Remembering the Holocaust

Indulge me the use of my column today to remind you about the Holocaust Remembrance interfaith worship service next Sunday afternoon.

We were gone a lot during the planning  period, so I confess I have made no contribution to it this year. For that I apologize to both the Jewish and Christian members of the committee who worked so hard to make sure it happens.

This will be the third year we meet, Gentile and Jew, to stand shoulder to shoulder and say, We will not forget. We will never forget. We must never forget the Holocaust.

We speak it, we sing it, we shout it: Remember! Remember that approximately 11 million human beings were destroyed – Jews, gypsies, the chronically ill, the mentally afflicted – all those who differ from the “pure” standards promulgated by a mad man.

Our daughter Mary works for the Dortmund Opera Company, in a German town best known for its fanaticism for “football,” which we call soccer, and for being the second largest beer producer in the world. (The largest? Milwaukee.)

The opera house, to my eye almost bizarre in its modern design, was completed in 1966. In the sprawling courtyard in front of the theater is a block-like monument. I confess that I’ve never translated exactly what is carved thereon, but the gist of it is that we are standing on the site of the “grand old synagogue,” in its time the largest and most revered in the city, demolished by the Nazis in 1938. The Platz was renamed Synagogue Square in 1988 to commemorate the atrocity.

There are those who would deny that the Holocaust ever happened, or who say we should move forward and leave the past behind.

That’s like saying Forget the Maine. Forget the Alamo. Forget Pearl Harbor.

Forget the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.

Forget 9/11.

Some things have been etched on our chromosomes and will never, ever be forgotten.

Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – will be honored at a 4 p.m. service Sunday afternoon, this year at Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church, 101 Peachtree Pkwy. in Peachtree City. Participants from both the Lutheran church and Congregation B’nai Israel will take part in a service to which the community is invited. Afterward, refreshments will be served in the church fellowship hall.

Remember to remember.

Allow me to digress. If you were among those who gathered with us to celebrate 50 years of marriage, you know what a special event it was. Begun with the intention of throwing a party for the whole world to celebrate with us, it turned into a gala honoring us, and was pulled together by about a dozen dear, dear friends and their spouses.

When we walked into the church fellowship hall – transformed into a sparkling kingdom of romance and lasting love – my mouth fell open. I have the pictures to prove it.

We have not yet sat down and counted the faces in the photos and the names on the cards, but we’re fairly certain it exceeds 200.

I told someone that words failed me, and they responded that that would have been reason enough to have been there. Ha, ha.

But the same thing is happening now. Despite my belief that I have some skills using English, I can’t get the words together to tell you how very much it meant for us to see you all there.

The only flaws in the occasion were that our daughter Mary could not be there – it’s high season for opera performers – and that family crises required the attention of some who worked so hard.

(I kept hoping right up to the end of the day that the flowers and phone call of “regrets” from Mary were somehow staged to make her sudden appearance that much more surprising…. It was not to be, but I was SO glad Jean and her tiny boys were able to be there.)

For joining us, or for thinking of us if you could not be there, and for sending the most delightful cards, our heartfelt love and gratitude. I can only wish for you that you have friends as loving as ours, and family members as caring.

Also I want to tell you we do have the sensitivity to realize that many of you who came will never celebrate a golden anniversary, because of death or divorce, or perhaps just a late start. Your presence brought with it a certain…nobility. We were touched that you would come, and we thank you.

Thinking back, with Jean and her babies being here, then seeing the transformed fellowship hall, being greeted by so many old friends and new, the pictures, the flowers decking Peachtree City – I have to say this may have just been the best week of my life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being a part of that.