My mother is now well into her 90’s, and I am not referring to her age.
My mother and her parents left Hungary in 1943 as the Nazis were closing in. The train ride across occupied Europe was harrowing but ultimately brought them to safety in what was then Palestine. That could not be said for dozens of her family members, including grandparents, aunts, uncles and close cousins who within the year were consumed by the flames of Auschwitz along with the masses of Hungarian Jews.
Together with my father, of blessed memory, a Holocaust survivor from Romania, my mother was blessed to build a beautiful family. As she noted the other day while thanking God for a recent flurry of births of great-grandchildren, my mother now has well more than 90 descendants, in some way filling the void of her 90 close relatives murdered by the Nazis.
Those 90-plus descendants, divided almost evenly between Israel and America, are all—like her murdered relatives—proud Jews who study the Torah, observe its laws and live its values, pursuing peace, goodness, kindness and ethical behavior. My mother is grateful for every one of those descendants, but her past experiences make her fearful for their future.
From bitter personal experience, my mother is committed to the “never again” mantra but not as it is so often invoked as either an overly confident prediction or an arrogant expression of a newfound invincibility. She has studied and experienced enough of Jewish history to be wary of its repeated patterns of tragedy and dislocation, and the chronic failures of overconfidence. To her, “never again” is a pledge to never again naively believe that it cannot happen here; that the cultured world will stand up against the ugliness of antisemitism; that Jews can outsource their defense to others, even friends. “Never again” is a reminder that allows her to recognize past evils in current foes.
“Never again” is expressed in encouraging and nurturing the further growth of her family with each newborn child being raised to achieve the blessing God gave to Abraham and his descendants: that they serve as a bracha, a source of blessing to the entire world. “Never again” is her firm commitment to continue the Jewish response to persecution since our days under the Pharaohs of Egypt, responding to oppression with the sweet revenge of stubborn perseverance and growth.
“Never again” is expressed in her obsessive determination to see all the hostages of Oct. 7 return home, freed without conditions, and in her devastation and sense of foreboding at seeing them returned surrounded by and in exchange for unrepentant Hamas terrorists. “Never again” is also alive in the sticker that has been on her front door for 20 years, declaring “Gush Katif: We will never forget.”
Gush Katif was a bloc of Israeli agricultural Jewish communities in Gaza that the Israeli government made the decision to evacuate and give over to the Palestinians in August 2005 on the premise that peace would only come with Jews and Arabs living separately. My mother knew from experience that a peaceful future could only come to Jews or Arabs from learning to live together and would be set back by abandoning territory to Palestinian leaders with long histories of supporting terror and incitement against Israel. No matter one’s political feelings then or now, that summer helped cast the die for the horror that Gaza would become—a pseudo-state quite literally founded upon destruction. Oct. 7 made it clear that Gaza was built on Hamas’s dreams of destruction, including both their monstrous attacks on Israel and the carnage they knew that Israel would have no choice but to inflict on Gaza to eliminate the terror infrastructure Hamas had cynically built inside and under its residences, hospitals, mosques and schools.
Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day established by the United Nations in November 2005 just three months after the failed attempt to make peace by rendering Gaza Judenrein (“empty of Jews”). It is commemorated annually for the purpose of “reaffirming that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one-third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.” To my mother and many others, this day is a fearful reminder of how that warning continues to be ignored.
They will destroy, and we will build. Israel will defend itself from those who seek destruction, while its people will never despair of building families and communities that profoundly value life and contribute to the well-being and prosperity of all their neighbors. And my mother will continue her response to the Holocaust—the sweet revenge of stubborn perseverance and growth, praying to see more great-grandchildren born into a world made better and more peaceful by their presence and values.