Dear Friends: 

Thank you for granting me the honor to address you once again at the opening of our Gathering. It is a privileged position as it provides me with an opportunity to place before you some issues we must consider, think about, and perhaps act on. 

As we have discovered over the 14 years that many of us have come together, talked and listened, discussed and contemplated, we are a unique group of very complex individuals whose young lives were permanently affected by a great tragedy. 

To that time in modem history that we know so well, there had never been so concerted an effort to murder an identifiable group of people, the Jews of Europe. And  some would say, it was a successful effort. So few survived. The war on Jews was enormous in scale and devoid of pity. The war on Jewish children even more so, barely 6-7% survived in Nazi-occupied Europe. We belong to the remnant, that fraction who somehow escaped death. 

The assault was so  murderous that one cannot imagine surviving it without scars. The children in concentration camps had virtually no chance to survive and yet some did, with the help of friends and of friendly adults. Those of us in hiding relied on rescuers, Jews and Christians. Yes. Jews also were involved in major rescue efforts, seldom properly acknowledged. I recall one of you, a little girl hiding with French Catholic nuns, telling  how puzzled she was by the fact that so many nuns looked so Jewish.

Of course, these were Jewish women in disguise, hiding themselves while participating in rescue.

And in Belgium, hundreds of Jews fought to save children, in double jeopardy for they were themselves being hunted.

Some of us were lucky enough to hide with Christians who really cared, who neither abused us nor took material advantage of our families. Some accepted and/or demanded money but their personal risk was no less. Hiding Jews was punishable with death. 

We were so fortunate. We did not lose our lives. For a time, we did lose our identities. Persecuted as Jews, we were safe only when wrapped in the mantle of Christianity. A confusion of identity, a mixed allegiance to the savior religion and that of origin has pursued many into adult life. It is only one of many problems with which we struggle. 

What are these problems? What really accounts for our chronic suffering? It is not so hard to figure out. Living one's earliest years in constant fear, torn from parents and family, suffering pain, cold, and hunger is quite enough to account for the physical and psychological injuries that we have begun to recognize over these past several decades. And all of us know that it was not much easier after the war, waiting for parents who would never return, waiting for help which did not come, placed in orphanages or group homes, with well-intentioned individuals struggling to find for us new homes, new families, new countries. For children, the Shah did not end at liberation.

But is it fair to pose only a question about the problems and trauma without asking what accounts for our successes? How have so many of the traumatized children raised decent children, contributed to their communities, indeed, enriched the communities in which they reside? And most amazing of all, how have so many learned to love again? 

A story comes to mind. Some of you may know it. The account was in various newspapers and on the internet. And it was repeated several months ago at our local child survivor meeting in Vancouver. It concerns the violinist, Yitzhak Perelman. 

Perelman, afflicted with childhood polio, always makes his way laboriously to the podium using crutches, sits down, adjusts the braces of his weakened legs, then signals the conductor when he is ready to play. At a recent concert, Yitzhak Perelman launched into his performance of a difficult concerto when a violin string broke. What would he do? Have the string replaced? Get a new violin? Perelman paused, reflected a moment, and signaled his readiness to begin again. He played the entire concerto on 3 strings. The audience rose in a standing ovation. Who could not approach-ate the genius, the innovation, the courage, to perform a challenging concerto composed for an intact violin and to proceed on an inadequate instrument? How was it possible? 

One of our group responded immediately to this story, stating: "That describes us. We have lived our entire lives on just 3 strings." 

How true. No-one gave us a new instrument to play, nor replace a string. No-one was able to hand back a lost childhood, or replace horrific memories and gruesome experiences. In fact, until recently, few persons were prepared even to listen. 

But we did innovate and played life as if all 4 strings were there. We played our deficient instrument so successfully that few could tell we were at a disadvantage. That was our objective, not to be noticed as disadvantaged. We became as normal as the next person, our innovations not so public as that of the great violinist, yet every bit as creative and courageous. 

