The Importance of Remembering Below Is a Speech by Michael Cohen That He Delivered at Yom Hashoah Vehagevurah at Pinelands Cemetery on 16 April
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PAM GOLDING ON MAIN NOW LETTING Locate your office in Kenilworth. Peter Golding 082 825 5561 | Mike Morey 082 820 0429 Office: 021 426 4440 VOLUME 32 No 4 MAY 2015 www.cjc.org.za www.pamgolding.co.za/on-main The importance of remembering Below is a speech by Michael Cohen that he delivered at Yom Hashoah Vehagevurah at Pinelands Cemetery on 16 April. Michael is head student at Herzlia. ave you ever come across something returned home safely to loving families, actions. What struck me with devastating as young Jews in the knowledge and Hso horrific that it leaves you silent? after giving up five years of their lives. This impact is that the Holocaust did not start living proof that Hitler and the Nazis did All you feel is something you cannot was a privilege not shared by survivors with murder but with racist attitudes and not succeed in their mission — to murder explain…..total numbness. in Europe whose families, homes and prejudice. Attitudes became laws which the Jewish Nation. I felt a deep connection This time last year I participated in the livelihoods were broken and destroyed. led to concentration camps, and ultimately with everyone marching, an overwhelming March of the Living in Poland. As a regular My grandfathers were not much older to the final solution — death camps and sense of grief, but also of unity and pride 17 year old Capetonian, nothing could fully than I am now when they went to war in genocide. — of being Jewish. prepare me, absolutely nothing, for being 1940 and I realise with a sense of pride that Jews and many other groups of people We are the link between that generation at the sites of such inconceivable horror in they felt the responsibility to stand up and were murdered by the Nazis and it is our which experienced the horrors of the the history of our people. So unimaginable join the march against brutality. responsibility to stand up for all humanity. holocaust and the next generation when that it still haunts me to this day. Together In 2014 in Poland, while surveying the vast We must never stop speaking out against there will be no more survivors still with us. with my fellow South Africans and others compound of Majdanek and seeing the anti-Semitism, intolerance, prejudice and Our generation is responsible for of my age from all over the world — from lines of barracks preserved in their entirety all forms of discrimination. That is how we ensuring the continuity of the story of the Argentina, to Hungary and even Panama stretching into the distance — taking half can continue our march. Holocaust. It is part of our Jewish story as is — we began our march. an hour to walk the length of Auschwitz- Today a year ago I was at the Yom Pesach when we speak about the Exodus What I have realised is that the March Birkenau — only then did I get a true sense Hashoah service at Auschwitz. 10,000 so that it lives on from one generation to of the Living was not an end in itself, it of the scale of the killing operations and of us walked, some in silence, others the next. We must keep the memories of was the starting point of a much longer the Nazi effort to murder those who they singing and chanting, retracing the steps the Holocaust alive in a way that does not journey — of reflection, questioning, despised. of those who marched the 3 kilometres diminish their importance nor reduce the deeper understanding, realisations and I kept on asking myself how it was from Auschwitz to Birkenau to their deaths. impact it had on the victims, survivors and responsibility — the responsibility to speak possible that a nation like Germany used We remembered those who had been their families. out against anti-Semitism and all injustice, its resources and its educated minds murdered and those who had suffered It is impossible to fully comprehend the to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive to create a sophisticated infrastructure under the brutal hands of the Nazis and events that took place all those years ago, and to ensure the continuity of the story of specifically designed to murder millions survived. but I feel a step closer to understanding the Holocaust for the next generation. of people. So many ordinary citizens on We marched knowing our fate, but the what happened and an overwhelming My personal connection to this period every level of society collaborated with the victims did not know whether they were sense of responsibility not only to react, of history is through my grandfathers Nazi government to cause such pain and going to live or die. but to be proactive. Sonny Jaffe and Oscar Cohen. They both suffering — a phenomenon that occurred We are privileged to have survivors with As we, the youth, march into the future, join volunteered to serve in the South African not only in Germany but in many countries us here today — we are inspired by your us as we stand up against anti-Semitism, army in their effort to stop Hitler’s rampage across Europe. resilience and courage to overcome the injustice and prejudice, wherever it may across Europe and North Africa. My one If human beings can use their power for horrors that you faced as you continued be. I fear that if we remain silent, we could grandfather, Sonny Jaffe, was captured in evil, then surely, we can use our power for with your lives. allow evil to be perpetuated. North Africa and taken as a POW to Europe good. We marched under the flags of our Today on Yom Hashoah — 70 years later where he was held until he was liberated My generation cannot change history different countries but were united under — to remember and to act is as important by the Russians. Fortunately they both but we can change attitudes by our the banner of Am Yisrael. We were united as ever. Lighting candles for victims. Taken at MotL 2015. Magen David at Gensia Cemetery, Umschlagplatz Mila 18, Warsaw Ghetto. Taken at MotL 2015. Camp at Lublin/Majdanek, Poland. Taken at March of the Living 2015. 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