Yom HaShoa

When I woke up this morning I felt that I didn't really say enough about Yom HaShoa in yesterday's blog entry.  Partly because of my weird mood and the eerie experience of walking through the empty streets at night and maybe partly because I felt a little disconnected yesterday as well.  I didn't really know how to memorialize the day.

This morning I woke up and put on my running clothes and was out the door at 9:50.  I thought the siren was at 11, but in fact I was wrong and it was at 10:00 a.m.  It was amazing to stop mid run and hear the siren sound in the streets of Tel Aviv.  Everyone around me stopped- people, cars, noise. I removed my headphones, and stood tall listening to the siren sound throughout the entire city.  In the minute or two that it sounded I thought of my experience in Poland in 1997 visiting the Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, and Auscwitz-Birkenau.  I thought of every Holocaust survivor I've ever met and had the chance to converse with and hear their stories.  I thought of my own grandparents who I didn't really know and was never given the chance to hear their stories of survival and beginning a family in Israel.  For without them I wouldn't be here today.  And of-course, I thought of the many, many family members that would exist today had the Nazis not brutally murdered the millions of Jews of Europe.

It is unique and powerful to be in a country that unites to memorialize history in such a way.  I felt proud to be standing on the street of Tel Aviv amongst strangers, yet not, and remembering the atrocities of past.  

Never Forget.