My Address at the Yom Hashoa Ceremony in Johannesburg, 2007 - Dedicated to Dad's Memory

יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה תשס"ז – יוהנסבורג, דרום אפריקה

My Grandmother, סאסיה בת יעקב צבי הי"ד, for whom my sister is named, was gassed to death in Auschwitz-Birkenau on ב' סיון 24^th May, 1944, along with my uncle יעקב צבי בן מנחם הי"ד, and my uncle, מאיר בן מנחם הי"ד, for whom my brother is named.

My Grandmother, פעסיל בת צבי הי"ד, for whom my daughter is named, was gassed to death in Auschwitz-Birkenau on כג' סיון the 14^th June, 1944 along with my Aunt, איטה בת מנחם הי"ד, my Uncle, שמאי בן נפתלי הי"ד, and my cousins, מלכה הי"ד, and עטיה הי"ד.

My Aunt, לאה בת הרב טוביה הכהן הי"ד, was gassed to death in Auschwitz-Birkenau on כג' סיון the 14^th June, 1944 along with my cousins, צבי אהרון בן יואל פנחס הי"ד, עטיה בת יואל פנחס הי"ד, שלום שמואל בן יואל פנחס הי"ד, and מינדל בת יואל פנחס הי"ד.

My Uncle, משה אריה בן מנחם הי"ד, was shot to death in Satoralujhely, Hungary, ז' חשון on 24^th October 1944.

My Grandfather, מנחם בן שלמה זלמן הי"ד, for whom I am named,was murdered on a death march near Sachsenhausen, Germany, on כד' שבט 7^th February, 1945.

הו"כ אלופי ומיודעי הרב הראשי - Chief Rabbi Goldstein

הו"כ רב י ומורי היקר – Rabbi Tanzer

Distinguished members of the presidium,

Rabbanim and members of the Christian clergy,

Members of the Diplomatic Corps

Ladies and gentlemen,

Survivors ניצולי השואה –

מכובדיי.

We belong to a tradition that has always extolled the virtue of gratitude. In our liturgy, the very first prayer we are supposed to utter in the morning when we get up, when we open our eyes; is to say thank you. So, thank you. I thank you for the few moments that you allow me to spend together with you today.

This is the second time in my life that I stand here, beneath Hermann Wald’s awe-inspiring and powerful memorial. I stood here 39 years ago today, when I was 15 years old, as one of 6 children of Holocaust survivors, who were each honored with lighting one of these six memorial flames. Then too, the “Torch of Holocaust Remembrance” was passed to the next generation.

I stand here today, joined in spirit by my sister and brother, feeling very humbled by the generosity of spirit shown by the organizers of today’s event who have chosen to honor our father’s memory on this solemn anniversary, and it is my duty as an adult member of what is now called the “Second Generation,” to speak of him, yet not about him.

I stand here today feeling very humbled because although I did grow up here, I am not a native of this community nor of this country, yet I must attempt to speak words of worth and merit, that will perhaps also inspire and motivate you, as I speak of my late father’s legacy as a survivor of the brutal, cruel, and inhumanly evil years of the Holocaust.

20 years ago, the late president of Israel, Chaim Herzog was the keynote speaker at Israel’s central national Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He opened his remarks by saying that perhaps instead of holding large ceremonies with many speeches, it might be better if we allowed the victims to speak. I thought then how dramatic that would be. Imagine if we all sat here today for an hour and just listened to the wind rustling through the trees; if we remained silently ensconced for 60 minutes within our own private thoughts about the incomprehensible and ghastly murder of six million of our kinsmen and women – grandparents and parents, sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles and cousins; husbands, wives and children. But no matter how potent and vivid and remarkable such an exercise might be, I think it would be an insufficient and inadequate response to the events that we have gathered here to commemorate today.

Let me tell you some stories that will illustrate this.

