Nitzavim- Vayelech: Bloody Secrets

The parsha deals with secrets.  It contains the climactic  sentence: The secrets are (the domain of)  the Lrd our Gd, and the revealed are for us and our children ...

My first memories of my father include seeing him in the bloody butcher's apron.  Much later, I understand some of  the secret of its symbolism. 

This is the Shabbath before the yahrzeit, the anniversary of the death, of my father (z"l).  I chant  the haftorah.  The haftorah comes from Isiah, never easy to grasp. It includes a section from  chapter 63 that  deals with bloody garments.  A hero emerges , but his clothes are sullied. He has survived alone,  relying on himself.  This is my father. 

When my father was in Treblinka, in  the deepest aloneness, he washed  clothes.  Each group was separate.  The clothes of the Germans had no visible stains, but the blood stains, the chimutz, in them could never be removed.  The Ukrainian henchmen's uniforms showed the blood of their cruelty.  The victim's  gore clung to these raiments , the barbarity was evident. The clothes of the Jews, whose blood was spilled like sewage, had to be washed separately, to be recycled for the beneficiaries of the death machine.  My father survived through these bloody clothes.  The blood on the butchers apron was a symbol. 

These stories that my father told covered  more secrets than they revealed - day to day choices, questions of will and honor and survival. These secrets are for Gd , I have enough with the revealed.