THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

heard this melody at any other home, on any Sabbath, anywhere in the world. This isour tune, of Grandfather, my father and myself. The rest he would leave to Mother:“Zing Zmires,” meaning “Sing songs” in Yiddish. When klezmers, musicians, playedbefore him, when he heard his favorite melodies, he would smile to himself and nodhis head, either responding to the rhythm or approving the beauty of the moment. Yethe did not sing. Now we were surrounding his bed and singing a nigun, a religioustune.When one of the Rabbis of the Belz Hassiduth got married, the best composer ofthe Belz court composed a cheerful rhythmic melody to the lyrics of the “Days ofAwe” prayer: Avinu Malkenu, “Our father our king, let this hour be an hour of mercyand goodwill from before you.” My father loved this melody very much, and alwaysasked us to sing it. On the evening after Yom Kippur, we slowed the melody’s tempo.We turned this wedding song into a melancholic lamentation. Slowly, with beauty, withall our might, we sang and wept.Then suddenly, from the shadow of death, as if revisiting our world for a moment,my father mumbled something and joined the singing with his blocked throat, his voicemuffled by the oxygen mask. He muttered something twice, as if trying to speak justone last time, to utter those eight Hebrew words that would say it all: Let this hour bean hour of mercy and goodwill from you. He wanted to say it so much and yet couldnot, so we acted as his mouth. This is how my father departed this world, with amelody that has become our own hymn of sorrow and grief.One day we will wake from our long nightmare and sing “End and Beginning,” apoem by the marvelous Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska about the consequences ofwar. Perhaps someone will compose a melody to it, and it will become the secondhymn of us all.When we wake up, history will resume. Life will return to life and it will become clearthat it is impossible to dig in, forever, in the trenches that stretch between thecemeteries. Someone will announce: “That’s it. It’s over.” Another will declare: “Wecan defeat Hitler.”Because it is possible, we must do it. We must leave the Valley of Weeping, theshadows of death and climb up to the hills of hope and optimism. We will remember,but will be hale. Scarred, but whole, balanced. On the first day of normalcy, the newbeginning after what happened to us in the middle of last century, we will begin the