Some mental health professionals attribute successes of traumatized children to their individual resilience. Others postulate that the good fortune of some to end up with good foster families or

great teachers account for their progress in the world. Of course it required resilience, a measure of good luck, the support and guidance of a caring person at the right time. Can we really know? So many have studied our traumas, so few have studied our successes.

Perhaps our children and grand-children will succeed to understand us. I hope they are beginning to recognize what we faced. And in turn, we must recognize that they faced us, people who are at times excessively serious or excessively playful, for exactly the same underlying reason, the reactions to having lost our childhoods.

Since we learned to live with silence, you may see us move quietly in the world or just as likely, surround ourselves with the noise of radio, television and music always playing. For some raised in silence, constant noise may provide a cover for remaining silent. Even in the presence of company, we may retreat into quietness and seclusion at unexpected moments. Who can understand? 

Who would know that our memories are linked to a hair-trigger, where a fragment of memory intrudes and in an instant, tears well up as we brace ourselves and in that moment, retreat even from those we love? We do not mean to do so. Mostly we cry in private, if we cry at all.

And who can understand what makes us sad? It takes so little, a child in distress-any child, especially those who are being separated from their parents. And Holocaust films, I seldom see one. People tell me about them as if I should want to see it more than they and who are genuinely puzzled that I did not rush to the theater when the film opened. There are films I must review for Holocaust education purposes. I find it difficult and becoming more so. .

There are other sad moments mixed with the most joyous. My children have grown up with grandparents, aunts and uncles. I know they are aware of the privilege and it gives me great joy to see them with extended family even while reminding me of what I had missed. What a peculiar combination of emotions. 

And so we struggle daily with solitude, with unexpected sadness, and with rage depending on the reminders that may come at any moment. 

While we may reflect together on our present status as adults with respect to the problems de-rived from childhood, and reflect as well on our considerable achievements, we must also take note at this Conference of the chilling fact that we find ourselves thrust again into a world of Jew-hatred. 

In the time of our persecution, whether aware of it or not, we were being murdered for being Jews. A Jewish child could neither plead innocence for not knowing, nor escape death through conversion. The death sentence had been pronounced according to simple terms and was inescapable. 

Now we know we are Jews, whether observant, lapsed, identity-confused, whether we belong to congregations or not, attend synagogues or support Jewish causes. We are the children who grew old before their time but who have now aged chronologically as well. 

Many of us are Seniors by society's measure. But we cannot retire, not with what we know, not with the awareness that we have. It took many years to understand that the tiny world of our survival, was part of a larger world surrounded by barbed wire. We lived together and died together in what some have described as the "Concentration Camp Universe". It was a world of chaos and death in which decisions and choices were not real choices but an artifact of the cruel rules of that Universe-verse. How could one know that to throw a child from a train might save his or her life? How was a mother to decide that her child had a better chance to survive without her rather than with her? What should a father do in the presence of his children when faced with machine guns and even a word of protest would invite his death, or worse, that of his wife and children? In fact, it was a world best described by the author Lawrence Langer as one of ' 'choice less choices". How can we speak of choices in the normal sense when in that world, one could only choose whether to die quickly or slowly? It was a universe of death that defied human understanding and belief. 

No wonder we did not understand, we children. It took more than forty years for us to speak of it. I first addressed my concerns publicly in a Kristallnacht commemorative lecture on November 9, 1981 titled "Contemporary Responses to Kristallnacht---Views of a Child of the Holocaust". Here is an excerpt of that address over 20 years ago. 

"We are not surprised that there are many Jewish Nobel Prize winners. Jews have had thousands of years of preparation for scientific discoveries. It is no surprise that there are many Jewish musicians and composers. Jews have created music and poetry for thousands of years. And it certainly should be no surprise there are many Jewish comedians. We need them desperately.” 

For there exists a powerful jealousy of the Jewish people, its culture, its accomplishments, its historic dimensions, and mostly, its capacity to survive. This jealousy expressed itself as anti- Semitism and it is this anti-Semitism which will ultimately destroy its practitioners for it blinds them to the teachings of an old and wise people. Yes, if there is a legacy of the Holocaust, it is as a lesson to a complacent world. 

