“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.”
Anne Frank (1929-1945)
Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. We mourn the loss of the Six Million. We resolve ourselves to combat hatred and bigotry, xenophobia and antisemitism.
This year, we commemorate Yom HaShoah under extraordinary circumstances. We see the challenges. We hear the voices of those who are suffering. We acknowledge our own pain and we empathize with the pain of others around us. And we, too, still believe at the very core of our being that it will all come right, that peace and tranquility and a sense of normalcy will return again.
Y’hi zichram baruch—may their memories be for a blessing and may we honor them all by holding on to hope…
— Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
