Shemini - Yom Hashoa 5773 - English

By Rabbi Daniela Szuster

B´nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica

This week’s parashah, Shemini, recounts the story of an event in which Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, the first Cohen, die through a strange fire they themselves had kindled.  Many commentators try to explain what it was that Aaron’s sons actually did and what was the meaning of that strange fire.

Today, however, I don’t want to delve into that story, but rather to focus on their father’s reaction.  It is written in the Torah, vayidom Aharon, “and Aaron was silent” (Va-yikra 10:3).  Aaron lost his loved ones, his sons, and said nothing; he fell silent, he was struck dumb.

Why didn’t he cry out, shout, complain, instead of keeping silent?  According to Rabbeinu Bechaye, silence is one of the aspects that make up mourning, as is written in other parts of the Tanach (Ezekiel 24:15).  It was the manner in which Aaron mourned his sons.

Some scholars explain that Aaron kept silent because he accepted God’s judgment and didn’t want to question it.

We could say that the tragedy was so sudden that he froze and didn’t realize what had happened, or perhaps, Aaron’s distress and pain were so great that he could not express such feeling in words.

That silence, that pain, is what haunts the Jewish calendar this week.  In just a few days, we will commemorate Yom HaShoah v’Havurah, Holocaust Heroism and Remembrance Day.  On this day, we remember the pain, suffering, and anguish that millions of Jews experienced during the Shoah.

The Allies defeated the Germans, and the Jews who had survived the horror, were liberated.  The war, the nightmare, was finally over; however, there were thousands of people who stood silent, like Aaron.  In silence before the pain, the losses, the situation in which they were left.  Imagine suddenly finding yourselves all alone, with no family or friends alive.  What utter abandonment, solitude, and angst.  Silence, together with the cold, illnesses, maladies, malnutrition, and lack of affection.

Reflecting upon this terrible silence of Aaron and the survivors, I’d like to share with you a moving story that I read this week, one of many stories in the wake of the Shoah.

In January 1945, Francziska Oliwa, a Holocaust survivor, immediately after being liberated, returned to Otwock in search of her relatives.  Though the search was unsuccessful, she happened to meet a group of hungry children, dressed in rags, and accompanied by a Russian soldier.  The soldier told her that those children were abandoned Jewish children, and asked her to take care of them.  When she replied that she didn’t even have a house for herself, the young man led her to an abandoned apartment at 11 Boleslawa Prusa Street, with shattered windows and no furniture, heating, or running water.  Francziska then took eleven children under her charge.

She immediately asked for help from the medical colonel Dr. Ovochovski, commanding officer at a Soviet field hospital nearby.  Moved by the children’s condition, he agreed to help her, providing her with paper mattresses and blankets taken from the hospital supplies.  He also helped fix the apartment windows, and offered hospital aprons to dress the children.

In March, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKZP) officially took control of the children’s home in Otwock, converting the home to a unit within the framework of the committee and beginning to support the home and improve its living conditions.

By June 1945, approximately 130 child survivors were living in the home.  Most of the educators and staff were also Holocaust survivors, who had suffered severe trauma and looses too; they recognized in their work a sense of mission and destiny, as well as a healing experience and an answer to the loss they themselves had experienced during the Holocaust.

In the words of Ewa Goldberg, a girl who lived there, “For each one of us, our stay at the Children’s Home was like a new beginning – a re-entry into life.”

For many of the children who had been in hiding for quite some time, the home roommates were the first children in their lives with whom they could play, interact, and become friends.  Others, who had survived under a false identity, could at last open up and relate with others, with no fear of revealing their true identity.  All of them, raised in silence and solitude, had to learn to communicate and open up towards those around them.  Despite their having been left alone, without the people they loved most, they were now finding a new family; the children as well as the adults.

It really is a moving story: of how from the silence, the darkness, the paralysis that these children had to suffer, after being left entirely on their own in the world, they were able to find other human beings and, together, begin a rebirth, transforming the silence into words, the tears into smiles, and the fear into games and the possibility of dreaming again.

I believe this story teaches us much about human strength, solidarity, and the possibility to live again, in spite of having lived such painful and tragic experiences.

May God grant that we never forget what happened in the Shoah, and may we be able to help those who are currently submerged in silence, as were Aaron and millions of Jews who survived the horror.

Shabbat Shalom!