Hello a local synague where we reside havea beautiful memorial type service yesterday. Two of my children attended with me. There was a 92 yr old gentleman who spoke and told us how he survived. It was heartbreaking. Another man told his uncle's story. His uncle along with 6 other people survived in a whole under a barn. Theye stayed in that hole for 1 1/2 yrs. When they finally left the hole the war was over. It took them 2 days to leave the hole because they were so scared.
I am not Jewish. I am a human being. This effects everyone. Its so important to show kindness and empathy torwards your fellow human beings.
Anne I am so thankful your mom along with her family survived. So sorry she went thru that horrible experience. I agree with 100% what you wrote. Genocide is still going on all over the world. I believe we cant forget what happened in WW II. When I was in Europe about twenty yrs ago. I was fornuate enough to visit Anne Frank house ...the house where she hid from the Nazis. It was sad I am not ashamed to admit I cried as I walked thru it. I also saw a concentration camp..Not something I wanted to see. However I see the importance in seeing it. Actually walking where these Jewish people were captured and eventually murdered. Had a huge profound impact on me. I was with a young peoples tour group bus tour throughout Europe two knuckle heads were taught by their parents that the holocaust never happened. I was deeply offended. Life is precious. No one should have it taken from them they why the Jewish people were slaughtered in the concentration camps.
Jill You asked how I going about teaching my kids empathy and compassion?? Well one of Mantras we live by.."Treat people the way you want to be treated" Specifically regarding WWII when it somehow come up in conversation. When my kids were small a relative said something in passing about WWII about the people that were effected in the war. My kids were tiny. I didnt want expose them to such meanness at such a young age. I called the Nazis the bad soldiers.As they got older I called them the Nazis. I tell them what if someone was picking on someone in your class..even if it didnt effect you. What would you do? How would you handle it. They say comments like I would say leave him alone, stop picking on him, if you dont have kind to say dont say anything. After the memorial service was done my kids and I discussed it in the car. I asked them how they thought that gentleman felt being in that hole for 1 1/2 yrs. They sad he was probably cramped, scared and had to go to bathroom. I tell them to put themselves in the other person place. Does it feel good..or is it scary? Hope this helps.
We're going on a firld trip today into DC, going to the Holocaust Museum. It wasnt planned b/c yesterday was the Remembrance Day, just happened that way. Brain pop had a good kid friendly video yesterday explaining what happened etc.
P
I had no idea this day existed.
Good for you for including your kids, educating them, and teaching empathy.
In the news recently was a story about Jews in the Ukraine being handed flyers with instructions on "registering" and I was appalled.
There are over 900 hate groups in the US alone.
Scary stuff.
I don't do anything specific and there have been many atrocities in history in addition to the holocaust. I try to be mindful of people who have suffered any or might be suffering today. I just remembered someone I knew who died in 9/11 last night while driving and had a little cry and thought of her husband and parents and prayed they have found some peace. How do you plan to show people kindness and empathy as you say?
I'm not very good at remembering the anniversary of such events, but I applaud you for taking your kids. It's so easy to live our own lives in our own little world and forget that compared to many on this earth, we are living in paradise.
I want my kids to be thankful for everything they have and compassionate and loving towards those that do not have the same advantages.
I do not want to dwell on things that have already happened and things that I have no control over, but it is importantf to be aware of some of the evils of our society so we can work towards a better future.
I did not know about it.
This is on my pintrest quote page:
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. -
Elie Wiesel
May our lives reflect this and our whole country remember it.
I'll start again as I lost my post. We were stationed in Germany from 1983 to 1991 in a area near the French/Belgium/Luxembourg borders. In that time, my family traveled around the country and viewed many towns that were in the war. A few of the older people were thankful for the Americans coming and freeing them.
