Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, which is being marked as the coronavirus pandemic challenges all of humanity, will be held differently this year, without the traditional ceremonies at Yad Vashem, at the various memorials and at schools. During regular times, Holocaust survivors who lived through the inferno attend these ceremonies and tell their story.
Each one is heartbreaking. Each time I ask myself, how did they survive? And this year we'll ask ourselves - how will we feel the pain and memory? With Zoom, or through a different screen?
Just before the pandemic, I visited the Jewish community of San Diego, California, right after they finished setting a memorial for the Holocaust in their Federation building. I asked the community leaders how many Holocaust survivors live in their community and was surprised to hear there are 500 still alive.
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Every Jewish community around the world today stops to remember the massacred and those who fought and died under the worst of evils, which threatened to destroy the world and especially the Jewish people. We stop and think of family members who were lost and others who survived, of those who had to travel the world in search of peace and quiet and of those who made aliyah and fought for the State of Israel.
The story of Jews around the world is part and parcel of the stories of the war and the Holocaust. Each community has its own private survival story from the war. There is no Jewish community that hasn't been scarred with the pain of Holocaust death, no community that doesn't carry difficult memories of pain and loss. No synagogue without a memorial plaque telling something of what happened there, and of course witnesses who will tell their tale until the last day of their lives.
The generation of my children, the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, is a pragmatic generation. They are not looking for dreams, but solutions: How do we make the world a better place? They ask themselves and invent many means, technological or others, for a better human life. This is the value that guides them. These attempts hit an unexpected twist this year with the pandemic.
In this case, as well, there is no community that is not dealing with the consequences of the disease. And also now, during these days of uncertainty and fighting for life, we return to those community values, the values of friendship and mutual responsibility that are inherent to our people. There is no other nation that went through such horrible hardships as the Jewish people. There are no other people who withstood the infernos that the Jewish people have. "You have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed," as is written in the Bible, and I add: "You have struggled with the worst of all and prevailed!"
All of humanity is facing a challenge these days. And on this day we should remember, as Frenchman Jean Jaurès said: "There is only one race, and it is humanity." We are obligated to defend this race, this humanity from harm, from war, from pandemic. We must keep our values of mutual responsibility, to respect our elders, to promote "tikkun olam". If we always remember that we are all part of one human fabric, the world will be a better place for all of us.
May the memory of the six million be blessed, and may they be remembered by the people and all the world forever!
