Every time I cross Tempi (and I don't drive!) I look around mesmerized by the fascinating landscape, as if I'm seeing it for the first time. Can you never get enough of it? my husband asks me. No, never, I answer. But... does beauty get enough? Can you ever get used to it or tire of it?
I think this is how our mind works with everything big, everything that shocks us. And indeed, not only with the beautiful things, but also with the ugly things.
This thought came to my mind when Evie asked me "How do you feel that every year you participate in the preparation of events for the Holocaust?" Just as beauty is uncommon, horror is also uncommon. It is not justified. It's unforgettable. Reliving such trauma does not leave you unscathed.
Every year, on days like this, because of my position in the Israeli Community, I am almost exclusively involved in organizing events for Holocaust Remembrance Day (27the January). Press releases, invitations, printed and digital material, communication with dozens of co-organizers, wreaths, speeches, interviews, articles, non-stop phone calls... It's the season with the most tiring days at the office. However, it is very different from the period e.g. of discounts for a merchant. Because this particular job always includes a painful "dive" into a past, which is not so distant after all. Every year such days will reopen deep wounds in the collective memory of the Jews, but also in my family history. Memories of my father, saved so many times by sheer luck and youthful ignorance of danger, will emerge. The nightmares of Aunt Doukas, with the number on her arm, who couldn't hear a train whistle for the rest of her life. The stories of my grandparents, of the terror… this terror relentless and unceasing, for their lives, for the lives of their children, the terror that had become one with their skin, even when the cause had passed… This is how I learned me about the Holocaust, since I was a little kid. And all the Jews of my generation. Books, movies, plays, and written history later came to fill in the pieces of a terrifying puzzle and illuminate other unseen aspects of this atrocity, but never managed to grapple with the "whys" that remain unanswered.
And if every year you have to sink into this abyss and then, with as much breath as you have left, to rise again to the light, holding a single lesson as a banner, to continue walking, that for me is NOT INDIFFERENT!
Of the unimaginable number of 6,000,000 victims of the Holocaust, more died because of indifference than because of hatred. Accomplices and abusers are also those who remained silent, those who looked away, those who did not speak, did not help, did not do the slightest thing to save even one person. Indifference is the greatest anti-virtue throughout time and the one responsible, even today, for every evil that happens around us. That is why, in memory of all those who lost their lives, I feel that I must offer a service as a human being, as a parent and as a citizen: to fight injustice wherever I encounter it, not to be indifferent, not to get used to the horror!
And when the commemorations and honors are over, evaluated and leave an impact on the souls of those who attended, then for the rest of the year I will be busy with a bunch of other issues of the Jewish Community, with actions that are pleasant, celebratory and creative. When the physical and mental strain of these days is over, then a feeling will prevail in me, like an aftertaste: the feeling of victory! It may sound paradoxical, but it is true. I refuse to be identified as a Jew from the black page of the Holocaust and to adopt the fear of persecution that haunted my ancestors. I live in a society which, despite its pathologies and the disturbing revivals of sick ideologies, is democratic and allows me to feel free, proud and aware, both of what connects me to other people, and of what differentiates from them.
My own personal answer to the initiators and also to the nostalgics of the Holocaust is: I BEAT YOU!
*Cover photo: This photo was taken at Auschwitz after the camp was liberated by the Russians in January 1945. Miriam Ziegler is seen second from left, showing the prison number tattooed on her arm. (Associated Press)
Alina Mousis, Director of the Israelite Community of Larissa
January 2023