What is on my mind? Yom HaShoah aka "THE" Holocaust.
As a secular assimilated Jew born in "The Golden
Medina" of America I became a proud Zionistic Israeli after I first
arrived in 1974 to volunteer on Kibbutz. I can remember all those encounters
and things that I experienced when I first "came home". That changed
me and my life forever.
When I left Kibbutz Gonen in March of 1976 and moved to
Maalot before my call up as a Single Soldier to the IDF in September of 1976. I
would take my laundry to the WIZO laundry center which was run by two older
"Ashkenazic" settlers of the Townlet of Maalot which was founded as a
Transit Camp "Maabara" in 1957, here in the very north of Israel in
the "peripheral area".
The "Maabara" that has become the City of Ma'alot,
was for those "Jews of Arab Lands" who had been ethnically cleansed
from their homes by Arab hatred, was comprised mainly of Moroccans -from the
French controlled as well as Spanish controlled (and YES there is a difference)
and other "Jews of Arab Lands" Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Yemin.
I met these two wonderful women, who treated me as a
long-lost nephew, when I first went to get my laundry done. Hannah (z"l)
was married to Mordecai Rosen(z"l) and Hassiya (z"l) was a widow. I
never learned anything about Hassiya's husband. Hannah and Hassiya, had met
while slave laborers of Birkenau. Mordechai was a survivor of Auschwitz.
Hannah (z"l) and Hassiya (z"l) had gone out of
their way to help me many, many times as a "Chayal Boded".
I will never forget one time, while on a short leave from
the IDF. I helped Mordechai move some items in his workshop-he was a welder and
machinist. Without prompting him one day as we sat drinking coffee, Mordecai
told me this story regarding his arrival to the hell known as Auschwitz to pass
on. Here are his words:
"Before my family and I were rounded up and shipped
from the Ghetto in Lodz. I had been a young naive Yeshiva Boucher, an Orthodox
Jew, who lived by the commandments and the Mitzvout in happier pre-war days.
My family and I had just turned 17 when we arrived at Auschwitz
on a very cold rainy winter evening in 1943 after a long train ride in a
cramped cattle car, packed in like sardines so that we could not sit.
We were undernourished, freezing and starving. We had not
eaten for days it seemed, nor did we have water to drink. During the train ride
those who stood near the windows would break the icicles off the bars and pass
them to others to suck on for water. When we stopped on the way the two buckets
that served us toilets were dumped and rotten vegetables were thrown in to feed
us by the SS guards.
When we arrived at Auschwitz my mother and father were very
weak, they could hardly stand. The SS guards screamed as we were forced down
from the train, beaten and whipped into line.
As we got off, we passed some of my friends' parents who had
died of starvation while on the journey. Their stiff frozen bodies were thrown off the train
like you would sacks of potatoes.
The uniformed guards on the railroad siding held whips or
clubs in one hand and some, their dogs in the other. There were Jews in stripped
uniforms who picked up the dead and loaded them on trolleys while some gathered
our meager belongings on the platform.
One of the scarecrows in stripped uniforms came close and
whispered to me; "If you wish to live tell them that you are a cabinet
maker! Do not tell them you are a Yeshiva Boucher!"
I couldn't understand, at that moment, just why my mother,
father and younger sister were separated from us and what would happen to them. The stern looking Nazi Officer in a SS uniform with a mere flick of his hand
motioned them away.
I moved forward towards the man in the well-kept uniform
with cold eyes with my younger brother, who with the flick of his hand would
motion "left or Right" - "Life or death".
As the night sky turned darker the lights came on and we
shuffled forward. The Officer with the cold eyes spoke. My 15-year-old younger
brother and I were asked our profession I said cabinet makers. We were experienced carpenters and expert cabinet makers. So, with a "flick" of his gloved hand we were
pushed and beaten towards the camp.
I never saw my other family members again....
Of all the hundreds of Jews who arrived on our train,
religious and non-religious ALL vanished.
Later as we stood outside in the freezing cold in the issued
flimsy "stripped pajamas" with the wooden clogs that passed for shoes
waiting before being beaten and sent to our barracks. It appeared that as the
wind shifted towards us that white flakes like snow began to fall on us. And as I stood there I could
remember seeing the chimneys, of what I learned later to be the crematorium
glowing red against the darkening night sky. Occasionally red-hot sparks of
ashes flew out from the chimney to the sky, adding more flakes that floated in the air swirling around us.
One of the Jewish Kapos pointing to the red-hot pieces of
flesh rising in the air to the sky said to us; "You see that, that is your
loved ones fleeing to heaven."
And as he said this, I bowed my head and said the Kaddish
for my parents and siblings that I now realized I would never see again. And as I stood there I made a vow that I
would survive to honor their memory and the memory of all who died."
So the next time that you meet or encounter one of these non-Zionistic "Non-Jew" Jews remind them of Mordecai Rosen's story that hatred does
not see Secular, Orthodox or Zionists they see ONLY Jews. And when the haters murdered our family members and cremated
them the haters did so mereky because they were Jews. They do not care if you deny your Jewishness. For them Jews of all forms are made into the same ashes!
In the words of Abba Kovner; "Trust No One!! Be AWARE,
be on your guard and be ARMED! Strike first and strike quickly. Do not stop to
mourn your fallen until victory is ours!"
This is THE message we MUST remember on this day Dahm
Yisreal Nokem!!! Never means Never Again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mODTRvz7RL0
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