Thoughts on a Video of 1933 Munkatch

Check out this video of scenes of life in Munkatch in 1933, available on Google Video.

There are a few varied scenes available, including: the wedding of the daughter of the Grand Rebbe Eleazer Shapira of Munkatch in March 1933 (with the Munkatcher Rebbe making a speech in Yiddish exhorting Jews in America to continue to keep Shabbos), secular Jewish children singing HaTikvah, traditional religious Jewish children studying in an Orthodox religious school, a book peddler and weaver in Munkatch, and secular Jews dancing.

When I showed a friend--a survivor of the Shoah--the scene of the children singing, her one comment to me was, "What do you think happened to the children?"

Her comment reminded me of the introduction to "The World That Was: Lithuania," by Rabbi Yitzchak Kasnett. Rabbi Kasnett writes:

The goal of The Living Memorial has been to focus our remembrance upon an aspect of the Holocaust which is regretfully being forgotten. When the Nazi beast decimated European Jewry, he destroyed more than human lives. Together with the six million souls who perished in the most cruel manner, a culture was destroyed that was majestic and noble, yet warm and unpretentious. European Jewry took on many forms which reflected several diverse approaches to the Torah way of life. There were the pure hearts and warm spirits of Chassidic Jewry; the dignity and refinement that characterizes German Jewry; the profound faith and courage of Hungarian Jewry; the purity , modesty and incisive Torah minds that personifies Lithuanian Jewry; the sincerity and joy of life of Russian Jewry; the charm and graciousness of Galician Jewry; the commitment to age-old tradition that was demonstrated by the Balkan Jews; and the exciting multi-dimensional world of Polish Jewry.

Above and beyond the horrific loss of 6,000,000 Jews, an entire branch of Jewish life and culture was prematurely torn off and consigned to the flames--lost to future generations, a fact we really do not fully think about or comprehend. Rabbonim and Talmidei Chachamim were slaughtered. Chassidus survived; the Mussar Movement did not. Yiddish has had something of a resurgence. Without Eretz Yisrael, who can say what would have been--and today we see that too is in danger.

Technorati Tag: Holocaust and Jews.