The Holocaust is many things, mostly inexplicable. But its legacy is unequivocal, unassailable, unambiguous. It represents the ultimate warning to an otherwise blind, and perhaps, doomed world. 

And not only have we had the Holocaust to alert the world to what is possible even in its most civilized, most technologically advanced societies, we have had constant reminders of the possibilities which exist now that this horrendous event has become part of our history. 

What have the Jewish people taught the world lately? It has tried to describe to the nations of the world that the~ advent of terrorism against its people would not be limited for long to Israel and to the Jews. It tried to teach the world through the Entebbe  rescue mission how to fight terrorism. Israel and world Jewry has demonstrated that active persistent exposure of Soviet intentions in regards to the Soviet Jews and various dissidents can force open the gates of Russia, while silence cannot. It has demonstrated that active intervention in Lebanon could prevent Christian genocide. And ultimately on June 7, 1981, in its destruction of the Iraqi nuclear complex, Israel showed the world that there are nations not only making atomic weapons but actually preparing for nuclear war. 

The world denounced the Israeli action as if countries which possessed nuclear weapons would stop destroying after the destruction of Israel. It is as if Hitler would have stopped with the Jews, had he won the war. How little has been learned.

Now, 20 years later, terrorism has made its way here. What is our situation today? How secure are we? How different is the situation of Jews? Are we safer or less safe than in pre-war Europe? I wonder. While anti-Semitism raged throughout Europe, Jews were nevertheless successful in the professions in Germany and Austria, and cultural powerhouses in the larger cities of Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw and Amsterdam. It was incomprehensible to any rational mind that a movement could arise that would destroy one of its own most productive and creative resources, its own native Jewish scientists, artists, physicians, lawyers, writers and philosophers. However, we Jews served a greater purpose. Our enemies united in a culture of hate that defies belief, and in our disbelief, we perished. In a world where Christianity promulgated Jew-hatred with conspiracy theories and blood libels, it was really a small step for most occupied countries to join the "master race" in the opportunity of an anti-Semite's life, the murder of Jews.

What is different today? Perhaps not much. Jews remain a cultural powerhouse with many accomplishments including the establishment of the State of Israel. And Muslim countries have replaced the countries of Europe with a fresh culture of hatred directed at Israel and the world's Jews. The State of Israel is portrayed as a threat to 100 million Arabs in its immediate neighbor-hood. It stands accused of being expansionist and racist Arab countries have adopted the entire package of Jew-hatred as expressed in earlier European blood-libels, right-wing extremist Holocaust denial, plus the vocabulary and the imagery of the Holocaust to advance their own political agenda. Of 163 countries represented at the U.N. conference on racism in Durban, with few exceptions, the energies of nearly 160 nations were directed against Israel accompanied by the vilest public display of anti-Semitism since Nazi Europe. What is going on? Have we made no progress whatsoever? 

The Balfour declaration of 1917 promised a Jewish homeland in the British Mandatory Palestine, at that time comprising 48,500 square miles East and West of the Palestinian hands, there would have been no cantons. Palestinian areas would not have been isolated or surrounded. There would have been territorial integrity and contiguity in both the West Bank and Gaza, and there would have been independent borders with Egypt and Jordan. 

"The offer was never written" is a refrain uttered time and again by apologists for Chairman Arafat as a way of suggesting that no real offer existed and therefore Arafat did not miss a historic opportunity. Nothing could be more ridiculous or misleading. President Clinton himself presented both sides with his proposal word by word. I stayed behind to be certain both sides had recorded each word accurately." 

What has all this to do with us, the children who survived, and with our children? We have committed an unpardonable sin. We have not faded away nor have we been unfaithful to memory. We have not accommodated the legions of enemies who sought our extinction and the extinction of memory. Those of us who were spirited away from Europe to Western Palestine fought to establish Israel and many children died in the war that followed war. Those of us who ended up elsewhere, remain for the most part, committed to our heritage and traditions, as well as enriching the countries and communities in which we reside. 

