The Central Themes for Holocaust Remembrance Day Through the Years

In early May 1945, when Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to Allied Forces, jubilation spread throughout the world. World War II in Europe had come to an end, although fighting still continued for several months in the Far East. This was a war that had wreaked destruction on a scale unprecedented in history: roughly 80 million dead; millions of refugees of many nationalities spread throughout Europe and beyond; cities destroyed and infrastructures shattered. Allied soldiers banded together on the smoldering ruins of Berlin, and military parades and public celebrations took place the world...

The Jewish community, a unique, autonomous social unit that characterized Jewish existence in the Diaspora through the ages, was dealt a fatal blow by the Holocaust.  Thousands of prewar Jewish communities had served as a fundamental and critical framework in the lives of the Jewish people.

"What happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans ran twice from the ghetto… I feel that great things are happening, and what we dared to do is of great, enormous importance."From the last letter of Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw ghetto, 21 April 1943 Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman and Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and University of Nebraska Press, 1981), p. 315.

In keeping with the policy of the "Final Solution," during World War II the Germans and their collaborators uprooted millions of Jews from their homes and deported them to their deaths. This meticulously organized operation was an event of historic significance, obliterating Jewish communities throughout German-occupied territory that had existed for centuries. Vast numbers of Jews were sent straight to the extermination sites, while many others were first taken to ghettos and transit camps. Thus, the cattle – or railway – car, the principal mode of Nazi deportation, became...

“June 22, 1941 was like an earthquake, like a huge volcano erupting,” Zakhar Trubakov, The Secret of Babi Yar. "Krugozor," (Russian), 1997. recalled Zakhar Trubakov in his memoirs. One of a handful of Jews who witnessed the massacre of the Jews of Kiev at Babi Yar, he described the feeling that gripped him and the public during the German invasion of the Soviet Union.In June 1941, after having defeated Yugoslavia and Greece, Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack on the USSR. “Operation Barbarossa” was the codename given to the incursion of some four million troops...

"Fate has willed us apart… Yet that same fate has also willed that during the years of our people's greatest misery, your mother is fulfilling a mission in order to ease this terrible suffering. If I survive this difficult period, I think I will be able to say that I have not lived in vain. In this spirit you must bear this separation, since the shared destiny of the Jewish people stands above any personal pain."From a letter by Gisi Fleischmann to her daughter Aliza in Eretz Israel, 6 September 1942 From Hana Yablonka, "Gisi Fleischmann: One Must Do Everything in Order...

When the battles of World War I came to an end, humanity hoped that never again would another world war erupt.That hope was crushed on 1 September 1939, when the German Army invaded Poland. Five years later, in 1944, while hiding in a town in Polish Galicia, Dr. Baruch Milch wrote in his diary, “On Friday, 1 September 1939, the day World War II broke out, my real life began to end. The events of that day, and everything that happened in the ensuing days and years, will be remembered to the world's eternal shame for as long as mankind endures. One day, when we tell our children and grandchildren...

In his later years, Abba Kovner, Holocaust survivor, poet, partisan, and one of the leaders of the Vilna ghetto underground, wrote of his fellow survivors rebuilding their lives:“Those people… could have resignedly settled down where they were and tried to restore their ruined lives. I would not have been surprised had those same survivors become bands of thieves, robbers and murderers; had they done so, they might well have been the most humane and just of their kind."Kovner’s comments reflect his wonderment at the survivors’ rehabilitative and creative energies....

On 19 August 1942, the Nazi Germans began to liquidate the Kowel ghetto in Volhynia. Most of the 8,000 Jews remaining in the ghetto were shot to death that very day at the Bakhov murder site near the city; those caught trying to escape were crammed into Kowel's Great Synagogue. They were held there for several days without food or water, and in highly unsanitary conditions. In view of their impending certain death, the victims inscribed their last words on the walls of the synagogue for posterity. Some wrote testimonies and wills, while others signed their names to farewell letters and calls...

In the diary that he kept in the Warsaw ghetto, teacher and educator Chaim Aharon Kaplan wrote, “In these days of our misfortune, we live the life of Marranos. Everything is forbidden to us, and yet we do everything.”Kaplan, Chaim Aharon. Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan (Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 174.With these words, Kaplan expressed the struggle of the Jews to maintain their human spirit under the impossible conditions in which they found themselves under Nazi German occupation.From their rise to power, the Nazis strove to exclude all Jews – men,...

The partisan Abba Kovner used to tell the story of a Jewish woman survivor he met in Vilna, when he arrived at the site of the destroyed ghetto with the Soviet liberating soldiers. For almost a year, the woman and her young daughter had hidden in a small nook, and had come out from their hiding place for the first time after liberation.  As her mother broke down in tears, relating their experiences for the first time, the child asked her, surprised: "Mame, men tor shoyn weinen? – Mommy, is it okay to cry now?"On 8 May 1945, when the defeated Germans finally capitulated to the...

Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 5754 (2014) is marked by the situation of the Jews in 1944 – exactly 70 years ago. The expression "on the edge" is taken from Nathan Alterman's poem Joy of the Poor, which so aptly expresses the feeling which prevailed that year among the Jews of Europe, who were in the throes of a double race on which their very lives depended. On the one hand, cities from east to west, such as Vilna and Minsk, Warsaw and Riga, Belgrade and Sofia, Paris and Rome, were being liberated from the yoke of Nazi Germany; the Red Army was advancing,...

