Your article’s title is innocuous and inviting. Yet the realism and recipe ingredients of the theme are interesting because they are different enough from our times so that there could be a curiosity resulting in learning a change of mind.
For reasons I cannot explain, these stories resonate deeply inside me. I've read survivor stories. I visited the US Holocaust Museum. I saw the shoes, the uniforms, the stars, the boxcars, etc. I'd read how they packed the Jews into those boxcars so tightly, that when one died enroute, they remained upright. Bodily elimination was done upright. All unimaginable, all horrific.
And then, I entered the wall of names on the third level, paused and thought, "That's a lot of names". As I encounterd the wall again on leaving the second level. Looking closely, the realization washed over me, this wall was three stories high, and contained the names of villages, hamlets, and towns where the extermination journeys commenced. It was at that moment the colossal enormity penetrated to my most inward parts, and I was overwhelmed by the scope of the loss. People moved past as tears fell and I stood rooted, enveloped in complete silence. Even as I write and re-visit that moment, I enter the silence. The silence is the empty, collective space of each life the Holocaust claimed. It is real.
So, I will eat falalfal with you tomorrow along with a lamb shawarma in Dugo's memory, and the silence. I appreciate you.
Shawarma and falafels partaken in Dugo's silence. Reinforced by a documentary I just 'happened' to watch last night which had films the SAS took as they liberated Buchenwald.
Have a touch of weltschmerz today, or perhaps ke'ev ha'olam. Not assuaged by the "deal". Thanks again for Dugo's story.
A continuation of the story of the Jewish people: the older man singing in this threesome is my grandson’s mohel. He happens to be my son-in law’s uncle (who was also my son-in-law’s mohel ) and his cousins. Small Jewish world.
Your piece brought me to tears…Dugo’s story and his yearly yahrzeit of eating falafel for all those who tragically perished in the Holocaust is paradoxically so affirmative and at the same time so tragic …it reminded me of watching a small pebble being cast into the water and creating wave upon wave circling wider and wider further and further from that small drop …Dugo’s story touches us all and is a message of resilience,making meaning out of the horrors he witnessed and millions of others also did but whose lives were stolen cruelly and untimely from them.
I can hear somewhere in Dugo’s testimony the cries of King Lear cradling his beloved daughter dead in his arms and calling out into the dark indifferent universe “Never,never,never,never,never”
But the glory of this story is that Dugo sees a Jewish universe the beauty of laying tefillin,of the Torah Etz Chaim,of living a life in Israel …the land of our ancestors and the refuge for all Jews scattered like stars across the dark sky of the diaspora…his story gives me and others hope…let us all eat felafel…l’chaim and let us never forget!
Thank you so much for sharing Dugo’s profoundly moving testimony with us.
You chose one of my favourite songs sung by the Portnoy brothers and their father…another joyful affirmation and celebration of how we are indissolubly linked in our Jewish story.
Thank you for the link. Your writing pierces the heart. That theme does seem to want to overwhelm us. It is a full-time job to overcome it. It leaves us stronger, but it is a strength enveloped with an excruciating sadness.
What you wrote is holy, burning truth. I’m reading it again.
Rachel, thank you. Feel free to share.
Your article’s title is innocuous and inviting. Yet the realism and recipe ingredients of the theme are interesting because they are different enough from our times so that there could be a curiosity resulting in learning a change of mind.
The unspeakable turned into words. And that on a day when we made a horrible deal with the murderers of Gaza. What words shall we write now?
Nothing comes to mind, and if something did, I wouldn't trust myself to write it.
Standing. Thank you for sharing from the heart.
For reasons I cannot explain, these stories resonate deeply inside me. I've read survivor stories. I visited the US Holocaust Museum. I saw the shoes, the uniforms, the stars, the boxcars, etc. I'd read how they packed the Jews into those boxcars so tightly, that when one died enroute, they remained upright. Bodily elimination was done upright. All unimaginable, all horrific.
And then, I entered the wall of names on the third level, paused and thought, "That's a lot of names". As I encounterd the wall again on leaving the second level. Looking closely, the realization washed over me, this wall was three stories high, and contained the names of villages, hamlets, and towns where the extermination journeys commenced. It was at that moment the colossal enormity penetrated to my most inward parts, and I was overwhelmed by the scope of the loss. People moved past as tears fell and I stood rooted, enveloped in complete silence. Even as I write and re-visit that moment, I enter the silence. The silence is the empty, collective space of each life the Holocaust claimed. It is real.
So, I will eat falalfal with you tomorrow along with a lamb shawarma in Dugo's memory, and the silence. I appreciate you.
Thank you Rebekah Lee.
Shawarma and falafels partaken in Dugo's silence. Reinforced by a documentary I just 'happened' to watch last night which had films the SAS took as they liberated Buchenwald.
Have a touch of weltschmerz today, or perhaps ke'ev ha'olam. Not assuaged by the "deal". Thanks again for Dugo's story.
A continuation of the story of the Jewish people: the older man singing in this threesome is my grandson’s mohel. He happens to be my son-in law’s uncle (who was also my son-in-law’s mohel ) and his cousins. Small Jewish world.
And a great musician at that.
Your piece brought me to tears…Dugo’s story and his yearly yahrzeit of eating falafel for all those who tragically perished in the Holocaust is paradoxically so affirmative and at the same time so tragic …it reminded me of watching a small pebble being cast into the water and creating wave upon wave circling wider and wider further and further from that small drop …Dugo’s story touches us all and is a message of resilience,making meaning out of the horrors he witnessed and millions of others also did but whose lives were stolen cruelly and untimely from them.
I can hear somewhere in Dugo’s testimony the cries of King Lear cradling his beloved daughter dead in his arms and calling out into the dark indifferent universe “Never,never,never,never,never”
But the glory of this story is that Dugo sees a Jewish universe the beauty of laying tefillin,of the Torah Etz Chaim,of living a life in Israel …the land of our ancestors and the refuge for all Jews scattered like stars across the dark sky of the diaspora…his story gives me and others hope…let us all eat felafel…l’chaim and let us never forget!
Thank you so much for sharing Dugo’s profoundly moving testimony with us.
You chose one of my favourite songs sung by the Portnoy brothers and their father…another joyful affirmation and celebration of how we are indissolubly linked in our Jewish story.
Something I wrote with a similar theme.
https://open.substack.com/pub/womanskeptic/p/accountability-as-empowerment?r=2z8wkz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you for the link. Your writing pierces the heart. That theme does seem to want to overwhelm us. It is a full-time job to overcome it. It leaves us stronger, but it is a strength enveloped with an excruciating sadness.