Yizkor – Remembrance

Letters

Editor: It is April 16, 1978. My wife and I are at the Bergen-Belsen Survivors Association of Toronto. The hall is filled with old and broken people. President David Goldfinger, the Toronto glazier who with his son appears in the National Film Board's documentary Memorandum, had asked Emil Fackenheim and me to speak. At my turn, I begin with:

Some tormented by images lived
some straining to see in the dark
yet neither able to grasp
the enormity, or the deliverance

Two generations have passed;
with signs of danger recurring
we, under gathering clouds,
apprehensively search for a shield.

How to account for the fact that the 2,000-plus-year cycle of defamation, persecution and mass murder was being revived? A clue came one day in class: a student was reporting on Michel del Castillo's novel Child of Our Time. The end of the Spanish Civil War sees civilians and former soldiers fleeing to France, among them a young mother and her preteen son. Interned near Marseilles, women can go to work outside the camp but children must stay put. When Nazi troops overrun France, the camp is raided in search of Jews. Mistaken for one, the Spanish boy becomes part of a transport to a concentration camp. In spite of the horrors witnessed there, he survives and is eventually returned to Spain.

Compared with other accounts, this one packs little punch. So much more surprising then that my student ended her report in tears. Asked about it, she said it seemed unreal to her, it should not have happened. "It had not been meant for him - he was not Jewish." Together we explored her answer. Had she meant Jewish suffering was a collective fate? "No, but look at history: since the first crusade, Jews have learned to expect unprovoked attacks on their communities, with all the attendant suffering, as part of their lot in life." We agreed that suffering, inflicted repeatedly and with little challenge, will become seen as normal, even justified, as if the victims had brought it upon themselves.

Today, much anti-Jewish phobia emanates from pseudo-religious circles that effectively imitate Nazi propaganda. Among other lies, they broadcast the long exploded myth of a Jewish world conspiracy. And to further inflame the mob, they have revived the outrageous medieval blood libel, claiming Jews murder other people's children, using their blood to make matzot. Where such dangerous false consciousness is allowed to flourish, a repetition of the Shoah is not unthinkable.

In face of this madness, where is inspiration and hope? We can look to the example and courage of Israel, fighting endlessly to protect all her people, Jews, Christians, Druse and Muslims, from terrorism. Yet she must still struggle for her elementary right to exist in a mostly hostile world. May Israel and her people, with God's help, long prevail!

David H. Kirk
Victoria

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