There is no holiday that marks Hashem’s saving us from the Holocaust. There is no day of celebration. There are no family gatherings, there are no traditions reminding us of the salvation.
However, after all we suffered during the Holocaust, even after losing six million Jews, we are still here. Despite the Nazi regime’s all-out effort to systematically annihilate our nation, we are still here to talk about it.
You and I are still sitting here, discussing our heritage, contemplating its meaning, very concerned with passing down our traditions to the next generation so we can continue the chain that spans millennia — one generation passing down our traditions to the next one.
The reality is that we are an ancient people. We have lived through centuries of exiles, suffering the greatest tortures known to mankind. From the destruction of the Second Temple almost two thousand years ago, we have lived through the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, blood libels, pogroms, persecutions, mass murders, and gassings.
If man ever devised a method by which he could torture his fellow man, it was used against the Jews. If there was ever a diabolical means used by man to kill his fellow man, it was used on the Jews. We were stabbed, shot, hung, executed, starved, clubbed, burned, beaten to death, gassed, and cremated.
And yet we are still here today. We are still around to tell the tale, as vibrant and as strong as ever. And one of the ultimate ironies that history has to offer is that century after century, after so many repeated attempts to slaughter, to destroy, to wipe out the Jews as a people, this nation still exists.
But from a historical vantage point there is a rather ironic question that begs to be answered: where are our enemies? Where is the Egyptian empire? Where are the Romans, the Persians, the Babylonians? All those great empires have risen and disappeared. Where are their people now?
Of all the ancient peoples who delighted in inflicting us with death and exile, we alone are here to talk about it. Of all the ancient people, the only nation that remains intact, unchanged, still alive and thriving, is the Jewish nation. The others enjoyed their moment of power; for a period of time their stars shone brightly, but then faded. During their era of power and glory they attempted to crush us, they attempted to vanquish the Jews, but they failed, and then they faded from the face of history, never to be heard from again.
This is a very important concept for us to stop and think about. Sometimes it is difficult for us to see the hand of Hashem. We want to believe, we want to strengthen our belief in our Creator, but it’s difficult. And people often cry out, "If only I could witness at least one miracle, if only G-d would show me one sign of His power, of His love for His nation, it would strengthen my belief."
I say that if you want to see the hand of G-d, if you want to strengthen your belief in G-d, you need look no further than at the fact that we survived our two thousand years in exile. If you want proof that the Creator of the world orchestrates the events of history, if you want to see G-d controlling the minds of renowned statesmen, generals, and kings — you need look no further than our amazing history.
The fact that the Jews are still around, despite the absurd odds against us, the fact that in every generation the leaders of nations have stood up against us to annihilate us and yet we are still here while they aren’t is one of the strongest proofs of Hashem’s power, and more significantly, of His running this world.
Watch as He shepherds his people from exile to exile; watch as he leads them from land to land, allowing them to be expelled but never totally destroyed.
You might think that I am biased because of my religious leanings, that I only view history this way because I am a rabbi. To dispel this misconception, I’d like to share with you a number of quotes from historians, none of them with any religious biases. Let’s look at the history of the Jewish nation through the eyes of a secular historian.
Let me read you an extract from The Jewish Dispersion by Jacob Lestschinsky:
For 1,900 years from the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) to the establishment of the modern State of Israel (1948), the Jewish people have wandered literally around the world. This wandering was usually precipitated by intolerable spiritual and/or physical persecution. The scope of the Jews’ nineteen-hundred-year exile is reflected in the lands from which they were, expelled, en masse.
And now he is going to list for us those countries from which we were expelled:
For example, in the third century (CE) they were expelled from Carthage (North Africa), in the fifth century from Alexandria (Egypt), in the sixth from provinces in France, and in the seventh from the Visigoth Empire. In the ninth century they were expelled from Italy, in the eleventh from Mayence (Germany), in the twelfth from France, the thirteenth from England, the fourteenth from France, Switzerland, Hungary, Germany, and in the fifteenth from Austria, Spain, Lithuania, Portugal, and Germany. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Jewish populations were expelled from Bohemia, Austria, Papal States, the Netherlands, the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Oran (North Africa). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were expelled from Russia, Warsaw (Poland), and Galatz (Romania).
In the twentieth century, all Jews living in Nazi-controlled lands were deported, [with most of them annihilated] and from 1948 to 1952 [due to intensive discrimination and the threat of extinction] hundreds of thousands of Jews managed to escape from the lands of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.
For 2500 years goyim persecuted us, hunted us, and killed us, all to make sure we don’t keep Torah and mitzvos. Our very existence is an anathema to them. They did everything to totally eradicate us from the face of the earth. That’s history. Today we have our consolation, we are still here. We are part of Hashem's greater plan, we are the eternal people.
Hashem promised us through His prophets that there will come a day when we will rise again. With the coming of the Moshiach Hashem will rebuild the Holy Temple and the Jewish People will flourish and shine forth like never before. We will proclaim the Kingship of Hashem and bring the entire globe to recognize their Creator.
Even in the terrible exile we find ourselves, the soul of the Jewish People is like a beacon of light in the darkness of night. It is our prayer, on this Shabbos Nachamu, that the People of Israel be consoled. May the purity of our hearts and the Torah we learn, and the good deeds we perform, rise up to Shomayim so we should merit the coming of the Moshiach and the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdosh speedily, in our lifetime. Amen.
