My name is Reuven and I am on the way to a Holocaust. I was a member of a

large Jewish family that loved life as a Jew. My father was a bus driver who

sang for his passengers on his daily route. The enemy of the Jews killed my

father as his bus was blown up by their bombs. My mother was a restaurant

critic. She loved to go to check out the newest restaurants and review them

for the newspaper. The Jew haters sent a man with a guitar case in which

there were bombs and while my mother was eating her Italian food in the

popular restaurant, she was murdered by them. My younger sister enjoyed to

dance and each week went out to the local club. As she waited in line one

night to pay the admission to the club, she too was destroyed by another

suicidal bomber. She had just purchased some new dance shoes along with a

pair of dance pants. We found her leg in one of the pant legs far from the

rest of her body.

My grandmother had survived many wars and pogroms against Jews. Sixty years

after her last bout with terror, she was waiting for a bus to take her home.

A terrorist enemy of the Jews began to shoot with his gun and my grandmother

was slaughtered on the main street to die in her late 70's. My uncle and my

cousin were walking in a park for a Friday afternoon in their city. My

cousin, a female, was just in the middle of her law school break from

another town, and she was knifed to death by the enemy. My other cousin and

my aunt live on a little farm village. My cousin, 11 yrs. old, is mentally

handicapped. Some of you call that being 'retarded.' Last week she was

taking a shower when an enemy killer came into my aunt's house and shot my

aunt dead and then shot my retarded cousin dead too. A few hours ago, my

mother's other sister, was being driven home by my cousin when she too was

gunned down by the enemy in cold blood in front of my cousin who was driving

to this city after Shabbat.

I have seen many of my relatives aged from 10 months old, Shalhevet, to a

great great uncle, 81, being butchered, murdered, killed, and maimed over

the past 2 years. I had an illusion that one day when the Jews have their

own country and army, that the millions of Jews who were about to be killed

would be the last Jews to be killed by the enemy. Some of you know that

there are Nazis, Arabs, and other peoples who want to destroy and erase the

Jews from this earth.

I am confused as I write this letter as one of the last survivors. I can't

go out to a restaurant, a mall, ride a bus, drive a car, go to a park, walk

around a pedestrian mall, as they, the murderers of all of my relatives are

looking for me. I am confused because I don't know if I am writing this

letter to the world in 1942 or 2002. I am confused because I don't know if I

am in that Holocaust of 1942 or this Holocaust of 2002. I am confused as a

Jew that every day I have to go to a funeral or a hospital. I am confused

whether the kaddish that I hear around me for the mourners is for the Jews

of 1942 or 2002. This 60 year time frame has not taught anything to the

Jews. I miss my parents, my siblings, my relatives, and my friends. I am

only a survivor as of tonight.

I was going to sign this letter with today's date, but I had a dream that

Jews can also write this letter 60 years later or 60 years earlier than

today. I am confused whether the Jew's letter is to another Jew in 1942 or

2002. I have to go now and look behind me as they, the enemy, are closing in

on me and the other weak Jews. I don't know what peace now means in today's

letter, but I do know that tonight there are more orphans, widows, and

widowers who are learning kaddish. I remember Purim in that Holocaust and

now I approach Purim in this Holocaust. Soon, perhaps, Purim will not be

celebrated as there won't be any Jews to listen to my megila.

A Jew's Letter of 1942 or 2002 to a Jew in 2002 or 1942.

Translated by Harvey Tannenbaum from the original Hebrew.

Hearing About Another Jewish Woman's Murder on the Highway