6 May 2 • 2019
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views

P

esach is a joyous Yom Tov for the 
Jewish people, especially when 
we sit at the seder table with our 
family and friends. The children ask 
the Mah Nishtanah (the four questions) 
“Why is this night of Pesach different 
from all other nights?” 
The father answers 
because we were slaves 
in Egypt.
The king of Egypt, 
Pharaoh, enslaved the 
Jewish people thousands 
of years ago.
Our generation also 
had a Pharoah. His 
name was Hitler. He also enslaved the 
Jewish people. 
The Jews lived in Europe 800-900 
years and obeyed the laws of the land 
in whatever country they lived in. On 
the eighth day of Pesach in 1944, 74 
years ago, I was davening with my 
father when a man came in to tell us 
that flyers were pasted all over town, 
two of them on our shul door. It read, 
“Tomorrow on Sunday, on the day after 
Pesach, each Jew must leave home and 
go to the school building.” 
From there, they took us Jews to 

the ghettos such as Budapest, Kiev or 
Munkacs.
Then the Nazi governments of 
Europe and the volunteers who joined 
them — Hitler didn’
t do it by himself — 
took us to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buna 
and many other camps where we found 
factories equipped with gas chambers 
murdering Jewish people … where 
our parents, our families, our children 
…. our people … were murdered and 
burned to ashes in the crematorium. 
During our history, the Jewish peo-
ple have had many tragedies, but the 
Holocaust has no equal. It is and always 
will be the worst human rights viola-
tion in the history of the world. The 
whole world stood by in silence while 6 
million Jewish people were murdered. 
The world heard their screams from the 
gas chambers, but they pretended they 
could not hear. The world smelled their 
flesh burning in the crematoriums but 
turned away because they were Jews.
On Yom HaShoah (May 2), we 
remember our family members who 
died during those awful years. I am 
sure it is a mitzvah to remember the 
neshamas (souls) of the 1.5 million 
children who died; their memories will 

forever live in our hearts.
On a morning in May 1945, the gates 
of Buchenwald opened and in came 
tanks, soldiers and guns. We thought 
they were going to level the camp and 
kill us all, but we found out this was the 
American army who came to liberate us 
and give us back our lives. We were like 
dead people walking, skin and bones. 
If they would have come a few months 
later, not one survivor would have been 
left.
Thousands of years ago, God sent 
Moses and his brother Aaron to 
Egypt to take His chosen people out 
of slavery from King Pharaoh and, in 
May of 1945, God sent the American 
Army, led by General Patton and 
Rabbi Shekhter, the chaplain of the 
unit, to take His chosen people out 
of the gas chambers. Seventy-five 
years later I say that unit was led by 
God and Moses … and the soldiers 
were God’
s angels. ■

Michael Weiss, a Holocaust survivor, is a 
speaker at the Holocaust Memorial Center in 
Farmington and author of the book Chimneys 
and Chambers. 

Michael Weiss

essay
Remember Yom HaShoah 
and the 6 Million Kedoshim

letters

An Alternate Dayenu
Regarding the “Dayenu 2019” in 
the April 18 Detroit Jewish News, here is 
an alternative version:

A Dayenu for this Passover
If President Trump had only 
moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem 
— Dayenu.
If President Trump had only rec-
ognized Israeli sovereignty over the 
Golan — Dayenu.
If President Trump had 
only appointed Nikki Haley as 
Ambassador to the U.N. — Dayenu.
If President Trump had only closed 
the PLO office in Washington, D.C. 
— Dayenu.
If President Trump had only 
stopped giving U.S. tax dollars to the 
PLO — Dayenu.
If President Trump had only been 
the first sitting U.S. President to pray 
at the Western Wall —Dayenu.
If President Trump had only can-
celled the disastrous Obama Iran 
nuclear deal — Dayenu.
If President Trump had only 
placed crushing sanctions on Iran — 
Dayenu. 
If President Trump had only insist-
ed that the ICC not target Israeli sol-
diers and diplomats — Dayenu.
If President Trump has only 
banned the BDS founder from enter-
ing the U.S. — Dayenu.

continued on page 10