To many, we Jews remain a discomfiting puzzle. How can it be that Israel, two-thirds the size of Vancouver Island and smaller than New Hampshire, is perceived as a threat to a hundred million Arabs in 22 sovereign states? How is it that Jews, so clearly the helpless victims of the mighty Nazi regime, fielded an army and created an air force capable of defending itself against the mighty armies of Egypt and Syria? We are not playing the role according to the script provided. 

Who would have thought that we would live again in a world where Jews serve as the unifying force of hatred, this time this time not of fascism but of a dominant religion? Who would have thought that we could unite the political right and the left in an orgy of hate? Who could imagine that Jews would join this phenomenon? Judy Rebick, the erstwhile Canadian Jewish feminist, wrote in Maclean's weekly newsmagazine on July 29,2002: "I accepted the invitation (to the Palestinian territories) because I had become increasingly disturbed by the Israeli occupation of the territories, and the uncritical support for Israel by Canada's organized Jewish community." Where has she been? Did she not notice that Israel tried to divest itself of the disputed territories in the Camp David negotiations of 2000? Did she not realize that Israel had between 1993 and 2000, already handed over 40% of the territories containing 95% of the Palestinian population to the Palestinian Authority? 

She does not appear disturbed by the fact that Arafat broke off negotiations, nor by the fact that since 1993, the year of the Oslo accords, he has trained 10-15 year old children to serve as homicidal human bombs 10 years later. 

We heard little from Ms. Rebick about the Palestinian leadership deceiving its own people nor about its genocidal rhetoric regarding Israel and Jewry. In the meantime, she is getting accolades for her so-called "balanced view", the outright condemnation of Israel. She is also upset by the Jewish community's "uncritical support". Uncritical? I would challenge any other community to demonstrate such diversity of views as ours. Who amongst you knows of a Muslim debate regarding Islam's differing views of co-existence with Israel? 

A Dr. Susan Rosenthal of Toronto offered in a letter to the Editor of the Medical Post a news-magazine read by tens of thousands of Canadian doctors, that: "As a physician and a Jew, I want to add my voice to the growing minority who oppose Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinians" and she finishes with her solution which is "the creation of a secular state which grants equal rights to all of its residents", a call for the destruction of Israel. While demonstrating that she does not know the meaning of the word genocide and calling for a secular state in the Middle East where there are none, she also offers the following: "The Holocaust was the greatest crime perpetrated against the Jews. The existence of Israel is our greatest shame." 

And just to make sure you. understand these developments, these so-called leftists have paved the way for the extreme right so successfully that the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust revisionist group based in California attempted to have its spring meetings in Beirut. The conference titled "Revisionism and Zionism" was fortunately banned by Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and a similar gathering set for Jordan was "postponed". 

I want to share with you the prescient vision of the well-known international rights lawyer, Samuel Pisar, the survivor-author and international lawyer. In 1981 he spoke at "Today, as we recall our nightmare, we must draw from its poison insights into why our world once collapsed, how our children's world can be preserved. This is the meaning of our pilgrimage. For when history swallowed us up and spat us out in bits and pieces, we experienced events of biblical, of Homeric proportions-events still too fresh and too potent for others to comprehend. We have a unique legacy to hand down to our fellow-men, Jews and non-Jews alike, especially to the young, because our message of blood and hope is not about the past, but about the future, a future that belongs to them. Perhaps those who cheated death the way we did, and then learned to savor the intoxicating luxury of freedom, are fated to I ive out their lives without an outer skin. But sometime, at moments of dark premonition, we see in the new images of religious fanaticism, racial hatred, terrorist violence and gathering mushroom clouds, a vision of doomsday. 

At such times, against our profound commitment to calm reason, against our love of life, against our confidence in man, we feel as though in that indescribable period, when a burst of slogans and bombs shattered our home, our families, our happiness and our minds, we experienced what was yet to come..." 

We now know what was yet to come. We, whose lives were forged in war in childhood, find ourselves in war again as adults. 

