Reading of the Names

Yom HaShoah, Jewish Remembrance Day, memorializes the millions of victims of persecution and mass murder during the Holocaust. On Yom HaShoah, in the nation of Israel, air raid sirens blow throughout the country, announcing two minutes of silence, during which Israeli Jews stand wordlessly in place – traffic stops, pedestrians stop, all join to remember the dead. Here in Portland – as in Jewish communities around the world – we gather to read the names of the men, women, and children murdered by Nazi Germany and its European collaborators between 1933 and 1945. On Yom HaShoah we read aloud names of those confirmed to have died in the Holocaust. There is no definitive list of those who perished. The list we read here in Portland is comprised of names archived at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance center in Jerusalem.

Memory, remembering, memorializing – these are practices anciently familiar to Jews. During Passover we remember the exodus from Egypt; at Shavuot in mid-June, we will remember the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Jews have a 4,000-year-old history and we continue to survive, in part, by remembering our history through a variety of narratives. Remembering the Holocaust is yet another traditional way to save history from oblivion.

Chaja Brajtsztajn died 1942 Treblinka; Beryl Solowjczyk died Wilna 1942; Rywka Fyhrer died Auschwitz 1943; Rachela Szucht died Warsaw 1944; Lina Stern died 1944 Theresienstadt. Throughout our Remembrance Day members of the community – dignitaries, clergy, and people like you and me – will read these names out loud in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square. One cannot help but reflect on the once living spirit and body of these lost individuals. Some names sound familiar and others seem like a cluster of consonants that we can barely pronounce. But though we didn’t know them personally, they belonged to our family, and we miss them. Is the obligation to mourn them any different than that of any other family member?