Yom HaShoah… In the midst of war

In the midst of war, Israel remembers. On Yom HaShoah, Israel honors the millions of victims of the greatest massacre in history.

It is a surreal image: yesterday, for the occasion, we were in a miklat, one of the secure shelters at Kibbutz Migdal Oz, near Efrat. This is the area where Rachel gave birth to Benjamin; it sits bordering Bethlehem, the city of David, and Jerusalem, the city of the Great King. Surrounded by a group of young people from the kibbutz, in this “bunker” transformed by their joyful creativity, David Herrsch spoke. He shared his story in a country that today knows how to defend itself with strength, in the midst of a war dubbed “The Lion’s Roar.”

He spoke of his father, trapped with his large family during the Holocaust. He spoke of the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Finally, he spoke of the unspeakable, the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau. As early as 1933, Jews were facing growing antisemitism until, ten years later, it reached the point of the unnameable: the “Final Solution,” aimed at exterminating a millennia-old people, the Jewish people.

May all those who today accuse Israel of genocide or war crimes take a moment to reflect. May they at least have the clarity and honesty to discern the true nature of a regime driven by an ideology of destruction, such as that of the Islamic mullahs today, which is comparable in its very essence to Nazism.

In Lodz, David tells us, the poorest neighborhood had been emptied of its residents to cram tens of thousands of Jews into it. They lived there in inhumane conditions, reduced to the status of slaves in the service of the Reich. Lodz became the largest ghetto after Warsaw. Then came a Nazi monstrosity: the idea to take all children under the age of ten “to the countryside.” Who, at the time, could have imagined that these children were being sent to be gassed and burned in the ovens of Auschwitz?

And today? Who can still defend, after October 7, 2023, those who raped, massacred, and ripped open pregnant women, or burned babies in ovens? More than 80 years after Auschwitz, the hatred of Jews has not disappeared. It remains a stain on humanity, and also on a Christianity that is all too often silent. But while yesterday the Jews were like lambs led to the slaughter, despite courageous revolts, today, Israel stands tall. Israel defends itself like “a roaring lion.” This strength, which surprises the world, is also a direct response to history.

As has been said, the Jews are “the canaries in the coal mine,” warning of imminent danger; today, the world is on the brink of chaos. The Bible also says that to touch Israel is to “touch the apple of God’s eye.” Those who attack Israel expose themselves to consequences of which history has already provided terrible examples.

Europe, which watches without acting, is reminiscent of the Europe of Chamberlain and Daladier. Regarding that “policy of appeasement,” Winston Churchill famously said: “You had the choice between war and dishonor; you chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

At this very moment, 10 a.m., the Yom HaShoah siren is sounding. Rak be’Israel, only in Israel, a nation that, even in the midst of a ceasefire, pauses to remember. A nation that honors its dead, listens to the survivors, and passes on the memory.

Recently, a 95-year-old Auschwitz survivor made aliyah from France. His children and grandchildren already live in Israel. He rejoices in having built this family, he who, at age 13, found himself alone in Auschwitz after losing every member of his family. Perhaps this, ultimately, is the most powerful response to the Holocaust: not merely to remember death, but to bear witness to life in the face of every deadly ideology. To the sound of that siren, amid the frozen silence of an entire country, one certainty remains: ‘Am Yisrael ‘haï, the people of Israel live.

“It is He who delivers you from the fowler’s snare, from the plague - whether the brown of Nazism, the black of Jihadism, or the green of Islamism - and its ravages. He will cover you with His feathers, and you will find refuge under His wings; His faithfulness is a shield and a breastplate. You will not fear the terrors of the night, nor the arrow (or the missile) that flies by day.” Psalm 91