Speech by Oded Kidron at the unveiling of Stolpersteine in honour of the Krammer families, July 20, 2018.
My name is Oded. In English it is Oh-Ded. In Hebrew it means encourage, support. So it can be said that our mother gave her oldest son a name which reflected the dominant aspect of her life until that point, namely: the dead ----- to be encouraged: To be pushed back to life. The names of Ilan-Haim and Ronen also follow the same direction.
Naturally, the events that took place 75 years ago influenced the State of Israel, my family, and me personally. In what way? In my effort to understand human nature and the many deviations that occur; to comprehend human organizations and their underlying mechanism.
To crack the mystery of leadership : how, why, and where it can lead. To discover evil (which may even hide inside ourselves) and to try to crush it, or at least to minimize it. To recognize the fears that constantly lurk in all our hearts and make us suspicious and unhappy (as happened to my mother). The same events lead me back to the human values in which we all believe: Humanism, liberalism and the chances of them surviving in each one of us, in the country, in politics.
The song we sang dsymbolizes the moral values which we uphold. And another thing: the tears, pain and terror are just one aspect in our soul. As I stated at the beginning, we also have joy, vitality, creativity and understanding. All those positive aspects make us enjoy life, but they also enable us to vindicate our present vis-à-vis the terror that ruled here so many years ago.
Now, I understand that the Kibbutz, where our mother lived most of her life, provided her with peace and quiet, and a place of protection, just the things that she needed after what she had gone through in Holland.
Lastly, we thank you for the initiative and organization of this event, and boundless thanks to the Mattman family of all generations – without whom we would not be here at all.
Oded Kidron