Rabbi
Israel Meir Lau, chief rabbi
of Israel, with dinner chairman
David
Halpern (left) and
Eli Zborowski, chairman of
American Society for
Yad Vashem. |
YAD VASHEM
Single
Story Powerful Enough
To Sweep Expanse of History
Story
by Tim Boxer
Photos
by Melanie
Einzig
 T
wasn’t until Israeli Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau came to
the American Society for Yad Vashem’s annual dinner that he
finally realized how to convey the horror of the Holocaust to the
next generation: one story at a time.
The
reason survivors kept quiet for decades following the war, he said,
was because nobody could understand six million deaths. “It was
too big a number to comprehend.”
Lau,
at eight the youngest survivor of Buchenwald, said he picked up The
Diary of Anne Frank when he was 10 years old. He wanted
to see what everybody was talking about.
He
was astonished. That’s all? The whole book, he thought, is not to
be compared to one day in Buchenwald.
“Where
is the concentration camp, the torture, the killings? I couldn’t
understand why people were so excited about this book.”
When
he got older, he realized that the book’s success lay in the fact
that it didn’t speak about millions. It was a one person’s
story. “With one human being you can identify.”
At
the Yad Vashem dinner at the New York Hilton, Lau had his
revelation. For the first time he understood what Yad Vashem means.
He
quoted Isaiah: “I will give them…yad vashem,” a hand and a
name.
“One
hand, one name. If it is single it will convince you. You cannot
bear millions of deaths, but one name you can understand.”
That
was why Anne Frank’s diary was so powerful – it was the
story of one individual. Anyone can identify with another single
human being.
Lau
urged the 1,005 dinner guests, most of them survivors, to transmit
their stories to their grandchildren.
“Tell
them how you lived in the shtetl, where nobody was homeless, nobody
died of hunger, because doors were open, hearts were open. And tell
them what happened to you in the Holocaust.”
Society
chairman Eli Zborowski presented the Yad Vashem Young
Leadership Remembrance Awards to Audrey and Zygmunt Wilf
of Springfield, New Jersey, and Arie and Eva Halpern
of Union, New Jersey.
Among
the special guests were Czech Republic Consul General Ales
Pospisil, Greece Consul General Dmitris Platis,
Switzerland Consul General Raymond Loretan, Papal
Representative Msgr. James Reinert, Poland Consul General Agnieszka
Magdziak-Miszwewska, Hungary Consul General Gabor Horvath,
Sweden Consul General Olle Wastberg.
Yad
Vashem is the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority
established in 1953 in Jerusalem by the Knesset.
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