The Silence
Aussie Dave | Apr 16, 2007 | 3 comments
Today we marked Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Memorial Day.
It commenced last night as our leadership (if we can call it that) participated in a ceremony at Yad Vashem, and continued today, beginning with a two-minute-long siren at 10:00AM which brought most of Israel to a standstill.
As fate would have it, I happened to be in a meeting room at the time of the siren.
With two German colleagues.
There we were – a Jew and two Germans – standing in silence with our heads bowed, for two minutes, as a siren wailed to remind us of those who perished in the Holocaust.
Talk about uncomfortable silences.
About the Author
An Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.Filed Under: General
I’ve always found the Israeli public silences amazing. The fact that the whole country can hear the siren and stops is just out of this world.
I’d love to know what your German guests thought of the event. Did you talk about it?
When I lived in Germany and went to school there, trips to see the concentration camps were compulsory.
It’s good I guess, it has an effect on the mind, you leave feeling awful inside but it makes you think about what happened.
Interesting fact, my school was actually made from old aircraft parts, you could actually point out pieces that were recognisible.
I just heard this morning that a Holocaust survivor teaching at Virginia Tech was one of the people killed yesterday 04/16 he died keeping the killer from entering his classroom and the killer shot through the door. I think that the survivors of the Holocaust have to be some of the bravest people in the entirety of the world.