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Hebrew, the term Yom Hashoah refers as the Holocaust Remembrance
Day. The day, which was established to remember the Six
million Jews, of whom one and a half million were children,
perished in the Holocaust. Over one million Jews were murdered
in the gas chambers. There is no trace of the victims who
were murdered, as they reached Auschwitz, no name or record
were taken. The vast majority of the victims were unaware
of their destination and of their fate. They were transported
to the camps in cattle-cars and arrived in a state of total
collapse
The Lager Fuhrer (head of the concentration camp) said
to us, "From now on, you are all numbers. You have
no identity. You have no name. All you have is a number.
Except for that number you have nothing." Jacob (age
17) Poland
A million and a half Jewish children were murdered during
the Holocaust. Who were they? Where did they live? What
did they like? The Nazis tried to deprive them of their
identity and turn them into faceless numbers during this
great tragedy.
The Remembrance Day begins at sunset on the 27th of the
Hebrew month Nisan and ends the following evening.
Yom Hashoah has been observed with candle lighting, speakers,
poems, prayers, and singing. Often, six candles are lighted
to represent the six million. Holocaust survivors speak
about their experiences or share in the readings. Some
ceremonies have people read from the Book of Names for
certain lengths of time in an effort to remember those
that died and to give an understanding of the huge number
of victims.
On this Remembrance Day we remember some of the heartrending
moments of the Holocaust. Here is a brief summary of a few
moments that we remember.
Kristallnacht
Night - November 9, 1938
The evening
of November 9-10, 1938, Nazis terrorized Jews throughout
Germany and Austria. 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent
to concentration camps; 91 were killed.
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Thousands
of Jewish shops, businesses and homes were looted
and pillaged, and over 1000 synagogues were destroyed.
Because the streets were covered with broken glass
from the looting, this night came to be known as
Kristallnacht, which means Night of the Broken Glass.
The event took place after five years of increasing
assaults on Jewish property, citizenship rights,
and their physical persons by the Nazis in order
to segregate German Jews from the general public
and encourage their emigration. |
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The
Warsaw Uprising - August 1, 1944
In 1944, from August 1, through October
2, over
63 days nearly 300,000 Jews were transported from the Warsaw
Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. In September after all
were transported, nearly 56,000 Jews were left in Warsaw.
As reports of the mass killings in the death camps leaked
back to the ghettos, despair gave way to a determination
to resist.
At that time, the Z.O.B. (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa) was
formed and slowly moved to take control of the ghetto. The
Z.O.B. was comprised of mostly young Jews in their teens
and early 20s.
On January 9, 1943, Himmler visited the Warsaw Ghetto and
ordered the deportation of another 8,000 Jews. This deportation
order caught many Jews by surprise and for many signaled
the beginning of the end. Z.O.B. leader, Mordechai Anielewicz
(23 years old), ordered a proclamation to the remaining
ghetto inhabitants to resist going to the rail station for
deportation. In January 1943, the Germans troops entered
the Warsaw Ghetto to begin rounding up Jews for deportation.
With some homemade weapons, the Z.O.B. sprang into action.
Using guerilla tactics, the resistance fighters would quickly
strike the Germans. After the strike, the Germans became
much more alert and after a few days backed away. This withdraw
of the Germans was taken as a victory. But the remaining
Jews recognized that the Germans would be back. So the Z.O.B.
prepared hideouts and prepared for the next battle.
The Germans returned and attacked the ghetto, cutting off
water, gas and electricity power. Because of fierce resistance
of the Jewish fighters, eventually, the Germans burned the
entire ghetto. The Germans assumed that extermination of
the ghetto could be accomplished within 3 days… this
was a bad miscalculation.
April 19, 1943 the uprising began. The fighters were able
to hold off the Germans for nearly a month. The Warsaw uprising
came to an end on May 16, 1943. Of the more than 56,000
Jews captured, 7,000 were shot and the remainders were transported
to concentration camps.
Arriving at Birkenau
Survivors
describe what they saw as the train came to a standstill.
It was silent, Suddenly they heard soldiers marching and
dogs barking. They pulled the doors apart and it was pitch
black. The cold air hit us. And then the lights came on.
we saw SS men lined up all along the platform with dogs,
and guns pointing at us. Everybody was frozen. Nobody wanted
to move.
Upon arriving at Birkenau, the victims march past SS officer
Dr. Mengele, who "selects" who will live and who
will go to the crematory. The line of the women and children.
The women and the children were separated men. They await
the selection. Alone the one that do not hold a child to
the hand or in the arms have a chance survival.
In Auschwitz, the victims were required to inscribe postcards
and letters to their home demonstrating that their resettlement
was fine and they were in good health. All these letters
had the same return address: Arbeitslager Birkenau, bei
Neu-Berun, Oberschlesien. In contrast to prisoners in other
camps, these new arrivals were not registered or given inmate
numbers. Shortly after writing these postcards or letters,
these individuals were killed.
The three photographs are taken on May 26, 1944, by two
SS: Bernhard Walter and Ernst Hoffmann, the only ones to
have the right to photograph in the camp.
Death
Camps
March 23, 1933, just two
months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. The first
concentration camp was established at Dachau. Dachau developed
to be the training camp for the SS. Among the major camps
established in Greater Germany were Buchenwald, Mauthausen,
Neuengamme, Ravensbrueck and Sachsenhausen.
Immediately after they came to power, the Nazis set up camps.
December 8, 1941, the first concentration camp was established
as an execution camp was at Chelmno (Kulmhof), Poland.,
when Jews from the surrounding area were brought there.
At first, gas vans were used for the murder. Sooner or later,
nearly 320,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered there.
