Yom Hashoah 2024 begins this evening of Sunday evening, marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising serving as a memorial day for 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Since the early 1960s, the sound of a siren on Yom Hashoah stops traffic and pedestrians throughout the State of Israel for two minutes of silent devotion. The siren blows at sundown and once again the following morning at 11 a.m. the following morning.
“This Yom Hashoa cuts us more deeply than any before...Things that we and the world vowed would never happen [’never again’] were committed against us—"again.”
—Chutney Klezmer Band
“Serving as witnesses to the horrors of the Nazis will give context to the roots oof antisemitism and help inform why we must continue to condemn antisemitism, from Eastern Europe to US college campuses.”
—Rabbi Ari Berman, Yeshiva University
"Unless You Know”
Poem by Rachel Lipetz MacAulay
Unless you know what it is to look at black and white proof at lambs led to slaughter,
At herds of the lost at ghosts of a people and know they were yours and know they are you.
Unless you know the deluge of tears for strangers not touched for a family not met
For babies not kissed for laughter not born and know they were yours and know they are you.
Unless you know the deluge of tears for strangers not touched for family not met for babies
Not kissed for laugher not born and know they were yours and know they are you.
Unless you know a childhood full of ghosts at the table of monsters in shadows of stories of suffering
Of prayers said in vain and know they were yours and know they are you.
Unless you know that guilt is ingrained that grief never ends that hate comes in waves that life carries pain
Do not tell me you know what is is that I feel unless you know they were yours and know they are you.
"Unless you Know"
Copyright 2016 Rachel L. MacAulay
Published by Reform Judaism.org
