The Human Spirit: Securing Our Memories

The battle for memory - how an event will be remembered in the future - is a key element of every conflict. Take, for example, the recent visit of my friend Miriam Griver to Pocking, Germany, where 60 years after World War II she was invited to speak in memory of her father, Rabbi Lipot Yehudah Meisels.

Miriam and her sister were small children in Budapest when their father was arrested for hiding Czech refugees in their home. He was taken to a work camp and later deported to Auschwitz. Miriam's mother escaped from her transport and rescued her two tiny daughters from the ghetto. A photo shows Rabbi Meisels lying among the dead in Pocking after the forced Death March from Auschwitz. An American soldier noticed a slight movement among the bodies, and pulled him out. The Meisels family was joyfully reunited.

As the spiritual leader of the Pocking DP camp, Rabbi Meisels officiated at hundreds of survivor weddings and tragically numerous funerals. Fifty-eight children born to the survivors died in Pocking, many because of a dirty needle used by the local German nurse. Before Rabbi Meisels immigrated to Israel in 1949, he insisted on erecting an impressive Holocaust memorial with a stone obelisk chimney with names engraved in stone to ensure that the memory of the Jews, including the children, would not be forgotten.

A decade ago, when Miriam first returned to Pocking, she saw that the names had been scraped off, erasing the Jewish context of the memorial. With black chalk Miriam wrote the names as a protest. To her disappointment, at this summer's official ceremony, the names hadn't been replaced. Instead, they were written on plaques across the park. She registered her complaint at what happened and with other survivors dedicated a special memorial for the children. Sixty years after the war, the fight for memory continues.

HOW WILL we remember the "intifada"? The details of the bus and cafe bombings, drive-by shootings and explosive packages have blurred for most of the world. Even for those of us who experienced the Palestinian violence close up and personal, there are moments where we confuse the bombing at Patt Junction with the one at Kiryat Menahem; Moment Cafe with Cafe Hillel; The attack on a Netanya hotel on March 9, 2002, with the attack on a Netanya hotel on March 27, 2002.

Forgetting is a fearful foe. Few are the markers we have erected for the men, women and children murdered in this war. Some families have chosen personalized memorials. For Nava Applebaum, murdered in Cafe Hillel, for example, stands a room for children with cancer in the new Zichron Menachem Center. The family of Hillel Cafe guard Alon Mizrachi recently carried a newly written Torah scroll through Jerusalem in an elaborate procession in their extraordinarily brave son's memory.

But as a nation, we haven't come to terms with the "intifada," not to honor the memory of the murdered, not to recognize the ongoing struggle of the survivors, nor to acknowledge average Israelis who valiantly continued their lives despite constant the demonic threats.

WORRIED ABOUT jinxing future plans or discouraging tourism, we're eager to put the Palestinian violence which began in September 2000 behind us. Too eager. How else can you explain why not a single government official, not even from the mayor's office, visited 10-year-old Tzur Kosik from Jerusalem, while he lay unconscious in the pediatric intensive care unit after being shot in the head by terrorists last week on his way to a karate class? Thankfully, Tzur woke up last Friday. Doctors are cautiously optimistic about his progress, but like thousands of terror survivors, his life and his family's have been radically altered.

We cannot degrade the struggle of terror survivors, the memory of those who perished, or our steadfastness of our citizenry by agreeing to the Palestinian spin on the disengagement. They may be partying in Gaza, but we must not accept their claim that the disengagement is proof that they have won the war. For better or worse, the disengagement was our decision.

Throughout the intifada, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke in nearly every public appearance of Israel's willingness to make "painful concessions." We are feeling the excruciating pain of leaving lovingly built homes and villages, but that doesn't negate our achievements. Speaking before our army's military colleges early this summer, US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer congratulated the officers for their innovative methods of winning the war. Western nations recognize that victory and want to emulate us. Had the Palestinians accepted Camp David, they might have been celebrating their fifth anniversary of statehood now instead of foisting on the world a propaganda party.

According to eminent Hebrew University professor Shlomo Avineri, this is the first time in history that a people has sent its own army to uproot its own people from their own homes. What other nation could decide on such a traumatic national challenge and carry it through? Let's not confuse pain with defeat.

We have a tendency to forget. In Deuteronomy we read how even while still wandering in the wilderness we had to be admonished not to forget the source of our redemption. Remembering remains both a national and a personal responsibility.