By now, thanks to the Tikkun Olam group’s whiz-bang volunteer delivery corps — Tom Byrne, Veronica Kaliski, Bill Packard, Suzi Rosenstreich, Madelyn Rothman, Cookie Slade, Rena Wiseman, and myself — and yes, with assistance from the USPS, which has made its rounds unhindered by snow, rain, heat, cold or gloom of night — you have received your yellow candles. Keep them at hand, for with them we will observe Yom Ha Shoah, and memorialize the Six Million with a communal flame bright enough to eclipse once more our own celestial star — the sun — and its light-giving strength.
Our congregation will join together on Sunday, May 5, with the North Fork Reform Synagogue, and two new Yellow Candle Project participants this year —Temple Adas Israel of Sag Harbor and also the Jewish Center of the Moriches — in a shared moment of purpose and holiness.
We have added new initiatives to the project this year. First, please note a few changes in time: Instead of 7:30 as originally planned, we will meet in person, at 7, outdoors in Andrew Levin Park. There, we will dig a grave and bury the tiny slips of paper sent to us by the Yellow Candle Project. These contain the names of children lost in the Holocaust. We were able to attach to a candle most of the names entrusted to us, and you will find a name attached to the candle delivered to you. When you light your candle, we ask you to think of that child. But so many names; so few candles. However, we will give the additional names a proper burial, and may the children so named then rest peacefully.
We will then head into the building or, for those at home and at other synagogues, sign onto Zoom by 7:30 for the ceremonial lighting of our yellow candles with appropriate prayers and commentary by our invited spiritual leaders to honor the Six Million.
And finally, we invite all to stay for the reading of a play by shul member Leah Friedman, whose family Holocaust story began as a boat bound for America was about to leave port. Who would board?
The title of this essay names Six Million, a child, and a soldier. What of the soldier? This soldier is personal to me, and his story is relevant to the Yom Ha Shoah theme.
In September 1942, this soldier was drafted into the U.S. Army, shipped out to England with his battalion in June 1944, and was among the first 100,000 troops to land on Utah Beach. While in the service, he received four Bronze Stars for his participation in the Normandy, Central Europe, Northern France, and Rhineland campaigns. He was discharged in November 1945.
More than 62 years later, the soldier was honored with the New Jersey Distinguished Service Medal during a ceremony at Runnells Specialized Hospital of Union County, where he lived for the last several years of his life. At the ceremony, he told a story to the gathering of relatives, friends, and fellow military men, a story that, he said, in all his days in the service of his country, and considering all that he had seen and experienced, what he was about to reveal was his saddest day.
At the end of April 1945, he began, the war was drawing to a close, and he and his first sergeant were on their way to Munich, but had detoured to the site of the Dachau concentration camp. The camp had just been liberated, and American troops were first discovering the atrocities that had occurred there. He said he climbed on one of the freight cars in the camp and looked down to see that it was filled with naked corpses. He then noticed a building with smokestacks. As he approached it, an officer cautioned him: “Don’t go in there,” he said. “If you do, what you’ll see will remain with you your whole life.” Just then, some GI’s exited the building, bent over, and vomited. Even 62 years later, the soldier could not speak further, overcome by what he had been told, what he had seen, and what he could only imagine.
He died at the age of 100 on Feb. 14, 2010, and was buried with military honors at Temple Sholom Cemetery in Bridgewater, New Jersey. All those who had gathered rose to salute Master Sergeant Lewis Michelson. I saluted him, too. He was my Uncle Lewie.
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