Wherever a Jew treads in Europe, he is aware of the Holocaust. It is inescapable. The rail tracks, over which high-speed trains transport tourists and commuters, once carried cattle-cars of suffocating and starving Jews. The lush, green tranquility of the forests belies the horrifying secrets of the past, the mass graves of Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazis.
The once-proud Jewish community of Dubrovnik has been decimated, and virtually all that is left is the beautiful old synagogue. Built over 600 years ago, the synagogue has seen its walls filled with Spanish refugees of the Inquisition, its children gathering in prayer in response to a nefarious blood libel in 1623, and countless other ups and downs of the Jewish Diaspora. More recently, it was damaged during the racially-charged war that tore through the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, leaving genocide and destruction in its wake.
Yesterday, we met a Holocaust survivor from Israel. He survived Auschwitz and made a home for himself in the Holy Land. Today we met a woman from New Jersey whose business card identifies her as a "Holocaust music recitalist and educator." And then we met a girl who had just finished an emotion-laden tour of four Nazi concentration camps.
But here—especially here—we see life. We meet Jewish people from all over the world. People who are proud of their heritage. Alive. They read the Shema with passion and feeling. The Jews we meet from all over the world paint a picture of a vibrant Judaism. We have outlived the inquisitors, the Nazis and the others, and we are here to tell the tale!
