faith in action

Honoring the memory of those lost to the Nazis is a daunting task

Jan. 27 is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. We memorialize this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and honor the lives of those lost to the Nazis.


This past summer, I was scheduled to deliver a sermon at a synagogue in California. I wrote my sermon about the idea of liberation found in the book of Leviticus, and how, in this age of polarization and divisiveness, one concrete step we could take to liberate ourselves was to refuse to take part in that divisiveness. I also shared how the project I direct — the One America Movement, a program of the Jewish service organization Repair the World — was working to bring people together across divides to serve their communities and build relationships.

It was a nice sermon, complete with a token reference to Game of Thrones and a joke about how I wanted to start my sermon with a joke but all the jokes my dad and grandpa had taught me were inappropriate for a house of worship.

Then, one week before my sermon, Charlottesville happened. I didn’t change much of my sermon (not even, to the detriment of my audience, my joke about jokes), but I wrestled with it.

It’s difficult sometimes to make the case to Americans that it is worth their time and energy to reach out across divides. Charlottesville only made that case more complicated. I felt like every word I wrote was supercharged. And then a rally was announced in the town where I was due to speak, followed by counterrallies (plural), and, suddenly, the media were everywhere.

When I sat down after giving the sermon, an older man reached out to shake my hand. I smiled and thanked him. And then the woman next to me leaned over to whisper in my ear. “That’s Ben Stern. He survived the Holocaust,” she said. “He lost his entire family.” I later learned that he had lived in Skokie, Illinois, in the 1970s when Nazis planned a march through that town. For Stern, Charlottesville was profoundly unfair – he had faced down Nazis twice, and yet here we were again. And yet, he was announcing he was ready to attend one of those rallies the following weekend to stand up, yet again, for his humanity and the humanity of every Jewish person.

Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day around the world. Here in the U.S., the observance comes amid deep divisions in our country.

Appropriately honoring the memory of those lost to the Nazis is a daunting task.

History tells us that extremist ideologies flourish in highly polarized societies where the institutions of civic life are falling apart. The Holocaust reminds us that the stakes are enormous. It is critical that we build civic bonds that are durable and real, so that when an external shock hits — a terrorist attack, a constitutional crisis, a natural disaster — those bonds can hold.

Building these bonds has to start with understanding both what’s at stake and our role in preventing extremist ideologies from gaining traction. And that starts, I believe, with a healthy dose of self-reflection.

After the dust cleared that week and I had time to reflect, I felt embarrassed that I had gotten up and spoken at that moment about this issue in front of Stern. What could I possibly say to somebody who had been through what he had been through? I wanted to listen to him, not the other way around.

But I also came to realize that his life speaks for itself. At 95 years old, Stern welcomed into his home a roommate, a young German woman whose grandparents were Nazis. According to the Washington Post, the unlikely roommates eat dinner together, watch TV together and even walk together weekly to a class at the local graduate school. His life continues to be about the opposite of everything the Nazis stand for.

That week, the mother of Heather Heyer, killed by white supremacists in Charlottesville, urged mourners to live lives exactly like Stern’s. “Let’s channel that anger not into hate, not into violence, not into fear, but let’s channel that anger into righteous action,” she said.

Appropriately honoring the memory of those lost to the Nazis is a daunting task. But living with dignity and love feels like a good place to start. Righteous action, in whatever form that might take, feels like a good place to start.

“Today we face a resurgence of Nazis,” I said in that sermon. “I don’t know what will happen next. But the one thing I do control is the one thing that makes me truly free — my own actions. My own intentions. My own heart. No hate group can take that from me.”

“When the Nazis came,” Stern’s daughter told the Post, “[My father’s] only weapon was his insistence upon living and remaining human.”

Andrew Hanauer is the director of the One America Movement, a project of Repair the World. The views expressed here are his and not necessarily those of his employer.