The last Holocaust survivor died last week. Well, Trudy (not her real name) wasn’t literally the last survivor – though that day is not far off. But she was my last Holocaust survivor, the last one I knew as a genuine friend, not as a congregant, or a colleague, or a symbol. She was a gossip buddy; we did lunch, drank wine, shouted at each other, laughed and cried together. Lately, she’d taken to tweeting, or texting, or messaging me on Facebook – and since I don’t regularly use any of those platforms, she’d scold me for not getting back to her sooner. She wasn’t someone I would present to a synagogue confirmation class, or an inner city high school, or a gathering of non-Jewish clergy to teach about tolerance and suffering and empathy and Jewish history – all those weighty subjects we drop on the shoulders of Holocaust survivors, begging them to do the heavy lifting for us. She didn’t enjoy speaking in front of audiences larger than her immediate family, and anyway I never would have asked her, because she was merely, and most preciously, a friend. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
