Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 19, 1993 TAG: 9304190024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The New York Times and The Associated Press
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
The uprising, in which several hundred young, poorly armed combatants heroically fought their German occupiers and lost, will be commemorated today - not only in Poland, but also in Israel, and wherever else Jews live.
Sunday was Holocaust Day in Israel - a day of melancholy music on the radio; of air raid sirens that brought traffic to a two-minute standstill; of ceremonies at which people took turns reading the names of some of the 6 million Jews who died under Nazism.
There was a call from another survivor of the Holocaust, a 62-year-old woman who said she had always considered herself an independent sort, but who felt suddenly vulnerable Sunday and in need of help, maybe because her son had died.
One man who had survived the camps and later fought in the Israeli army phoned in a rage, saying he wanted to take revenge, especially against Arabs who attack Jews.
They were among several hundred Israelis, most of them survivors or their children, who found this a particularly hard day and who unburdened themselves by phoning or by going to several offices of Amcha, a group that provides social and psychological services to Holocaust survivors.
In recent years, Amcha officials said, the number of such Israelis needing help or just a friendly shoulder has grown. No country has more survivors, an estimated 300,000, and many of them find that their anguish spills over on Holocaust Day, observed every year on a Sunday, according to a fixed day on the Jewish calendar.
The added poignancy of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw revolt made the occasion more difficult than ever for some. But John Lemberger, Amcha's director general, said their pain has become more intense for several years now as they sense life ticking away. Survivors who for decades never talked about death camps now want to come to terms with what happened.
"I got a telephone call from a man who says to me, `My father put me on a train a week before the Germans marched in. Am I a survivor? I haven't reacted to it for years. These last two years I sit before the television and I cry,' " Lemberger said.
"Old people tend to look back on their lives. When these people look, what they often see most clearly is the period from 1939 to 1945."
When the state of Israel came into being in 1948, many Holocaust survivors found little sympathy among native-born Israelis, who often mocked the European Jews as sheep to the slaughter. In time, contempt turned to empathy - a process that many Israelis believe was speeded up by setbacks early in the 1973 Middle East War, which provided the sobering lesson that even a strong army will not necessarily prevent disaster.
For about 15 years, obligatory Holocaust studies have been part of Israelis' formal schooling. Since 1988, several thousand students a year have gone on government-sponsored journeys to the sites of death camps in Poland, which were set up under Nazi occupation.
Many young Israelis of Middle Eastern and North African origin say the Nazi-inflicted traumas, while not part of their own family histories, lacerate their souls as much as those of their classmates with European background.
For some, memories of Nazi gas chambers were frighteningly rekindled two years ago when Iraqi Scud missiles fell on Israel - possibly armed, it was feared, with deadly chemicals made in Germany. The recent rise of neo-Nazism in the reunified Germany has produced new ghosts of its own.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who will attend ceremonies in Warsaw today, spoke for many when he asserted that Israel "is the promise that never again will such a horror be repeated."
Rabin, 71, is the only native-born leader Israel has had. Unlike some of his predecessors, he does not often hammer away at Holocaust themes. In fact, he said in his first speech in parliament after taking office in July that Israelis must stop thinking insularly that "the whole world is against us."
But Rabin can be as conflicted as anyone else in Israel.
"What will we learn?" he said Sunday at a memorial ceremony. "We will learn to believe in a better world. But most important, we will not trust in others any longer, generous as they may be: only us, only ourselves. We will protect ourselves."
by CNB