Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel 2006

It is the eve of Israel's national Holocaust Memorial Day (Tuesday, April 25). Tomorrow, the sirens will wail and the country will come to a standstill. People will stop their cars and stand by the roadside, their heads bowed in respect and in memory of the more than 6 million men, women and children who perished in Europe not so long ago.

My grandmother, Elsa, lost her parents, brothers and sisters in the war. She was able to survive due to her Aryan appearance, and the kindness of a wealthy Gentile woman who hired her as a personal physician. The story I heard as a child was that when the Gestapo stopped a passenger train they were riding on and demanded my grandmother's identity card, the woman told the Nazi officer, "she is my personal physician and I need her by my side, unless you yourself intend to take responsibility for my medical care."

My grandmother was the last Jew to graduate from the University of Prague Medical School, before their admission was barred by the Nazi regime. As she went up to recieve her diploma, one of the professors spat on her. "Thank god this is our last Jew," he said.

My mother told me that when she was growing up, she would sometimes lie in bed late at night and hear her mother crying over Rosalee, her little sister, only a young child when she was killed.

My grandfather was a prisoner at Bergen Belsen, and my mother remembers the numbers tattooed on his arm. He did not talk much about his experiences, my mother told me. But he did tell her about the day the Gestapo arrived at his office.

He was a psychiatrist practicing in Vienna, Austria. The Gestapo officers informed him that he was under arrest. They would not allow him to tell his family that he was being taken. My mother said that the Nazi officer was especially cruel. But when he saw my grandfather's pet parrot, his demeanor changed. He began playing with the bird and talking with it.

Realizing that the parrot was the officer's 'soft spot,' my grandfather told him that if he were arrested, no one would be there to feed it. He asked to be allowed to drop the parrot off at home, before his arrest. In reality, he knew if his family found the bird at home, they would understand he'd been picked up by the Gestapo. My grandfather used to say that the Nazis were more humane to animals than they were to people.

Then there was Mrs. Lenobel. My Tel Aviv neighbor, many years ago, she has since passed.

One day, Mrs. Lenobel saw me in the stairwell of our apartment building and invited me in for cheesecake. I could not say no. A widow, I knew she was lonely.

But I really wasn't in a cheesecake mood, I told her. Mrs. Lenobel would have none of that. "You don't have to worry - everything is kosher," she smiled.

Then she told me her story. When her first husband and infant son were killed in the Holocaust, she'd stopped believing, and stopped keeping kosher. But when her second husband was ill in the hospital, she made a deal with God.

"I told him, 'If you make my husband get better and come home, I will believe in you again.'" Her husband did recover and on the day he was released from the hospital, she koshered the house.

In another interesting and related note, there was a small article in Israel's daily "Yediot Ahronot" newspaper today that Professor Issac Ben Afriam recently died. He was a comrade of Hannah Senesh, serving together with her in the Jewish brigade of the British forces during WWII.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the story of the Jewish brigade, they were European Jews living in Israel who volunteered for the British forces. In Israel, which was then a British mandate, they formed a brigade which was to parachute into their native countries. Their mission was to carry out both reconaissance, and aid fallen British soldiers and pilots. Their ultimate goal, of course, was to rescue other Jews. Hannah Senesh was caught after being sent back into her native Hungary. She was executed by firing squad at age 23.

May history never repeat itself.