THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

THE HIGH POINT OF MY SEVENTH GRADE SCHOOL TRIP WAS the visit tokibbutz Yad Mordechai shortly after the Six-Day War. In Jerusalem, the windows inmy neighborhood were still covered with brown adhesive tape that we had affixedduring the three tense weeks of waiting, which had unnerved my mother. The tapewas supposed to hold the glass together in case a bomb shattered it, so we would notget cut. We did so because “experience teaches.” This teacher said that whathappened in 1948 would repeat itself. Car headlights were still painted dark blue todim them at night so as not to be seen by bombers in the sky, just as in Dresden. Thesandbags in front of buildings were beginning to crumble, and we, as boys, used themfor war games. The Old City had been opened and we searched it for bargain-priceswitchblade knives imported from China. They had wooden handles, tin patterns, andscary edges, like the curved Arab knives. To us, the war seemed distant already, andthe farther the war, the closer we were to Yad Mordechai. There we looked, amazed,at the perforated water tower, a relic of the 1948 War of Independence, and near it,as if emanating from its top, the monument of Mordechai Anilevich, commander ofthe Warsaw ghetto uprising. I visited the kibbutz again as trainee during the IDFsquad-leader course, then again during the officer’s course, yet again during the tourguide course, and during annual trips with my children. The place never changes at all,the hero is still entangled in the siege thicket, and I still learn from this experience. The