In Israel today is Holocaust Memorial Day.  But I am in New York, so I went to Di Shteyn.  On 83rd and Riverside Park there is a stone, promising in 1947 that a memorial both to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and the Holocaust victims would be built in this place.  It wasn’t built, but there are annual memorial ceremoniea in this beautiful spot.

81st Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUUVKrNqIA

The ceremony is moving.  The stone is not.  It’s a marker only, promising that what will come will be important and eternal.  But all there is is a stone, a shteyn.  That stone itself tells it all.

I had never heard of it until I read Jeremy Eichler’s book, Time’s Echo,  And then I started asking.  Only my cousin, Susan, knew of it.  She sent me the link of the video with no explanation.  That too is an appropriate response – so little tells so much.  If you don’t know you don’t deserve to know.