We pray to You that You may keep us alive and preserve us and redeem us speedily so that we may observe Your statues and do Your will and serve You with a perfect heart. Our rabbis teach that each generation should experience the Exodus anew. Each one of us was a child thrown alive into the oven to save the one-half cent the gassing would have cost. I saw my eyelids singe and heard my hair crackle before I felt myself rise as ashes through O those chimneys to fertilize Europe's soil. We don't eat moldy bread and drink weak potato soup tonight, but from within the ovens we proclaim to the world the infinite value of each unique human expression of the Whole.
People forget so quickly.
While the scale cannot compare, the intent is the same. We raise our voices in condemnation, yet we seem unable to halt the slaughter. Our people has known despots throughout its long history. But we, in supposedly civilized times, have lived through the most terrible attempt to annihilate our people. From the experience of the Sho'a we learn to be ever vigilant to enemies of our people, to resist and to overcome them before they can bring harm.