There are three days of Holocaust remembrance on the Jewish and international calendars.
That seems like a lot.
Except, we need them all.
Why? Because we live in a moment of moral danger. Antisemitism surges with a demonic intensity. Holocaust denial, which once lived on the margins, is now part of public discourse. To remember means more than just reflection; it means courage. Bearing witness is itself an act of resistance.
That is why I am co-hosting a new podcast, “To Be Continued,” which focuses on second and third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors, and their trauma and resilience.
So, what do those days of memory teach us?
Kristallnacht teaches: This is what they did to the Jews. On that night of shattered glass, Nazis burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish businesses, humiliated Jews in public, and destroyed Jewish ritual objects. This is what happens when a society grants permission to its worst instincts.
Yom HaShoah teaches: This is what Jews did for themselves. It commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which was militarily doomed and morally victorious. Starving, abandoned, and certain of death, Jews resisted passivity.
Years ago, I walked through the old Warsaw ghetto. I noticed buildings that seemed to rest on small hills. A friend explained: those were not hills. Rather, they were mounds of rubble. The Nazis destroyed the city block by block, and later builders reconstructed it atop the wreckage.
Warsaw stands on ruins. So do we. Every one of us builds a life atop rubble—personal, communal, historical.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day teaches: This is what the world did for the Jews. We mark that day on Tuesday, January 27. In Europe, it is the preferred day of remembrance, because it commemorates European activism to save the survivors — through the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz — and by extension, the partnership of the allies in liberating other camps.
In that sense, International Holocaust Remembrance Day reverses Kristallnacht. On Kristallnacht, the nations of the world were perpetrators, collaborators, or witnesses. On this day, however, some nations became liberators. Soldiers crossed borders not to destroy Jews, but to save whoever still breathed.
This is why memory is so sacred. In this new podcast, I interview Elizabeth Rosner, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, whose life and work explore what it means to live the Holocaust, even without direct experience.
Elizabeth Rosner is the author of Survivor Café. Her mother, born in Vilna, endured the ghetto and survived in hiding. Her father, a German Jew with the typical German name of Karl Heinz, survived Buchenwald. As teenagers, they met in Sweden, married in Israel, and rebuilt their lives in America.
Elizabeth used a phrase: “loved obligation.” We do not choose the history we inherit, but we can choose how we carry it.
Liberation never ended the Holocaust. Rather, the science of epigenetics shows that it often survives within the human body of both survivors and their children. Survivors carried wounds — what the author and second generation survivor Thane Rosenbaum has called “second-hand smoke.”
The children of survivors did not need scientists to help them understand this. Something lived inside them that did not begin with them: hypervigilance, numbness, constant readiness for catastrophe.
But, this is not only about Jews. It is about other groups that have suffered, such as African American bodies shaped by slavery and lynching; indigenous communities scarred by dispossession. It echoes in Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, veterans of war and their descendants.
Herein lies redemption. When Jewish survivors and their descendants share memories, and tales of trauma and resilience with survivors from other communities, they build bridges of tenderness.
Denial, minimization, relativization, amnesia: all fight their battles with memory. With each passing week, more survivors die.
And that is precisely why these days of remembrance matter. It is precisely why we need all three of them.
When we remember Kristallnacht, we remember the hatred – and that memory teaches us vigilance.
When we observe Yom HaShoah, we remember the resistance – and that memory teaches us pride.
When we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember those who liberated us – and that memory teaches us gratitude. But, it is not enough for others to have liberated us.
There is an even more powerful lesson: Others may harm us, and others may help us. But, we must liberate ourselves — through memory, courage, and through building lives—deliberately and honestly—on the rubble beneath our feet.
We remember because the story continues.
And because we do as well.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin is the co-founder/co-director of Wisdom Without Walls: an online salon for Jewish ideas, and one of American Judaism’s most prolific and most-quoted rabbis. His latest book is Inviting God In: A Guide to Jewish Prayer. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, says: “By way of warmth, wit, and wisdom, the riches of Judaism –its prayers and rituals –have been opened up for a new generation. This beautifully written volume will open up the tradition and your heart.” Rabbi Salkin currently lives in Montclair, New Jersey, and devotes his time to writing, biking, his friends and family, and consuming vast quantities of coffee.
