A Letter to Holocaust Survivors: We Failed You

You were the generation that suffered the most barbaric onslaught in the history of the world, mass murder generated by insane hatred, on an industrial scale. Never were so many lost to so much advanced technology of evil. We who were born after the horror were sure that, finally, the world had been shaken and transformed forever, that your pain and loss had bought our freedom. So much had been documented and proven and exposed—how could so much knowledge and awareness not change everything for the better?

You accomplished the impossible. You arose from the ashes of your families, friends and fellow Jews and somehow found the courage, strength and dedication to rebuild your lives. You raised families, succeeded in business, worked in factories and renewed life. You built a future and only then did you look back to the past to tell your stories. Your achievements were astounding, your inspiration profound and your dedication to live awe-inspiring. You built life out of death and taught us about the meaning of that life.

But we failed you. Unknowingly. Unintentionally. But we did. We built Holocaust museums and monuments and compiled survivors’ testimonies, but we neglected to connect your plight to proof of the need for our own state, for our safety in our ancestral homeland. We let others tell their stories about Israel and share it with the world. We did not reach out to explain our claim to a broad, general audience of young and old, Jews and non-Jews as an aboriginal people returning to their ancestral home.

And now we pay the price for that naivete and oversight. We thought the Holocaust had changed everything permanently. And we did have good reason to believe it. Hadn’t former long-time warring enemies created a European Union, and don’t they finally live in peace? Weren’t Jews in America and Canada, and even Europe, accepted as fully integrated partners in society with no barriers or quotas? Jewish jokes were fashionable and Yiddish words were adopted. Chanukah greetings were everywhere on TV. We felt we were at home. It wasn’t an illusion. It was real. It just wasn’t permanent.

Some Jews will quote the common expression saying that Esau hated Jacob, meaning that non-Jews, the descendants of Esau, would forever hate Jacob, the Jewish patriarch. While it is true that two thousand years of Christian teaching and indoctrination—only recently modified in the Catholic tradition—as well as Muslim teachings have had an undeniably negative effect, Jews have had long and successful golden ages in their countries. We thought that the prejudice of the past had finally ended and a new and lasting golden age had arrived.

The truth is that living in the diaspora is fine and good as long as there is a thriving, safe and sovereign Israel for those who want to live there and those who need to go there when they must.

You, survivors, and those who did not survive, more than six million—that is a genocide, not what the Israelis are accused of—would have found refuge in Israel and Jews would not have been the victims they became.

Israel takes up one one-hundredth of one percent of the surface of the world and one-fifth of one percent of the land mass of the Arab world. Not one percent. One fifth of one per cent. Five hundred million Arabs and a billion Muslims have more territory than the United States. To deny that minuscule piece of ancestral real estate, after two thousand years of exile and after the Holocaust is to say, loud and clear, “Don’t exist!”

Yes, we are shocked. We do not have to convert, like Felix Mendelssohn, who could not have his music performed unless he renounced his Judaism. We live in democracies. Societies today have people from all over the world. Surely, we thought, they would not turn on us when most were from somewhere else. But we are being singled out and it is heartbreaking, not just for us, but for the western world that is less humane and less stable as a result.

Governments make pronouncements, set up commissions, adopt policies, call out antisemitism and absolutely nothing changes. Jewish organisations have proven ineffective. We feel betrayed by our governments, police and leaders of other faiths. We feel that we have failed the survivors.

The vast majority of Jews who cannot or will not leave for Israel must find the resolve to honor the survivors and those millions of souls forever lost, to become vocal and engaged—each and every one of us. Cumulatively, we can achieve much. Letters to the editor, emails to individual columnists, contact with politicians, activism of any kind that is constructive and effective.

It is a Jewish belief to be grateful for miracles, but not to expect them. Our fate is, at least in part, in our hands. We pay tribute to the survivors and their memory by acting with even a small amount of their courage and resolve. They deserve it. We need it.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.