by Esther Korson
Yesterday was International Holocaust Memorial Day. (It is commemorated later in the year here in Israel, this year on the 28th of April). It is impossible to understand Israel without understanding the Holocaust. We’ve been a nation for 65 years, and the total population of the country is by now around 7 million. It is heartrending to remember that six million of our people were systematically murdered, including 1½ million children. It is the reason why relationships and friendships here are truly valued; why family life is so strong; why children and the elderly are loved and treasured. And it is the reason why we do not take our security lightly. As former Prime Minister Menachem Begin famously said, “After the experience of the Holocaust, when our enemies threaten to destroy us…we have to take them seriously…”
Yesterday over half of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) travelled to Poland, the largest number of Knesset members ever to attend an event outside of the country. This marked 69 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where a million Jewish people were murdered, and they visited the site along with many others. Holocaust commemoration events were held in many countries around the world. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on a video message said, “I recall a recent journey of my own to Auschwitz. I will never forget my visit. I saw the horrific remnants of the machinery of genocide as well as moving images of European Jewish life in the 1930’s—weddings, family meals, rituals, simple daily life, all extinguished through systematic murder…”On yesterday’s IBA English TV news, the nation was also presented with an amazing testimony from a church in Tubingen in southern Germany through a really moving news clip by Pastor Ted Pearce. As he explained on the news broadcast, about a decade ago this church began to examine the past of the people in the congregation, and was shocked to find out that almost all of them were descendants of real Nazis. And it moved the church to do something about that. And actually, more war criminals, including some of the most sadistic murderers, came from Tubingen than from any other city. Following the Holocaust, most people throughout Europe would hide behind a cloak of silence, falsely claiming, “We didn’t know anything.” The church in Tubingen decided to break the cloak of silence publicly in their city.
In 2007, they left the walls of their city and began a prayer march across the centre of Germany known as the “March of Life”. As many of the church members were actually children or grandchildren of the Nazis, they used this opportunity to repent for their family’s past and to ask forgiveness to the Jewish people. From a simple beginning, with a small church willing to humble themselves, the “March of Life” spread. Other churches around Germany and then in European countries like the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Austria and Hungary also began to have Marches. In 2009 the idea spread to the United States where every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day Christians in many cities have public prayer walks of repentance with the banners of Israeli flags flying high. In America it is called the “March of Remembrance”.
Above is a very touching video showing this amazing outreach of love towards the Jewish people in a number of European countries plus there is information about the couple who had the faith and the courage to begin it all. It is a real reminder to us all that we can make a difference!
Read more about March of Life at marchoflife.org
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