vox populi | silence is deafening

Silence is golden, or so I thought. That is, until this evening.

This Saturday marks the 68th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, the initial invasion of Jewish Synagogues and businesses, and the beginning of the events leading up to the Holocaust. I attended an evening of remembrance with cadets, a “Night of Broken Glass”, and overwhelmingly, it was not what was said that disturbed me, but the silence.

Holocaust survivors trusted us with their stories, but it was the silence which haunted. There was silence of Germans who watched their countrymen torture and brutalize a people. There was the silence of the world as they closed immigration to Jews who were trying to flee Europe. The most deafening silence for me came in the voices of christians. Where were our voices?

I wanted to ask a question this evening, “Did you have faith, and what has become of that?”, but I did not want to inflict any more pain on these survivors. It was a night of darkness, pierced only by the candles of remembrance and the painful memories.

“Tell me how you live with death.
Hiding the tears every night.
Tell me, how much longer?
The fire that calls me is not really there
And the one who disappeared
Will he return or is he already dead?”

Le’orech Hayam

Vox populi appears every Friday on theRubicon. Find past Vox populi posts and a bio of Rick Zelinsky here.

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