BS”D
Physically my connection to the Churban is very indirect; two great uncles who were deported from Vienna and killed in Chernovtzi which is here in Ukraine.
While I cannot feel it the same way as a child or grandchild of survivors can, I still feel it every day. Most of my friends are indeed close relatives of survivors, if not of the Nazis then of the Communists.
And I live in Eastern Europe, where every day we are rebuilding what the Nazis and Communists tried to destroy but succeeded only in barely putting on hold. If I ever need a reminder, I need only walk to the town square, to a department store turned mall where I occasionally shop.
There, a plaque testifies to the memory of the Yidden who were killed on the adjacent square.
And I just came back from walking along that square as I do every time I go to shul, dressed proudly as a Yid, with full beard and tzitzis flying in the wind. The music in my mp3 player was no different than what was loaded in there when I lived in New York and used it for a brisk walk along Broadway or Kingston Avenue or 13th Avenue – much of it was recorded by sons and grandsons of survivors who sing the praises of our Father in Heaven as their ancestors did in shuls and at chassunes in this very region where I live.
During the war, I would have been shot for that. Afterward, I would have been marked as a subversive, as a member of an organization that was lehavdil regarded as a combination of Al-Qaeda and the Gambino Crime Family by the rotten Communists YMS.
A few old Communists parade down the main street in front of that square every May 1. They may well have been collaborators during the war as well, but they are old, impotent fools now. Indeed, they are laughed at along with the Hara Kishkas, Mormon missionaries, meditation advocates, and other “freaks” who make utter fools of themselves in public here in town.
But where are the Nazis now?
The answer is, they are gone, and their memory is trampled under my feet and the feet of every other Yid who walks proudly on that square, pausing to notice the memorial to those who gave up their lives al kiddush Hashem and are now watching us rebuild from the highest heights of Gan Eden, waiting only for that moment when they will come back and meet us, in Yerushalayim habenuya.