Yom HaShoah –Israel brings them home — if only in earth and ashes

History is always powerful, and when it is personal, even more so. The first Holocaust Remembrance Day that took place in Israel was on December 28, 1949. A decision was made by the Chief Rabbinate that the memorial day should coincide with the 10th of Tevet, a traditional day of mourning and fasting, commemorating the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II, and from when all our troubles truly began.

Significantly, on that first Yom Hashoah of 1949, it was marked by the burial in a Jerusalem cemetery of the ashes and the bones of thousands of Jews brought from the Flossenberg Concentration Camp. The following year, on the second Yom Hashoah of December 1950, as memorial services were held, funerals were held in which desecrated Torah scrolls, and the bones and ashes of the dead were once again interred in cemeteries in Israel.

I was completely unaware of this potent and compelling tradition. It came to my attention through the association of Jews from Volynia and Rozyszcze, the town from where my father hailed. They have a memorial in the cemetery in Holon. At that memorial, they have brought back holy soil from the place where the Jews of Rozyszcze were murdered, and mixed it with soil of the land of Israel.

It was a visceral experience for me to know that something, even if it was only ashes and earth that once carried within it the lifeblood of our family, had been retrieved and brought to the land of Israel.

One might say, no matter. On the contrary, matter, matters. Memorial books for almost every town under Nazi domination have been written. Each tells the stories of the Jews who lived in the town and whose existence was supposed to be obliterated. But instead, their memories, written and published remain as evidence and testimonies of each and every Jewish town. In addition, stone memorials have been placed in many of the towns where the Jews were massacred. There are many memorials throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe commemorating the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.

But there is something absolutely singular, unique, and awesome, that the bones, the ashes, and even the earth which contained the lifeblood of Jews are returned to be buried in the land of Israel, returned to the Jewish people. We are of spirit and of matter. We can listen to the testimonies of those who have survived the cruel and evil brutalities of the Shoah, or we can read of those same stories. It is quite a different matter to know that something, even if it is only the bones, the ashes, or merely the remaining earth that contained something of our people has been captured and returned to us.

One might have thought that Yom Hashoah should get easier with every passing year. Many of our former oppressors, and current ones, say “Isn’t it time to let this thing go and move forward?” On the contrary. Yom Hashoah, with its testimonies, and its books, remains part and parcel of Jewish memory as we add it to our history from the destruction of the Temple, through the crusades, through the expulsion from Spain, the Chemlinski massacres until today. And today, with the living Jewish presence in the land of Israel, we have retrieved and properly buried all those for whom a proper burial was denied, but will never be forgotten, as they blend into the soil and the soul of the Jewish nation.