Today is Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance commemorating the Holocaust, the most heinous crime ever committed against humanity in the history of the world.
The Holocaust is never far from my mind. It is built into everything I am and it haunts the deepest reaches of my psyche. Whenever I do hard physical work, I remind myself that it is nothing compared to what my people were forced to endure. I will not buy anything made in Germany or from a German company if I can possibly avoid it. I will not (cannot) watch movies depicting Jewish torture and suffering. Visiting Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. brought me to tears. I am verklempt with emotion thinking of my three living and two deceased relatives who bear tattoos on their arms and of my Aunt Gittel and Cousin Rifka who were murdered at death camps. I pray every Friday night (well almost every Friday night) for all who perished without anyone to say Kaddish for them.
My only comforting thought, my only way of mitigating this horror, is to think it took 6 million lives to establish today's State of Israel and end our long exile in foreign countries. A homeland for the Jewish people is built upon their ashes.
May their names forever be a blessing.
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