| Dear Harold, After a wonderful time of fellowship during Family Week Kentucky we are finally settling in for a few days here in Tennessee and have already begun preparing for our next adventure. As sweet as the time was we are reminded this weekend of a time not so sweet. Bloody Wednesday Several days before what would be known as "Bloody Wednesday" a work crew of military soldiers, POW's, and Jews at the concentration camp in Poland began digging three six foot deep ditches that measured 100 yards each. "Bloody Wednesday" began at 6 or 7 o'clock on a low hill in full view of the local residents with the loud unusual sound of dance music. The Jews, who had worked the day before to dig the ditches, were ordered to march into the ditches 10 at a time and lay face down. The music was used to cover up the machine gun fire that began and ended the massacre. By 5 pm on Wednesday, November 3rd, 1943 over 16,000 Jews were dead. 
800,000 shoes found at Majdanek
Another 14,000 Jews were executed at Poniatowa on the same day ....in the same way. What was their crime? How was this act justified? They were Jews. That's it ....They were Jews. If you're like most Christians you've never heard of Majdanek or Poniatowa. Sad, isn't it? Saturday evening at sundown will mark the beginning of Yom Ha'Shoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day. It will last until Sunday evening at sundown. Please don't go to a local church service expecting to see or attend a special memorial service - you won't find it. Why? Maybe because the music is still covering up the reality of it all. It was then and still now difficult for us as Christians to admit to or hear that our religion .....our forefathers were to blame for this barbaric extermination of the innocent. For me the music wasn't muted until I made my first visit to Yad Vashem - the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. For the first time I understood how my religion played a part in the murder of 6 million people. I grew up in a rural Southern Baptist Church and was once proud of my protestant heritage. Not once did I hear any cruel or unpleasant discussions concerning the Jewish people - the fact is, in small town Tennessee - I never heard anything about the Jewish people. Maybe I wasn't paying attention ......or maybe the music was just too loud. I grew up believing that Martin Luther was a great man with great courage in bringing reformation to my faith. To read his simple minded foolish quotes from the book "The Jews and Their Lies" made me embarrassed. I was more than embarrassed - I was angry. You see ...every Jew who lives in Israel ...at least those who attend high school or serve in the IDF must visit Yad Vashem ...with a guide. A guide that makes sure every Jew hears the story - every Jew knows the truth. You see ....every Jew knows the things we were not told. Every Jew knows that without the teaching of - the hatred of Luther the Holocaust would not - could not have occurred. Some of us, knowing the truth, have become so embarrassed that we've stopped calling ourselves Christians. We still believe that Jesus/Yeshua is the Messiah, but we just can't deal with the hypocrisy of the past ....especially where it involves the Jewish people. Does it matter what we call ourselves? What matters is that we stop making the music louder - stop keeping our head in the sand. Is there a way to undo the sins of our fathers? Maybe - probably not. And if we can never undo what's been done, we still must do something. This Sunday every Jewish community across the world will observe Yom Ha'Shoah. What if you - all of us - went online and found out what time the event is taking place in your city and take your family? As for my family we will be attending an event held at the Gordon Jewish Community Center here in Nashville on Sunday, May 1st at 11 o'clock am. Go to BridgesToZion.org for more info. I want to leave you with an article written by my friend Moshe Kempinski from Jerusalem. A Whisper of Glory in Maidanek On a trip to Poland with Rabbi Mordechai Elon several years ago, my son and his classmates produced a movie describing their trek into the abandoned valleys of death. Their voyage was focused on the death and the destruction, but it also attempted to relive the lives, dreams and culture of a thousand years of Jewish communal life in Poland. There are several minutes in that film that will be forever etched in my mind, and on this Holocaust Remembrance Day I feel a need to recount those minutes again. I watched the video and saw their arrival in the Maidanek concentration camp. They entered the gas chambers and huddled together because of the cold temperatures, mainly because of that inescapable chill that was clutching at their souls. They stood listening to one of the Holocaust survivors that had volunteered to come with them on their trip from Israel. At one point in the description, the guide asked them to look up at the ceiling. The concrete was streaked with swatches of a bluish tinge. The guide explained that the bluish streaks were the remnant of the poisonous Zyklon-B gas that snuffed out the lives of so many men, women and children. He continued to describe how every year, a group of Polish Christians would come and try to whitewash the ceiling. Yet, their efforts proved to be fruitless, as the blue-singed testimony would always return. The blue color was all that remained of those horrific moments and it would not be covered. I thought of those horrifying moments and the terror and the cries. I thought about the prayers in that darkened cell. I suddenly realized that the bluish tinge was not what was left over from the Zyklon gas. It was what remained of the victims' prayers. The prayer that filled that horrific chamber was the Sh'ma prayer: " Hear O Israel, HaShem our G-d, HaShem is one." It is this same prayer that had risen and rent the heavens so many other times in the history of this people. It was a prayer uttered in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, during the pogroms of the Crusades and in the massacre of the Jewish community in Hebron. It was the last words of a father and little son as they lay dying on the floor of the Sbarro's restaurant after a Palestinian terrorist attack. It is a prayer that declares for all eternity that faith cannot be bludgeoned, burned or gassed into oblivion. Faith lasts forever. The last paragraph of the Sh'ma ( Numbers 15) describes the string of t'chelet (blue) that was added to the fringes of the tallit - "put with the fringe of each corner a thread of t'chelet." (Numbers 15:38) This color would be reminiscent of another blue color, the color of the divine Throne of Glory, "And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a blue sapphire stone." (Ezekiel 1:26) The last prayer in that horrible concrete room was the Sh'ma and it was the Sh'ma that left that bluish tinge, not the gas. The victims' collective prayer left an imprint of t'chelet on the ceiling as their prayers rose unto the Throne of Glory. That is where their prayers, and their souls, reside together with six million others, never to be forgotten. The bluish tinge in Maidanek is but a whisper of Glory. Yet, it is also a constant reminder of divine promises that will yet be fulfilled. If you would like to be added to Moshe's email list or order merchandise from his shop in the Old City please contact him at shop@shorashim.com. Blessings, Tommy Waller 
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