Can the witness of Yad Vashem lead to Peace?

I hesitate to write about my experience of Yad Vashem. To me it as a sacred place, a place that bears witness to an almost incomprehensible experience of suffering by one group of people at the hands of others. I feel, when I walk through the memorial, that I am walking among the wounded souls of a people. I ask God, whenever I visit, to touch my soul with the anguish of the Jewish people, reflected in the pictures and quotations, in the art and the exhibits. And I ask God to show me what this means for me as a fellow human being of those whose suffering is represented in this place.

The memorial is full of powerful images and striking quotations, many which scar one’s emotions, and others which lift one’s spirits.

“slay them not [the Jews]…scatter them abroad” (Augustine)

“where books are burned, human beings are also destined to be burned” (Heinrich Heine)

“the personification of the devil, as the symbol of all evil, assumes the living shape of the Jew” (Hitler)

“a country is not just what it does – it is also what it tolerates” (Kurt Tucholsky)

The exhibits bear witness to a feeling and perception of Christian ambivalence toward Jews and Judaism, and traces the attitudes and events in Hitler and Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jewish people:

The concept of German vs. Jewish “blood”

The so-called “Jewish question” and “Jewish problem”

The policy of Aryanization and discrimination

Anti-Jewish racial laws

Economic boycott

Stripping of civil rights

Forced registration and wearing patches

Vandalizing and expropriating of Jewish businesses

Flight, creating a refugee problem (no one wanted them)

The destruction of a whole Jewish way life

Experience of terror, jail, humiliation, abuse

The burning of synagogues

Confiscation of homes, real estate, factories, businesses, artistic and cultural treasures

The creation of ghettoes – incarceration behind fences and walls, large numbers of people being restricted to small sections of a city (as an interim measure to eventual total removal)

Resettlement, deportation

The final step in dehumanization and demonization of a people – the “final solution” – total annihilation, with gas chambers, and plans to murder 11,000,000 Jewish people

And the fact that (for the most part) fellow citizens and other nations did not notice, did not care, did not take action, or in some cases, acted as accomplices, directly persecuting Jews or taking advantage of their suffering and loss.

It is too much to take in.

“the world is divided [for Jews] into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter” (Chaim Weizman, 1937)

“all of us, dying here amidst the icy artic indifference of the nations, are forgotten by the world and by life” (Avraham Levite, Auschwitz, 1945)

And after the war, the fact that most Western countries did not want, would not accept, Jewish refugees.

There is a small bright spot in the witness of Yad Vashem, the testimony to those called “the righteous among the nations,” non-Jews who saved Jewish lives, people it says were (are) “a model of heroism, humane and moral behavior, and the preservation of the sanctity of human life.”

“God created all of us in the same image…everyone has the right to live” (Mary Szul, Poland)

“I do not know what a Jew is, we only know what human beings are” (Pastor Andre Trocme)

"I know that when I stand before God on Judgment day, I shall not be asked the question posed to Cain -where were you when your brother's blood was crying out to God?" (Imre Bathory, Hungary)

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

(Martin Niemöller, a German pastor and theologian)

And the reflections after the war, after the Holocaust, of a world lost:

“an entire Jewish world that existed and was destroyed”

“their dear ones had been murdered, their culture crushed, their homes ravaged, and they had been torn from their childhood places of origin – persons without a homeland, categorized as ‘displaced persons’”

“all is imprisoned within the cell of memory” (Itamar Yaoz-Kest)

“my people is no more” (Yitzhak Katznelson)

And praised. Auschwitz. Be. Majdanek. The Lord. Treblinka. And praised. Buchenwald. Be. Mauthausen. The Lord. Belzec. And praised. Sobibor. Be. Chelmno. The Lord. Ponary. And praised. Theresienstadt. Be. Warsaw. The Lord. Vilna. And praised. Skarzysko. Be. Bergen-Belsen. The Lord. Janow. And praised. Dora. Be. Neuengamme. The Lord. Pustkow. And praised… Amen.

(an excerpt from the book The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart)

How does one internalize such a witness? How does one answer the question that was ringing in my head as I tried to comprehend such large scale inhumanity, “how should we then live?”

I ask God to help me to understand, to give me sympathy for, the suffering of the Jewish people. And not to contribute to it. And Yad Vashem helps me to understand, in a small way, the importance of the nation of Israel to the Jewish people - having a place, a home of their own, a refuge. And the mentality that I think I see, of fear, acting like a cornered, threatened animal, striking out because of the spectre of being struck again, of annihilation as a people. I ask God to help me understand.

I can’t help but think – visiting Bethlehem and Ramallah and Hebron and Jerusalem – of the current experience of the Palestinian people, their suffering, their loss. And to think of the words I have heard so often (including from Jewish Israelis), of the tragedy of the abused becoming the abuser, the victim becoming the victimizer.

And I wonder what the lesson of the Holocaust and of Yad Vashem should be to us, all of us? Can Yad Vashem be a witness for peace?

