April 18th Friday morning class was animated. I took photos of our students and added my thoughts about the ADL Holocaust Memorial featuring Eva Kor. This was the first time I left a Holocaust Memorial feeling good about the experience.
On Sunday, the memorial at the Hebrew Educational Alliance was positive as well, honoring the American soldier liberators. The busy program went by quickly. Seventy years of talking, sharing, grieving and heartwork has brought a matured understanding to this past and present event.
The notes below are still in process.
Eva Kor's "Candles Museum" in Indiana was ransacked by right wingers. "Candles" connects with
Medjanek's soul lights art installation:
Medjanek ghost
town concentration camp was scrubbed clean.
No sweat, tears or blood suffused the wooden barracks and walls. In one barrack, a striking art installation. Bare light bulbs ovalled in thorn bulbs; a
sea/see in darkness. Great photo op, better
video with ambient voices speaking many languages at once but I'm not
photographing. Also scrubbed clean. No Yiddish, no plaintive reciting
yidddish kindelach's names: oy,oy,oy! These
are not our prayers, beggings, lamentations.
No Kaddish
to elevate the dead. The installation
is called “peace.” Scrubbing
clean the pain is not my truth. Ouside, sunlit grass waved in the soft breeze
while birds sang. Like babi Yar Park
lushness of baby carriages and joggers fertiilized by ashes of those
sacrificed.
Rabbi
Hoffman asked me about the ashes at Medjanek that I would not visit. 10 foot
emotional pole was not enough protection.
I shared Dan Gabbay's reflection “I remembered the Aish Kodesh's
commentary on the ashes that were left behind from the sacrifices in the Holy
Temple yearning to reach up to heaven.”
My parents married in the DP camp on April 20,1948.
May 14, 1948 was THE STATE OF ISRAEL WAS CREATED.
Two years later, I was born May 14, 1950.
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