‘Our Frozen Tears’: A book written from the heart

This week's featured author — Sheldon P. Hersh of Lawrence — will be the keynote speaker at the Five Towns Community Commemoration of Kristallnacht, Monday, Nov. 10, 7:30 pm, at Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi, 395 Oakland Ave., Cedarhurst. Free admission. Men and women welcome. Alan Jay Gerber is chairman of this event.

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Once again the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom of 76 years ago serves as an opportunity for our community to reprise the horror of those days. This year’s review will be devoted to a book recently published by Dr. Sheldon Hersh of Lawrence, entitled, “Our Frozen Tears,” which will be the focus and literary subject of the annual commemorative here in the Five Towns.

Consisting of over 50 brief narratives of Holocaust experiences, Dr. Hersh relates the passion of those survivors who came to accept as their responsibility to relate their experiences to the next generations.

“Holocaust survivors differ in their capacity to cope with the past and by the manner in which they are able to share their stories with others,” writes Dr. Hersh. “A decent number were fortunately capable of speaking of the horrors and could do so with few, if any, constraints. Interviews were granted, articles and books published and lectures presented to those who were receptive and wanted to hear and learn.”

“There were, however, a group of survivors who could converse only in tears. Unable or perhaps unwilling to attach words and phrases to memories so shocking and unthinkable that any attempt at verbal communication seemed utterly ineffectual if not outright frivolous. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira Hy”d [The Aish Kodesh] noted [that] ‘when the Jew is so broken and crushed that he has nothing to say, then he does not feel, he has not even a head or a heart with which to perceive or feel. … The only thing we feel is that our selfhood is trampled; the world has turned dark for us; there is no day, no night, just turmoil and confusion’.”

Dr. Hersh adds: “Perhaps most thought provoking is the silence accompanied by an occasional isolated tear.”

These are the tears reflected in Dr. Hersh’s compilation. What motivated his passion were the experiences of his parents and others. This can be seem in the following that to my opinion will serve as the motive for all that will be found in this work.