This is Our Revenge

I have been to many Jewish weddings, but never have I seen such pure abandonment and unbridled joy as I experienced when Sara Krakowski and Ryan Kossoy tied the knot in New York recently. Neither have I been to a wedding where the Shoah took center stage. One might assume that such darkness would have no place at a time of celebration, but as I discovered, being reminded of the past is sometimes the best way to look to the future.

Under the chuppah, as the bride and groom exchanged rings, Chief Rabbi of Israel emeritus, Meir Lau, recalled for the bride that he and her grandfather, Israel Krakowski, had survived the Shoah together. He spoke of the fact that the two of them, along with her beaming father Harry Krakowski, who at the tender age of eighteen was its first donor, had helped to found the American Society of Yad Vashem.

As Rabbi Lau spoke surrounded by the white roses and orchids that adorned the chuppah, it did not seem out of place when he talked about the murder of their ancestors. The point was clear, seventy-seven years after the end of the Shoah, the Nazis are long gone, but we were all there to celebrate a new Jewish family being formed. If there was ever an act of revenge, this was it.

Although the principle of an “eye for an eye” appears to promote revenge in Jewish Law, the act of taking revenge is prohibited in the Torah (Leviticus 19:18). The concept of an “eye of an eye” is to provide a means for the justice system to balance restitution, not an invocation for violence. But taking revenge and having revenge are very different. No one in the Krakowski family set out to avenge the deaths of their family members by physically attacking German people. Maimonides describes taking revenge as an extremely bad trait and urges those who have been wronged to rise above their feelings about all worldly matters.

Israel and Elli Krakowski had been severely wronged. There was no legal mechanism to seek justice for the murder of their families. They had no means to carry out physical revenge even had they wanted to. Their only pay back to the people that destroyed their family was to create a family; the answer to the destruction of their home was to build a home; their answer to financial ruin was to work hard for economic security. They rose above the ideology of hate, and with love they answered death with life.  

They rose above the ideology of hate, and with love they answered death with life.

Father of the bride, Harry Krakowski, is a placid, fun-loving mensch of a man, always thoughtful in the moment. The dancing was well into its second hour, when Harry took the microphone, cleared the dance floor and invited the four Holocaust survivors present to share a blessing for the guests. Some 600 people stood to their feet as the festivities paused in baited silence. It was a moment of awe and reverence. Each of the survivors Rabbi Meir Lau, Jerry Wartski, Sam Domb, and Bob Desau summed up the moment: Hitler had tried to wipe us all out, but we are still here, still living, still dancing. In a few brief sentences they passed an unseen torch of memory and identity to Sara and Ryan, part of the next generation of Jews, who will themselves, pass that torch along.

L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, reminds us that Jews have thrived through the ages in spite of the evil and persecution that have come their way. Indeed the Jewish people have succeeded like no other group I know when it comes to passing the torch from one generation to the next. But as the last survivors of the Shoah leave us, there is no time in Jewish history when this torch matters most. The light was nearly snuffed out. It is now our responsibility to keep it brighter than ever before.

As the band started up again we danced with the four survivors at the center of the circle, who despite their age pulled off remarkably agile moves. If only Hitler could see them from his place in hell, exuding the very life he had tried to extinguish still living, dancing, celebrating. This is their revenge—and our heritage.

Stephen D. Smith is CEO of StoryFile and Executive Director Emeritus at USC Shoah Foundation.