Published: Sunday, April 11, 2010
GUEST COMMENTARY / HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
‘Never again’ must become humanity’s pledge
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. In all likelihood it will go largely unremembered, which is exceedingly unfortunate — for all of us, Jew and non-Jew alike.
Israel and I were born in the same month and year. I recall vividly as a small child being told of the Holocaust (Shoah). “Six million dead.” But what does that mean? There were roughly 18 million Jews alive before Hitler. Twelve million afterwards. One out of three Jews on the planet had been murdered.
I was too young at that time to know what being Jewish meant. But I had a father, a mother and a sister. I understood one out of three. One out of three of everyone like me, whatever “like me” meant, had been obliterated.
Today we still have “Holocaust deniers” — the president of Iran is currently the most famous. But I’ve always been bothered more by the Holocaust minimizers. The world turned its collective back on the Jews, giving Hitler tacit permission to proceed. The United States kept its quota intact. The pope made his Concordat.
There were indeed heroes. Raoul Wallenberg helped. Chiune Sugihara helped. Oskar Shindler helped. But these, and a few others like them, were the exceptions. And all too often they are used as an excuse to rewrite history. “See,” I was told as recently as a few years ago. “You Jews exaggerate. The world did not turn its back.”
Yet what is by far the most distressing to me is that the phrase, “Never Again” has been relegated to a Jewish saying. I believe that one reason we need a Holocaust Remembrance Day is that “Never Again” must become humanity’s pledge.
For me, “Never Again” has never referred solely to the Holocaust. What Hitler accomplished in less than 10 years, it took European emigrants more than 100, but the results were remarkably similar: the near annihilation of the Native Americans as a people, and to no small degree their continued isolation in ghettos we call reservations. At least the German people, for the most part and to their credit, have owned up to their complicity in the genocide that became known as the Holocaust. Turkey remains a “holocaust denier” regarding its own Armenian population.
Not a few people ask me why I became a Jewish minister. I am indeed an ordained interfaith minister, while remaining a Jew (last week I led an interfaith Seder). Holocaust remembrance gives one concrete reason. We humans tend to remember what happened to “us” with intensity, and what happened to “them” less so, if at all. But there is no them. “Them” is an illusion. There is only us. Humanity. Us.
We divide ourselves with impunity: by gender, age, race, country, religion, and indeed we divide yet again into denominations within our religions. What I would like, what I pray for from Holocaust Remembrance Day is a realization that there is no them. There is only us.
When we demean, debase and seek to destroy the “other,” we demean, debase and destroy ourselves. The Holocaust is a stark and terrifying reminder of what happens when we forget this. Holocaust Remembrance Day can help to keep us from forgetting.
Elie Wiesel, in his 1986 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, wrote of the Holocaust, “That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. … And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.”
Let us, with Elie Wiesel, swear never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us remember our common humanity.
Rev. Steven Greenebaum is an associate minister at the Interfaith Community Church in Seattle, and leads the newly founded Living Interfaith Church of Lynnwood (www.livinginterfaith.org).
Israel and I were born in the same month and year. I recall vividly as a small child being told of the Holocaust (Shoah). “Six million dead.” But what does that mean? There were roughly 18 million Jews alive before Hitler. Twelve million afterwards. One out of three Jews on the planet had been murdered.
I was too young at that time to know what being Jewish meant. But I had a father, a mother and a sister. I understood one out of three. One out of three of everyone like me, whatever “like me” meant, had been obliterated.
Today we still have “Holocaust deniers” — the president of Iran is currently the most famous. But I’ve always been bothered more by the Holocaust minimizers. The world turned its collective back on the Jews, giving Hitler tacit permission to proceed. The United States kept its quota intact. The pope made his Concordat.
There were indeed heroes. Raoul Wallenberg helped. Chiune Sugihara helped. Oskar Shindler helped. But these, and a few others like them, were the exceptions. And all too often they are used as an excuse to rewrite history. “See,” I was told as recently as a few years ago. “You Jews exaggerate. The world did not turn its back.”
Yet what is by far the most distressing to me is that the phrase, “Never Again” has been relegated to a Jewish saying. I believe that one reason we need a Holocaust Remembrance Day is that “Never Again” must become humanity’s pledge.
For me, “Never Again” has never referred solely to the Holocaust. What Hitler accomplished in less than 10 years, it took European emigrants more than 100, but the results were remarkably similar: the near annihilation of the Native Americans as a people, and to no small degree their continued isolation in ghettos we call reservations. At least the German people, for the most part and to their credit, have owned up to their complicity in the genocide that became known as the Holocaust. Turkey remains a “holocaust denier” regarding its own Armenian population.
Not a few people ask me why I became a Jewish minister. I am indeed an ordained interfaith minister, while remaining a Jew (last week I led an interfaith Seder). Holocaust remembrance gives one concrete reason. We humans tend to remember what happened to “us” with intensity, and what happened to “them” less so, if at all. But there is no them. “Them” is an illusion. There is only us. Humanity. Us.
We divide ourselves with impunity: by gender, age, race, country, religion, and indeed we divide yet again into denominations within our religions. What I would like, what I pray for from Holocaust Remembrance Day is a realization that there is no them. There is only us.
When we demean, debase and seek to destroy the “other,” we demean, debase and destroy ourselves. The Holocaust is a stark and terrifying reminder of what happens when we forget this. Holocaust Remembrance Day can help to keep us from forgetting.
Elie Wiesel, in his 1986 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, wrote of the Holocaust, “That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. … And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.”
Let us, with Elie Wiesel, swear never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us remember our common humanity.
Rev. Steven Greenebaum is an associate minister at the Interfaith Community Church in Seattle, and leads the newly founded Living Interfaith Church of Lynnwood (www.livinginterfaith.org).
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