It was ten a.m. in Israel on the Holocaust and Bravery Remembrance Day, and I stood in a city square as the siren started. It sounded somewhat distant, yet touched every nerve in my body.
People stopped, instantly frozen in their tracks. Cars stopped, their doors opened and the drivers and passengers exited. No one was honking. No one was talking. Everyone stood straight, silent, their heads bowed.
In this two-minute freeze-frame time span even the birds ceased their spring celebration. All was still, an entire nation respecting its dead, six million of them, as people recalled the Nazis’ attempt to annihilate their very being.