Holocaust Remembrance

The Boy of Steel
Leo Melamed
USHMM Luncheon
Chicago, IL
November 3, 2008

The following is a true story. It happened in Poland just outside of Wilno directly after the war. The great Jewish poet Avrom Sutzkover, a Holocaust survivor from the Wilno Ghetto, encountered a young boy hurrying towards him along a desolate and war-torn path. As the boy, perhaps 13 or 14, approached the poet, he occasionally looked behind him as if he was afraid of being chased. Deathly thin, carrying a bundle in one hand, and wearing rags that did not cover his exposed ribs, the boy stopped in front of Sutzkover. He explained he was not from those parts and asked for directions to a school in Wilno he had heard about. Sutzkover obliged. As they parted Suzkover shouted to the boy, "And you, young man, where are you from?"

The boy stopped, becoming very still, as if the world had suddenly ceased turning. He faced the poet, his eyes began to shine a bluish gold, a smile formed on the corners of his lips, and his voice assumed a certain boldness.

"From where am I, you want to know? Sir, I am from steel."

We are gathered here today to pay tribute to that boy of steel. In four small words, he captured the resilience, the durability, the strength and defiance of the Jewish people. We are gathered here to guarantee that the significance of his words live on forever.

I have a special affinity to that boy. I was seven years old when the war broke out. We lived in Bialystok, Poland’s second largest city, where sixty percent of the residents were Jews. You have all heard of Bialystok. Some famous people were born there, including Icchok Shamir, the former Prime Minister of Israel. It is also the place from where Jewish bakers invented what is today known as the bialy.

Our life was normal. That is until September 1, 1939, just as I was about to enter first grade. Then the world turned upside down and would never be the same. Captured by the Nazis, our fate was to be the same as that of 6 million Jews of which one and a half million were children like me, trapped in the inhuman grip of the German Wehrmacht.

But I was one of the fortunate. Because of my father’s brilliance, determination, and foresight, because of my mother’s perseverance and courage, they plucked us out of the fire, literally in the the middle of one night. Thus, began a dash for freedom, across borders, on foot, by train and by junk boat as my parents outwitted the Gestapo and the KGB day after day, week after week. An escape that had the benefit of one of the world’s most righteous human beings, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul General in Lithuania, who issued 3,000 life-saving visas to Japan. An odyssey that took two years, across Lithuania, the Soviet Union, and all of Siberia, across the Sea of Japan to the city of Kobe. Then in a stroke of amazing luck we were permitted passage to the United States, just a few months ahead of Pearl Harbor.

Yes, I have a personal affinity for that boy of steel. For whatever act of fate, I too became a survivor, but with a huge difference—unlike him I do not have the numbers on my arm. The rest of my family was not that lucky.

Bialystok had one additional distinction, its Great Synagogue. Designed in 1908 by a renowned architect, Shlome Jakow Rabinowicz, the Great Synagogue’s dome exhibited a Byzantine architecture that was famous throughout Europe. On July 3, 1941, the Nazis rounded up about 800 Jews from the surrounding neighborhood, including both my grandmothers, my father’s sister, all my cousins, herded them into the synagogue at gunpoint, locked all the doors and windows---saturated the outside walls with gasoline, and torched it. It was an early omen of things to come. The remaining Jewish citizens of Bialystok, along with 90 percent of the Jews of Poland and two-thirds of the Jews of Europe, were murdered in the gas chambers.

Fate does not explain its rationale. Fate had chosen to save me from the Holocaust and bring me to this exalted land of liberty. To grow up as an American and live in freedom. To participate in its opportunity and reach the level of my own capabilities. And to be here today to tell my story.

Oh, and to do one more thing: To tell you about the boy of steel. Because his story is the story of the Jewish people—it is why we are still here—and it must be understood, embraced and repeated by everyone in this room.

For he is the symbol of our existence.

For his survival personifies the survival of the Jewish nation.

For his memory embodies the memory of the six million who perished.

For his courage represents the courage of all survivors and all the Ghetto fighters.

For his spirit is the foundation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

That’s right. The United States Holocaust Museum, a bipartisan American effort—a proud achievement were it merely a monument in our nation’s capital paying homage to the victims—victims of the most heinous crime in the annals of human history. What Winston Churchill described as so evil that it is a crime without a name. But the museum is much more. It is a statement of our survival. It is a precious living beacon from which emanates a warning to those who would deny or forget the history it depicts. It is a holy communion—whether Jew or Christian, white or black—a commitment of every living being—to remember that it happened and that it can happen again. It enshrines the eternal voice of the boy of steel.

Within its walls, at the epicenter of its structure, sits the museum’s Committee of Conscience. It is the world’s early warning system—a canary in the mineshaft—to sound the alarm, marshaling mankind’s collective conscience, whenever or wherever the seeds of genocide are detected. As it did in Kosovo, as it did in Rwanda. For no other voice on this planet has the moral weight of the Holocaust Museum when it comes to racial hatred, bigotry, or ethnic annihilation. The Committee of Conscience embodies our sacred commitment of Never Again.

This message has particular relevance in today’s moment of international turmoil. For it is during times of economic stress and uncertainty that bigotry and hatred become embolden and raise their ugly head. In the 1940s, the Jews were the cause of all evil. During 9/11, the Jews caused the attack on the Twin Towers. Today we hear the President of Iran tell the members of the United Nations—to overwhelming applause—that it was Jews that caused the current financial crisis. Check the Internet and you will see and hear countless echoes of similar vile hatred—directed at Jews. Those sentiments today represent a clear and present danger. It is precisely at moments such as these that our united commitment becomes critical. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a unique fortress against the enemies of humanity and tolerance. It is our sacred and personal responsibility to keep it safe and indestructible.

It is in that context that I now ask for your full support to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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