You enter into a building where you go from the bright sunshine of the Israeli summer day, as we do on our tours, into a cave-like entrance where you are suddenly in an oppressive darkness, relieved only by stars twinkling in the vast expanse, each a reflection of a reflection from a candle. And all you hear is the constant, continual recitation of names. Name after name after name of the one million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust. When you walk away, you have virtually seen nothing, no graphic photos, no video, no writing, and you are emotionally drained for the experience. Names, names, names.
Names help translate the incomprehensible figure into meaningful, and, therefore, terrible reality.
We don't mourn numbers, we mourn children, individual children, each one who had a name, each one was beloved, each one bore the divine image and embodied a whole world of promise. Each name represents and confers the reality of life, of an individual snuffed out by the Nazis. They understood the individuality in a name, and that is why one of the first things they did was to strip everyone of their name and replace them with a tattoo on their arms. Numbers have no history. Numbers have no characters, have no reason to fight.