In January 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came to power in Germany, with consequences that are now a matter of recorded history:
• The Second World War broke out as a direct result of Hitler's expansionist aims.
• In that war, some 40 million people lost their lives, and millions more were forced into slave labour.
• More than six million Jews, including a million and a half children, were systematically murdered, victims of a diabolical scheme for the liquidation of an entire people such as the world has never known.
The Jews were condemned to death as a nation, simply because they were Jews. As the Nazi armies swept through Europe, they were rounded up, herded into ghettos, starved, tortured and killed regardless of age. rank or station. Those who did not die in the ghettos were deported to the death camps in Poland and Russia. There, the able-bodied were selected for slave labour; the rest were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers, their bodies cremated or simply dumped into mass graves. Only a very few managed to organize armed resistance against the Nazis.
The minority among a largely hostile or indifferent population, the Jews of Europe faced their fate virtually alone, while the free world stood by. Of almost 7 million Jews, in what were once the most vibrant Jewish communities in the world, only 250,000 survived. Many managed to find a new life in the Land of Israel (Palestine), where the Jews were at that time struggling to re-establish an independent state in their historic homeland.
The 12-year nightmare of the Holocaust has been chronicled in countless articles, books and personal accounts based on Jewish and German records of the events. Much material has come to light as a result of numerous court trials of Nazi war criminals conducted in West Germany and elsewhere.
Less is known, however, — because so few survived — of the heroic Jewish resistance which fought against overwhelming odds in the ghettos, camps and forests of Europe. This tenacious resistance to the Nazis remains an inspiration not only for the Jewish people in its ongoing struggle for a secure national existence, but for all those committed to the right of every human being to live in freedom, dignity and peace (Excerpts from Israel Information Center IIC)
The Poem of Butterfly
The Butterfly
The last, the very last, So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow Is carried lightly 'way up high. It went away I'm sure because it wished to kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don't live in here In the ghetto.
Pavel Friedman 4.6.1942
POEM AND ILLUSTRATION COURTESY YAD VASHEM PUBLICATIONS DEPARTMENT
El Male Rahamim
(for the Martyrs of the Holocaust)
O God, full of mercy, Who dwells on high, Judge of widows and Father of orphans, grant proper rest on the wings of the Divine Presence - in the lofty levels of the holy and the pure ones, who shine like the glow of the firmament - for the souls of the holy ones of the communities of Israel, who were killed and burned and choked and buried alive in the hands of the Nazis and their helpers. Among them were righteous men and women, upright human beings and persons of faith, innocent children at their schoolbooks, babes and sucklings. May Eden be their place of rest.
May the Merciful One bind their souls in the Bond of Life. The Lord is their heritage, may He remember their martyrdom, and may their merit reflect on all of Israel.
Earth, cover not their blood and become not the repository of their cries.
In their merit may the scattered of Israel return to their homeland, and may the holy ones be an eternal memory, may their righteousness remain before Your eyes, may they repose in peace in their resting places. Now let us respond: Amen.
