REMEMBERING CONSTRUCTIVELY

MEMORIAL SERVICE

SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF CZECHOSLOVAK JEWS

Rabbi Norman Patz

March 12, 2023 – 19 Adar, 5783

REMEMBERING CONSTRUCTIVELY

1. We Jews have been described as AM HA-SEFER, the People of the Book. The original reference is, of course, to the Torah, but our relationship to the act of remembering is so important that the SEFER being referred to could also be a SEFER ZIKKARON, a Book of Memory.  Remembering is what this service has been doing since the first such ceremony in 1946. This is the 77th gathering to remember the murder of the 3792 Czech Jews who were being held in the Family Camp B II b in Birkenau on erev Purim, 1944. Our memorial service is the second oldest we are aware of, preceded only by the Warsaw Ghetto memorial service (1944).

Together with the execution of the remaining Family Camp members who had been brought from Terezin to us h wits in December 1943 and May 1944, this was the largest mass murder of Czech Jews in all of World War II.

The  Joseph Popper Lodge of B’nai Brith organized the first of these memorial services, continuing until our Society took over sponsorship in 1961. Years later, the Holocaust Survivors of Slovakia joined us.

For nearly three decades, the service was held at Congregation HaBonim on west 66th street. But after the fall of the communist regime in CZ, we were welcomed by the leaders of the Bohemian National Home, for which we are very grateful.

In these post-communist years, we have been greeted by representatives of the Czechoslovak government, starting with the first ambassador of free Czechoslovakia to the United States, Rita Klimova. In these later years, the consuls-general of Slovakia and the Czech Republic have addressed us in person, as did U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Norman Eisen, in 2019. This year’s greeting is in an email from Anna Atari, Israel’s current ambassador to the Czech Republic.

2. Over the decades, the mission of the Society has never changed. In the words of Kurt Wehle, former secretary-general of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia, and president of the Society in 1961:

“Nobody should be allowed to call for an end to remembering this (event.) That would be the beginning of forgetting.”

A. To tell the history truthfully and rebut communist revisionism. Three volumes published jointly with JPS, from 1968-1984, with 4 Reviews following

B. This Memorial Service, always close to the date of Purim

C. Under the leadership of Dr. Eva Derman, a number of excellent lectures on intellectual and cultural topics by distinguished scholars, presented throughout the year 

D. As survivors pass on, our numbers have dwindled, but the families in this Czech and Slovak landsmanschaft persist, one of the few that do so.

3. Let me amend that: I said a few, but members should know this too: in my  New Jersey congregation, Temple Sholom of West Essex, we have a Holocaust Torah scroll from Dvur Kralove nad Labem. It’s a kosher scroll, so it is read every week, and properly described.  And then, ever since we got the names from the liberated leaders of the Czech  Jewish community, we include the names of the Jews deported from Dvur Kralove in our weekly kaddish list —  by name, by age at the time of their murder, and where the murder took place;  so that the names are clearly identified, every week throughout the year, with a full list in the synagogue’s Yom Kippur Memorial Book.

And in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where I have been a visiting rabbi for 16 years, the Holocaust scroll we have is linked to Jihlava, a former German  DEUTSCHE SPRACH INSEL in Moravia , so we list the names of Jihlava’s deportees who were sent the their execution in Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz, babies a few years old to elderly ‘80’s. Some weeks, because our list is alphabetical, the six names all are from one family, three generations, murdered on the same day. 

In the Puerto Rican congregation, the custom of the mourners is to stand up when the name of the family member for whom they are saying Kaddish, when that name is read out near the end of the Shabbat service. And then, after I’d add the victims of terrorism, those who fell in the battles to defend our country and Israel and our martyrs,  I’d invite the whole congregation to rise for Kaddish.

Last year, as I was reading the six names of Jihlava deportees, some motion in the congregation caught my eye and I looked up from the list; individual members of the congregation were standing up for the Jews of Jihlava. Voluntarily! No-one told them to! I was shocked. Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican natives, Jews by choice, were standing up to say kaddish for the Jews for Jihlava! It brought tears to my eyes. Jews by choice, adult men and women who sought out the congregation and converted to Judaism, choosing to identify themselves as the family heirs of the murdered Jews of Jihlava, and standing to identify with individual Jews from a faraway place and time. Each week, they are writing new pages in the Jewish BOOK OF MEMORY. 

So in this increasingly hostile world, WE are not alone.  There is reason to hope. We will not forget. May the memory of our loved ones continue to be a blessing.  KEIN Y’HEE RATZON!