Hostages Are Free, But How Free Are They Really?
How free are they, compared with the Holocaust survivors?
When one reads
Elie Wiesel‘s “Night”,
It becomes clear that no one was waiting to welcome the survivors home, quit the opposite. They were
“Free” yet utterly alone.
Where should they go?
Who was still alive?
Where was home?
In the first hospital in Heidelberg doctors nursed my father back to life, feeding him with baby bottles, after he endured Auschwitz-Birkenau and three additional concentration camps. It took almost a year to release him into life and then he received a free train pass to search for surviving family members.
Freedom was not jubilant, not the happy ending one might imagine. The loneliness that Elie Wiesel described echoed the plight of our hostages. At that time they were advised to bury the past in heart and mind and start from scratch.
When today, the media and politicians repeat the same sentence:
“The worst disaster since the Holocaust.”
Yes, that might be true, but let me tell you some differences. During this tragedy, the unity of the Jewish people has been one of the most extraordinary phenomena ever witnessed. From the very moment we heard of the attack, when we arrived in our shul on Simchat Torah, Tehillim were recited. We continued with this routine every Shabbat, Reading aloud Prakim of Tehilim and completed with the epic verses of
ACHENU KOL BET ISRAEL. We wept, we davened, we held on to our Emunah.
The plight of our hostages were on everyone’s mind, and as a result some deprived themselves of all kinds of pleasures. My brother Tomi, for instant, slept on the floor for two years. Only when the hostages returned last week, he returned to his regular sleeping quarter. I heard of others who removed any kind of meat or alcohol from their diet. I heard of other dedicated Jews who recited the entire book of Tehilim every day. Thousands poured their hearts into action in Israel, welcoming each hostage’s return. Lining their home towns standing long hours with their flags, singing and dancing. They mourned each fallen soldier in a similar way, hundreds of people accompanying the casket and the family members, as if it would be their own child.
Tourism per se stopped, but Jews from around the world flocked to Israel to volunteer; picking cabbage and strawberries, organizing barbecues on army bases, tying green Zizit for the soldiers, visiting the wounded in hospitals, comforting hostage families, and visiting Shiva homes of soldiers who fell al Kiddush Hashem.
And now, the hostages are home. We cannot get enough of watching the videos, the embraces, the tears, the overwhelming joy that leaves us breathless.
So yes, it was the worst catastrophe since the Holocaust. But this time, my father’s Staatenlos Passport could have been replaced by an Israeli passport and no one waited in DP camps for a country to let them in.
Today Our brothers and sisters rose from the ashes not as wanderers, but as builders.
We have a home, we have a flag, and we have each other.
The world might go mad, but our hearts remain steady fast with faith, with courage, and with endless love for our people.
Baruch Hashem, Am Israel Chai!
