Rabbi to Rabbi: Remembering the Shoah…together

Rabbi 2 Rabbi

Do non-Jews have a role to play in Holocaust commemoration?


Rabbi MICHAEL DOLGIN
TEMPLE SINAI CONGREGATION, TORONTO

Rabbi Chaim Strauchler
Shaarei Shomayim Congregation, Toronto


Rabbi Dolgin: In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 – the day that Aushwitz-Birkenau was liberated in 1945 – as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is not specifically a Jewish commemoration and, in the past, I must admit that I did not pay too much attention to the day. But when we both took part in a nine-person delegation from Toronto to Germany recently, my feelings changed. I was both inspired and concerned to learn of Germany’s efforts to memorialize the Shoah and some of the challenges the country has faced in that regard. Do you see value in Jews and gentiles participating in Holocaust remembrance together? Do you think the Jewish role in shaping Holocaust commemorations should extend to civic observances, as well?

Rabbi Strauchler: On our mission, I felt this ambivalence, too. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located in the centre of Berlin, so close to the Brandenburg Gate and occupying a full city block, testifies to the desire of the German people to memorialize the Holocaust. Yet, the monument fails to convey the enormity of the loss: its 2,711 concrete slabs do not begin to convey the significance of the systematic murder of six million people – or the meaning of each individual life to a bereft child, parent or friend. Nothing could.

Historian Paul Johnson has called anti-Semitism an extremely infectious and massively destructive “intellectual disease,” which afflicts human individuals and entire societies. While Jews are the target of anti-Semitism, the disease harms all who harbour it. As human beings, we must therefore struggle to find a medium by which to internalize the lessons of the Holocaust and keep the memory alive. That’s why we must participate in International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Rabbi Dolgin: I had a different reaction to the Berlin memorial. When I saw the concrete slabs, I was underwhelmed. But when I walked among them, I felt lost and isolated, confused and overwhelmed. It was a very powerful experience. The goal of memorializing the Holocaust is to inoculate current and future generations against this spiritual illness to the greatest degree possible.

When we met gentile German teens at Dachau and learned that they had volunteered for a government-sponsored opportunity to study the Shoah in a special 2½-day seminar, I was touched. Very few of them had even met a Jewish person before encountering our delegation. The depths of German efforts to use lessons from the Holocaust to vaccinate its youth are impressive.

However, when we met with Jewish teens in Germany and learned that a number of them had experienced anti-Semitism at the hands of their German-born peers, I was deeply concerned. So I ask: do you believe that Germany’s good-faith efforts to educate people about the Shoah and anti-Semitism can reach far and wide enough to create “herd immunity” against this scourge?

Rabbi Strauchler: The underlying question – can it happen again? – haunted us on our trip. It was a topic of conversation with the teenagers at Dachau and in Berlin. As you described, those meetings left us with both fear and hope.
As we look at our world today, we see anti-Semitism reappearing in ever-changing forms. We see identity politics forging a new form of tribalism. Sadly, all too often, we see the Holocaust itself used as a weapon to delegitimize opponents in political debates. We have discovered no vaccine for hate; saying “Never Again” has not immunized us from anti-Semitism.

Here’s a more useful medical metaphor: we must adopt the arduous task of “incremental care,” the slow, but steady, medical attention that doctors provide for weeks, months and years, in the attempt to heal complex conditions. Anti-Semitism is a chronic disease that affects humanity and cannot be prevented by vaccines, or cured by medication. It will not just disappear. We must treat it by teaching our children and our neighbours’ children not to hate.

At the same time, we must be careful about how we speak. We must develop the habits of respectful dialogue and call on universal principles like justice, kindness and righteousness, so that our society internalizes our common humanity. We must do this and we must keep doing this. We must provide incremental care, because hate has no cure.


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