Is the message, “never again will we (the Jewish people) allow this to happen to us”?  Or should it be, “never again will we (all people) allow this to happen to any human beings, and never – by God’s grace – will we (any of us) be the perpetrators of dehumanization and villianization of other human beings”?

May God allow us to internalize the witness of the many Muslims, Jews and Christians I have met in Israel and the Occupied Territories whose message is that we must treat every human being we meet as our brother, our sister, our friend, ourselves with a different language or religion or ethnicity, and that we must stand and work for societies, and a world, where every human being is treated with respect and dignity, their rights and humanity protected.

This, to me, is the message of Yad Vashem.

Postscript: as I walked out of Yad Vashem, looking over the beautiful countryside, wooded and serene, I found myself asking, “is there not room in this land for both peoples, for all people?” and then the thought turned inward, and I wondered, “is there room in my heart for all people? And can I see in every person a human being, created in the image of God and loved by Him?” For there will not be room in the land (any land) for different people, until there is room for them in our hearts. This is a something I am learning from my heroes for peace – Jewish, Muslim, Christian – that I have met in the land.

"You will be my first Palestinian friend!"

On our trip in Israel and the Occupied West Bank, and since returning from the trip, I have been asking the questions, what are roadblocks and barriers to peace (what keeps peace from happening)? and what does it take (and mean) to pursue peace?

One day on our trip we stopped in to visit the Holy Land Trust (http://www.holylandtrust.org/), and to hear about their work. We started our time by viewing the documentary film, "Little Town of Bethlehem" (http://littletownofbethlehem.org/), which highlights the stories and peacemaking efforts of three men: Sami Awad (a Palestinian Christian), Ahmad Al’Azzeh (a Palestinian Muslim), and Yonatan Shapira (an Israeli Jew). It is an excellent film, which should be viewed by anyone who has concern for understanding and resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

One of the barriers to peace that the film highlights is fear. The film argues that the Israelis are so militaristic, worshiping strength, because of their fear. They view themselves as weak, surrounded by enemies. They live with the memory of the Holocaust (as well as a long history of mistreatment by "Christians" in the West), and see and use it as a symbol of what Arabs want to do the the Jews now (rather than as a symbol of what should never be allowed to happen to anyone, anywhere). Their fear leads them not to know the Palestinians (in their midst, or under their occupation), and not to trust them.

And the fear extends to those on the Palestinian side, as well. In a situation of conflict, especially, people on both sides fear the different other, who they usually do not know (or who they know only in caricature, as a stereotype, and based on the worst behavior and actions of someone on the other side, like a suicide bomber, a religious fanatic who opens fire on praying people in a mosque, etc.).

The question, then, becomes how to break through the barrier of fear? "Little Town of Bethlehem" highlights Yonatan Shapira's journey into the Courage to Refuse movement (http://www.seruv.org.il/english/) - a group who, in pursuit of the IDF mottos of "human dignity" and "purity of arms," came to refuse to attack civilian areas or to serve in the occupied territories. In addition, Shapira highlights the need to "reach out to your enemy," to "try to correct the wrong" that has been done.

This is another step in "fighting" against violence and for peace (and highlighted in the film) - working against the dehumanization of the other, working to reclaim your understanding and commitment to their humanity. And for the Palestinians, they emphasize that a point of their nonviolent resistance to the injustices of the Israeli occupation, is to help the Israelis recapture their own humanity (since oppressing others always dehumanizes the oppressor as well as the oppressed). But that's another story, another theme.

To return to the theme of overcoming fear: one of our Palestinian guides told a story that changed his life. He was invited to attend an event at a kibbutz. The invitation, he said, stirred his fear. Growing up, he had always seen the kibbutzim and those who lived on them as the most dangerous of Israelis, the most anti-Palestinian. He felt certain, as he considered the invitation, that if they found out he was Palestinian, they would harm or even kill him. But on the other hand, he believed (in theory) in working for peace...so in the end he decided to attend the event. While he was on the kibbutz, though, he avoided talking to people, not wanting to be discovered as a Palestinian. His worst fears seemed about to be realized, near the end of the time, when one of the leaders of the event came to him, introduced himself, and asked where he (the Palestinian) was from. He said he swallowed hard, prepared himself mentally for whatever horrible fate awaited him, and said he was from Beit Sahour. The Israeli's response totally caught him off guard - he thrust out his hand and said with a large smile, "then you will be my first Palestinian friend!"

Needless to say, something changed for our Palestinian guide that day. A fear was conquered, as an unknown "enemy," in the form of a real person, offered to become a friend.

How can peace be achieved? By individuals facing (even walking into) their fears, stepping into the unknown, and establishing human contact, friendship, with those on the other side of the barriers (whether real or imagined).

A final thought from "Little Town of Bethlehem": the Israelis must come to the point of deciding to take down the wall. How many small steps of relationship building, of overcoming individual and collective fears, will it take to get to this point?