PHOENIX - Six million – it’s a big number. It would be big regardless of whether we were talking about dollars, jobs, or cars. But it’s staggering when you are talking about murdered people.
Men, women and children rounded up and marched off to gas chambers or riddled with bullets in front of a mass grave in some empty forest in Eastern Europe.
All of those murders ordered because they happened to be Jewish.
Six million lives were never allowed to end naturally.
Six million stories never had a happy ending.
It is why we, as Jews, are told from the time we’re old enough to hear the horrible truth about the Holocaust, that we can never forget.
This year, Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, is April 12.
It is a day when I think about my aunts and uncles who perished in Auschwitz. In fact, had my father’s father not left his small village in Czechoslovakia just before the borders were closed, I wouldn’t be here writing this.
I recently had a chance to visit a new exhibit at the Jewish Heritage Center in Downtown Phoenix called “We Remember.”
It features ‘life masks’ of some extraordinary people: Survivors. Their stories are miraculous and courageous.
Lawrence Bell is the museum’s director.
“We have a woman in here, Gloria Hollander Lyon, who is a survivor of Auschwitz,” Bell said. “Not only did she survive Auschwitz, she, at one point during her experience in the camp, got so sick, that they put her on the cart to take her to the gas chamber to have her gassed because she was no longer useful. She managed to roll off the cart and fall off. She was not detected.”
Bell said she hid for 24 hours in a little culvert inside the camp. Later, at night, she managed to crawl her way to a nearby barracks where 10 women were staying.
“It happened that during the night, the women in the barracks took her in. One of the other women died that night. Gloria put on her uniform, her clothes, and when the inspection came, there were 10 women. And she managed to live,” Bell said.
But the exhibit is not only about remembering what happened, but also making sure the legacy of those who survived, lives on.
“We’re reaching the point where the survivor generation is passing away. Their kids will probably continue the memory for another generation or so, but eventually, it passes into the realm of history,” Bell said. “And that’s where people like myself have to become the custodians of this memory, both to ensure that what happened is not forgotten but also to ensure that it does not happen again.”
The exhibit wouldn’t be possible without the extraordinary work of Valley-based artist Robert Sutz, who over the years has donated his time and craftsmanship to any survivor interested in having a “life mask” done.
Sutz, who also lost his entire family in the Holocaust, sees it as his life’s mission to make sure these survivors' stories are told with dignity, humanity and compassion.
Ultimately, we can learn as much from those who lived through this terrible stain on mankind, as we can from those who perished.
The exhibit runs through May 1 at the Jewish Heritage Center in Downtown Phoenix.
