THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

at least, before the Warsaw ghetto uprising,” I commented to him at the end of thefuneral. “And in any case, the Polish uprising was not only driven by the youthmovements.”“Who are you?” he asked.“My name is Avrum Burg,” I answered, using my nickname.“Oh, you’re the famous Burg. Then you’re a post-Zionist, maybe even anti-Zionist.I’m not even surprised by your comment,” he retorted, ending the discussion aboutthe controversial statement on his chest. Indeed, there are no easy funerals.There are still people who believe this nonsense. They still live by the myth createdby the founders of the state, who take false credit for the desperate uprising,grouping Warsaw with Dgania and Kinneret. They removed the Shoah aspects anddimensions from the rebellion of despair, from its communal aspects and monstrousdimensions, and added it to the portfolio of Israeli legends, making it part of theZionist ethos. Why did Israel adopt the Warsaw rebels posthumously when the prestateIsrael did so little for them in at the time—if anything could be done—againstthe forces of death and destruction?As the great calamity in Europe was unfolding, the leaders of pre-state Israel hadtwo options. One was to resign their public posts forever, as the national leadershiphad proved itself to be inept. The second was to claim ownership of the little thatwas done, to magnify it into an ethos of the national Zionist narrative. They chose touse deception and planted two historical misunderstandings in our minds.One error was that their uprisings and heroism were equivalent in size and intensityto the Shoah and its victims. Shoah Remembrance Day was altered to become aremembrance day for heroes and a day of some contempt, almost official scorn, ofthe Shoah and its helpless victims. The second error was that the uprising in theghettos belonged to us, the natives of the Land of Israel. We were programmed tobelieve that the Shoah belonged to Hitler, the slaughterer, and to the small-town Jews,the sacrificed. Heroism belonged to us, the modern Maccabbees, the Hasmoneans’scions, Bar Kokhva’s descendants.Lieutenant General Ehud Barak, then chief of the IDF staff, paid a visit to theAuschwitz-Birkenau camps about the time of the 1992 Shoah Remembrance Day.He gave one of his most beautiful speeches there, a cynicism-free speech of pureIsraeliness. The crooked axioms that fed his mind and ours are glaring. He said: “At