Thursday, May 01, 2008

• Holocaust Remembrance

  The Holocaust was arguably among the most fearsome tragedies that have befallen the Jewish People in its long history, in which six million Jews including one and a half million children, were murdered.
  
  Before World War II began, the German government sterilized 375,000 people. 17,000 of them were deaf.
  
  "First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out;
  Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out;
  Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out.
  And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
  
  Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984
  
  The Holocaust was a systematic, state-organized persecution of Jews and other targeted groups by the Nazi state and its collaborators. During the Holocaust two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was slaughtered which calculates to one-third of the world population of Jews. In addition, the Nazi’s genocide exterminated millions of Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), Soviets, Polish citizens, Catholics, homosexuals, handicapped, alcoholics, political and religious dissidents and Jehovah Witnesses.
  
  The Holocaust is many times called by other names. The Nazi’s spoke of it as die Endlosung or the “Final Solution” for the Jew’s extermination. In the early 1940’s a Yiddish word churb’n, which means “destruction”, was utilized. Others utilized the word Sho’ah that means “catastrophe.”
  
  Kristallnacht: “The Night of Broken Glass or Crystal Night”
  
  On November 9, 1938, Adolf Hitler attended a dinner party in Munich Germany honoring Nazi party heroes. At the dinner he learned that Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat was killed in Paris. Leaving the dinner, Hitler gave orders for a “night of terror throughout Germany, including German-annexed Austria and the Sudenland region of Czechoslovakia.
  
  During the nights of November 9-10 more than 90 Jews were killed and hundreds of synagogues and temples were set on fire. Throughout the two-day period over 7000 Jewish businesses were looted without intervention by the police. Additionally, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and over 30,000 Jewish men were placed under house arrest and sent to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.
  
  Noted as the worst pre-war program, the streets of Germany were filled with shattered glass from the synagogues and store windows, creating the name Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass.” When the night was over, the German Jewish community was ordered to pay repatriations to pay for the damage created by the acts of the Third Reich. Blamed for the destruction, the Jews were fined one billion Reichsmark, which is equal to $400,000,000 in United States currency.
  
  Protests erupted throughout the world surrounding Kristallnacht. In New York, protesters asked for an intensification of existing boycotts of German goods and services. Demonstrations called for an end to “Hitler’s bloody pogroms.” In Chicago, protesters burned swastika flags. Franklin D. Roosevelt, horrified by the actions of Hitler’s Kristallnacht, proclaimed his shock that such actions could occur in the 20th century and recalled the American ambassador from Germany. Sadly however, few Americans advocated for changing the immigration laws to increase quotas of Jewish immigrants from Europe.
  
  Hitler had no intention of being intimidated by the protests or the boycotts. On January 30, 1939 Hitler declared that Germany was at war and “the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race of Europe.”
  
  People killed
  European Jews 5,6000,000 to 6,250,000
  Soviet Prisoners 3,000,000
  Polish Catholics 3,000,000
  Serbians 700,000
  Roma (Gypsies) 222,000 to 250,000
  Political prisoners, journalists, teachers, activists 80,000
  Handicapped & alcoholics 70,000
  Homosexuals 12,000
  Jehovah Witnesses 2,500
  
  Like the Jews, the Rom Gypsies were chosen for total annihilation just because of their race. Even though Jews are defined by religion, Hitler saw the Jewish people as a race that he believed needed to be completely annihilated. The Rom Gypsies also were a nomadic people that were persecuted throughout history. Both groups were denied certain privileges in many European countries. The Nazis believed that both the Jews and Gypsies were racially inferior and degenerate and therefore worthless. Like the Jews, the Gypsies were also moved into special areas set up by the Nazis. Half a million Gypsies, almost the entire Eastern European Gypsy population, was wiped out during the Holocaust.
  
  

  Daniel
  	Laura Crist
  
  And the child held her hand
  A child tiny for almost eight,
  Deep blue eyes that dominated his face,
  When he explained new events to her,
       that funny doggy,
       that pretty rock,
  And the freckles on his cheek,
  No one saw a sunrise more perfect,
       to her,
  She so vividly smells the fragrance of
       his hair,
       his ears,
       his breath in the morning
  She vividly hears that little heartbeat,
       that was hers
       always hers,
       and the laughter,
       that raspy little laugh,
       when he caught her in a conundrum.
  All this,
  But this is merely the surface,
  As she watches her little one sheared,
       and stripped,
  For the gas chamber.

  
  

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