​This included over 1,200 warships (battleships, cruisers, and destroyers), more than 4,100 landing ships and craft, and roughly 1,500 auxiliary and merchant vessels, as well as aircraft, balloons, and gliders Over 160,000 airmen, soldiers, sailors and civilians landed on the Nazi-held Normandy coast of France.

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Over 4,400 died on that day, today, in 1944.

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1944. Sounds like such a long time ago, doesn’t it? After all, that was 82 years ago.

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Now, consider this. I was born just after the 7th anniversary of that invasion. I was born just seven years after it occurred and six years after the end of World War II.

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So, to me, it doesn’t seem like such ancient history.

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We must never forget the sacrifice made by these folks, those who died in the assault, and those who survived it to tell the story another day.

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Yes, it’s been commemorated and reenacted in such great movies like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan.

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This week marks my father’s 26th Yahrzeit - the 26th anniversary of my father’s death.

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Allan G Serle was a witness and a participant in this event. From the radar room inside the gun turret of a destroyer minesweeper called the USS Ellison, my father Allan sat terrified and near deafened by the pounding of the gun shooting 5” shells against the German positions on the hilltop pillboxes overlooking the beach.

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He was about to turn 20 years old, and he had already served three years in the Pacific Theater and would spend another year in the Atlantic before it was all over.

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I certainly have to say, I’m so grateful that he survived that experience, soon marrying my mom, and helping me enter the world just seven years later!

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As Jews, we want to express our gratitude to these men and women who gave us so much. Almost all the nations in the world at that time – except for the tiny Dominican Republic – totally ignored the plight of the Jews, suffering, and dying in the Holocaust. This one act, this one invasion led, in a year, to the end of the Holocaust, saving however many lives of our brothers and sisters could still be saved.

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We remember and honor their fears, their courage and their bravery on this anniversary of D-day.

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Zichronam livracha!

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May their memory truly be a blessing, and let us say Amen.

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Rabbi Brian Serle​

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