The local American high school had many graphic pictures displayed around the top of the English class as reminders of what happened. Some days when I would open the building for night school, I would just stand there and look and think about all the people that had lost their lives to the "cause". I stayed at a hotel in Berchesgaden that Hitler had built. There were tours and there was still excavation of tunnels that led up to the Eagles Nest (five miles straight up) that had been blocked off. The hotel also had a few floors below the operations that had been sealed off which made the hotel about seven floors below ground, The feelings were a bit strange to know the history of what had happened. My children also went to Anne Frank's house when we were on a tour of Amsterdam. The steps are steep and it is a reminder of how people lived to be free. They now understand why mom "dragged" them through the tour. I did not visit a concentration camp on my way to Munich but could have. I just did not feel right about it. We were also there for the breaking up of the Wall and I have a piece of it for history. That was something I did not think would happen in my lifetime -- to see it go up with the concertina wire to a brick wall and to come down.
My daughter's stateside high school class viewed the movie Schindler's List but I forgot to sign the permission slip so we watched it at home (I had gone to the theater with a friend to watch several months prior).
Once you are exposed to the horrors of the past, they become real and not imaginary and they also make you think of what and how they survived and what they endured. You want to try to keep it from happening again. The Ukraine registration thing comes to my mind.
Thanks for bringing the remembrance day to light.
the other S.
PS History is trying to repeat itself and not in a good way. My great great grandfather left Germany in the early 1800s. So I guess that makes for a good reason to feel the way I do.
What a lovely post. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for this post. I participate in the observance every year. For the past 2 years, I have been part of a community choir that sings at a service sponsored by the local Jewish Federation and which rotates among 4 or 5 synagogues sharing hosting duties. There is always a speaker (this year it was a Russian American professor who shared the histories and poems of Russian poets whose work was published in Pravda and other Soviet publications in the early 1940s when American and British papers were ignoring the accounts of witnesses who saw trenches filled with Jewish men, women, and children.
There is always a candle-lighting ceremony, with Holocaust survivors themselves each lighting one memorial candle (Jewish memorial candles burn for 24 hours - you can actually buy them in the Kosher food section of any grocery store as they are lit on the anniversary of the death of a family member. But they are also used for this annual observance). After the survivors each light a candle, the children of survivors do the same, then the grandchildren. In this way, we remember them, and we ensure that each generation will remember. A lot of the schools sponsored essay contests and art projects - some of the work was extraordinary, and it was displayed at this commemoration.
There is a traditional mourner's prayer, but there is a version edited by Holocaust survivor/professor/author Elie Weisel that inserts the names of about 25 of the biggest death camps into the middle of the prayer. 2 words of prayer, then "Auschwitz", 2 more words, then "Buchenwald", etc. Very powerful.
Here's what happens in Israel, a nation born of the Holocaust - a siren blows for 2 minutes and everything, I mean EVERYTHING stops, including shoppers in stores and cars on highways. Think of this the next time you see Americans who won't pause on Memorial Day or even put their beer down at the ball game to sing the national anthem.
http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2014/04/27/what-is-it-like-when...
I understand why people don't want to revisit the horrors. But if you don't do that, you don't celebrate those who saved lives. You don't acknowledge the PTSD that survivors still suffer from (Rena Finder, the last survivor of Schindler's List, lives in my area - she speaks regularly and has for over 20 years - but she has told me that she still has nightmares afterwards.) A friend of mine spent a long time on the transplant list for a heart - we have to remember that 2/3 of the European gene pool was wiped out, and so were those genetic matches for organs today.
Genocide still continues. As kids get older, I recommend that they see some of the movies about the Americans putting Japanese citizens in internment camps. I recommend they learn about the Armenian genocide and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Rwanda. I recommend they learn about the current hatred of Muslims. I recommend they learn about lunch counters and buses being segregated until the 1960s, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Every day, someone is attacked because they are gay or lesbian - the Nazis also exterminated homosexuals and those with developmental disabilities. A Sikh temple was fired upon in the midwest a year or so ago. It's all based on "fear of the other".
The Jewish mayor of a city in Ukraine was killed 2 days ago. AntiSemitic flyers were distributed to Ukrainian citizens telling them to "register" - this is how it started in Germany. While the flyers were not official, they are symptomatic of the rising anti-Semitism in Europe.
So I think talking about it is the first step in helping everyone realize that this is not a Jewish problem. It's a problem of people ignoring discrimination and turning away from someone being treated inhumanely.
I'm delighted that you chose to attend the service even though you are not Jewish. Many people don't realize how welcoming synagogues and Jewish organizations are to anyone who just wants to learn a little.
