Safe in Our Hands

by Laura

Shoah – a simple yet utterly incomprehensible word.  What does it really mean to each one of us?

No matter how many words are written, how many testimonies spoken or images seen, we will forever be unable to comprehend the tragedy that befell the Jewish people just over 70 years ago.

In the years that followed it became a mission of the Jewish community to arouse the consciousness of the outside world on the subject of the Holocaust and to this end we have achieved much.  We now have a pressing duty to pass the baton of responsibility for its legacy to future generations within our own community.

Our rich traditions teach us that in order to know where you are going you have to reflect on where you have come from.  The voices of Shoah survivors are fading; their testimonies and those of the victims cannot be consigned to the past.  We must lift them from the history books to conserve them and provide them with a voice – our voice.  The next generation in their turn will then become our witnesses to the witnesses.

The time to do this is on Yom HaShoah, 27th Nisan, inaugurated in 1953 as the Yahrzeit for the Holocaust.  It is due time for this most important of days to be elevated in the calendar of UK Jewry.

In Israel, in an act of national unity, the country observes a two minute silence. Today, you are uniting with other communities across the UK to mark this special Shabbat, renamed Shabbat Zichron HaShoah in 2012 by former Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Lord Sacks.

During the new Yizkor prayer written especially for Yom HaShoah, the names of family members from this community who perished in the Holocaust will be read out ensuring that each person will be remembered as the individual they were, not just as one of 6 million.

For more information, see www.yomhashoah.org.uk