May Little Monkey and Big Monkeys Never Forget
(Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day)
Yom HaShoah began Sunday evening on April 27th and ends Monday night on April 28th for 2014.
I've been to the museum in DC a dozen times and no time have I gone that at some point my heart hasn't stopped. My throat not choked with unspilt tears. By the time I reach the bridge of photos.... my heart feels dead inside overcome with too much pain, grief, sorrow.
These are not posed faces to be put inside frames and sold, they were real people, lives lost, stolen, under the banners of horrible hatred. Families broken apart, in some cases destroyed or left with no knowledge of other survivors scattered. We hear stories of the devastation of these families. I personally know of one such story, a friend N. Csonka who once told me how is father and grandmother were under the impression for almost a decade that the other had perished only to randomly come across each other in California 10 years after the end of the war. Both having made their way to not only the United States but the West Coast thinking only they had survived.
The photos rise well above ones head into a space like a bell tower, but holds no bells, no music, only loss.
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As you walk through the museum, watching videos, looking down into exhibits (some are too graphic to be out right displayed so those who can not stomache the images do not look down into these such exhibits), listening to testimonials, seeing the mountains and piles of shoes, hair clippings, luggage. All this while you carry with you a small booklet. As each floor and level passes you turn the pages to see, the life of a real person. You hold the life of a real person, and you walk trough the Holocaust with them, each moment and level at a time. When you reached the very end, see the final depth of the destruction and its toll of the world, feels its toll on your heart, there are computer stations. Each time I find myself at this step I hold my breathe, hoping without hope. You see the computer will tell me whether my person lived, died, or in some cases uncertainty.
Only once in the dozen times I have gone to the museum have I made it to the end and breathed emotions of relief that the person inside the booklet I held survived. All the rest perished and one unfortunate soul was unknown but suspected to be dead.
When my son left for school this morning, I asked him again and again... what is today, until he could tell me in his own broken speech. 'Yom Ha Show Ah". What is it? "To remember the dead". As he gets older, we will talk more about it and when he's old enough, I will take him to see. As horrible as it is to see, it is important, remembrance is important. Why? So 'Never Again'.
