After the Allies liberated the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, the notes of "Hatikvah" arose from the ruins the evil created. The survivors were singing, and it was like a prophecy was being fulfilled.
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They sang to the memory of the glorious heritage that had been shoved onto railway cars and crammed into furnaces, and for the entire communities forced to strip down before they were slaughtered in forests, on marches, and in camps. They sang for entire families, from the eldest grandparents to the youngest grandchildren, who were suffocated to death when the iron doors clanged brutally shut; for the children ripped out of their mothers' arms and sent into death gullies by a volley of gunshots, buried before they even started to live.
They sang for the sake of an entire people who were nearly lost and who in an instant they became the ones to carry on. They, over whose heads death had been hovering, rose up from hell and founded a national home.
"As long as within our hearts," as Hatikvah says, there is meaning, purpose, and will, intentions will turn into actions. They made aliyah to the Land of Israel as refugees, and reshaped and recreated their fate. They joined the Zionist Yishuv, and together they revived the legacy and formed a new vision, established communities and families, and founded a generation that had and has the privilege of being "a free people in their land."
We are still on our way to fortifying our freedom, and we, the IDF and its commanders, are implementing that vision by standing guard, and by serving as a defensive force that ensures the Jewish people's existence in their land.
But we will always be committed to another mission we must continue to carry out: to learn the story of those murdered, to hear the survivors' testimonies, and to make their voice heard for generations to come.
The survivors sang "Hatikvah," and we are fulfilling it daily in the defense and security we provide the citizens of Israel.
May the memory of the 6 million be a blessing.
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