Both of my late parents were Holocaust survivors. But unlike my mother, who survived the vicious brutality of Auschwitz-Birkenau; and the malevolent hatred of the death march from Poland to Germany in the freezing winter of 1944; and the malicious cruelty of the concentration camps in Frankfurt and Ravensbrück - my father’s experiences are best described as atypical. My father was a slave. He was drafted into the Hungarian Forced Labor Battalions in October 1941, when he was 20 years old. He spent most of the next three years clearing forests, digging trenches, paving roads and laying railway lines, starting in what is today Slovakia, through the Ukraine, and deep into the plains of Russia. He and a friend once noticed a security lapse at one of their prison camps, and decided that should an opportunity present itself they would make a run for it. That opportunity did one night present itself and they did indeed escape into the Russian outback. After walking some 30 kilometers on the night of their escape they came to a town, Kalatsch, where they noticed signs had been placed all over, warning the locals against taking in any strangers seeing as the Germans had spies in the area. Soon enough they were found by the local constabulary and questioned as to who they were and what they were doing there. My father replied truthfully; that they were escaped POW’s from Czechoslovakia, and that they were looking to sign up for the Czech Legion. The officer in charge then asked in Russian: “Are you Czech or Slovak?” My father figured that this person was probably cleverer than the others, if he knew the difference between Czechs and Slovaks, and replied: “Ya Yevrey – I am a Jew.” Under the circumstances that was not a smart thing to say. The officer placed his hand on his pistol and replied: “Chto? Ty Yevrey? Skazhi Shma Yisroel!” “What? You’re a Jew? Say Shma Yisroel!” When my father did so, the officer burst into tears and embraced my father, saying that my dad was the first Jew he had met “from the other side.” Who knows, if my father had met some other officer and said the same thing, if he would have lived to see the next 63 seconds, never mind the next 63 years! My father did indeed join the Czech legion; he became a soldier and fought against the Nazis, and finished the war with the rank of Major.

The fact that my father did survive seared into the bedrock of his soul, scorched into the very nucleus of his being, an obligation to actively remember those who perished, an obligation which led him - among other commemorative ventures - to establish the South African National Yad Vashem Memorial at the Etz Chayim Synagogue here in Johannesburg. Dynamic remembrance became the primary motivator of his life. No event in his life would go unmarked by some form of moral action.

I remember one afternoon when I was a child - and this was in the old South Africa - a black man came to our front door, begging for money. My father asked him if he had eaten recently. When he replied that he hadn’t, my father brought him into the house, sat him at the dining room table and proceeded to serve him a meal. After the man had completed his meal, my father gave the man some money and sent him on his way. I marveled at this, and my father, sensing my consternation, said to me: “We were once less than vermin,” (a description he would use often in his life) “and no-one would give us to eat. Now that we have, should we not give to others?” And it wasn’t just a matter of giving food. It was also serving the meal. In the dining room. "ואהבתם את הגר – כי גרים הייתם" “You shall love the stranger,” the Torah instructs us, “for you too were strangers.” Dynamic remembrance, moral action.

The other defining event of my father’s life was the establishment of the State of Israel just a short time after the end of the Holocaust, to where he, my mother and my sister immigrated in March of 1949, and where I was born a few years later. Although he was absent from Israel for 30 years, during which time he served the Jewish community of this country with great dedication, his heart always remained there. Israel was for him the place of Jewish redemption, Jewish independence, and Jewish liberty.

In January 1971 I walked through Tel Aviv’s old Central Bus Station with my father. Those of you who are familiar with that landmark know that it’s an understatement to describe it as not the prettiest place in Tel Aviv. My father turned to me and said: “Look around you – what do you see?” I replied: “What do I see? I see dirt, pollution, noise, beggars and panhandlers, screaming people pushing and shoving.” My father said: “You’re not looking properly. Look, this is קיבוץ גלויות - ingathering of the exiles. This is what the prophets spoke of. Look around you, there are Jews here from Yemen and Romania and Poland and Kazakhstan and Morocco and Hungary and Persia – and they are all free, independent, proud Jews. During the Shoa we were less than vermin, and now look what we have achieved!”

