BOYNTON BEACH, Florida — Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem honors non-Jews who chose to save Jews, even at the risk of their own lives. Yad Vashem does not honor, document or recognize Jews who saved other Jews during the Holocaust, even at the risk of their own lives. Honoring Jews who saved Jews was and is not part of its mandate.
Were not their life-risking efforts worthy of memorialization? There is no memorial to Jews who saved Jews and others, in Israel, or anywhere.
For decades, Yad Vashem and many others reflected on the Talmudic teaching Shavuot 39a, Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, all of Israel are responsible for each other. In other words, a person is not necessarily righteous for doing that which was expected of them as their duty, their obligation, their job – soldiers, doctors, police officers.
There are exceptions that should always be considered. What about Jews that blew up the Death Transport #20, taking Jews to Auschwitz, or Jews that blew up the crematoria in Sobibor? What about a Jewish doctor who secretly aborted Jewish women in the Concentration Camps? A pregnant Jewish woman, if discovered, was immediately killed and so would have been the doctor. Is a Jew righteous for saving life, if he shared his last crust of bread with a fellow Concentration Camp inmate who was not Jewish?
The hardest problem is to understand, to decide, to define, is who is Righteous?
Jewish history is 3,500+ years old The stories, the memories, the Jewish values for life are myriad and myriadly unknown, lost to memory. Are they not entitled to honor too?
Should their stories not be told to our children, as examples to guide their lives by?
Proposals to honor, to remember, to teach the stories of Jews saving Jews or Jews saving God’s most precious creation, human life, Jewish or otherwise, have been made for years. They have advanced no where. The very effort has created rancor in some places.
Honoring Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust is not dishonoring the life struggles of the Jewish victims in the Nazi Concentration Camps because they could not do what we think they should have from today’s perspective. Who are we to judge them, when the ability to save themselves was nearly impossible, little less their neighbors?
What if individuals did things to survive that are not seemly to us today? We have not had to walk where their feet walked, with death at every step. Their choices, their actions are for them and God to consider.
If Jews rightfully honor non-Jews who did not have to, but chose to, save Jews, what does that say about us today? What does it say if we choose not to honor the actions of Jews who did do what they could? Is the action of a non-Jew more significant than that of a Jew?
If it is our obligation to remember the Righteous Among the Nations? it is equally a Jewish obligation to remember and honor Jews who also chose to save life.
The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP) decided to try and do what has never been done. JASHP has agreed to be the sponsor of the first-ever memorial of honor to Jews who chose to save life, Jewish or non-Jewish.
The memorial will not be focused on the Holocaust alone. To shape the future, we must remember the past. Remembering the past, all the past, means teaching our children today to help shape their tomorrows.
JASHP has associated with noted Israeli artist Sam Philipe to create a unique concept, initially an artist’s rendering, the Tree of the Jewish Righteous. Sam will artistically guide and inerpret the memorial’s development in the future.
The Memorial’s Olive Tree, with its symbolic 613 leaves, reflective of Jewish law, will be six meters high upon an elevated circular platform of Jerusalem stone pavers. The platform will be three meters in height. Each paver will have the name of a Jewish Righteous person.
The Tree and platform will rest upon a large circular plaza, again with Jerusalem stone pavers for future names of the Righteous.
The physical space will be large enough to expand, to grow. The proposal encompasses an organic precept. As with Yad Vashem, annually, names will be submitted, vetted, and added to the Tree. Potential honorees can be recommended, from any part of Jewish history and experience, from anywhere in the Jewish world.
A condition of JASHP’s sponsoring the Tree of the Jewish Righteous is that in Israel, an appropriate city, an appropriate community, is willing to donate the land and work with us to organize, develop and run the project long term.
Potentially, the Tree will become a focal point of major interest. The Tree will not be a JASHP project alone. It should not be. The Tree of the Jewish Righteous belongs to all the Jewish world, together.
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. He may be contacted via Jashp1@msn.com