Yom HaShoah Holocaust Memorial Service Followed by Greenspan's One-Man Show

 

On April 26^th, members of both Jewish and Christian communities gathered at Congregation Emanu-El Israel Synagogue for the annual Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Yom HaShoah was founded in 1951 by the Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion and President of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.  The day falls on the 27 day of the Hebrew month of Nisan (on the 26^th or 28^th when interfering with the Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest). Yom HaShoah also falls between the anniversaries of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and founding of Israel, as well as during the traditional period of Jewish mourning.

Irene Rothschild, president of Congregation Emanu-El Israel, began the service by welcoming the people of all faiths. She then told her own family’s Holocaust survival story.

Her grandfather fled Germany as soon as Hitler was elected, and gathered passports for the family. He saw an ad in the newspaper from a man who wanted to come back to Germany (and liked what Hitler was about). The two men switched their respective bakeries.

“I thank goodness very day of my life…for the freedom to practice religion,” said Rothschild.

After readings by members of the Ministerium, the service turned to what Mark Kessler referred to as “the most somber part of the ceremony.” As seven candles were lit, the names of many Holocaust survivors were read aloud.

Beginning the candle lighting was Dr. Robert Mendler, a survivor of 10 concentration camps who spent 6 years as a slave for the German Reich.

“I share sorrow for those not here tonight with me…my father, mother, brother, sister, 89 members of family…the 6 million innocent men, women, and children…5 million of other faiths…to the few that risked their lives…and sorrows for the beautiful lady who made me who I am today,” said Mendler.

The Color Guard lit the final candle and ended the service with a salute.  Immediately following was a performance of Dr. Hank Greenspan’s “Remnants” at the nearby Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. Greenspan, a psychologist, collected stories over thirty years of conversations with survivors.

“For many, I was the first American they had talked to about their experiences. I was convinced I had to stay with the project,” said Greenspan, who began the project in the mid-70s.

Remnants began with the story of a woman who was rendered mute by what she had seen in the camps. For two years, all she could do was scream at night. “The screams eventually formed into words, barely salvaged from the silence.”

Next came a man who fled to America after the war, during the UFO hysteria. The aliens, whom his cousin had seen in the newsreels, had huge eyes, skinny arms and legs, and big heads. The man had seen these people before; to him, the concentration camps had been Mars.

The horror increased as the stories progressed. One man worked in the section of a camp where they dug the burial trenches, the places where people were shot, gassed or simply buried alive (the Nazis didn’t want to waste bullets).  The gravestones from the cemetery were broken up to use as platforms to pave muddy roads or as workbenches to destroy bone fragments.

“To destroy an entire people, you have to wipe out every trace; not only that they ever lived, but also that they ever died,” the survivor had told Greenspan.

On the gravestone workbenches, the remains had to be ground into a fine powder that passed through a sieve. With the crushed up gravel, the remains were tilled into the soil where grass was planted. The grass grew like ordinary grass. There was no evidence that anything horrible had happened.

The man was horrified that “they murdered the murder of my people and we murdered the cemetery.”

The climax of Remnants is clear: a man, joking, muses on all the trendy “survival” books: how to survive your in-laws, how to survive being a step-parent,  etc.

“What helped me survive isn’t in any book.  I don’t think people really want to hear this,” said the man.

What helped him survive was undiluted hatred.  The man screamed at the S.S. guard, “I’m going to survive you! Someday I will be the one with the machine gun. You will be torn to pieces and I will go on!” while quoting Shema Yisrael, the Jewish Lord’s Prayer.

“In that moment, there is a bit of heresy, and it’s meant to be shocking,” said Greenspan.

Running through all the stories was the theme of hope, in one form or another: hope for revenge, hope for reconciliation with loved ones, hope that life afterward would become bearable, and hope that nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again.

“You want to live, never give up. The easiest way to finish was to electrocute yourself on the barbed wire within seconds. I never wanted to give up. I don’t know what happened to mother, but I was always hoping my mother survived. I’m still searching, I never give up,” said Mendler.