As inconceivable as this may sound, setting a date for Yom Hashoa, Holocaust
Remembrance Day, was once a matter of legendary dispute. For most of us who have
heard eyewitness, survivor testimonies; who have seen the movies and visited the
museums--some of us may have even made pilgrimages to the very concentration camps
themselves--the idea that the Jewish community would not rush to embrace one
designated day of memorial and tribute to the victims of the Shoah just sounds
inconceivable. Not until 1959 did the Knesset declare a national day of commemoration
for the Holocaust. Some Zionists, intent on building a new state, a strong, independent
Jewish state, wanted to forget about the whole idea of the Jews as victims; about the Jew
as the sheep going to the slaughter. With an autonomous, formidable Jewish state, Jews
would never be the victim of the arbitrary, brutal, hateful forces of history again! It was
as if they wanted to forget that the Holocaust ever happened.
Some of Israel’s religious political parties felt that modern Jews did not have a right to
legislate new holidays on the sacred Jewish calendar, and preferred instead to attach
Holocaust memory to an existing fast day, such as the widely under-observed Fast of the
10th of Tevet (commemorating the 6th Century BCE Babylonian siege on Jerusalem).
Others suggested folding it in to the layered tragedies of Tisha B’Av, the late summer fast
of the 9th of Av. It was widely held that a day commemorating sorrow and tragedy had
no business being in this month, the month of Nisan, because we are commanded to
celebrate, not mourn, during the entire month of the Passover holiday.
Into this clamoring, quarreling discussion came a group whose voice simply could not be
ignored. The members of the underground resistance, the ghetto fighters, the Zionist
youth groups who supported armed resistance of Nazi oppression all joined ranks and
demanded not only a day of Holocaust remembrance, but that this commemoration be
calendared on the date of the most significant and historic uprising of them all—the
Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. The Nazis intentionally scheduled some of their most heinous
attacks to coincide with Jewish holidays. The plan to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, to
murder every last inhabitant was to occur on Passover of 1943. How could a God who
saved Israel from slavery really exist, a God who is praised in the Haggadah for coming
to Israel’s rescue in every generation, a God who hears the cries of the oppressed and
rescues them with an outstretched arm and a mighty hand really exist if so many Jews are
1
exterminated on the very holiday that celebrates those ideas? Somehow, the Jews in the
Ghetto found out about this diabolical plan. Quickly, about 1,000 Jewish resistance
fighters organized, collected contraband weapons, guns, and grenades, and decided to
fight back. Worn and weary from starvation and sickness, they nevertheless repelled the
German troops for nearly a month—which, by the way was even longer than the mighty
French Army could hold off the Germans! While they were ultimately overpowered, the
symbolism of their heroism led to the creation of Yom Hashoa ve’Hagevurah—the
official name of the holiday—Holocaust and Heroism Day on the date the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising began. It was April 19th, 1943…The first day of Passover, and the day
before Hitler’s birthday. Himmler thought that liquidating the Ghetto would be a much
appreciated birthday gift for Hitler. Instead, Hitler’s birthday was overshadowed by an
all-out rebellion by these brave Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto. It was a major turning
point in Jewish history. Think about it: On Hanukkah, the Seleucid Greeks only wanted
the Jews to abandon their traditions and Hellenize. On Purim, Haman only demanded
that they bow in subservience to him. If the slaves in Egypt would have kept on slaving
away, Pharaoh would not have felt the need to attack all the male children. The
Inquisition sought authentic Jewish converts more than anything. But the Shoah was
different. Nothing a Jew could do or not do mattered. The Nazis didn’t want to convert
us, or to enslave us, or to have us bow down to them, or to have us give up our culture in
favor of theirs. They had one demand and one demand only…and it was our lives. The
heroes of the resistance, whose legacy we honor this year in particular, 70 years since the
Warsaw Ghetto uprising announced that Jewish life is too precious, the Jews are not
expendable, that we would not dutifully line up for our own slaughter.
The truth is that gevurah, heroism, resistance came in many forms…not just those
who fought with weapons or joined rag-tag militias. How many mothers pushed their
children out of moving cattle cars and ordered them to run. How many brothers and
sisters dragged their younger siblings into the depths of forests and through frozen
mountain passes, fleeing from death; running toward life. That too is resistance; that too
is heroism. How many gave up their last piece of bread, an article of clothing, or a
comforting word to another…to help ease their hunger, their suffering, or their fear. That
too was heroism. That too was resistance. How many non-Jews opened up cellars and
2
attacks, farmhouses, and convents to hide a whole generation of Jews, putting their own
lives at risk as the Nazis prowled the countryside, executing on the spot those who
offered hiding places to runaway Jews…That too was heroism. That counts as well as
acts of incredible resistance. And there are so many stories like this, so many that are
both recorded and retold, and countless others that will never be known because no one
documented them or they did not survive, but that we honor this weekend of Yom
Hashoa ve’Hagevurah…Holocaust and Heroism Day.
As much as I am absolutely committed to sanctifying the memories of the staggering
numbers of victims of the Shoah, I also believe that the stories of heroism and resistance
must be told. You see, a resurgence of anti-Semitism has made its way to some of the
very places where it once so diabolically flourished. As Michael Gerson so poignantly
wrote in yesterday’s Washington Post, the same kind of dehumanizing, genocidal rhetoric
that once blared through loudspeakers at Nazi Party rallies is now the common, daily
oratory of the modern Iranian regime. Gerson cautioned readers not to just write it off as
just the bombast of crazy religious fanatics…but to take it for what it is, the attempt to
reduce Jews to something less than human, making it more conceivable, more plausible
to destroy them. Today’s heroes…today’s resistance…today’s defiance is to make sure
that the world rejects that rhetoric; repudiates that rhetoric; and demands that no human
being can be reduced to something less; to something expendable or worse…destructible.
a young Jewish woman from the Netherlands named, Etty Hillesum. In 1942 a young
Jewish woman from the Netherlands named Etty Hillesum “voluntarily went to the
concentration camp at Westerbork to help the sick and dying. She was 28 years old at the
time, and yet “she must have known that such courage would cost her life. It did. A year
later, in 1943, she was sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. In the midst of that dark
night, she wrote in her diary:
‘I will go to any place on this earth where God sends me, and I am ready in every
situation and until I die to bear witness…that it is not God’s fault that everything has
turned out this way, but our fault…Only this thing becomes more and more clear to me:
that You [God] cannot help us, be that we must help You, and in so doing we ultimately
help ourselves…”
3
Dearest friends, I hate speaking about lessons of the Holocaust…as if the Holocaust was
some kind of nefarious curriculum or case study. But if there is any way to honor the
heroes and the martyrs, then it must be this: Wherever and whenever in the world people
are labeled as less than human; wherever and whenever an entire people is saddled with
blame and responsibility for other people’s problems; wherever and whenever the
destruction of humanity is “justified” for any reason, we, the post-Holocaust generation
must stand up and find our voice and do everything in our power to prevent it. Etty
Hillesum once said, “God is not accountable to us, but we are to Him.” This is the
accountability of the modern era. This is the heroism of the modern era. Find your
voice; find your courage; and stand up for life, for humanity, and for God.
4