Yom Hashoah
On Thursday, April 19, 2012 the United States will commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, which in Hebrew is called Yom Hashoah. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising during World War II and memorializes the murdering by Nazi Germany of 6,000,000 Jews, (including over 1,500,000 children.) Six million is a huge number when you consider the entire population of Louisiana is only 4,500,000. The city of Lake Charles will take part in this memorial at the Civic Center on this date.
Many ask why and how this atrocity took place.
The “why” is very simple. In a culmination of a 2,000 year history of European anti-Judaism, the maniacal hatred of Nazi Germany’s leader (Adolph Hitler) and a cooperative people, it was decided to once and for all to solve the “Jewish Problem” and render all of Europe, from Great Britain thru all of the Soviet Union “Juden Frei” (free of Jews.) It was meant to be a complete “cleansing.”
The “how” started in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the beginning of the Second World War. Following behind the invading Nazi Armies were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular throughout the territory occupied by the German forces, and later in the Soviet Union as the war raged on. Operations ranged from the murder of a few Jews to those that lasted over two or more days, such as the massacre at Babi Yar (33,771 killed in two days.) The Einsatzgruppen, as they were called, were responsible for the murders of over 1,000,000 and were the first Nazi organizations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organized policy.
One only has to turn to the records of the Wansee Conference in January 1942 that planned the entire “evacuation” (Final Solution) of the Jews of Europe. A statistical report showed the mission ahead, country by country, of the planned solution. It listed the number of Jews in every European country, from only 200 in Albania to 330,000 in England to 2,284,000 in Poland and 5,000,000 in the USSR, all to a grand total of 11,738,684 Jews to be eliminated and make Europe “Juden Frei.”
It was decided at this conference that the present methods of “elimination” were not fast enough and also trying on their troops. It was concluded that the preferred method would be the use of Zyclon-B gas in a confined room that would hold up to 1,000 men women and children, and after all had succumbed to the poisonous gas the bodies would be cremated. A number of concentration/work camps would therefore be changed into killing camps with the most notorious being Auschweitz and Birkenau (Auschweitz II) just outside the eastern Polish city of Oswiecim. One and a half million Jews were gassed and cremated at these two “elimination” camps. These horrors continued until Allied armies liberated the camps throughout Europe.
One cannot imagine the horrors of these camps until visiting them. Auschweitz and Birkenau today are open and tours are held daily so that the world will never forget the atrocities that happened there. When one walks through the main gate of Auschweitz with its overhead sign stating “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes free) you can’t help but feel a chill down your spine knowing what you are about to see. The same is true when you enter nearby Birkenau and walk under the famous building and tower that cattle trains would enter with their Jewish prisoners from all over Europe. The most gut wrenching is to enter the gas chamber where Zyclon-B gas killed a million Jews, and you find it hard to breathe. The adjoining room is the crematorium where bodies were burned so as leave no evidence of what happened there. Almost all visitors coming out of these rooms is crying and in a state of shock. All one can do is stop and say a prayer for the dead and promise the world that this atrocity will never happen again and that they will NEVER FORGET.
And so the City of Lake Charles invites people of all faiths to join at the Civic Center on April 19th for a remembrance ceremony and to honor the victims of the Nazi era and pledge “NEVER AGAIN.”
Many ask why and how this atrocity took place.
The “why” is very simple. In a culmination of a 2,000 year history of European anti-Judaism, the maniacal hatred of Nazi Germany’s leader (Adolph Hitler) and a cooperative people, it was decided to once and for all to solve the “Jewish Problem” and render all of Europe, from Great Britain thru all of the Soviet Union “Juden Frei” (free of Jews.) It was meant to be a complete “cleansing.”
The “how” started in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the beginning of the Second World War. Following behind the invading Nazi Armies were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular throughout the territory occupied by the German forces, and later in the Soviet Union as the war raged on. Operations ranged from the murder of a few Jews to those that lasted over two or more days, such as the massacre at Babi Yar (33,771 killed in two days.) The Einsatzgruppen, as they were called, were responsible for the murders of over 1,000,000 and were the first Nazi organizations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organized policy.
One only has to turn to the records of the Wansee Conference in January 1942 that planned the entire “evacuation” (Final Solution) of the Jews of Europe. A statistical report showed the mission ahead, country by country, of the planned solution. It listed the number of Jews in every European country, from only 200 in Albania to 330,000 in England to 2,284,000 in Poland and 5,000,000 in the USSR, all to a grand total of 11,738,684 Jews to be eliminated and make Europe “Juden Frei.”
It was decided at this conference that the present methods of “elimination” were not fast enough and also trying on their troops. It was concluded that the preferred method would be the use of Zyclon-B gas in a confined room that would hold up to 1,000 men women and children, and after all had succumbed to the poisonous gas the bodies would be cremated. A number of concentration/work camps would therefore be changed into killing camps with the most notorious being Auschweitz and Birkenau (Auschweitz II) just outside the eastern Polish city of Oswiecim. One and a half million Jews were gassed and cremated at these two “elimination” camps. These horrors continued until Allied armies liberated the camps throughout Europe.
One cannot imagine the horrors of these camps until visiting them. Auschweitz and Birkenau today are open and tours are held daily so that the world will never forget the atrocities that happened there. When one walks through the main gate of Auschweitz with its overhead sign stating “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes free) you can’t help but feel a chill down your spine knowing what you are about to see. The same is true when you enter nearby Birkenau and walk under the famous building and tower that cattle trains would enter with their Jewish prisoners from all over Europe. The most gut wrenching is to enter the gas chamber where Zyclon-B gas killed a million Jews, and you find it hard to breathe. The adjoining room is the crematorium where bodies were burned so as leave no evidence of what happened there. Almost all visitors coming out of these rooms is crying and in a state of shock. All one can do is stop and say a prayer for the dead and promise the world that this atrocity will never happen again and that they will NEVER FORGET.
And so the City of Lake Charles invites people of all faiths to join at the Civic Center on April 19th for a remembrance ceremony and to honor the victims of the Nazi era and pledge “NEVER AGAIN.”
posted by Sam Schoolsky | 7:10 AM
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