Yom HaShoah

Today is Yom Hashoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. The topic of the day this year is the contribution of the Holocaust survivors to the creation of the State of Israel - and a vast contribution it is. Essentially, Holocaust survivors brought great blessings to just about every single walk of life or undertaking they touched. There is much that is miraculous about this country, and the survivors wrought more than their shares of the miracles.

Which in itself is miraculous. It is extraordinarily fashionable in this age to garner the benefits of victimhood, to inherit loss, and of course to blame the culprits for each and every weakness we are blighted with, and for all the flaws in our world. The survivors of the Shoah were victimized beyond all others. They didn't wallow in their victimhood. Nor did they pick themselves up and get on with their lives, which would have been the admirable thing to do. Instead, they hauled themselves up by their torn shoestrings, and then created a world, one immeasurably better than the one they came from. Still flawed, of course, because they are human, but astonishing none the less.