“If Only I Could: A Holocaust Reflection Across Time”

Every year, the date of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, makes its arrival known.That is the very nature of what it means to live by the calendar—the essence of the cycle of life we live by.Time moves forward, the cycle repeats itself, yet each year I wonder to myself:Is it possible? Do we really just "repeat ourselves"?To me, it seems quite the opposite: we never repeat ourselves.We always discover something new within the old.

Every year I learn new things about things that are “supposedly old.”Every year I’m astonished—“How did I not know this?!” Or in my less compassionate moments to myself it is more like, “Ronnie, you should have known that!”I wonder if I’ll ever be able to say, “I truly understand.”Each year, the doubt grows, the thirst grows, the knowledge grows but…so does the sense that the more I know, the more I realize how little I know.

Not long ago, we read once again in the Haggadah at the Passover seder, what seems to be for the “millionth time”: “Even if we are all wise… it is a mitzvah to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and all who increase the telling are praiseworthy.”We are all wise? Really?To know is not enough. There is a need for renewed inner connection—for the story, for remembering the verse: “Know from where you came and where you are going…” (Pirkei Avot 3:1)

Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, often referred to simply as Rav Kook, was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers and mystics of the modern era. He taught that “to tell” is more than “to learn”— it is to turn knowledge into heart, into feeling, into living awareness.

Each year, on the eve of Yom HaShoah, I pause and reflect that the story of the past does not stay in the past, but takes on new forms, new faces. New things are discovered, new angles, deeper understandings—seen through a broader, deeper lens.

Every year, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the pain and sadness return—but so do the insights and a renewed sense of hope.

My thoughts race:The letters that remain from my father's archive, letters in handwritten Yiddish that he cherished dearly, from his relatives in Poland years before the Nazi killing machine would brutally eliminate them all; the photos in albums, the articles written, the film I made with a deep sense of reverence on my father’s testimony at the mass grave in Zhetl;  the doctorate I wrote in which 41 children of Holocaust survivors in their second half of life shared their life stories in reflecting on their lives...where will this all go? Where shall I take it? To whom shall I take it?

My heart and mind take me back to the unforgettable solo trip I took to Zhetl—to live, walk, and write in the town—just 250 meters from where they all lived, from where it all happened. To live for a week,  to show the film, tell the story to whoever wanted to hear, just a month before our own world shattered on October 7, 2023…

Every year, the longing returns. For my father. Also for my grandfather, my grandmother, uncles, aunts,and all those I never met—but cannot forget. And don’t want to forget.

Each year at Yom Hashoah I seem to find a new perspective that gives context, breeds new questions, explores new areas of an existence of 1000 years in Poland that was totally and brutally wiped out. I wish my father were here to hear, to correct, to steer and to lead the way. His story is here with me, inside. He is gone. His legacy remains. It is a huge undertaking but also one I embrace with love, tears, dedication and responsibility.

I remember the poem I wrote some months ago.

If Only I Could

Even as a small child, I knew.If only I could, I thought then, I would have… but I couldn’t. That too, I knew then.

As a little boy, I knew that in the corner of the living room, on the bottom shelf,there was an album where the photos are old.There is black, and a bit of white.The album lies in that corner, between sacred and mundane, between silence and speech.

Only in one photo, they all stand together—once, only once.Forever.The Dunetz family, Zhetl, Poland, 1934.

If only I could, I thought as a child, I would save them all.But a little boy cannot save what exists only in a photograph.That too, I knew then.

If only I could speak to my loved ones in the photo, I would tell them:At least one thing I can do, even when I grow up—I can keep the photo. Forever.

And when I look at my grandmother,the only one with a smile on her lips,I imagine I hear her voice from within the picture:“Thank you.”

If only I could. If only we could.

—Ronnie Dunetz, November 23, 2024