READING THE NAMES

It is a custom in Berlin to read from a vast book listing 55,696 names of Berlin Jews who perished in the Shoah - it lists names, date and place of birth, number of Transport, where and when killed..

I have already published several volumes of ‘Tales from the Rabbi’s Desk’, with more in preparation. This one, as you can see, related specifically to Yom HaShoah, not Reichspogromnacht, and at that time (2014) the whole book was read in one go - now it is divided - but as I spent some hours today outside the Fasanenstrasse Gemeindehaus where the names were being read again from a small desk with microphone to the VERY few people present, I have decided to put this online this evening, as it is….

TALES FROM THE RABI’S DESK.

READING THE NAMES ON YOM HASHOAH.

You have to look hard to see them. They are there and not there at the same time, they are in a place and no place, between the shadows and the other shadows. But sometimes you can see them. Sitting patiently, most of them. Or standing at the edges. Some of them look a little scruffy, dressed as though for a long journey or maybe having just finished one. Some are a bit smarter. There are mothers with small children on their laps, old people with sticks but they stand there, erect, and they are listening.

They are all listening. They are listening as we read the list of Names, as we do every year – from the big book with the names and the forenames and as far as is known where they came from, when and where they were born, and where they went to – though this is also not always clear; for some it says ‘Alterstransport Theresienstadt’ and for some it says ‘Riga’ or ‘Minsk’ or ‘Auschwitz’ or sometimes ‘The East’ or sometimes just ‘Verschollen’ which means that no-one will ever know. For some it says ‘Freitod’ - but this is an interesting word and I don’t know what it really means. They died for free? They chose to die of their own free will? Or maybe just that they chose for themselves how and where to die – alone or as a pair, they picked the time as best they could, they took maybe a pill with a glass of wine and sat there or lay there, maybe even holding hands together until they could leave this world behind them together.

Anyway, we don’t read it all out, it would take far too long, even as it is one needs around thirty six hours to get through the list and people take turns and those sitting in the tent keep flasks of coffee for those who come at 2 in the morning, and the policemen stand guard, but it is there in the book for anyone to read who might want to come and do so. Often of course we read a surname and then also read ‘’Geboren something’‘ which means someone had a maiden name and then fell in love and married and had a married name too, and often of course there is a whole string with the same surname, because these are lives we are reading out, not just names, abbreviated lives and abbreviated records but lives where people fell in love and married and built up families and had siblings and parents and grandparents.

Then.

Sometimes there is a very faint stir as someone leans forward, sometimes one of them moves with a sort of gesture of recognition and you wonder whether they have just heard their own name read aloud. The children especially seem to listen more carefully as we get to certain letters.

They come every year and they know the routine; and we take turns to stand on the little podium by the microphone on the pavement and read the names into the darkness and there, between the place and the no place, between the shadows and the other shadows, they listen.

Still, it’s nice to be remembered, isn’t it?

…............................................

Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild.