יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה

Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day

Yom HaShoah Program

1. Overview of the Holocaust

2. Development of Yom HaShoah

3. Exploring Gevurah – Heroism

4. Faces of Heroism:– Jewish Resistance

– Righteous Gentiles

5. Standing up for what is right

6. Lighting of memorial candles

7. El Malei Rachamim

8. Hatikvah

Holocaust Overview

• The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime

• The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community

• Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II

• By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe

Holocaust Overview

• Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos, concentration camps, and to killing centers often called extermination camps

• The Germans and their collaborators killed as many as 1.5 million children, including over a million Jewish children and tens of thousands of Romani children, German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, Polish children, and children residing in the occupied Soviet Union

Development of Yom HaShoah

• In 1951, just a few years after the Holocaust, the Knesset proposed creating a day of remembrance on the twenty-seventh of Nissan

• On this day, Jews would remember the death of six million people and pay tribute to the heroes who tried helping the Jews

• This day would be called Yom haShoah u’Mered haGetaot, “Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising Remembrance Day.”

• The date was chosen because of its proximity to the date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as other tragedies during the war

Development of Yom Hashoah

• Ten years later, in 1961, the Knesset passed laws defining the customs of the day: a two minute nationwide silence, assemblies and ceremonies, lowering flags to half-mast, radio broadcasts focusing exclusively on Holocaust themes, and closing all places of entertainment.

• Other customs include the study of Torah, the recitation of Kaddish and El Maleh Rachamim, and programs to bring people back to religion

Development of Yom Hashoah

• A name change also took place changing it from remembering the Warsaw uprising to remembering all of heroism. We have to remember that not all of Europe were evil and there was the need to honour those who helped the Jews.

• This day would now be called Yom haShoah veHagevurah, “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.”

Heroism - גבורה

• Resistance to the Nazis took many forms:– Military

– Spiritual

– Civic

• Both Jews and non-Jews displayed bravery and heroism in resisting the Nazis.

• Non-Jews who resisted are called Righteous Gentiles - חסידי אומותהעולם

Heroism - גבורה

• The term Righteous Gentiles is a term of honour used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.

• As of 1 January 2011, 23,788 men and women from 45 countries] have been recognized as Righteous among the Nations, representing over 10,000 authenticated rescue stories.

גבורה

Jewish Resistance

Janusz Korczak• Janusz was a very successful

physician, and children books authorand even had his on radio show.

• Janusz was very popular by both Jews and no Jews living in Poland. In addition to his writing, he ran an orphanage with 200 Jewish children in it, in Poland.  The orphanage was in the Warsaw Ghetto.

• Because of his fame, he was offered many different times by Polish authorities to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. He refused the offer, and continued his work with the orphanage.

• He walked with his children to the Treblinka concentration camp where he and all of the 200 children where murdered.

Chana Senesh

• Hannah was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in 1921and was executed by the Nazis in 1944 at a young age of 23.

• Prior to the war, in 1939 Hanna Senesh emigrated to Palestine to studied agriculture

• When Hannah heard about the Jews in Europe being placed in concentration camps, she went to Britain and offered to serve to fighting against.

• In 1943 Hanna joined the British Army and volunteered to be parachuted into Europe  She was captured soon after parachuting in.

• Hanna wrote famous poems, the best known poem Eli, Eli (my God, my God.) 

Rabbi Klonymus Kalman Shapira

• The rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto

• Also known as the Piaseztner Rebbe

• Well known for writing, Aish Kodesh - Holy Fire, which he wrote this while in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940-1942

• He also ran a secret synagogue in the Warsaw Ghetto. In the synagogue he arranged mikveh immersions and kosher marriages

• Inspired people to keep faith in Hashem

• Murdered on November 3, 1943 by Nazis, in Trawlinki

Mordechai Anielewicz

• Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• He was a leader and organizer since he was young

• Prior to 1940, he was a professional underground activist

• When the major deportation to the death camps began in 1943, Mordechai helped organize the resistance to the Nazis, and for 12 weeks, a small group of fighters fought off the Nazis.

• On May 8, he was killed in his bunker.

• In Israel today, a kibbutz “Yad Mordechai” is named in his memory.

גבורה

Righteous Gentiles

Irena Sendler• Saved more than 2,500 children during WWII• Working as a tradesman in the Warsaw Ghetto,

Irena managed over time to smuggle many children out of the Ghetto

• These children were placed with Polish families, orphanages and convents

• She buried lists of their real names in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities.

• She was caught and beaten severely• After the war, she dug up the jars and attempted to

find the children and return them to their parents. However, almost all of their parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had otherwise gone missing

• Passed away in 2008

Raoul Wallenberg

• A Swedish diplomat who worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Between July and December 1944, he issued protective passports and housed Jews in buildings established as Swedish territory, saving tens of thousands of lives

• When Soviet forces liberated Budapest in February 1945, more than 100,000 Jews remained, mostly because of the efforts of Wallenberg and his colleagues.

• When the Soviets entered Budapest, he was called into detention – he was never seen form again

Chiune Sugihara

• Sugihara served as a Consul General of Japan in Prague, Czechoslovakia, from March 1941 to late 1942.

• During world war 2, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan who were mostly refugees from German Poland and Lithuania

• Chuine Sugihara helped 6,000 Jewish refugees go to the to Japanese territory

• In 1985, Israel honored him as Righteous among the nations for his actions.

Oskar Schindler

• Schindler employed Jewish workers who resided in the nearby Krakow ghetto. At its high point in 1944, he employed 1,700 workers; at least 1,000 were Jewish forced laborers, whom the Germans had relocated from the Krakow ghetto

• Although the prisoners at his factory were still subject to the brutal conditions of the Plaszow concentration camp, Schindler intervened repeatedly on their behalf, through bribes and personal diplomacy to ensure, until late 1944, that the SS did not deport his Jewish workers

• Schindler died in Germany, penniless and almost unknown, in October 1974

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then

they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up

because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Pastor Martin Niemöller

El Malei Rachamim

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