The 27th of Nissan, the date set for Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism Day, was initially set as a "Day of Heroism" in the Jewish community in Israel, commemorating and commemorating the victims of hostilities in Israel since the beginning of the Arab Revolt. The Jew in 1936 - without any connection to the Holocaust.
With the establishment of the state, and after the custom began to take root in a number of communities, the Chief Rabbinical Council and the Ministry of Religions determined in 1949 that the tenth of Tevet would be the general Kaddish Day in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
This decision reflects the view that the destruction of European Jewry is an integral part of the killing and destruction that has befallen the people of Israel since the dawn of history.
In light of this, when it later established the Holocaust Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Day on the 27th of Nissan, this provoked a public controversy.
On the one hand, the date falls on the days of the counting of the Omer, when according to Jewish law some mourning customs are practiced for the deaths of 24,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva, for not honoring each other, and on the other hand the date is set at the end of Nisan. past.
Another reason for the controversy was the setting of the date in the context of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943 - the last Seder night in Warsaw.
Many of the Holocaust survivors had a feeling that a day dedicated to ghetto fighters puts in a positive light only those who fought with weapons and force, and defines them as true heroes, and puts in a negative light the others.
Indeed, this was the truth - this is how the concept of the Holocaust was shaped in the revival of the state.
Over time, changes took place and the consciousness was assimilated that the heroism of the victims and the survivors in all parts of Europe during the Holocaust was no less than that of the warriors.
Standing at the siren in Dizengoff Square, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
In my many preoccupations with youth, educational institutions and soldiers and IDF commanders and security systems, there is another change in the perception of Holocaust Remembrance Day. A greater and more significant place.The understanding that the Holocaust survivors are dwindling and that we are the next and most important link in the chain of generations to tell those who come after us the story of the Holocaust is binding and challenging.
"If I had said a number like the generation of your sons I betrayed ..." (Psalms 3)
If we place a comma after the word "like", we will get the most essential verse in our duty to tell the story to the next generation.
All the stories of the Holocaust are milestones for us and for our descendants, and if we ignore them and do not know how to tell them to the next generation and tell them "like", then "I have betrayed the generation of your sons."
For many years I was privileged to march as an IDF delegation in the "Witnesses in Uniform" project on Polish and European soil. During these trips I met many Holocaust survivors and heard firsthand what happened to our people. One of the survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp and its planners - Thomas "Toibi" Blatt - an elderly Jew from St. Barbara's in the United States.
He took various diagrams out of his briefcase and began to tell me how the escape from the extermination camp was planned, a fascinating and exciting story like no other, especially when the story was first heard on the outskirts of a labor camp where tens of thousands of our people were destroyed.
At the end of his story he addressed me with a personal and special request: "Many know the story of the escape from Sobibor, but the intensity of the pain of my personal stories and my 'revenge' after the escape are less known, I will ask you to tell it for me and be a faithful messenger."
And this is his story:
After escaping from Sobibor and a complex period in the forests among the partisans and a daily war for survival, Toibi returned to his childhood home in the Polish town of Izbitz.
When he approached his house and saw him standing on his pedestal he was very moved, he was sure that all his acquaintances and local friends would be very glad to see him "a shadow shaded by fire," returning from the inferno.
After a few knocks she opened the door of his house, the devoted caregiver who raised him and treated him with devotion in his youth.
Therefore, it was certain that the meeting would be especially exciting.
To his amazement, the door immediately slammed shut.
After repeated knocks, her husband opened the door and shouted at him never to return.
In tears he told me that at that moment his world was destroyed, the feeling of loneliness and despair that awaited him led him to concoct a plot and personal and sweet revenge of his own.
In his youth, his father taught about the quotation in the Midrash that before the conquest of the Land of Israel by Joshua ben Nun, the aforesaid buried their property in the walls of the houses, so God brought leprosy on those houses, so that they would destroy the house and discover treasures much greater than the house. .
Thomas "Toby" Blatt,
The next morning he returned to the scene, and again after a number of knocks was humiliated and deported with shouts, threats and allegations that they did not know him and that the house never belonged to him.
He bravely stood in front of the landlord and told them that he was asking for only one thing: the diamonds that his father had hidden in the walls of the house before being deported to the camp - of course the story in De Malibu.
This angered the residents of the house, who believed what he said.
They beat him and deported him indefinitely.
After about a year, Toby returned to the scene, and discovered that the house had become a heap of ruins - completely dismantled.
It turns out that the family who lived in the house decided to look for the treasure but in vain.
"That was my 'revenge'" - he concluded his story.
The collection of the personal story of the survivors is etched in our memory as one of the darkest periods in history, when our nation was almost destroyed.
A time when all of humanity lost a human photographer and the world stood aside, but places in precious light the heroism of the spirit and soul of those who perished and the survivors who are passing the torch to us these days in the apostolic race of the chain of generations.
Rabbi Shraga Natan Dahan is an officer in the Res. And holds a master's degree in management and technology and is certified as a rabbi and judge. Serves as a consultant and lecturer in public, security, educational and scientific bodies on Halacha, technology, medicine, science and space.
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