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Hanefesh
is an educational organization geared to the university student
and a service to all. Hanefesh administrate varies programs to modernize
traditional Judaism. This page was printed from www.Hanefesh.com/edu/Holidays/Holocaust_Remembrance_Day.htm with minor Printable adjustments. For more information please contact Hanefesh, at www.hanefesh.com: Copyright © 2008 Hanefesh - National Assembly of Hebrew Students. |
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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.
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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