1942 the Nazis started to build three more extermination
camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. A large amount of Jews
from Poland were murdered in these camps in 1942 - 1943.
All told, about 1.7 million Jews were murdered in these
camps. Majdanek, which was also a concentration-labor camp,
also had a murder area and was consider an extermination
camp. many of the victims of Majdanek were not Jews.
The most well-known of the extermination camps was planted
at Auschwitz. It began to role as an extermination camp
in the spring of 1942; heavier gas chambers were built in
nearby Birkenau (Auschwitz II). Sooner or later, more than
a million Jews and several hundred thousand Poles, Sinti,
Roma and nationalities were murdered there.
Below you may witness some horrify pictures. The first image
was the moment what the victims saw when they got to the
main entrance to Birkenau.
Below the first image is a nazi shooting a women while she's
hugging her chilled, the rest of the images are self-explanatory.
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A fundamental belief In Judaism is that nothing occurs
without Gods willpower. History has meaning, cruelty has
meaning, and suffering has meaning. We are a people whose
essence is meaning.
People ask, "How can you believe in God after the
Holocaust?" I say, "How can you not believe
in God after the Holocaust?" Is there any survivor
who wouldn't say, that it was only because of miracles
is why I'm still alive?
After 2,500 years of persecution, massacres, pogroms,
mass murder, gazed and bloodsheds the Jewish nation still
remains strong and vibrant. Accounting to all laws of
nature we should have been vanished long ago. Can a nation
that has been targeted for final destruction so many times
manage to survive?
When the Holy Temple was destroyed and the Jews were exiled,
who would have expected the survival of our people; who
ever dreamed 2,500 years latter the Jewish people retuning
back to its holy land.
The Assyrians conquered and exiled half of the Jews and
almost sacked Jerusalem. Not too long after, the Babylonians
succeeded in conquering Jerusalem and exiling the rest
of the Jews. We were attacked nearly just by everyone,
the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Philistines, the Babylonians,
the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Holy Roman
Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Philistines...
and yet tragedy after tragedy, destruction after destruction
the Jewish nation continues. This screams out that there
is a divine power in watching his chosen nation.
The History continues and there were more pogroms and
massacres. Almost every major European country expelled
the Jews at some point. Murders, inquisitions, blood libels
and much more were inflicted on the Jews.
But here we are today, little more than 60 years after
the most brutal, calculated, and organized massacre of
the so-called "The Final Solution," and the
Jewish people is still remain strong and vibrant. The
big question unfolds "where are all the great nations
today" their light simply burnt-out and were put
away in history books.
Sociologists and historians cannot adequately explain
the phenomenon of Jewish survival. While they may try,
their theories ring hollow when compared to the sheer
improbability of 3500 years of survival against the fiercest
of foes. The only adequate theory is that G-d has save
His people.
Over 300 years ago King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise
Pascal, the great French philosopher, to give him proof
of the supernatural. Pascal answered: "Why, the Jews,
your Majesty -- the Jews."
Mark Twain, "Concerning the Jews," Harper's
Magazine, 1897.
"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose,
filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded
to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman
followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other
peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a
time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now,
or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all,
and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence,
no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing
of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive
mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew; all other forces
pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"
Leo Nikolaivitch Tolstoy, unlike Twain, was not an agnostic.
He was a very religious, Russian Orthodox Christian. He
is also a very famous Russian author from the last century,
perhaps best known for his War and Peace. He wrote this
in 1908.
"The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither
slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy,
he who neither fire, nor sword, nor Inquisition was able
to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first
to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so
long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to
the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed.
The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself."
The very survival of the Jewish
people through recorded time is nothing short of miraculous.
The very fact that Jews exist as a nation today stands
in testimony to the existence of God who acts in history.
By any historical measure, the Jewish people should
have disappeared long ago.
Josh detaches the plug alongside
his dad's deathbed to put an end to his pain. The father
returns to his son in a dream and says, have I lived
just one more week with the strong illness pains, I
would have cleared-up all my improper sins, prior coming
up to heaven. Why people suffer only God knows, but
looking at history, God awareness screams.
When the Jewish people lives up
to its potential as a light unto the nations, the moral
fabric of the entire world is improved.( Mesilias Yesharim,
pg. 21, Feldheim edition) The nations of the world will
see the beauty of Jewish values and will praise us and
want to emulate our ways. (Deuteronomy 4:6; 33:9 with
Rashi's explanation)
But if that light is lacking, then the moral fabric of
the world quickly sinks into decay. And then it is only
a matter of time before the Jews are seen as little more
than an irritating reminder of an old-fashioned, restrictive
morality, an enemy of the "new world order"
that wants nothing to do with the Chosen People and their
God.
Jewish history is like a 6,000-piece puzzle. At the beginning
you dump the pieces on the table and it makes no sense.
But as we assemble piece after piece, a picture emerges.
A picture that records the action of God in history. And
there's no chance or randomness here. Everything happens
for a reason.
By Jewish reckoning we have assembled 5762 (years) of
these pieces and have 238 to go. History is moving toward
a conclusion, its final destination. That final destination
was described by Prophet Isaiah in these words:
"In the days to come, The Mount of the Lord's House
shall stand Firm above the mountains; And it shall tower
above the hills. And all the nations shall gaze on it
with joy, And the many peoples shall go and shall say:
Come, Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, To the House
of the God of Jacob; That He may instruct us in His ways,
And that we may walk in His paths.' For instruction shall
come forth from Zion, The word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Thus He will judge among the many people. And arbitrate
for the multitude of nations. And they shall beat their
swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning hooks.
Nations shall not take up Sword against nation; They shall
never again know war."
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