So let me ask. How many of you have in this past year written a letter to the editor of  a  newspaper or magazine protesting an anti-Israel or anti-Jewish diatribe? How many of you have visited the offices of your member of parliament or congress representative to advocate for  Jewish rights? Who has written to commend or support a politician who has defended us?  Have you visited Israel in the last two years? Have you participated in a Holocaust education or commemorative program and told your story? Have you protested an incident of racism or prejudice not directed at Jews? Have you given monies to Israel and to Jewish communities in distress? Have you bought Israel Bonds, supported relatives in Israel, Argentina, or Russia with phone calls, letters, and money? Have you bought Israeli products or insisted they be on the shelves of your local market? Have you phoned an open-line show to protest the participation of an Arab spokesperson if he or she lies, distorts facts and history, or called the program host who knows better but does not challenge his guest? 

What about your children? Have you made them aware of the dangers they face? Do they know that their personal lives and future success is linked to the existence of a secure and viable Israel? Have they given thought to the fact that the Jews of the Diaspora have been able to achieve their present status as proud Jews, in great part, due to the existence of a Jewish homeland? Do they realize that without it we are once again at the mercy of the tides of fortune in the countries where we live? 

While we need not agree on all of Israel's policies, we must agree on the need for Israel. Whether we like or dislike the incumbent Prime Minister, or those of the recent past, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, we must realize they live with daily, even hourly decisions affecting the lives and safety of our brothers and sisters. 

We must not be fooled or drawn into debate by those who substitute Zionists for Jews and for Israel. The usage of "Zionist entity" is a code word for the annihilation of Jews. Zionism is a 100-year old Jewish liberation movement founded to create a Jewish homeland. Zionism is not and never was a contemporary racist Jewish policy to oppress Arabs. Had the movement succeeded earlier in the last Century, as it should have, some of us might have had our families. Can you think of a man to whom freedom and liberation meant more than the Reverend Martin Luther King? This is what he said in 1968: "anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic and ever will be so. It is the denial to the Jewish people of the fundamental right to what we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the globe. It is discrimination against the Jews, my friends, because they are Jews. In short, it is anti-Semitism." . 

I would not blame one of you, not one single Jewish soul for feeling weary, stretched to the limits, astonished that we are perceived by so many as the enemies of mankind, rather than as a proud people, making enormous contributions relative to our small numbers. But it seems not enough. We have failed to make our case to continue our existence as an identifiable people. Arafat stated for all to hear, and to President Clinton, that Judaism has no claim to the temple mount, for there is no evidence the Temple was there. And the world stayed silent. Within grasp of a Palestinian homeland, he chose instead to tell Jews they have no rights to any part of Jerusalem thereby denying Jews and Judaism not only a historical connection but also one of traditions celebrated by the entire spectrum of our people. This signaled the battle for Jerusalem and if lost, marks the end of Judaism. The genocidal war launched against us in the Thirties has not ended. 

Politically, Jews are self-destructive. In Canada we are primarily counted amongst the ranks of the Liberals, the party that has done the least to pursue Nazi war criminals over the decades when it was in power, and which regularly abstains, sometimes votes against Israel in the United Nations. In the United States, Jews vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats despite the fact that Republican Presidents have been more sensitive to issues affecting the survival of Israel. Think Nixon and the airlift of supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur war and Reagan's pledge to holocaust survivors gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1983 that so long as he was President, Israel would be safe. Shall we pause for a moment to thank all those elderly Jewish voters, including a considerable number of  Holocaust survivors, who were unable to decipher their Florida ballots thereby electing the wrong President? Should we rethink our political positions?

I know we deserve a rest. We cannot. There is too much to do, there is too much at stake. The future of our tiny community al1d tiny land and the future of our children and grandchildren remain our great responsibility. Through a twist of fate, luck, or the hand of G-D, we were given life. There must be a reason, and if not, we are obliged to find reason. As Elie Wiesel has said: "The Holocaust was a meaningless event but we must confer meaning on it." That remains our task, to make Jewish life meaningful, even in trying times.

Having lived life so brilliantly on 3 strings, perhaps we are now prepared to respond brilliantly to the present dangers, old enough and wise enough to make a difference.