Reading Names on Yom Ha Shoa at Pioneer Courthouse Square

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare’s Juliet mused to herself.  I found out while reading them aloud: the Soul.

I stood under a canopy in front of a microphone with a thick packet of pages in my hand consisting of lists of names and ages; these I was to read aloud at the microphone: I began: Nukhim Polyakov, 15, Zinaida Nudel, 14, Golda Miler 13, Khaim Fishman, 6.

I kept reading. Fishman is my last name by marriage. Could this, I asked myself while continuing to read aloud the names and ages at death; could this be someone in my husband’s family?

I continued: Khaia Fishman, age 4, Lifshe Fishman, 6. And I continued with more and more pages, until someone else took the microphone. When I finished reading the pages and pages of names and ages at death, I knew it was not just a list of names; it was their very lives we who were reading made real.

 The day was gorgeous and Pioneer Courthouse Square was warm with sunshine. I had to sit for a while quietly before I could drive or do anything that felt mundane.

I went home and explored family geneaology and Yizkor books. I wanted to see if I had discovered three children, three very little children with our last name, who might be related. But then, they were all our children.

Ó Sherry Fishman 2010

Note: Every year around the country and in other countries Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, provides the known names of approximately 3 million of the 6 million who died in the Shoa. On Yom Ha Shoa, the Day of Remembrance, these names are read aloud by volunteers in public squares. In this way, people who had no burial or memorial will be memorialized. Yesterday was my first time doing this. I had no idea the profound effect it would have on me. Despite having had many ways of learning about and hearing about the Holocaust, reading the names and saying the ages of these martyrs is a transformative experience.