Monday was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Gregorian calendar year is 2026, and the lessons from that catastrophe of history should never be forgotten or diluted. We are less than 100 years from that unimaginable tragedy. Six million Jews, mostly across the European continent, were systematically tortured and exterminated.
In today’s day and age, it is almost inconceivable to imagine how this was allowed to happen. But it did. We can and should never forget how passive indifference to the plight of one of the world’s smallest minorities almost, God forbid, led to our partial extinction. That was the diabolical and evil plan of Hitler along with his European and Arab collaborators.
One of the most telling aspects of the Israeli Yom HaShoah commemorations is that, in Israel, Jews not only recall and remember the six million victims of the Holocaust but also place the Jewish peoples’ resistance at the forefront of our living memory. Indeed, we recall the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 in Poland where Jews facing extermination organized and literally fought for their lives with all their might against the Nazis.
HOW SOVIET JEWS SURVIVED
It is also highly relevant to remember the experience of Soviet Jews during World War II, and especially how many of them were taken in as refugees by Bukharian Jews and Uzbeks within Central Asia.
My family was one of the many that were graciously welcomed by Bukharian Jews during that time as we fled the Ukraine to Uzbekistan. There is much that can be said about Bukharian and Central Asian hospitality; the “mehmonliq” aspect embedded in those cultures were literally a saving grace for many Soviet Jews fleeing the oncoming German Nazi invasion. Members of my family lineage also stayed and valiantly fought the incoming Nazis on mainland Europe, and the borders of Eastern Europe. They were hard times, and we know that hard times make strong men and people.
It is of utmost importance to understand that the Jewish people are an eternal flame; we will not be put out or snuffed out. We will never allow ourselves to be forgotten, or anybody to dim our light. Today, we have whole sectors of society that are attempting to do just that—from traditional media, social media, pop culture, secular schools, influencers, foreign powers, and even in our government.
Each well-adjusted Jew carries the spirit of the Warsaw uprising and defense within our souls, and our ancestors struggles and sacrifices will inform our responses in today’s world as well, wherever we meet Jew hatred and anti-Semitism. This is not a matter of free speech—it is matter of survival, and our survival instincts only grow stronger with time, thank God.
Today we remember with heavy hearts all the victims of the Holocaust. And we re-affirm our commitment to never let this history – our history – be inverted or diluted by the many dark forces in our contemporary society that only wish to erase us. We know who they are, and so does the living God of our ancestors.
We must honor all of our brothers and sisters memories during that dark time, and recommit ourselves to carrying forward their legacies of being proud and resilient warrior Jews in our days. Let their memories only be for blessings.
Dmitri Oster,
LCSW