The Jewish Community in Chania was not large, relative to other Jewish centres, prior to WW2. However, there was a distinct community of Jewish people here. They had their own quarter, where I now stay. Perhaps my bedroom was one of their bedrooms. They had their own synagogue just around the corner. When it "came their turn" they were rounded up and placed on a ship destined for the execution camps of northern Europe.
A British submarine, just off the harbour, torpedoed the ship thinking it carried weapons. It sank quickly. No one survived. The British tried in vain to deny their involvement in this terrible misjudgment. In more recent years the British had to admit this was, in fact, the case.
The Cretans were horrified by this tragedy. A memorial depicting the 'hand reaching out of the sea for life", is their gift of dedication for those who, from their city, died this way.
The Jews however, put a rather poignant twist on the event. It was reframed by the Jewish survivors within the context of reflection upon the war years, that given the horrors and terrors that awaited these men, women and children in the camps, Yahweh 'took pity upon his children of God' in this sudden and merciful act of sudden death.
This adds an emphasis to the unfathomable complexities of the situation the Jewish people found themselves in after the holocaust. How does one account of such evil as was visited upon them? Does this kind of 'grace' give a meaningful answer?
I have visited many of these sites from Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus and the Check Republic. They never cease to give me pause- as they should.
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