Toby Klein Greenwald makes a valid point in her article, “Six Million and One, Twelve Hundred and Two” (The Jewish Link, February 27) when she said, “the human mind cannot absorb the number six million, but can focus on one person.”
The six million Jews murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust was more than the entire populations of almost 40 of the world’s 70 nations in 1939. That was a lot of murders, which makes it very hard to comprehend. There was one victim, however, that was almost universally recognized, and that was Anne Frank, who has become the face of the unimaginable atrocity.
In an analogous comparison, the 1,250 Israelis massacred and 251 taken hostages in one day, Oct. 7, can be compared to 600 Israeli deaths in the entire Six-Day War, and 2,656 deaths during the entire Yom Kippur War. It was also more than 15 times the number of Jews slaughtered by the Germans during the infamous rampage on Kristallnacht. The staggering total of 1,451 Israeli victims in a single day, Oct. 7, is also a figure hard to wrap the mind around for a tiny country.
What is easier to comprehend is the savage slaughter of the two innocent red-headed babies, Ariel and Kfir Bibbas, along with their mother, Shiri. Just as Anne Frank has emerged as the face of the Holocaust during World War II, I feel that these two red-headed infant martyrs may well emerge as the faces of the Gaza War.
In their honor, Jews, and also sympathetic non-Jews, should be encouraged to display orange balloons and other decorations as symbols to keep their memory alive, and by extension, all the Israeli casualties. AM YISRAEL CHAI!
