When Israel Stopped in Time

"What time is it?", asked Mama J (the Mom of the kids).  She continued to drive as I bent over in my seat to find my (now) Israeli phone.  It was buried in the dungeon portion of my purse.  "It's 9:58am", I said.  I dropped my phone back into the dungeon and looked up to see where we were at.  With all five kids in tow, we were on a main thoroughfare, just about to get onto the highway. "Look, people are already pulling over...", said M.  It was true. It was almost 10am. I fixed my eyes onto the overpass and saw that busses, cars, and motorcyclists were not moving.  Some of them were stopped on the side of the highway and some halted right in the lane where their car had just been racing along.  I looked around at the vehicles that were surrounding ours and the same action was occurring.  The world around me was coming to a complete stop.  As I absorbed the moment, the distinct sound of an air siren filled the atmosphere. At the very moment the siren pierced the air, every vehicles was at a standstill and people were getting out of their cars.  Now pulled over, we all filed out of the vehicle and stood in quiet reverence.  For two minutes the sound of the siren filled the air and swept through my heart. All of Israel was virtually stopped in time.

Yom Ha' Shoah, also known as 'Holocaust Remembrance Day', is a Jewish observance to commemorate and remember the lives of the six million Jews who lost their lives during the World War II Nazi Holocaust, between 1933 and 1945. This is the most solemn day on the Israeli calendar.

Once I was filled in on the significance of the observance, I very quickly tossed out my lesson plans for schooling for the day. I poured over pictures and articles on the Holocaust.  The night before Yom Ha 'Shoah, we all watched The Diary of Anne Frank movie. This was a perfect avenue to begin discussing what happened during that war. Even breaching tough thoughts and subjects, the kids asked pointed questions and made truthful, but hard, conclusions.  The next morning we went into further detail about World War II and I selectively showed them pictures from the concentration camps. As we went into more depth, the atrocity of the war began to hit us all.  Not only because of all of the innocent lives that were lost, but also because we are presently living in the land and amongst the people it immediately affected.  These people, the Jews, remember this day. They don't remember it because it is on the calendar.  They remember it because it was their family that was killed.  It was their neighbor that was taken to a concentration camp.  It was their friend that was shot and burned.  It is real to them and it is still tangible.  No one is without a memory or story of loss.  It was an entire people, a whole country that mourned the death of their family, friend or neighbor.

All of us were moved by the experience.  In that moment, as I stood with an entire country in remembrance, my heart grieved for their pain. It was is loss that I could never begin to understand.

It has been 70 years since the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It's hard to believe that something so atrocious occurred such a short time ago.