Holocaust horror, truths recalled
BEARING witness was how the Jewish community marked Yom Hashoah Vehagevurah, the annual Holocaust and Heroism Day commemoration ceremony held at Pinelands Jewish Cemetery yesterday.
Between January 1933 and May 8, 1945, six million Jews, of which 1.5 million were children, were systematically murdered by the German Nazis and they are remembered through the reading of names and the telling of stories during the commemoration ceremony.
As the Holocaust survivors die, their stories are now being remembered by second and third generation witnesses, who “feel a responsibility that their children know the truth and full horror of what happened”, said Tamara Rothbart of the Cape Town Jewish Community.
Many of the new generations of storytellers like Caely Jo Levy find strength in the words of witness of the past like
writer Elie Wiesel, who said: “To listen to a witness is to become a witness and that consoles us.”
“It consoled him to know that there are many more generations of witnesses, ready to stand guard against tyranny and hate long after he is gone,” said Rothbart.
“The purpose of knowing and remembering history is always that we don’t repeat it. It is certainly true for the Holocaust which was probably one of the most systematic genocides which changed the way we think about humanity and what man is capable of, because it was so systematic.
“On the day, marked by solemnity, reflection and emotion, it was all about hearing individual stories, to know that “every one of those six million people had a story, had a face, had a mother and father, brothers and sisters and dreams and that they were exterminated,” she said.
After a roll call of names, there was a ceremony of butterflies which took inspiration from the poem I Never Saw Another
Butterfly by Pavel Friedman who died in the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. Cut-out butterflies with messages and names written on them, which symbolised the “tenacity of hope and freedom that can never be killed” and which culminates in transformation, were pinned on the cemetery walls.
Rich in symbolism and tradition, songs were sung in Yiddish and Hebrew. “When you hear words like holocaust and genocide and numbers of six million people, 1.5 million children, the scale and the horror of it becomes almost too much to comprehend and those terms become neutralised, so today is very much about hearing individual stories.
“We become numb to the horror, but when we hear the stories and the emotions, we as a religion, a culture and a people recognise the individual even in the face of mass horror,” said Rothbart