INTERMOUNTAIN JEWISH NEWS DENVER, CO 8 APRIL 1988
Navy Chaplain's efforts lead to Holocaust
Guide
Twenty five years ago, Navy Chaplain Arnold Resnicoff conducted an interview for a high school
research paper. That interview, with Holocaust survivors Pearl and Morris Lang (his synagogue
Cantor), changed his life.
Their words, he says, made him understand the depths to which human beings can sink. Their
lives--their faith, and their commitment to good in a world sometimes filled with evil--made him
understand the heights toward which human beings might aspire.
That interview always in his mind, Rabbi Resnicoff has become a driving force for holocaust
remembrance in his role as Navy chaplain--efforts which have now led to the publication of a 96-page
Defense Department Guide for Holocaust Commemorative Observances.
This Guide will support world-wide involvement of Armed Forces commands in commemorating the
annual "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust."
Official military involvement with Holocaust remembrance programs date back to 1984, when
Resnicoff's former teacher, the late Dr. Seymour Siegel, served as Director of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Council (USHMC).
At that time, Resnicoff suggested that observances of the national Days of Remembrance include the
military, for two reasons:
First, because it was the military which witnessed the Holocaust, as it helped liberate the camps. The
military should help to bear witness to the Holocaust and its horrors.
Second, because military men and women take risks and make sacrifices for our national dreams, they
must understand both the dreams they stand for and the nightmares they stand against.
At Dr. Siegel's request, then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger issued what has become the
first of a series of annual memoranda to military commanders encouraging participation in the national
effort to remember the Holocaust.
But it was not until 1986 that the first materials were made available to military units in support of
those efforts.
In that year, Rabbi Resnicoff served as project editor for the navy's Chaplain Resource Board
workbook, "Horror and Hope: Americans Remember the Holocaust." A three-ring notebook
distributed to all 1200 active-duty Navy chaplains, the packet included articles for theological
reflection, readings for educational programs, and prayers for worship services.
This Navy effort set the stage for the new Defense Department Guide.
Under the direction of Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci, and the support and encouragement
of President Ronald Reagan, the Department of Defense Guide for Commeorative Observances
was created by the Pentagon, and compiled with the assistance and cooperation of the international
Center for Holocaust Studies of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
It is currently being distributed to Army, Navy, and Air Force commands around the world.
Using specific historical accounts of the Holocaust--from the words of Army privates to a quote from
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower--the Guide cautions commands to understand
that the Holocaust is, first and foremost, a specific historical event: the annihilation of six million Jews
as part of the plan to destroy the Jewish people and the Jewish faith.
Because of the special plan--the "final solution"--to destroy the Jews, the Guide cautions that the
Holocaust "must be confronted in terms of the specific evil or anti-Semitism--without virulent hatred of
the Jewish people and the Jewish faith."
"But," the text continues, "remembering the Holocaust as a specific event does not mean seeing it in
isolation.... For, once the Holocaust began--once the plan took hold--values and morality fell victim
just as surely as did lives."
President Reagan said in his introductory message to the Guide, "We must remember.... My
generation cannot forget, but neither must any generation.... There are some in every age who choose
evil, not good, and death, not life. If we truly remember, we will choose life."
Coordinated within the Department of Defense by Colonel Harvey T. Kaplan, Executive Director of
the Defense Equal Opportunity Council, the Guide includes detailed checklists for project officers
working on Holocaust programs; a complete sample military ceremony linked to the national Days of
Remembrance proclaimed by the USHMC each Spring; and resources compiled by the ADL.
According to Rabbi Resnicoff, military efforts to wrestle with the lessons of the Holocaust are linked
to other programs in the Armed Forces which challenge individuals to take responsibility for their
actions--and to understand that integrity at the individual level lays foundation for ethical and moral
leadership at the highest levels of our nation.
On a personal level, Resnicoff adds that the Holocaust must remind us of our shared humanity. The
sample ceremony in the Guide quotes the prayer he offered at the 1987 Holocaust Remembrance
ceremony, in the Capitol Rotunda:
"If the time has not yet dawned when we can all proclaim our fiath in G-d, then let us say at least that
we admit we are not gods ourselves. If we cannot yet see the face of G-d in others, then let us see, at
least, a face as human as our own."
Click here for opening pages of Guide,
including Letter to Commanders from President Bush,
plus photocopy of original newspaper article.
Click here for webpage for
Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff