Stories of Pain

My teacher once asked, “Can they be prayers after the Holocaust?”

Each catastrophe that has befallen us has had a major impact on our way of thinking. The Crusades with the terror of rampaging villagers burning, looting, writing, murdering we remember through the prayers and litanies that we recite on Tisha B’Av. That speak of the atrocities committed at York, Mayence, Speyer, Worms, the auto-de-fe’s of the New World are also included in this heartbreaking the liturgy.  In some towns they still recite the names of the victims from long ago. Each year they are read publicly.  On Yom Kippur, the prayers conjure up blood stained images of the martyrs-Rabbi Haninah, Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Ishmael, Rabbi Akiba….  We recall the horrific attacks in the Middle Ages on Jewish homes and Synagogues. For these things too, the memory of the Jewish people finds expression in the Kinot, poems and eulogies written by survivors; eye-witnesses to the atrocities.  We have specific mourning chants for each of the liturgies.

 What words, what testimony can be recited for the victims of the Shoah?

No prayers existed for decades. The poems had yet to be recorded. On the day of collective memory, Tisha b’Av, there is no mention of the Holocaust. Its pain, its proximity to us, makes all these other tragic events of history insignificant by comparison. A separate day of memorial had to be created the pain of the trauma was too overwhelming great.

The words describing the events of bygone epochs is insufficient grasp the enormity of Auschwitz.

Even the familiar biblical story of Isaac’s near death does not tell the story of one and one half million children who died in the camps. Instead, silence reigns.  In the aftermath of the inferno prayers were slow to emerge.  It took Elie Wiesel, the first real voice of testimony, nearly 15 years to tell his story. Survivors were still being urged to speak for decades afterward. Up until recently they had their dark memories and secrets behind locked doors. 70 years have passed and the terror is only now sufficiently distant to begin the process of hearing the stories and creating lasting memorials to the victims.

The closest biblical analogy we have is that of Aaron witnessing the death of his sons. When they perish, the Torah offers her most anguished and terse sentence, ‘Va-yidom Aharon,” “and Aaron was silent.”  It is the other silence of disbelief, shock and humility. Any words uttered would degrade the memory of the dead.

It is trying and nearly impossible to compose new prayers. Instead, we tell their stories. And that must be enough.