THE HOSTAGES ARE FREED, BUT IT’S NOT OVER
BY: SLOVIE JUNGREIS-WOLFF
The world loves to say kaddish for the Jew. But to let us live? For that we must hold onto our faith and fight for our life.
As Romi, Emily and Doron, the three female hostages, were finally freed from their 471 days in Hamas captivity, I saw a clip from Steven Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s List. Oskar Schindler is in his factory, filling a glass of liquor while speaking to his Jewish assistant, Itzhak Stern. “You know this will be over soon,” he says.
I want to scream. I want to shout out to the world on the top of my lungs, “This was supposed to be over! And it’s not over! They are still trying to snuff the life out of us!”
The barbaric murders, women’s violations, and kidnappings of October 7th have been unconscionably defended. We see the protesting mobs, the campuses filled with anti-Israel hatred, social media calling for our extermination, and the world courts blinded by their poisonous venom. Our history is being rewritten as calls questioning our right to exist spread anti-Semitism across the globe.
I have begun to travel back to Poland with groups of women. We walk through Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. We see the never-ending piles of hair, the endless shoes, the mounds of wire framed glasses, the prosthetics heaped one on top of the other, and the suitcases so naively labeled. Hundreds of pots that mothers and bubbies had brought, thinking they’d be cooking dishes for their families.
We walk through the extermination camps, the heavy silence cutting us as a sharp knife. The chimneys of the crematoria and the train tracks that carried millions to their death stand as testimony to the barbaric madness of the Final Solution. We look up and the sky is blue, the sun is shining, green grass growing, as if the world is normal and nothing terrible ever happened here. Some flowers even dare grow on this earth soiled with our blood.
At a recent talk I gave to middle school children about the Holocaust, I shared pictures of my trips. I told stories about my parents and grandparents who miraculously endured despite the Nazi killing machine. As I was leaving, a young girl approached me, her eyes filled with tears.
“Did you really go into the gas chambers?” she asked.
“Yes, I did.” I replied. “I walked into the very spot where my grandmother gave her life and shouted out Shema Yisrael, I believe, for her very last time.”
The girl wiped away her tears.
“Take my story with you,” I said. “Never forget it. We are part of an incredible people. And we will make it through these difficult times too.”
I look at this sweet innocent girl and I think about all our children. What kind of world are they growing up in? What promise is waiting for them as they journey through childhood?
Eighty years ago my mother was a Jewish child shoved into a cattle car. There was no water, no air to breathe, only shouting and screaming. She was taken to Bergen Belsen, freezing, starving, her head shaved. I grew up listening to stories of resilience and of faith under fire. This was my mother’s milk that nourished my soul. My children’s childhood was filled with hearing their Bubby recount her undefeated spirit as she triumphed over evil. My father lost his entire family but never lost his ability to sing, to laugh, or tenderly carry a baby on his shoulders. We understood the power of our nation to endure.
My uncle, who survived Bergen Belsen as a child as well, tells me about the times he would drive to Newark Airport in New Jersey and see an El Al plane fly above. Uncle Yanky would park on the side of the highway and look up at the blue and white Magen David as he would recite the Shema prayer. “Do you think when I was a little boy being beaten by the Nazi’s in the camps I could ever have imagined seeing a Jewish plane from the State of Israel in the sky? What a sight for me each and every time. Of course I must stop and say thank you.”
I cannot believe the world that I am seeing today. I hear my mother telling me, “You know the world loves to say kaddish for the Jew. They are happy to build monuments and museums in our memory. But to let us live? No. For that we must hold onto our faith and fight for our life.”
Commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz and acknowledging the responsibility for atrocities committed during the Holocaust is important. We must never forget the story of our nation. We must hold onto the understanding of how evil can take charge of people’s minds and cause devastation.
But Oskar Schindler said, “You know this will be over soon.”
My heart breaks as I call out to six million souls who have no rest: I am sorry. It is not over.
To the countless wounded, brave warriors of our people, to the broken families, to the hostages yearning to come home, I say too, “I am sorry. It is not over.”
Yet, I say too: hold on. Grab onto the faith of our people. Our story remains to be written. Look at the inspiring images of Romi, Emily, and Doron embracing their families. See the resilience of these three brave women. And do not lose hope. We will endure.