Have you ever had to introduce someone to a friend and found that you have forgotten their name? It’s kind of embarrassing when that happens and you really wish that you were somewhere else, anywhere else. Unfortunately this has happened to me, but the lesson I learned from it was nothing short of spectacular.
I have led many trips to Poland, with many different kinds of people from all walks of life. I really should remember them all as they have all taught me something special and unique, but sadly I do not recall every single individual. On one occasion a girl approached me and asked if I remember her from a Poland trip she had been on a few years earlier, which I’m happy to report that I did. She was quiet, unassuming and modest, exceptionally deep, and always came up with an unexpected insight into things that others would have missed.
I confirmed that I remembered her, recalled some of things that we had experienced together on her trip and enquired about her circle of friends. It was all going well until she asked THAT question - do you remember my name?
There was a pause. Followed by another one. While my eyes scanned her face, my brain scanned for names and the rolodex in my mind kept on teasing me, flipping through the various possibilities but rejecting each suggestion. What was her name? I smiled to eat up some time and my gaze fell on the floor as I summoned up the deepest parts of my memory to give me its precious cargo. My brain felt like a remote control that isn’t sending out its infrared light and needs to have the back taken off and the batteries rubbed together. This is humiliating.
I opened my mouth to say something, hoping that her name would just pop out involuntarily. But nothing came out, and I began to wish that I was a mole or any other creature that lived underground and doesn’t have to remember people’s names.
To her great credit, she saw me struggling and gave me a whole new perspective on how to correctly sum up the situation. She said “Don’t worry if you don’t remember my name. We were in Poland and it just makes me consider how many millions of Jews were killed there, whose names the world has forgotten”.
Since then, I have thought about her comment a lot. How easy it is to forget things that really should be important to you? How many names, stories, experiences, and lives are overlooked, disregarded and unremembered? When I think about that it makes me feel uneasy. Who are these forgotten names?
I did a quick search of someone who may have been forgotten in the Holocaust, and I am going to share it with you. I suggest that on Yom HaShoah, we all remember ONE person that has been forgotten. It doesn’t take long and it isn’t difficult. Not only does it bring that person to life, but it brings you to life as well. That you haven’t forgotten their names, that they still exist in our hearts and our minds and lived and died for something. Go on, remember ONE name of ONE person who was murdered in the Holocaust. Bring them back, if only for a few minutes. Let’s show the world that they lived.
Lidia Lebowitz:
Lidia Lebowitz was the younger of two sisters and was born in a small town in north-eastern Hungary. Her parents owned a dry goods and fabric store. In 1944 German forces occupied Hungary and a month after the invasion, Hungarian gendarmes, acting under Nazi orders, evicted Lidia and her parents from their home. The Lebowitz’s spent three days crowded into the local synagogue with hundreds of other Jewish citizens. Then they were all transferred to the nearby town of Satoraljaujhely, where some 15,000 Jews were squeezed into a ghetto set up in the gypsy section of town. The ghetto residents had a hard time getting enough food to eat.
The ghetto was liquidated in May and June of 1944. All the Jews were deported in sealed freight cars to Auschwitz. Lidia and her parents were never heard from again. Lidia was ten years old.
