#letmyneckbelikethetowerofdavid

[matan4il]

Hi, I saw on your posts that you volunteer at Yad Vashem.

I came to Israel as a (gentile) tourist in 2012 for 2 weeks when I was 16 as part of a tour, as one does. In the UK, where I live, it is a statutory requirement to teach the Holocaust in history class before the age of 15, and, unlike a lot of people I could mention, I actually paid attention in history class, learning about Kristallnacht, the Kindertransport, the ghettos, and the Final Solution. And I read and saw all the grisly school displays in the history corridor with pictures of emaciated dead bodies in those striped uniforms. And I read at least 3 books by concentration camp survivors in the school library. And my school got a Holocaust survivor in to talk to us, AND we covered the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge and Darfur in Religious Studies. Not to mention I had taken history as an elective and done Interwar Europe and WW2.

So I was pretty well-versed on the factual, violent elements of the holocaust.

But when I came to Yad Vashem, there was an aspect to the Holocaust that I wasn't expecting, and that was how people held onto their humanity in the worst circumstances. I remember seeing a photo of people lining up for the cinema they'd organised in the ghetto - people who were lucky to get one meal a day. I remember the story the tour guide told us about a rabbi's son who ended up in a camp with his kid brother and kept him alive.

But the most moving thing of all was the makeshift ram's horn that a rabbi had made in one of the concentration camps.

Not even the camps could stop him blowing the ram's horn. And while I don't know much about Jewish festivals, I felt that the ram's horn was a sign of hope.

Hi lovely!

Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I'm very moved to hear how much you care about the topic of the Holocaust. I personally believe we can't understand human nature, without attempting to understand the Holocaust, all of it, the whole range of human nature as it was expressed back then, from the worst of the worst, to the best of the best. We do very much try to talk about this subject, as we try to generally highlight parts of the Holocaust that we feel have been neglected. So, I am REALLY happy to hear that we could introduce that aspect to you, and that it touched you so much! <3 I personally find a lot of comfort and strength in studying more in depth how people managed to do it, how they maintained their humaneness, even as they witnessed, and were victims of, the most monstrous deeds humans are capable of.

I guess following Oct 7, I feel the same way about seeing Israelis, Jews and allies react in a similar way, and choosing good, in spite of the evil we have experienced again, firsthand.

The ram's horn is a Jewish shofar, and this is the specific one you're talking about, it's found in gallery 8 (which focuses on life for enslaved Jews in the Nazi camps):

And this is Moshe Ben Dov, who crafted it in a Nazi slave labor camp in Poland, in 1943.

He said, "I think I must have softened the horn with my tears." Moshe Ben Dov knew that for using the tools the Nazis gave him, to create an object with Jewish significance, they would kill him if they found out. He wasn't in denial of his pain and of the horrors surrounding him. He didn't blindly ignore the danger. He simply chose to overcome it, to channel that pain into creating something good, a symbol of hope as you said, a holy artifact that would allow Jews to blow the shofar, and maintain their tradition and religious customs, even in the middle of a Nazi camp. I think it's remarkable.

This is why one of my favorite Jewish sayings is, "A little bit of light chases a lot of darkness away." This shofar didn't change the world, but it changed something fundamental about the reality of the Jews enslaved in that camp (they all came to hear the rabbi blowing the shofar on Rosh Ha'Shana), and I believe it can also change us for the better, if we let such incredible deeds inspire us to channel our pain into doing good, too.

Thank you so much again for this ask! I hope you have a wonderful day! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)