The continuity of the Jewish people, guaranteed by passing the memory of the Holocaust to the next generation, was emphasized in Sunday’s 44th commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
At ceremonies at the Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden here, attended by an estimated 4,000 people, 60 children wearing blue ribbons filled the stage and lit candles in a large Magen David in memory of the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. A young girl passed her candle to six survivors, who, escorted by their own children, added to the flames kindled onstage.
Benjamin Meed, chairman of WAGRO, the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization responsible for mounting the annual ceremony, told the gathering that the obligation of survivors to the past “is no longer our obligation alone, We have been joined by the second generation.” The children, said Meed, “have become our full colleagues and coworkers in the efforts of remembrance. Soon they will become our partners, securing the continuity of remembrance over generations.”
And the survivors and their children, said Meed, have been “joined by the Jewish community at large, which has upraised the cause of remembrance as the obligation of all Jews, and has insisted, as we have for generations, that it is not enough to remember. We must ensure that others do not forget.”
Meed spoke of the importance of the current trial in Jerusalem of John Demjanjuk, and its awakening of young Israelis to a time in Jewish history that some Israelis counseled was better left as is.
He said: “Today we have seen that those who counseled forgetfulness were wrong. By the thousands the younger generation of Israelis come to see the trial. Children from Morocco and Iraq, from Turkey and Ethiopia attend every day. Let us listen to the word of one young boy who said at the trial, ‘Our generation bears the responsibility to listen to the survivors. From here on, it is going to be only textbooks.”
Donald Hodel, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, emphasized the need to include learning about the Holocaust in the repertory of every child in the country. “As the young people of our country read in their history books about the heroes of America who, for the sake of freedom, fought gallantly to the death in places like Corregidor, they also must learn about the incredible events of the Uprising. They must become acquainted with the heroes to whom you and I pay tribute today.”
The story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising “must be learned, not merely told,” he continued. “There is far more to it than human interest in acts of raw courage…. those outnumbered souls who fought the most awesome army in Europe with a pitiful assortment of small arms and explosives — they understood there can be no security without freedom. They serve as a constant reminder that those, here and abroad, who say ‘better Red than dead’ are just plain wrong.”
Hodel also recalled that the uprising began on Passover, marking the passage of a people to freedom, and that for Soviet Jews “who are not free to go to Israel or come to America… freedom is not complete.”
Hodel spoke of the failures of world leaders to act to save the Jews. “We need to unmask for all to see, and we must tell and retell for all to hear, the failures during the Holocaust of leaders and ordinary citizens alike to stand up to evil and to be counted. We must teach the crucial lesson that, when society and its leaders fail in that regard, innocent men, women and children inevitably will pay a terrible price. And when that happens, those who sit mutely in the face of evil pay the price of losing their right to proclaim they are children of God.”
‘A STORY THAT MUST BE RETOLD’
Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) told the gathering that “the story of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance is a story that must be retold by Jews and gentiles alike.” He scored the United Nations for failing to release its files on Nazi war criminals, and criticized the U.S. for voting with the majority against making the files public. “It is all the more unbelievable,” he said, that the U.S. failed to vote in favor of releasing the files. “These files should be open and available.”
D’Amato praised Neal Sher, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), who was present, for his unflagging effort to expose Nazi war criminals living in the U.S., and hailed the deportation of Karl Linnas last Monday. “We must never allow those who perpetrated their crimes against humanity to enjoy a moment of peace. Let us be vigilant, constant in our trust, in our faith in going forward to do what is necessary.”
Menachem Rosensaft, founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, spoke of the near failure of bringing Linnas to justice. Rosensaft scored the attempts of Attorney General Edwin Meese to send Linnas to Panama, and for his failure to place Austrian President Kurt Waldheim on the watch list and bar him from entering the country.
“We are outraged that anyone in our government should have tried to help Karl Linnas live out his days in freedom in a safe and comfortable retirement home on the beaches of Central America.” Rosensaft said that all who share these views “must be made to understand once and for all that any compromise or accommodation with Nazism or the Third Reich is a perversion of justice and an obscene desecration of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
