Good evening. Like many others of my generation, I heard some stranger-than-fiction Holocaust stories when I was growing up: from family, extended family, and friends of family. And when I did, I discovered that different people come away from trauma with different responses, on emotional, personal, and political levels. In the case of my mother, the response was a continuous stream of activity and optimism.
She kept herself busy by first volunteering and then leading at the ARC of Monroe, with teaching conflict resolution in city schools, with public speaking on her Holocaust experience, with obtaining 2 master’s degrees, with supporting friends and family – her in-laws lived next door, and we had cousins worldwide who lived with us for extended periods – and with her own physical and spiritual development, and all this while raising 4 children.
My dad, who had also escaped Germany and came via Italy and Cuba to the US with assistance from HIAS at about the same time, tried signing up for the Canadian and then the US army but as an “enemy alien”, he was initially turned down. After eventually being accepted after Pearl Harbor and shipped over to fight in Europe, he returned in 1945 and devoted his energies to his education at night school, to starting a family, to his research, and to community work where he felt he could have an impact: soup kitchens, interfaith efforts, and the Sanctuary movement among them.
Why do I mention all this? Well, because there were 2 lessons in it for us kids, intricately intertwined: first, to have a profound gratitude for life, which was as central to their outlook as it is foundational to Judaism. And second, that one way of demonstrating that gratitude was by not standing idly by. These lessons were seldom verbally articulated as such – in one rare such instance I remember my dad referencing the fate of the St. Louis in answer to a question about his involvement with the Sanctuary movement – but the values were constantly demonstrated, both by them and by those who gave them a hand. HIAS helped my parents and so many others, and there are similar organizations here today which can now use our assistance. Jews and refugee organizations, I’m sorry to say, are kind of a natural fit. I can personally speak to the wonderful efforts of No One Left Behind but any of the organizations represented here deserve our consideration and support. It is one of the many ways in which we can honor our past. And in so doing, give honor to our present.