On Monday night, the eve of the 27th of Nisan, we will begin the commemoration of Yom haShoah, the day on which we remember the brutal extermination of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazi murderers and their collaborators.
My parents and grandparents were not born in Europe. I come from a typical Sephardic family. On my mother’s side, my ancestors come from Syria, and on my father’s side, from Morocco. None of my close relatives were sent to a concentration camp, nor died in a gas chamber. My parents, my sisters, and I were all born in Argentina. We did not directly experience the Shoah, nor do we have survivors in our families.
I learned about the Shoah at the school I attended in my hometown of Buenos Aires, the Talpiot school on Azcuénaga Street at 700. Every year they made us watch some horrible black-and-white documentaries. So, my classmates and I learned about death trains, corpses, crematoria, and gas chambers. I will never forget that documentary that showed a group of school-age children, accompanied by a teacher, innocently entering a German army truck, from which they never emerged alive, since to expedite their murder, the Nazis directed the carbon monoxide gases inward. I cried, and a lot… for the horror that our brothers suffered at the hands of the most inhuman humans that history has known, yemach shemam.
But what I remember most, and what made my experience of the Shoah something “personal,” happened the year our principal, Mr. Eliezer Shlomovitz, z”l, invited a Holocaust survivor to speak with us (it was probably the year 1977). It is worth noting that at that time, it was not common for Shoah survivors to speak in schools.
He was an elderly man. It was difficult for him to speak in Spanish, and you could tell he didn’t have a memorized speech. Although I vividly remember the experience of hearing him speak, I am ashamed to admit that I remember all the details of his personal story. Not his name or if he thought it necessary to mention it. After telling us about his personal holocaust, how he lost his parents, his little brothers, and practically all his loved ones, and how he managed to escape from Auschwitz, this elderly man told us something like this:
“You have not personally lived through the Shoah, thank God. I think I fear that perhaps for you, the Shoah may one day become just another chapter in modern Jewish history. A history that perhaps can be refuted, questioned, or denied by our enemies. And that is why I want you to understand that the effort of our enemies to deny history is the first step in trying to repeat it. And you can never allow that to happen. It is not enough to ‘learn’ about the Holocaust. You have to be witnesses to the Shoah. All of you. Why? Because history can be denied and documents can be questioned. The only ones who can protect the memory of the Shoah are the witnesses of the Shoah. Today, you have heard my story. And you have also seen me. And you have seen my eyes… Now you carry a new and tremendous responsibility on your young shoulders. Today, you have become eyewitnesses to the Shoah. How did this happen? I will explain it to you. My eyes saw the Shoah. But they didn’t see it in black and white. My eyes saw the dark green of the Nazi uniforms, the metallic gray of their rifles, and the red of the blood of our loved ones. My eyes saw death in all its horrible colors. My eyes saw the horror that my words cannot describe. And now I want you to look into my eyes. So that from today on, you can tell others, and someday tell your children: ‘I have not seen the Shoah. But my eyes have seen the eyes that saw the Shoah. And now, my children, look into my eyes and become witnesses too.’
When he finished speaking, he rolled up his sleeve and invited us to look at his prisoner number. It was the first time we had seen a number tattooed on human skin. I approached him a little closer and forced myself to look more closely into his eyes. They were small, gray, sad, tired, and dull. There was something empty and absent in that gaze. It lacked “life.” And that was when I realized that in the tired eyes of that old man, I had witnessed a reflection, or a dark shadow, of the horror of the Shoah. And since then, I became a witness. And the Shoah became part of my personal experience.
Let us not forget. Nor allow it to be forgotten.
