Baltimore, MD - Apr. 14, 2026 - In Eretz Yisroel, Yom HaShoa has been commemorated. The siren has been sounded. People across the country have stopped whatever they were doing, whether it was driving, working, you name it, as they paused for our People, remembering the Six Million Kedoshim for a short and simultaneously very long one hundred twenty seconds.
I have never seen this in action; however, once upon a time when I was in seminary, I did hear the siren, and I am grateful to whoever warned me in advance as to what it was. As an 18-year-old, without being able to comprehend the full impact of what the Holocaust was and its devastating impact, it didn’t really mean much to me at the time. Now, I feel different. Perhaps it is an age thing, as I have matured and come to understand what a Horror this was and how it still holds onto us, like gnarled fingers curled tightly around whatever is in its grasp. Even more compelling is my history and personal connection to the Holocaust. I am the proud first born American to Hungarian survivors. My mother was born in Budapest at the very end of the war. My father, a”h, was taken to Auschwitz that same week. Both their stories are drenched with such obvious Hashgacha and incredible Nissim that it is impossible to deny the hand of G-d. Perhaps one day I will write about it, but for now, I will pen these few thoughts. As I have written before, my maternal grandfather, HY”D, an aspiring physician, was taken to Munka Tabor, labor camp, while still a newlywed, leaving his pregnant wife (my grandmother) praying for his safety. He was later killed on one of the transport marches the Nazis, Yemach Shemom, engaged in to move their prisoners from place to place when they were losing the war. My grandfather heard he had a child, but tragically he never met his daughter, my mother.
My father was taken with his mother and sisters and nieces and nephews, HY”D, from the round up in the shul of his hometown in Derecske with the rest of the community. First, they were herded to a ghetto. Whoever survived that was loaded onto the infamous cattle car travelling for days before they reached the destination of what was known as Hell on earth, Auschwitz. The last words he heard from his holy mother, my namesake, were “never forget you are a Jew.” At Auschwitz, he saw his sister and her four young children sent to the left as he was pointed to the right. “Our lives depended on the flickering move of the finger of the SS doctor (Mengele, Y”Sh.) If his finger pointed to the right, it meant going into the camp. Pointing to the left meant the crematorium,” as my father wrote in his personal memoir.
This is the history that I grew up with, no different than knowing the color of my eyes and hair. It was a part of me that I never really paid much attention to as child and teen but as I get older it has affected my consciousness in a deep and profound way. It is for this reason that the holocaust novels and memoirs I devoured as a teen, that I can no longer read, or at least tread very gently, because the pain is just too great. At the same time, I feel a reawakening to perpetuate the memory of our precious lost neshamos and desperately cling to their names and whatever little information I know of my family. I have started and stopped and started again to make an album with the few blurry black and white family pictures trying to reconstruct some sort of connection to people I wish I knew and yet love so strongly in my heart.
I felt this even more so on Pesach while spending time with my visiting granddaughter. As she sweetly remarked how much she liked our home and wanted to come back (yes, the nachas gauge went over the top), I had to quell back the tears that were pooling in my eyes. I never had the typical grandparent relationship. My mother’s mother, Nagymama, (Hungarian word for grandmother), a”h, lived across the ocean still in Budapest and her English was nil. We visited her every several years and she would do the same. We were fond of each other and possessed the deep love that is the nature of grandparents and grandchildren. Culturally, it was very different and back then I did not know the term “intergenerational trauma” that was the atmosphere hovering on our visits. At the same time, my mind also took me to my father’s mother, Bobba Yides, who I never was able to meet. It was then, in those spare seconds at the end of this past Shabbos before my granddaughter went to bed who uttered the most beautiful statement to this Savti’s ears, that I mourned that relationship of what was ripped away from me so cruelly, and to millions of others. The loss is still reverberating 81 years later, echoes of the past that still do not quiet with the passing of time.
This year, I finally saw what occurs when the siren is sounded. I was moved to tears watching the YouTube clip of cars driving along the highway and then coming to a stop. Some people got out of their cars and stood there on the road. To me, it felt like a Yizkor moment. That millions of people, who I don’t know, are honoring my Nagypapa (Hungarian for grandfather), Bobba Yides and Tanta Mariam with her children, my sweet cousins Yitzik Herschek, Mayer, Chayli, and Luzer, H” YD, along with their own precious lost, was so painful and yet so comforting. That the world may still endeavor to carry out what we just said on Pesach of B’chol Dor V’Dor Omdim Aleinu L’Chaloseinu, this tribute reminds us of our Survival and Strength. We may have suffered and lost so many, but we are here to stand up strong, proud. proclaiming the next part of that statement; V’Hakadosh Baruch Hu Matzileinu M’Yadam. Hashem’s Havtacha of Am Yisroel Chai!
As my father begins in his book, “we have to remember this for all time and NEVER FORGET. NEVER. EVER, EVER.” Totty- I will never forget.