"It is a necessity… an imperative, due to the historical truth and the legacy that our generation will bequeath to those who will come after us, to speak not only of the loss… but also to reveal, in its fullest scope, the heroic struggle of the people, the community and the individual, during the days of massacre and at the very epicenters of destruction."Thus wrote Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in the early 1950s. Today his words remain a guiding principle as we mark the 70th anniversary of the uprising.The notions of "defiance"...

“Micky and Stachek didn’t let go of each other during the entire death march. Both were young, but long-time inmates. Both were thoroughly experienced with all sorts of ‘normal’ situations in the camps. They knew all the usual and not-so-usual techniques for avoiding dangerous tasks. Their friendship was steadfast to the point where it never occurred to either one of them to enjoy an advantage the other one didn’t, even if the other one wasn’t even there. More than once, a piece of bread rustled up by one of them during the day would wait until evening, when...

"I bought this prayer book in Auschwitz for a portion of my daily bread ration. It accompanied me through the entire torturous journey in the death and concentration camps in Germany. I donate this prayer book today to Yad Vashem – as a reminder to future generations."Holocaust survivor Zvi KopolovichDuring the Shoah, an entire universe was shattered and dispersed in myriad directions. The remaining scattered fragments vary infinitely in size, shape and texture – from documents to diaries, testimonies to artifacts, photographs to works of art. Despite their wide dispersion,...

"Take heed... lest you forget the things your eyes have seen... and tell them to your children, and their children after them"(Deut. 4:9)The survivors of the Holocaust carried – and still bear – the weight of memory upon their shoulders. The presence of these eye-witnesses in our society, those who saw and experienced the events, provides this memory with an ethical power. The survivors are the very backbone of Shoah commemoration in the State of Israel and abroad. They were the first to document the years of terror, and continue to relate their painful memories today. In...

On Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, during the annual “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony, we will read aloud the names of children murdered in the Holocaust. Some faded photographs of a scattered few remain, and their questioning, accusing eyes cry out on behalf of the 1.5 million children prevented from growing up and fulfilling their basic rights: to live, dream, love, play and laugh.From the day the Nazis came to power, Jewish children became acquainted with cruelty, first in Germany and, as time passed, in every other country the Germans conquered or forged an alliance....

“I came to Israel on the Tel Chai. We were caught and sent to the Atlit detention camp. Because of my young age - 17 - I was released… I decided to join the Palmach… In March 1948, when Jerusalem was beseiged, my company was sent to join up with the city. We passed Sha’ar Hagai and managed to make it to Ma’ale Hahamisha without being attacked… I remember the battle on Har Adar as one of the fiercest. We bonded under fire…”So related Holocaust survivor Shulamit Garbash to Yad Vashem. During the Shoah, the Dutch-born Garbash was interned in concentration...

“There is much talk about keeping a journal. Everyone believes there is a great deal that needs to be documented, things that don’t happen in normal life... I sometimes want to take a pencil and do something with it, record some of what lies in the depths of my heart, a relentless force deep within my soul which lays beneath my consciousness.”Extract from a diary by a young female prisoner in a forced labor camp during WWIILong before liberation, the Jews who experienced the Holocaust yearned to describe their experiences in writing. Throughout the war, many of those trapped in...

During the war, European Jewry was faced with a constant struggle for their very survival. Yet even under such terrible conditions there were those who acted in areas that went beyond the necessities of human existence: they risked their lives - deliberately and intentionally - for higher values, including educating their children, maintaining religious values and traditions and sustaining centuries-old cultural activities. Unfortunately, not all those who succeeded survived the hell that was the Holocaust, but their deeds themselves bear witness to power of the human spirit.

“The camp guard who came to open the gate said, ‘You are free and you can leave.’ …No one moved, no one went out.  We did not laugh, we were not happy, we were apathetic - and the Russians came.  A general came in, he was Jewish.  He told us that he was delighted to find that there were still people alive in the camp.  He started to cry; but we didn’t. He wept and we didn’t.”Bela Braver, deported to Auschwitz, liberated from Lichtewerden, Czechoslovakia, by the Red Army.On VE Day there was dancing in the streets of New York; in Moscow...

“If you live—I will live within you…The city’s Jews have disappeared from the streets. There is nowhere to flee.”Last letter by Pinchas Eisner, Hungary, October 1944)Sixty years ago, on 19 July 1944, the Germans began rounding up the 2,000 Jews of Rhodes and Kos. After being detained for several days, they were loaded onto barges headed for Athens. During the eight-day journey, the ships stopped at Leros and collected the island’s sole Jewish resident. Once in Athens, they were all loaded onto a train; four weeks after the round-up they reached Auschwitz-Birkenau....

Generation after generation, Jews and non-Jews alike confront the greatest crime ever perpetrated against humanity — the Holocaust. Overwrought, individuals and nations try to comprehend how the largest and most vibrant Jewish settlement that thrived in Europe for a millennium was eradicated in a matter of years.Just as Jewish fate differed from that of other nations under Nazi rule, so too did the nature of Jewish opposition to the Nazis. Out of the sheer will to survive, millions of persecuted Jews in Nazi Third Reich territory and the occupied countries resisted the Nazis. On the eastern...

“We declare that on 7 July 1944, the order for the evacuation of the ghetto of Siauliai (Shavli) was issued. We want future generations to know our names: Shmuel Minzberg — the son of Shimon from the city, Lodz (Poland); his wife, Reisele née Saks from Vaiguva; her sister, Feigele Saks; and Friedele Niselevitch — the daughter of Nahum Zvi from Vaiguva. We don’t know to where we are being deported. Two thousand Jews are in the ghetto awaiting the order to leave. Our destiny is unknown. Our state of mind is dreadful. May the Kingdom of Israel be established speedily in our...