Holocaust Remembrance Day

Well, today is Hitler's birthday and tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Hey, facts are facts.

It's certainly true that almost every religious or ethnic group has been the subject of both formal governmental and informal societal persecution at one point or another in world history. Whether we are discussing Catholics in America in the 1850s, Mormons in Illinois in the 1830s, Indians in India, Christians in China, Darfur, Rwanda, the examples are too numerous and we could go on and on.

What is unique in my mind about the Jewish experience from the Diaspora onward is that Jews have more or less always been the subject of persecution, both formal and informal, in most societies across the world and particularly in highly civilized societies.

German society in the 1930s arguably was among the most civilized if not the most civilized in the world, in terms of art, literature, culture, music, industry, science, law and technology. They had the first television network, for example, the most extensive rail and road system in the world, the most advanced rocketry program, again I could go on and on. (Ok, maybe their food wasn't so hot).

Yet their singular mission was the destruction of European Jewry. The Nazis were peculiarly interested in eliminating Jewish children, for it was the children who had the ability -- simply by living -- to defy the ultimate goal of the Third Reich.

Approximately one and a half million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust. The number of children who survived is estimated in the thousands.

Anyone who grew up Jewish in South Florida grew up with the living remnants of the Holocaust -- proof of the failure of Hitler's mission. You could not walk into a Publix without seeing a survivor with a numbered tattoo. You could not enter a movie theater, go to a restaurant, or walk down Collins Avenue without encountering a survivor.

I regret not taking the time to speak with more of them; instead I just wanted my black and white cookie from Butterflake, and my steak well-done at Curry's. And I wanted services to end on Saturday as quickly as possible.

There are so many amazing stories of survival that have emerged in recent years, ones that expand upon and go beyond the initial stories many of us have heard many times. I am particularly fond of the lyrical and philosophical writings of Primo Levi, the Italian chemist who found himself at the center of the horrors of Auschwitz. His Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening are deeply moving and sophisticated works of art. I also recommend Boris Pahor's Pilgrim Among the Shadows, which recounts in poetic terms the Slovene medic's path from concentration camp to concentration camp at the end of the war.

There is no more moving an account that I have ever read than the newly published memoirs of Clara Kramer, Clara's War, which recounts this young Polish girl's 20 month experience hiding in a dug-out bunker with 17 others below a drunk, philandering anti-semitic German national. Unforgettable.

We pray for all who lost a loved one from intolerance, bigotry, fear, and hatred. We remember.