Numbering the Dead
April 30, 2008In honor of Yom HaShoah. This essay was originally written for the Holland and Knight Holocaust Remembrance Project.
There is a number that is carved into the stone of memorials, sealed in black lettering in history books and burned into the memories of Jews worldwide. It is a number that has come to symbolize the devastation brought about by the Holocaust, a favorite target both of its deniers [1] and those most committed to preserving the memory of the Shoah [2]. It is a number that represents a tragedy of inconceivable scope and unimaginable horror.
In the early years of Hebrew school, when asked “How many Jews died during the Holocaust?”, I could quickly and easily provided the answer of six million. If the question were phrased slightly differently, and I were asked instead “How many people died during the Holocaust?” I would have given a similar answer, tentatively (with the detachment a number too large to imagine allows) a couple million more. It would be an answer given without the same certainty, an answer nobody taught me. My answer was to the wrong question, and the number I learned, in both Jewish classrooms and secular ones, was far too small. (more…)
