisputably heroic people. That reinforces the idea that they too be remembered. 

The last couple of months in the Jewish calendar deal with episodes of national destruction and redemption. That a day be set aside for a focus on the most recent large-scale attempt at our annihilation during this time seems appropriate. But it needs to be more than commemoration. Who we are and how we got here did not start in 1933, or 1945, or 1948. Holocaust Memorial Day should be more accurately dubbed Holocaust Awareness Day. It is not just about personal loss, the suffering of those who endured it, or the heroism of those who came out of it. It is a significant part of how we look at ourselves now, and how we look and act as we develop in the future.