Today it is Yom Ha’Shoah, we call it Holocaust Memorial Day. The years of this memorial we count like beads, in tens of eight. But time has not healed nor has forgetting been allowed to follow. Instead Holocaust becomes generic genocide, or is whitewashed and denied. And even worse, has been refreshed by Hamas invaders on 7.10.23*, with their murderous massacres and desecration of Jews, young and old. These were not living in foreign lands on the mercy of others and dying from libels, but sabras* and returnees to a homeland before Diaspora became the only way to survive.
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
Psalm 137: 1-4
*Postscript: After 843 days, the body of Ran Gvili, a policeman killed fighting on October 7, 2023 was found in Gaza, disinterred and returned to Israel for burial yesterday. He was the last of the 251 hostages taken alive or dead, and returned that way..
*Sabra : A term widespread during the 1930s, to denote a Jew whose birthplace was within the Land of Israel—corresponding to Ottoman Syria until 1918 (cf. Old Yishuv) and Mandatory Palestine until 1948 (cf. New Yishuv). The term may have been in use earlier.
PoetryPix 