I was excited; this is the best word to describe my feelings that day. Every
detail of the ceremony had been worked on for weeks. We were going to Ankara!
And to commemorate the Holocaust nonetheless, this was huge! The victims of the
Holocaust were officially going to be commemorated in my country, as it will be
in many other countries. And in Ankara, at the heart of Turkey!
We already have Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust memorial day in April according
to the Hebrew calendar. In 2005, The United Nations designated 27th
of January, the date the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by Soviet
Army, as an annual international day of commemoration in memory of the victims
of the Holocaust. Holocaust International Remembrance Day was first
commemorated in Turkey five years ago at Neve Shalom Synagogue. Last year the
commemoration was held for the first time outside Jewish institutions, at Kadir
Has University in Istanbul and this year at Bilkent University in Ankara. This
year is also important because the Speaker of Parliament Cemil Çiçek will be attending
the ceremony to honor the victims. This will be the first time the Turkish
Republic will be presented in this ceremony with such a high ranking official.
Everything was perfect. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu,
attended the ceremonies held at Auschwitz in Poland with 100 Holocaust
survivors and world leaders. The ministry of Foreign Affairs released an impeccable
press statement: “We hope that every person
develops an understanding of the Holocaust, which constitutes one of the
darkest times of human history, and will consider the importance of working
together so that such a tragedy, and the conditions that made this
inconceivable crime possible, will never reemerge. However, we observe that
anti-Semitism, which formed a basis for the inhuman Nazi ideology, still
survives today and therefore we believe in the importance of fighting
tirelessly against this phenomenon.”
Cemil Çiçek attended the Holocaust forum held in Prague and he
was on his way to Ankara to attend the Holocaust remembrance ceremony
thereafter. The atmosphere of the Jewish delegation in Ankara could be
described as; 170 people full of optimism, hope, and sentiment of pride.
Our first stop was Anıtkabir. We first went for a visit to the mausoleum of Anıtkabir
with a military ceremony to pay our respects and gratitude towards Atatürk, the
founder of the modern Turkish Republic and we stood in one minute's
silence to tribute him. I waited for the National Anthem of Turkey to be played
but it didn't happen. Maybe it is not customary to play in this type of visits,
I am not entirely sure. Our Chief Rabbi made a speech at the entrance of the
museum and signed the Special Book before we visited the museum.
Our next stop was the Ankara
Synagogue. They told us
that the neighborhood of the synagogue is not very welcoming for the Jews, that
we have to be organized in groups and move quickly. This is when I realized
there are high security precautions around our buses and police officers
everywhere. I have to confess, I already have a paranoiac tendency. I shared
everything we did and everywhere we went on twitter but, only after we had
already left the place. Just in case…
You have to see the beauty of the Ankara synagogue. Even the cheap fluorescent
lighting and old heating stoves could not ruin the splendor of the ceilings and
chandeliers. The president of Ankara Jewish community Can Özgön told me that it
is the roof that is in need of an urgent repair. And I learned another
devastating fact; Ankara Jewish
community has no more than 30 members today, out of 3500 in 1948…
The ceremony held at the synagogue was very important in many ways. It
was the first time in a long period that the synagogue witnessed such a crowd
and it was also a family gathering of the Turkish Jews all over the country. A
photo was taken with all the presidents of the Turkish Jewish community to capture
this reunion.
When we went out of the synagogue, I was afraid of the looks of the male
dominated crowd on the street. I realized that it was true, we were not welcome
here as we were informed before. I started to walk faster toward the bus. On
the other hand I am used to this. In Istanbul every time a ceremony is held
there are announcements; “Don’t wait in front of the main entrance, walk away
quickly once you are outside the synagogue.” It is nothing new for me.
After a lunch at Bilkent Restaurant, we visited Alberto Modiano’s photo
exhibition “The Symbols of the Holocaust.”
I noticed many army members and I found out that this is the first time they
attend such a ceremony. The President of Bilkent University Abdullah Atalar,
Dr. Umut Uzer from Istanbul Technical University, the president of the Turkish
delegation for IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) Ambassador
Ertan Tezgör expressed the importance of
education in the fight against anti-Semitism during their speeches.
The president of the Turkish Jewish Community Ishak Ibrahimzadeh said
that the best answer to the Holocaust, and all the other pains that humanity
has been through, is to ensure that our children do not experience that. And he
added, “We should walk together hand in
hand, in solidarity, with the richness of our differences.”
The Speaker of Parliament Cemil Çiçek began his speech by
saying that the Holocaust experience is the most concrete indication of what
could happen when we loss human values. Every speech is translated in advance
to English and it is reflected on the wall over the stage. During the ceremony
I was also following this power point presentation out of curiosity just to see
if there were any errors in the translation. During Çiçek’s speech I was
checking the translation that in a moment I found out that the subject had
changed, and there was no translation to that at all. He had started talking
about Israel and Palestine and how this dispute stands in front of all Middle
Eastern problems as well as the problems that we complaint about in here. He
continued to talk about Palestinian rights, Jerusalem, Al Aqsa, Gaza attacks
and Mavi Marmara…
Wait a minute, aren’t we in a
Holocaust memorial service?
The one that occurred 70
years ago in Europe, even before the creation of the state of Israel? The one where the Nazis used all their intelligence
and all kind of technology just to construct death machines and factories? The
one that the world chose to ignore until the last minute? Did not we talk about
this tragedy during all this ceremony? Did not we emphasize how dangerous it is
not only for the Jews but also for the humanity? And that we have to learn a
lesson from this atrocity?
Was it necessary to emphasize the idea of “Every Jew equals Israel” even
today? Don’t we have 364 other days and
other platforms to discuss and try to find a solution to the problems of the
Middle East, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, and the Mavi Marmara incident that
torpedoed Turkish-Israeli relations?
Later on I saw the simultaneous translation in excellent English; “The
rights and liberty of our Jewish citizens who are not responsible from the
Israeli politics, but only share the same religious affiliation, are under our
protection.” Can we sincerely trust these words?
The ceremony ended with a candle lighting ceremony for the 6 million who
were taken out of their daily life, separated from their loved ones, became
just a five digit number, forced to work and live in the upmost inhuman
conditions, experiments were performed on, and killed in cold blood. The words
of our Chief Rabbi Izak Haleva summarized all: “I hope our world will not witness such brutality ever again!”
Never again!
Karel Valansi Şalom Newspaper 10 February 2015
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