Amcho

It’s 1945, a train station in Poland.

A young woman, her sister, and their mother, liberated by Soviet troops from Czestochow, a concentration camp about 125 miles east of Warsaw, get off the train.

They look around frightened. Families hug and noisily greet one another, but they stand silent by themselves.

Then they hear the word, “Amcho.” In Hebrew, it means “of the people” or “of the clan.”

Jews chanted this word when lost among people not trusted or feared. If there was another Jew in hearing range, she would know that she is not alone. Amcho.

In that train station, in that moment in war torn Poland, eight Jews who had lived through unfathomable hell, found each other, and walked out into the night.

In their disorientation and despair, they were chased and pelted with rocks by a band of thugs until an old woman dressed in black intervened and offered them shelter.

She stepped out into the street and cried, “Stop it! Stop that cruelty!”

My friend recently gifted me this new word “amcho” and along with it, a link to this stunning simple story that a survivor named Estelle Laughlin told to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

What do we have if we do not have each other? Without a way to connect and establish a sense of belonging to ourselves and to others, we are unidentifiable, inhuman.

Who can we hope to be if we don’t get involved, if we don’t call out and speak out and act up in the face of hatred and fear?

Today, I want to say “amcho” to Philando Castile, the young black man who was murdered in his car by police in Minnesota, while his 4-year-old daughter watched.

I want to say “amcho” to the young woman from Stanford, who was sexually assaulted by a white privileged boy swimmer and then marginalized by a corrupt judge. 

"Amcho" to the 50 gay people who were gunned down while dancing in Orlando and to John Lewis and his Congressional colleagues who staged a sit in to change our horrendous gun laws.

I want to say “amcho” to everyone who feels abandoned, disenfranchised, damaged, and disheartened by all the hatred and injustice around them.

We must seek refuge in our sense of “amcho” and allow healing to happen when we can truly embrace each other and feel embraced.  We are not alone.