Another day of memorial, this one is present and thus, to me, much less poignant than Yom Ha'Shoah was last week, for some reason.
Dead soldiers and dead civilian victims, killed in War and Terror.

My feelings are mixed.
Last year I was depressed and the whole thing washed over me and was dimmed into the background of my own personal self pity and pain, to do with the war I participated in.
Now everything feels sharp, not the pain, but the facade of the (necessary and important) ceremonies in which the names of the dead will be spoken and candles will be lit, is so much more clear to me.
The ceremonies seem like theatrics to me. But I'll go to my elementary school where every year, younger and younger (because every year I get older) children stand on the grass slope where they will sing the same songs as last year, recite the same poems and maybe the choreography of the dance will be different, though I doubt it.
I'll go because dead men and women need to be remembered and at this point this is what we have.

Tomorrow is Independence Day, always after Memorial Day, so that we know what those dead men and women fought, lived and died for.

Korin Alal (though Ehud Manor wrote it) puts into words the way I feel best on these days... even if they are mixed:

I have no other land
Even if the ground is burning
Only a word in Hebrew, penetrating
Into my veins, my soul
In an aching body,
In a hungering heart.
Here is my home

I will not be silent, for my land
Changed her face
I will not concede to her
I will sing in her ear
Until she opens her eyes

Sometimes I think about the Holocaust, and especially today I do because it is Holocaust Remembrance Day; the public television networks are showing documentaries, the radio is playing dirges and at ten AM a siren, the siren used for air raids and times of emergency and war, was heard, stopping everything – traffic, exams, fights, classes, shopping – creating an ear piercing moment of silence that continued to ring in my ears for a few more moments.
It is surreal, to see the stillness while your brain is screaming that the noise is painful. It forces you to remember what today means and why we must never forget it.

In Israel, we use the word "Shoah" (שואה, eng. Holocaust) lightly, at least in my circle of cynical friends; "This exam is going to be a holocaust" – "המבחן הזה הולך להיות שואתי". We make jokes about German Sheppard's (Alsatian dogs, ya know) in Jewish ghettos and ask how many Jews you can get into one car – one in the boot, two in the front, three in the back and the rest in the ashtray.
Morbid, which is putting it lightly.
I don't know how other nations that have gone through genocide handle the memory.
Do they also make jokes?
Do they go on school trips to Poland to see where our families were murdered, where their hair was shorn and used to make water proof socks and their fat was used to make soap (everything you saw/read in "Fight Club" is true).

I don't think it's the magnitude of death that makes the Holocaust unique as genocides go.
I think it was the industrial-ness of it, the careful methodical planning of it all. The loss not only of life but of an entire culture that had been cultivated over centuries. The pornographically photographed naked women, children and men; dying, dead and piled up in heaps, each body indistinguishable from the next.
Nudity takes away individuality.
The numbering of the people, which took away a little bit more of their humanity in the eyes of the perpetrators; the lies that hid the material reality: "You'll be getting your luggage back soon" a smiling Nazi clerk would say and everything was catalogued in that meticulous bureaucracy the Germans would pride themselves in.

My own opinion on the genocide that massacred the branches of my family on both sides has changed over the years - Those that went on to create what is now my quite large family, who live around the world, left Latvia and Lithuania before Operation Barbarossa, indeed before WWII even began.

It's easy to succumb to the idea that Jews are eternal victims and that the Holocaust was the largest and latest of Pogroms. At the same time, there is the fact that from this incident of violence a new kind of Jew arose, one that is strong, stronger than ever before, with a country of his own and an army that is the strongest in the Middle East. It is with this new strength and army, the Jews will never fear for our existence again.

I'm pretty sure Israeli Jews are the only majority population in the world that fears for its continued existence, not "way of life", but actual life. It is for good reason; Jews are surrounded by nations who don't want us here (when are we ever "wanted" any where).
I always think it's ironic that we went from one ghetto to another, only this time we built the walls, the snipers are ours and we pushed those we didn't want out.
The Holocaust brought about the existence of Israel, it probably would have happened at some point, but the genocide of the Jews made the process that much more urgent, that much faster.

Israel was built to be a home for those who became homeless.
*sigh*

The conclusion Jews and Israelis in particular, must take from our tragedy, is that we must strive to be better than we were.
Than we are.
We must strive to create a country, a world, in which persecution, racism, antisemitism, orientalism, genocide, auto-genocide are History and not reality.

That's my conclusion as an Israeli Jewish girl and that's what I derive from the Holocaust and that's why I make sure to remember, remember and never ever forget.

.לזכור, לזכור ולא לשכוח לעולם

Remember - יזכור:
The Jews
The Palestinians
The Bosnians
The Darfurians
The Rwandans
The Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania
The Cambodians
The Tibetans
The Armenians
The West African Slaves
The Original/First/Native Nations of the Americas
The "Witches"
The Inquisition
There are more, many more, too many. Who else must we remember?

Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car/ Dan Pagis
here in this carload
i am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that i

Another year goes by and one of the two most solemn days have arrived again.
Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day - יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה
The date chosen to mark this day is the date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which all things considered is a good thing to commemorate.
The Hebrew date is 27th of Nissan (unless it falls on Shabbat) and so it turns around throughout April and May over the 19 year cycle of lunar and solar calendars.

I keep thinking that something profound and important should be said about this incident in History, but there really isn't.
One thing I keep hearing and thinking is that the Holocaust, the Shoah, the Calamity, was unique.
In its magnitude (though that was surpassed by others), in its industrial method, in its ideology.
The reason my home exists was because the world felt sorry for those who were homeless.

One of the things I always felt was a kind mission of Jews as a people who has historically been persecuted is to commemorate the persecution and genocides of other people.
In Israel we could do a better job at (which it putting it lightly).
I could go on and give a list of genocides committed in the 20th century alone, but anyone who is interested can just Google genocide and holocaust, you'll get more information than you know what to do with.
Read with a critical eye and reach the conclusions you see fit about human beings and humanity as a whole.

*In Hebrew the Forget-Me-Not is called Remember-Me - זיכריני

I don't.
( Ashkenazi: Public must also prepare for next war (for the link-phobic) )

War Mongers and Hawks are nothing new in Israel's Military/Political elite, most of them base their entire careers on the fact that yes, there will be blood shed.

But the kind of hype and type of ministry of defense (see "love") newspeaka as shown above, I find so disgusting, I don't even have the words to describe the kind of disrespect this sort of address is, especially as it was expressed by the current and former IDF Chief(s) of Staff at a memorial in honour dead soldiers, who died in what was a tragic accident.
To talk to the families and media and say that more soldiers are going to die in up coming wars, is enraging.

Not to mention that Gaydamak is using this as another opportunity to score browney points, look at the nice man, giving money for memorial monuments - Gaydamak also set up a tent city for the North Israel citizens who stayed in the Centre and South during Lebanon War II - he's definitely trying to do the whole "Private is Better" - yeah, let the Capitalists take over social security and services, that way the government won't need to be bothered with the citizens it supposedly serves... sorry went of tangent there.

I despise propaganda; especially fascist, military propaganda that uses dead soldiers to move and stir an agenda which most people would actually oppose!
Yes we must prepare for War, citizens and soldiers band together against the Enemy...
Bah!

Taking a break from work, I thought I'd write a few words about the significance of this day for me, but unfortunately I'm feeling pretty much nothing at the moment, so an a deep and meaningful post about the significance of Memorial Day will have to wait for tomorrow.
Most likely just before Independence Day.

This poem is one of my favourites, the first time I ever read it, I didn't understand the meanings behind Paul Celan's words. I just knew that they were meaningful and powerful in the way they were constructed and in what they conveyed.
Later on, when I was older, writing poetry of my own, I understood what Paul Celan had said and continued to say.
It resonates and hopefully, always will.

( Todesfuge - Paul Celan )

( פוגת-מוות - פאול צלאן )

( Death Fugue - Paul Celan )