On Holocaust Remembrance Day

[epershand]

“Holocaust” comes from the Greek. It’s got a Biblical root, as a kind of burnt offering made at the Temple in Jerusalem. But not just any sacrifice. Unlike other animal sacrifices, where it was allowed to use the meat for other purposes after the animal was killed, a holocaust requires that the offering be burned completely, until only ashes are left.

Describing the deaths of people as a sacrifice is a much more Christian concept than a Jewish one. It seems to imply that the deaths had spiritual meaning, that it contained the seeds for redemption. The Holocaust contained no such seeds, and the standard Jewish term for it is “the Shoah,” or “the destruction.”

But “Holocaust” is a metaphor that sticks for me. The image of what was once a cow, reduced to lingering traces of charcoal, is a pretty apt description of what happened to Judaism in Europe. And it conjures up a visceral image of the bodies, piled and burnt like animals in the camps.

None of my ancestors were in Europe by the time the Holocaust happened. The last of them fled Kiev during the round of pogroms that happened in the wake of the Revolution and eventually made their way to the US. For my grandparents, the Holocaust was a terrifying thing happening on the other side of the ocean. But my cousins’ grandfather, Abe, narrowly escaped. His uncle Baruch got him out of Germany and landed in a camp himself.

For a long time, it was incredibly hard for me to rouse any emotions about the Holocaust. I was hammered with it so many times that I became numb. I was numb by the time the teacher of my tenth-grade European History class (technically the class was called World History, but that was a lie) pulled me aside to tell me I was allowed to cry when we watched a documentary in class, because I was the only Jew in the room. I was numb at the Holocaust Museum in Boston. I was numb at Yad Vashem.

In a lot of ways, the Holocaust was about numbness. Hitler wanted to make the killing of humans (Jews, queers, gypsies, Communists) as easy as the killing of animals. He ordered the gas chambers to make mass-murder psychologically easier on the Nazi soldiers, so they wouldn't have to look their victims in the eye when they killed them. So they could be numb to it. And he ordered the the gas chamber so that his troops could stop wasting bullets on people who weren’t worthy of them.

And the thing is, a lot of people turned a blind eye to what he was doing. If Hitler hadn’t had expansionist plans, would anyone have stopped him? Even in America there were a lot of people who supported fighting Hitler not because of but *in spite of* what he was doing to the Jews. Eugenics was a popular ideology in the 30s. Hitler is just the one who put it into practice.

But the Holocaust can’t be kept behind emotional seals. It builds up and it leaks out and you find yourself falling apart over what seem like minor things, for petty reasons, while you are trying to ignore the weight behind them. You find yourself hating Abe for the pain he inflicted on his family. You find yourself hating Baruch for the way that Abe wielded him as a weapon, when all the man did was die in a Concentration Camp and prevent a little boy from suffering the same fate.

Life is Beautiful comes to American theatres a few months after your aunt and uncle die in a car crash, and you find yourself crying uncontrollably for hours. Is it about the film? Is it about your aunt and uncle? Is it about the Holocaust? What does it say about you that you can’t tell them apart? (And what does it say about you that you can’t write a post about the deaths of six million without turning it into your loss of two, over a decade ago?)

The Holocaust has burst its seal in my life, and I’ve become obsessed with it. I read Isherwood and cling desperately to his idiocy in pre-war Berlin, to his incompetent proto-Nazis who seem little more than angry schoolboys. I read Carroll and become fixated on his own personal petty ties of the Holocaust to his life. I’ve become fixated with my friend Cody’s parents, who were Hitler Youth, who say they had no choice and protested every step they could. But did they? They seem like very nice people, but how can I know?

I have a hard time writing about the Holocaust. But I can’t stop writing about the Holocaust. I was convinced I’d posted about it five million times in the last six months, but I looked at my Dreamwidth and none of the posts are there. They’re all in my inbox, converted into lengthy emails to myself about my hopes, my fears, my fixations.

But today is the Day of Remembrance, and I can’t help but think that all these petty fears and fixations are as much a part of the bigger picture as anything else. Because how else do you wrap your mind around something that big? You whistle in the dark, you laugh at Hipster Hilter comics, you find things that make you hurt and you tie them to this bigger, incomprehensible terror to try to make sense of it it in comparison.

And you remember.

Comments

[newredshoes]

This hit me right in the center. Thank you.

[epershand]

Thank you as well.

[jesse_the_k]

Thank you.

[epershand]

Thank you for reading :)

[were_duck]

*hugs*

[eccentric_hat]

And what does it say about you that you can’t write a post about the deaths of six million without turning it into your loss of two, over a decade ago?

I think that may be the only way to understand any of it. We're not equipped, I think, to conceive of six million deaths. Sometimes six is too many. We grieve as best we're able. I don't know.