On the one hand I cannot forget what happened in Europe. On the other I know that I have to help rebuild a new world.

What’s a holocaust memorial? Is the last will and testament of the six million to have a memorial? Their last will is that we yidden should be yidden. Unfortunately, many yidden give two million dollars to a holocaust memorial while their own kids don’t care about being Jewish.

Inconsistency in one’s emotions or thinking is a human quality and a very honest expression of one’s humanity. A deceitful person attempts to reconcile contradiction through conniving reasoning and by stretching the truth.

My goal is to turn people on to Yiddishkeit or whatever other religion or spiritual path they were born into. And to make frumm (religious) Jews conscious of our world mission. Orthodox Jews keep G-d’s commandments but have trouble accepting their responsibility to help make this a better world for all of humanity. On the other hand, the enlightened Jews who came out of the ghetto sought to achieve social responsibility but completely neglected the commandments.

Rav Kook taught that the so called secular Jews by settling in and building the Holy Land, were guarding the body of the Jewish people, while the religious Jews were watching its soul. Today the body of the Torah, the laws, are being guarded by the religious Jews, while the soul of the Torah, the fire of its teachings are being watched by the so-called secular Jews.

We orthodox Jews have to deliver G-d’s message to the entire world and that’s why I travel to a place where there aren’t that many Jewish people now. That’s why I came to Poland. It’s a place that has especially bad memories for our people. But that’s the very reason that it makes Poland a prime choice for change. In the Bible we find that Shechem is the city where Dina was raped. Years later it was the city where the brothers sold Joseph and the split of the twelve tribes began. But it’s also the headquarters for the tribe of Joseph who symbolizes the start of the redemption.

So the greatest tribute we can offer to the Six Million is to return to the place of their eternal rest and swear to them that we shall dedicate ourselves to spreading their values and their dreams to the entire world. Holocaust memorials have been turned into a business by people who haven’t the slightest idea of who the pre-holocaust Jews were and what they stood for. We cannot allow assimilated Jews who speak in an alien tongue be our spokespeople to the world. We must address the world in our own Divine language. If I let out tztzis and payus everywhere, then when I return to Germany, I let them out even longer. I was in Hamburg once and a Jewish lady told me that I wasn’t in Jerusalem where I could let my religion hang out this way. I told her that in all the times I’ve been back to Germany, no German ever made such remarks to me. Her comments are, cholila, Nazi-like. The Nazis wanted to wipe out our people and she wants to wipe out our religion. Another time, in Hamburg, I walked into a restaurant with a German TV reporter. He saw me eat some fruit and told me, thank G-d you eat kosher, that he had interviewed a famous Israeli pianist the week before, who ordered ham and cheese. I felt a sigh of relief, he told me. Thank G-d, the Fuehrer didn’t succeed and there are still Jews who are proud to be Jews.

We frummer Yidden can make such a Kiddush haShem with our behavior, that we can inspire the whole world. But first we have to clean up our own act. A little Israeli boy once told me that the reason he doesn’t go to a Jewish school is that he lives near a yeshiva and he hears the children crying whenever they get beaten by the teachers.

Any parent or teacher who hits children is, G-d forbid, keeping Der Fuehrer’s way alive! G-d’s words can be taught to our children and spread throughout the world only in a loving way that is completely free of all anger and hatred.Majdaneck, Poland 5749

Originally transcribed for Connections Magazine by Rabbi Sam Intrator