May Their Memory be a Blessing
Today is Yom HaShoah, the memorial to the Holocaust. Following the liberation of the camps, General Dwight Eisenhower summoned business leaders, politicians, community leaders, and others in influential positions to come and see the camps. He explained why, “Lest there comes a day when someone says that this never happened.”
As the camps opened, the world saw their horror. Death, disease, starvation, and bodies stacked like cord wood. I saw an American soldier’s photos of his time at Dachau. The photos showed the devastating effects of the Nazi war machine and their quest for the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Today, on Yom HaShoah, seventy four years later, one tourist said that Israelis stood at attention for two minutes. “Cars stopped in the middle of the road, drives stepped out of their vehicles and waited until the sirens to stop to get back into their vehicles.” “The entire country stops to remember the six million.”
The term holocaust means total burning, referring to the sacrifice of the burnt offering, a fitting description of what happened to the Jewish people in the camps. Today on Yom HaShoah, the memorial to the six million proclaims the truth: The Nazis didn’t win, they didn’t accomplish their aim of destroying the Jewish people. “The people of Israel live,” Am Yisroel Chai!”