I believe that to be his legacy as a Holocaust survivor. To always recall redemption. To forever cherish Jewish liberty. To perpetually value Jewish freedom. To ceaselessly treasure Jewish independence. To persistently stand up for social justice. To remember dynamically. To constantly be motivated to moral action.

We Jews have tons of mitzvot that are זכר ליציאת מצרים. We are forever recalling our exodus from Egypt thousands of years ago. Not only during the recently completed festival of Pesach which recalls the historical events of the exodus from Egypt, but also daily, when we put on Tefillin - we do so זכר ליציאת מצרים. We wear a Tallit and a Tzitzit זכר ליציאת מצרים. We make Kiddush on Shabbat זכר ליציאת מצרים. We observe festivals זכר ליציאת מצרים. We redeem our firstborn sons - זכר ליציאת מצרים. We are instructed to care for strangers, widows and orphans זכר ליציאת מצרים. Why? What is this constant recollection of an event buried so deeply in the sands of time?

I believe my father’s legacy would answer that upon our exodus from Egypt we achieved our redemption, we gained our liberty, we obtained our freedom, we were granted our independence. So that Jews after the exodus could from then on be just that, free, liberated, independent, Jews. So that they can freely put on their Tefillin and Tallit and Tzitzit. So that they can openly, in every place on God’s earth, keep their laws and customs, and say Kiddush and observe their festivals. So that a Jew, even when on the run from his oppressors in the bitterly cold snow-laden plains of Russia, when apprehended and asked his identity could say "עברי אנכי" – “Ya Yevrey”- “I am a Jew.” So too after the Holocaust, Jews who had been “less than vermin” once again were liberated, free, independent, strong, proud and living in their own land, with their own freely and democratically elected government, never again to be üntermentschen or dhimmi, never again to be dependent for protection upon the whim, caprice or grace of others.

Simon Wiesenthal, who my father brought to this country in 1969 as a guest of the South African National Yad Vashem Memorial, once described the following scenario: “When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, ‘What have you done?,’ there will be many answers. One will say, ‘I became a jeweler.’ Another will say, ‘I have been a successful banker.’ Another will say, ‘I built houses.’ But, said Simon Wiesenthal, I will say, ‘I did not forget you’."

I imagine that my father too will by now have said to them, “I did not forget you.” And then he might also have added: “I undertook to do things to honor your memory. I cared for the poor and I tended the sick, I raised up the downtrodden and I taught the uneducated, I supported the weak and fed the hungry and championed justice – all in your memory.”

In summation let me focus on the wonderful young men and women who are here today, who are all me - 39 years ago, and who are now - in keeping with the theme of this ceremony - the “Next Generation” to whom the torch of Holocaust remembrance is being passed.

What are you to do with this memory?

מסכת סוכה דף מ"א ע"א: מנלן דעבדינן זכר למקדש? א"ר יוחנן: דאמר קרא (ירמיהו ל:יז) "כי אעלה ארוכה לך וממכותיך ארפאך נאם ה' כי נדחה קראו לך, ציון היא, דורש אין לה." דורש אין לה? מכלל דבעיא דרישה!

Sukkah 41a: From where do we know that we must perform deeds in memory of the destruction of the temple? R. Yochanan replied: Since scripture says (Jer: 30:17): "For I will restore health unto you, and I will heal your wounds, says the Lord, because they have called you an outcast. She is Zion; there is no-one who cares for her." There is no-one who cares for her, implies that deeds be done so that she is cared for.

What are you, the members of the “Next Generation” to do with this “Torch of Holocaust Remembrance” that the theme of this ceremony passes on to you?

I’ll tell you. Always recall Jewish redemption and relentlessly cherish human liberty; constantly value Jewish freedom and tirelessly treasure everyone’s independence; and vigorously, vigorously pursue true moral action.

That is the legacy left by my father, Joseph Jacob Fogel: Rabbi, Mentor, Soldier, Humanitarian, Zionist; Holocaust Survivor.