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| Annual Gathering of Remembrance, Temple Emanu-El (photo by Melanie Einzig) |
Yesterday we held our annual Holocaust commemoration day with more than 2000 people in attendance. The following are the remarks that I delivered:
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Museum of Jewish
Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, I welcome you to this annual
gathering, where we assemble to be alone, where we join together to find
solitude, where we find strength in our numbers to confront the lonely task of
remembering. A year has past since we
last gathered here, and in this year the world has changed, our families have
changed, we have changed. One thing that
remains constant, however, is our stone-like resolve to keep a place in our
hearts and our minds that is reserved for our deepest reflection – a place to
which we return each year to remember what we have lost – what we have lost as
individuals and what we have lost as a community.
Although it may be possible to identify the losses we have
suffered personally and the losses that befell our families and mutilated our
communities, no one can possibly quantify the vast potential that was denied
our people and robbed from the world.
Today we mourn our private losses and we mourn our collective loss that
grows in time as we consider generations that were never born, creativity that
was never expressed, achievement that could never be realized.
Yet in this crowded place of solitude and memory, we reflect
today not only on loss but also on the uplifting story of rebirth and renewal.
As we look around us at this room, filled with more than 2000 people, we marvel
at the exponential power of survival.
And we know that it belonged to the responsibility of those who survived
and those who followed them to remember those who perished, to learn about the
monstrous crime that was their murder, and to identify and bring to justice
those who committed that crime. And
although that effort was incomplete and flawed, it is important that we recall
it and that we recognize what was achieved.
And so today we reflect on the defeat of those who sought to destroy us
and we recall the moments of Justice that punctuated the postwar period.
This year, we note that sixty-five years have passed since
the victorious allies placed the Nazi leaders in the dock at Nuremberg, and
fifty years since the still young State of Israel, through a combination of
chutzpah and heroics, delivered to the glass booth of justice Adolf Eichmann,
the man who helped to organize the murder of its people.
Within months of the end of the war, with the earth still
smoldering and the dimension of the destruction still undigested, the victors
devised a code to judge the offences of their enemies – including crimes
against peace and crimes against humanity.
Although imperfect, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg
succeeded in documenting the deeds of the Nazis, preserving crucial records for
future historians, and removing from the earth some of the perpetrators of
those immense crimes. Exactly 65 years
and two weeks ago, those assembled in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg heard
the testimony of the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess. In a series of chillingly straightforward
answers to simply posed questions, Hoess described the killing process
at Auschwitz. With his testimony and
that of the others, the court and the rest of the world learned of the colossal
crimes of the Holocaust.
Almost as an antidote, and certainly as a respite from the
rigors of the trial and the horrors revealed there, the prosecutors and the
staff of the tribunal attended a concert at the Nuremberg Opera house on May 7,
1946, one week less than 65 years ago.
On the program was an orchestra of ex-inmates of ghettoes and
concentration camps, and among the performers was the dear mother of Rita
Lerner, who has served as the co-chair of this commemoration for so many
years. Henny Durmashkin Gurko and her
colleagues in the orchestra, dressed in striped uniforms, gave powerful and
eloquent expression to their survival.
A sign stood before them on the stage and announced in Hebrew “Am
Yisroel Chai.”
Exactly on this day, May 1st, 50 years ago, in
the theater that became a courtroom in Jerusalem, converted for the trial of
Adolf Eichmann, a slim young man with thick dark hair took the witness
stand. In accented English he told the
story of his experiences during the war and how he lost his mother, father, and
all six of his siblings one by one. Dr.
Leon Wells of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who had also testified at Nuremberg and had
been a teenager when the war began, told the court how among his many
experiences, he had been forced to serve in a special unit that was sent to
destroy the evidence of the Nazi crimes by digging up the mass graves and
incinerating the bodies and crushing the bones to dust.
Despite this desperate attempt by the Germans to hide their
crimes, the evidence survived, and despite their efforts to destroy Leon Wells
and Henny Durmashkin Gurko, both survived to live long lives and give birth to
children and to tell their stories.
Today we honor their memories as we honor the memories of the millions
who perished, and we are mindful today that even if ultimate justice in the
context of the Holocaust is not possible, the pursuit of justice in all things
is not only worthy but is a sacred responsibility.
