When there became here, and then became now
Holocaust Remembrance Day has never felt this way in Israel before. Hopefully, it never will again.
It slipped out of one of the papers that arrived at our doorstep on Friday. I took all the papers out of their bags at almost the same time, and dropped them all at once on the coffee table. So when this pamphlet slid off the table and onto the floor, I wasn’t sure which paper it had come out of. I’m still not certain.
Its title, משיב הרוח (Mashiv HaRuach), is a double entendre. The first word, mashiv, can mean either "to cause to blow” or “to restore.” HaRuach can mean either “the wind” or “the spirit.” So the phrase can mean either “who causes the wind to blow,” which is what it means in the daily liturgy, or “who restores the spirit,” which it means in many other instances.
Here, I assume, it was the second meaning that was intended. Though who knows? These days, it’s not very clear what anything means.
It is, the subtitle says, “The Holocaust in poetry of subsequent generations.”
One of the poems is by Yotam Barsheshet:1
I remember nights when I painted the doorpost with blood But You did not pass over You, and not an angel I remember how a river of blood flowed through the street quietly. Red doors remind me The scents of hyssop remind me Sounds of silence ignite in me exhausting vigilance. There are days when I wait for the wall to collapse Perhaps on me Perhaps within me and gone will be the doubt of memory.
This poem arrived not in some arcane journal, but in the Friday newspaper received by thousands of Israelis.
Israelis, it turns out, still read poetry. (Some of the major weekly papers print new poetry in every Friday edition.) Why? Perhaps because the ambiguity and uncertainty that lie at the heart of poetry have always been better at capturing Israel than has the clarity of prose.
Because the meaning of a poem can be unclear, as is, these days, the very meaning of this place we call home. And never more so than on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024. What does it mean to live in a place whose motto is “Never Again,” when it did happen again? And it happened here. And is still happening.
Ask the families of the hostages if it’s over. Ask those who’ve lost sons or daughters, husbands or wives, brothers or sisters, boyfriends or girlfriends, fathers or mothers, if it’s over.
This Yom HaShoah is different, for everyone I know, because now we’re not looking back into history, remembering the past. Because this year, the past became the present. We’re not remembering what life was like over “there” until we got here. Because this year, on October 7, “here” turned into “there.”
Here is still there.
Seven months in, dozens of families are still ripped asunder, waiting for a stolen loved one to be given their freedom. Hundreds of thousands of Jews cannot go home, because if they went home they might be killed. It used to be that “going home only to get killed” evoked Kielce, in July 1946. But, it turns out, you didn’t need to live in Poland to get killed when you went home. You could live in Kiryat Shmona, too, or Metula. Right now. Today.
No, we were not passed over. We were not saved. And yes, we’re exhausted by the never-ending vigilance—many of the guys who got out of the army a couple of months ago have now been told to get ready to report back.
What do you do, this year, with a day that is about “Never Again” when it’s still unfolding? No, not the same, obviously. But close enough to evoke much of the same rage, and fear.
Another poem in that pamphlet is by Bat-Chen Schneider:
I, who pleaded for an epidural at the first contraction
I would have been the first to go mad jumped from the railroad tie stood while shrinking low blinked at the officers get tossed into the snow lost my spine convert to Christianity and become a nun loved with ferocity anyone who would grant me another day
“I would never have survived.” Who hasn’t heard people say that about those years, way back when? That they weren’t tough enough? Or sufficiently resilient or resourceful to make it? For decades, we could only imagine how we would have responded.
But now, many of us know how resilient or resourceful those around us could be.
Young children who hid in closets, silently, for hours, knowing that their parents had already been shot dead—they know. Holocaust survivors whose children or grandchildren were murdered, raped or kidnapped and who still have to live—they know. Families that have had to go more than 200 days not knowing the fate of their stolen loved ones—they know. Other families of 4, or 5, or 6, spending month after month in a hotel room, away from everything that was familiar, with no clear sense of when they’ll head home. They know, too.
Because “there” came “here.” And “then” became now.”
No, not exactly. But too close, in too many ways.
We were invited last night to a screening of a powerful movie called Shores of Light. It is about, as the film’s website says in part:
Thousands of Jewish survivors arrived in Southern Italy after WWII, on their way to the land of Israel. To their surprise they were welcomed by the poor local Italians. At this time of psychological and physical healing, hundreds of children were born. The film follows the story of three Israeli women who were born then, in Santa-Maria-di-Leuca (1946). They decide to discover the footprints left by their parents.
And yes, it is, in many ways, an uplifting story of people who had been through hell, and still brought children into the world. In incredible numbers. A story of resilience and hope. And some Italian Catholic kindness, too.
But what struck me, still, was the families who had been ripped asunder. The woman who goes to find her own mother’s footprints and finds the hospital where she herself had been born. She remembers her own mother waiting outside the delivery room when she had her first baby, but only at the Italian hospital does she fully realize what it meant that her mother, when she gave birth, didn’t have a mother to be with her. Or anyone from her original family, for that matter.
The film is beautifully done, and deeply inspiring.
But I also found it agonizing.
All these young couples, starting over, with no one. Like the kids here who lost both their parents. Like the kids here who lost their siblings. Like the hundreds who lost grandparents. Like the many hundreds who’ve lost fathers.
Like those who still will.
In 2024, you don’t need to go to Kielce to get killed going home. And in 2024, you don’t need to visit the maternity hospital of the DP camp in Santa Maria di Leuca to be reminded what shattered families look like.
If you want to see that, you can stay in your own neighborhood.
Everywhere one goes here, we’re reminded that “there” came “here,” that “then” became “now.”
“Karina: we’re waiting for you and for all the hostages, at home.”
Everywhere.
Outside the Pelech girls high school, at the end of our street:
Our lot is tied to your lot, and our hearts are with you. The Pelech School stands with the families of the hostages.
Outside the community center, a block from us:
The Greater Bakka Neighborhood Family and Community Council pray for the return of the hostages to their homes, speedily and in peace "and the LORD God shall wipe the tears from every face" (Isaiah 25:8)
Everywhere.
In his address last night at the annual Holocaust Memorial Day Ceremony, President Isaac Herzog actually tied the hostages to the Holocaust event, reading aloud the names of two of the hostages and their many family members who had been killed by the Nazis.
We knew it already, but those names made it agonizingly clear:
it simply never ends.
The translations are mine, done quickly. They are certainly not authorized translations and should not be reproduced.