Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)

I wanted to post this yesterday, but never had a chance. 

According to the YouTube site:

The song "Ani Ma'amin"(sung here by the miami boys choir) was chosen for backround music because this is the song death camp prisoners would often sing when walking into the gas chambers to die. The lyrics, from Hebrew translated to English are:

"Ani ma'amin b'emunah shleimah beviat haMashiach, v'af al pi sheyitmameiha, im kol zeh achakeh lo b'chol yom sheyavo."

"I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he may tarry, nevertheless I await his coming every day."

I am reminded of one of the quotes in the back of our shul's High Holiday prayer book:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when not feeling it
I believe in God even when He is silent.

- Inscription found on the wall of a cellar in Cologne, where Jews hid from the nazis.

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And also, from the Last Testament of Yossel Rakover, during the last hours of the Warsaw Ghetto on April 28, 1943:

I die peacefully, but not complacently; persecuted, but not enslaved; embittered, but not cynical; a believer, but not a supplicant; a lover of God, but no blind amen-sayer of His.

I have followed Him even when He repulsed me.  I have followed His commandments even when He castigated me for it; I have loved Him and I love Him even when He has hurled me to the earth, tortured me to death, made me an object of shame and ridicule.

And these are my last words to You, my wrathful God; nothing will avail You in the least.  You have done everything to make me lose my faith in You, but I die exactly as I have lived, crying:

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."

"Into Your hands, O Lord, I consign my soul."

Comments

[Leora]

This post of yours inspired this post of mine:

http://www.leoraw.com/blog/2008/05/05/learning-with-a-5th-grader/