It's the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day and I'm 30 years old, a member of the first generation to survive the terrible inferno, an inferno that continues with us to this day in a certain sense.
Sitting in front of the candles I lit in memory of Grandma Bracha and Dad's sisters.
I sit down, and begin to realize that I don't understand, that throughout all these years I have been suppressing the fact that I am so close to the Holocaust, to the loss and the constant sadness that accompanies our family and my father every day, every hour, and every moment.
I never touched on this sacred subject, we never sat down and talked about what was really there, we never dared to poke my father in the pain that never let up.
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The Holocaust - one small word. How much it contains and hides.
How much pain, blood, and difficult emotions I cannot convey through the written word.
Father, may he live, the man whose eyes say it all. Eyes full of sorrow, eyes full of faith - and an understanding that there are things that must not be asked, that must not be spoken, that must not be allowed to even think about returning to the cruel moments of the Nazi murderers, who tore him from his mother and sisters, and shot them across the fence, in front of his eyes that refuse to forget the difficult moments in his life.
Dad, I wanted to apologize for never being able to truly understand you.
Dad, I wanted to tell you that you are the strongest person in the world. A person who, despite everything, married and built a kosher Jewish family, with an incredible lineage of joy and optimism and a future.
Father, you always kept us from telling stories, you always kept the silence that tells us: Don't open wounds that never healed.
In your silence, you tried to keep your pain and your inner sorrow from us.
Dad - I met people on the street who told me: Your father saved us from death in the camp, you were 13 years old, a boy full of resourcefulness and courage, and despite what you went through, you helped older people escape from certain death more than once.
Blessed are you that you were also able to give people hope and save them from death in the Valley of Shadows.
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I am a little girl with little children who still don't understand the meaning of the Holocaust.
One day I will tell them what grandmothers and aunts they had, who were murdered for the sake of sanctifying God.
I promise you not to be silent, I promise you to shout your scream.
I promise you to sanctify the names of those who were murdered in cold blood by the Nazi beast.
May their memory be blessed.
Riki Levi, daughter of Rabbi Shraga Gottlieb.
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