Reaction to Murder
My first reaction to suicide bombings such as today's is anger and fury as the death toll quickly rises. When information about specific victims is released, that feeling includes sadness about the victims and their families, whose lives will be shattered because they got onto a bus after praying at the Western Wall.
It's now about two and a half hours after the bombing, and Haaretz just reported that a "2-year-old dies of wounds sustained in Jerusalem bus bombing, bringing number of dead to 21" and that "hundreds take to streets of Palestinian camp in Lebanon, hand out sweets to celebrate Jerusalem attack."
When one thinks of a mass murder, whether today's or even the Holocaust, often it's hard to internalize the scope and depth of the tragedy, and the extent of the evil that perpetrated it, until being confronted with information about actual victims.
For example, as in many older synagogues, Young Israel of Forest Hills has plaques in memory of those who have passed away. Many of those were vicitims of the Holocaust. As I was leaving Friday evening services a few days ago, I noticed a series of plaques for the Osterwieck family. There is a plaque for a husband and a wife who were murdered together in 1942, another for their daughter who was murdered in 1943, another for a brother who was murdered in 1943, and yet another for the brother's wife, who was murdered later in 1943. Presumably, these plaques were put up by a surviving relative of that family.
These were only five of the six million victims, and their suffering was actually not unique - hundreds of thousands of families suffered similar fates. Yet the four plaques for five martyred members of the Osterwieck family is a powerful reminder of the extent of the Jewish people's loss at the hands of the Nazis. Similarly, being encountered with news of a two-year-old baby's murder and the murder of the other infants, children and adults today, is a reminder of the extent of the Jewish people's loss at the hands of their evil, murderous Arab enemy.
posted on 8/19/2003
