Why we remember

They’re so old now, the children of the Shoah — and within our lifetime, and within our lifetime soon, there will be no living reminders left.

And already so many others throughout the world claim that it never happened, that ok, maybe there was a war, maybe a few hundred thousand died, but the rest? All smoke and mirrors. Ah, yes only smoke — and such smoke, smoke we can still smell from that gaping maw in humanity.

And there are others, still, that say  it’s all a lie that it never happened — and they say all this while these survivors remain to light these candles, to remember those who came before who cannot testify that they were there and that it happened and that it must not happen again.

“My mother kissed me and told me not to cry.”

“I saw my father lying on the ground with his eyes open, not blinking, never blinking.”

What in 18 years?

What in 36?

Still, I remember even though I wasn’t there – I remember because they remind me, and because you do, too. Just like I’m reminding you.

And each year, we tell the story of our Exodus out of Egypt — “Avadim Hayinu – when WE were slaves in Egypt,” we intone… and so I wonder what will be in a thousand years. Or In five thousand years, long after the Spielberg archives have crumbled, long after the leavings of these lives have turned to dust, long after the monuments have been replaced by nature’s indifference… when our own people may very well say “well, maybe it happened, or maybe it didn’t, but what matters is that we think it happened to us.”

So this is why we must remember now, and why we must remind our children to remember so they will remind theirs forever and ever before we forget.