On this Yom HaShoah, as always, we kindle the flame of zachar — memory — for the millions lost in the Holocaust. It is not our pleasure to do so but our duty.
This year, however, we mark an added dimension: We celebrate the lives of those who survived and who live today in the fullness of their years.
It’s hard to imagine the Holocaust slipping from living memory, but on this 60th anniversary of the liberation of Europe, on Thursday, May 5, that certainty seems more real than ever.
Even the youngest survivors are now counted among the elderly. As Holocaust Center of Northern California Executive Director Leslie Kane points out, several local survivors have died this year, and it’s only April.
The actuarial tables are catching up with the Holocaust generation.
That is why the Holocaust Center here, along with similar agencies across the country and around the world, are working overtime to collect testimonies, record life stories and bring able-bodied survivors into the schools and museums. That mission of education must continue unabated. The infrastructure of remembrance must be intact before we lose the last survivor.
But we have not yet reached that day. In the Bay Area, hundreds of survivors live busy lives. Most are retired, some are infirm or widowed, but they are still with us.
That is why a group of local Jewish community agencies have banded together to throw them a party on Sunday, May 15. Dubbed “Eyewitness to History,” the luncheon is intended to honor those local survivors and show them some love.
Of course, they were more than simply eyewitnesses to history; they also made history. With their testimonies and public appearances, they continue to do so every day.
Their efforts have paid dividends. One of our stories this week cites the example of local b’nai mitzvah students “twinning” with a European Jewish child murdered in the Holocaust. Participants in the “Remember Us” project, launched by a Santa Rosa-based Jewish educator, pledge to say Kaddish for the lost child every year.
It’s a way of keeping their memory alive for the next Jewish generation. Or, as they call it, “holding a place” for the faceless, nameless children of the Holocaust.
Yom HaShoah is not a happy holiday for the Jewish people. After Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, it is arguably the most solemn day on our calendar.
But while never forgetting those grim days, we also want to give ourselves permission to revel in the moment while so many survivors are still with us. It’s a way of making Yom HaShoah a day for the living as well as the dead.