Opening Remarks, Yom Hashoah.

Holocaust Rememberance Day
Beth Ezekiel Synagogue, Owen Sound
Sunday April 16, 2023

Opening Remarks
Jews have been a part of this community for more than 130 years, and for just as long, we have enjoyed peace and warm relations from our neighbours and friends. But things have been taking a dark turn – locally, nationally and worldwide – and we believe that now is the time for us to come together and stand up against hate, not only directed against Jews, but any targeted group, whether because of their ethnicity, their colour, their sexuality, or their religion.

We Jews are in a unique position to facilitate this kind of discourse because we have been the object of persecution for thousands of years. We know, intuitively, how it starts. And, sadly, we know how it ends.

Long before the war, the founders of this synagogue were forced from their land. Their villages were burned. They were subject to brutal persecution and fled their homelands with only what they could carry. They ended up here in Owen Sound where they found peace, raised families, and enjoyed the freedom to observe their faith without fear.

But they were the lucky ones. The Rabovskys, the Fishmans, the Gorbets, the Cadeskys. By time hate took hold in Hitler’s Europe, there were few avenues of escape for the Jews. Many Western countries, including Canada, turned them away.

Bernie Fishman’s father, Sam, risked his life in 1938 and went over to try to convince his extended family to leave, but they asked, “how bad could it get?” Only his brother and his family took up the offer. The rest perished.

Today we’re going to take you on a personal journey – one that will use the words of victims, the survivors, and the children of survivors, to give voice to the anguish that results when hate is allowed to go unchecked.

Our intent is not to air grievances or assign blame. This isn’t about us. It’s about all of us. Our children. Our parents. Our neighbours. Our teachers. That guy spouting off on social media. The dog whistlers. And that loudmouthed uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

 The Holocaust didn’t happen all of a sudden. And it didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because people let it happen. The Jews couldn’t accept that there was such hateful evil in the world. And much of the non-Jewish citizenry felt it wasn’t their business. Willful ignorance caused the holocaust, in my opinion.

Edmund Burk famously wrote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” I believe that you are all here today because you are good people. And I want to thank you for sharing in this moment with us.