Monday, May 06, 2024

What happens when we forget?

Burn
Dollard-des-Ormeaux, QC
February 2024
This photo originally shared on Instagram


As I prepared to take the recycling bins out to the curb last night, I did something I’m rather ashamed of: I took the empty matza boxes and buried them under all the other paper products.

Then I stood alone in the garage and asked myself why, in 2024, was I afraid of being identified as a Jew?

See, it’s Holocaust Remembrance Day today. And if I remember anything from my Jewish upbringing, it’s two simple words: never again.

And for much of my life, I’ve subscribed to the notion that never again will something so monstrous be allowed to happen to any identifiable group.

Yet here I stand in an ordinary garage in an ordinary town in Canada, and I’m afraid of being singled out. Simply because of who I am.

Why is that? Why is Jew-hatred still a thing? Why is hatred still an acceptable pillar of curriculum in countless schools and communities? Why has this become normalized? Why haven’t we learned from history?

So many questions - and I have no answers for any of them as I carry the recycling box down the driveway, careful to ensure those pesky matza boxes don’t give me away, and don’t give anyone a reason to look more closely at me, my home, my family.

Never again? Not quite. Not now, and possibly never at all.

#ldnont #YomHaShoah #NeverAgain

Related:
Why we must remember, January 2023
Not quite never again, January 2022
Never forget, April 2012
Kristallnacht + 70, November 2008

No comments: