Two weeks ago, I visited Berlin, meeting with Germany's senior leadership and with our IHRA colleagues at the Permanent Office, and visiting sites of Shoah memory. The timing of my visit, so close to the Jewish High Holidays, naturally prompted in me many reflections, particularly about the annals of the Holocaust and its remembrance.
One such reflection relates to the observance and meanings of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This year, it took place at the start of October. In 1942, however, Yom Kippur was observed in late September under tragically different circumstances.
Herman Kruk, a resident of the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania, had been keeping a diary since the German occupation of Vilna on June 23, 1941. In it, he documented daily life in the city and ghetto, the persecutions, deportations, and the eventual destruction of the Jewish community.
On September 21, 1942 Kruk wrote:
"Preparations have been made for Yom Kippur.
The high point is to be the prayers in the theater auditorium.
The hall is filled with Jews who have come to observe the holy day.
Everyone is waiting for the chief of the Jewish Council.
He enters and puts on a prayer shawl.
A great lament breaks out.
It is the wind of Ponar, of death,
of the children, women, and men who have been torn away."
Even while facing the unleashed Nazi horror of mass murder, Kruk bore witness to the continued observance of a sacred Jewish tradition. The collective lament he described was not only an age-old religious expression but also a cry of acutely fresh grief for the thousands already taken to Ponar and put to death. Kruk sought to give voice to an entire community yearning to be sealed into the Book of Life for a new year of unachievable health, prosperity, and peace, while surrounded instead by death, violence, and fear.
One of Yom Kippur's most poignant prayers declares: And all in this world pass before You like a flock of sheep... Who shall live and who shall die? In the Vilna Ghetto, these words carried an unbearable immediacy. For many, the verdict of death had already been executed at Ponar, while for others it loomed just ahead. Decades later, these words inspired Canadian-Jewish songwriter, Leonard Cohen to compose, Who by Fire, a song which reimagined the ancient prayer as a modern meditation on mortality (https://youtu.be/251Blni2AE4?si=_l5x19aHHq_EXkny). Like so much of the legacy of the Holocaust, this moving story is undeniably and specifically Jewish, and yet it simultaneously conveys a message that is outstandingly universal.
Kruk ultimately survived the Vilna Ghetto, but not the Shoah. In September 1944, exactly two years after his anguished Yom Kippur entry, he buried his diaries for safekeeping. The next day, on the eve of liberation, Herman Kruk was murdered by the Nazis in the Lagedi concentration camp in Estonia.
After the war, the pages of his diaries were recovered from their hiding places. In 1961 they were assembled and published by YIVO Institute, thus providing a profound perspective regarding the gruesome realities and eternal significance of Ghetto existence.
Such authentic Holocaust-related documentation, often created or preserved at the risk of victims' lives, evokes the courage of those who longed for life while standing at the very edge of death.
As the New Year of 5786 commences, I am sure that you join my wish that we all be inscribed in the Book of Life.
XXX
I dedicate this IHRA Newsletter to the memory of Professor Yehuda Bauer, of blessed memory, who died one year ago, on the 18th of October, 2024. Yehuda, whom I was privileged to know as mentor and friend, was a "founding father" of IHRA, its venerated Advisor for many years and subsequently its Honorary Chairman. A truly remarkable figure, Professor Bauer's decades of scholarship and leadership in the field of Holocaust Studies, which he pursued as a proud Jew and Israeli, contributed tremendously to humanity. The achievements and legacy of Yehuda Bauer stand as a powerful reminder of why Holocaust remembrance remains essential today, to help shape our shared future, founded on morality, tolerance, and democracy.