Jacob's Story

We are the shoes. We are the last witnesses.

We are the shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers, from Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam, and because we are only made of fabric and leather, not blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hell fire.

I had heard stories, seen pictures, and even heard survivors’ testimonies, yet nothing prepared me for a room full of real, genuine shoes, worn by those people whom we had all heard about. Sure, hearing about millions of shoes piled up is shocking. However, actually walking between the black piles, smelling the damp leather, and imagining the people who wore them was truly a knockout moment.

From March 18 to 21, I went on a Holocaust Awareness and Anti-bigotry Mission to Washington, DC. The trip itself was incredible, but going to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum was clearly the highpoint. Imagine all the stories you hear and pictures you see about the Holocaust, except everything is real. Genuine artifacts from the camps and the ghettos were just some of the objects that shook me to the core.

One artifact brought me to tears. I’ve always imagined what it would be like being caged in a cattle car on the way to the camps, but the minute I stepped into that rusty red car of death, everything hit me. It took a second to sink in, but when I took a breath and looked around, I literally felt like I had just been hit by a train. All I can say is I knew I was standing on hundreds of lives that had once been in anguish. I can’t describe the smell. I felt like I was suffocating, but I needed to stay in that car and take it all in. For many minutes I stood looking over every inch of that tiny cattle car. I saw the barbed wire-covered windows, the dirty wood floor that once held corpses and living bodies alike, and I also saw images. Images of the people crying out in desperation, trapped in the exact spot I was standing. I said a quick Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer of mourning, and I walked out. My eyes were watery as I left to go look at the Zyklon B canister hanging on the wall of the next room.

As I write this, it is the holiday of Pesach, known as Passover. Passover is cause for celebration for us Jews. However, when I think of the holiday when we celebrate our freedom from intense oppression, I now think of the millions of Jews in the camps during the Holocaust. In my mind, I would not have been happy to celebrate freedom when I had none. So I do celebrate Pesach with much happiness, and I’m grateful for the freedom I have, however as I’m celebrating, I think of my ancestors, trapped in the death camps. They had no freedom while others were celebrating. Now I always will remember those who were-–and are--not as privileged as I am.

Freedom comes with a price. This price is not measured in funds, but rather in lives and stories. Still today, some people have no freedom, and no reason to celebrate. So on Pesach, I ask you: Have fun and be thankful we’re free, but also keep in mind that some people do not know true freedom. Remember your ancestors who were trapped in the tentacles of hatred and oppression, and remember that freedom is a right that comes with responsibility. We need to pay the price and make a small sacrifice. In the same way we dip our fingers in our wine glasses at each seder, and take a little out at the mention of each plague, take a little of your own celebratory pleasure away, and dip your finger in the metaphorical wine glass of your life. Take a little out, so the ones who never had freedom at least are remembered, and live on in our words and our deeds.

Shabbat shalom.

—Jacob