18.01.2015 Views

19505_HMD_Cover:Layout 1 - Holocaust Education Trust Ireland

19505_HMD_Cover:Layout 1 - Holocaust Education Trust Ireland

19505_HMD_Cover:Layout 1 - Holocaust Education Trust Ireland

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

2013<br />

Learning from the past ~<br />

lessons for today<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

in association with<br />

The Department of Justice and Equality<br />

Dublin City Council<br />

Dublin Maccabi Charitable <strong>Trust</strong><br />

Jewish Representative Council of <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

Sisters of Sion, Council for Christians and Jews


Message from the Taoiseach<br />

When the full horrors of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> were revealed with the Allied victory over fascism<br />

in the Second World War, the world said, Never again!<br />

Yet we can unfortunately see that intolerance and xenophobia have not gone away. Even in<br />

European democracies memories begin to fade and a new generation must learn and come<br />

to terms with the dark ghosts of our history and ensure that it never can happen again.<br />

The protection of human rights is a central element in the values that bind us with our<br />

partners as members of the European Union. So it is fitting that in the year during which<br />

we hold the Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, we also launch and play a leading<br />

role in marketing the Year of the Citizens, which is intended to focus on the importance<br />

of our rights as citizens of the European Union. Not least among these are the rights of<br />

all EU citizens to live their lives in peace without harassment or discrimination.<br />

Human rights are not just to be protected within our individual borders or within Europe’s borders. The promotion<br />

of human rights is an essential of our values.<br />

Yours sincerely,<br />

Enda Kenny T.D.,<br />

Taoiseach<br />

Message from the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Naoise Ó Muirí<br />

I am honoured to be hosting this <strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013 today in the Round<br />

Room of the Mansion House on behalf of the people of Dublin. <strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial<br />

Day is now an important date in the calendar of the city and is a reminder of suffering<br />

which has been and continues to be inflicted on man. It is important that this suffering<br />

is not forgotten and the lessons of history are not unheeded.<br />

Held on the nearest Sunday to 27 January it marks the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-<br />

Birkenau in 1945. Older Irish people here today will remember the pictures from that<br />

liberation and the shock felt at the acts of inhumanity suffered by the Jewish community<br />

and those of other faiths. It is important that we never forget these acts and we deepen<br />

our resolve that they should never happen again.<br />

I would like to welcome here today survivors and descendants of survivors of the<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> who have made Dublin and <strong>Ireland</strong> their home.<br />

Thank you to the <strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong> for their hard work this year and every year in educating about<br />

the <strong>Holocaust</strong> and its consequences. In particular I thank them for organising today’s event.<br />

Naoise Ó Muirí<br />

Ardmhéara Bhaile Átha Cliath<br />

Lord Mayor of Dublin<br />

Front cover image: Tisa van der Schulenburg


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day Commemoration<br />

Sunday 27 January 2013<br />

Mansion House, Dublin<br />

Programme<br />

MC: Yanky Fachler Music: Lynda Lee, soprano; Dermot Dunne, accordion<br />

• Introductory remarks: Yanky Fachler, MC<br />

• Words of welcome: Naoise Ó Muiri, Lord Mayor of Dublin<br />

Keynote address: Alan Shatter, TD, Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence<br />

• The Stockholm Declaration: Dr Steve Katz, Boston University and Advisor to International <strong>Holocaust</strong> Remembrance Agency<br />

• <strong>Ireland</strong> and Europe: Lucinda Creighton, TD, Minister of State for European Affairs<br />

Musical interlude<br />

• <strong>Holocaust</strong> survivor: Tomi Reichental<br />

• The Jews of Europe in the interwar years: Prof Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick<br />

• Europe and the legacy of the <strong>Holocaust</strong>: Francis Jacobs, European Parliament Office, Dublin<br />

• Evian: Leonard Abrahamson, Jewish Representative Council of <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

• Nowhere to go: Philip Berman<br />

• Kristallnacht: Kevin O’Sullivan, Editor, Irish Times<br />

• Kindertransports: Jonathan Phillips<br />

Musical interlude<br />

• Ghettos: Chris Donohoe Harbidge, National Museum of <strong>Ireland</strong>, <strong>Trust</strong>ee HETI<br />

• Wannsee Conference: Martin Fraser, Secretary General, Dept of the Taoiseach<br />

• In less than a year: Ruairi Quinn, TD, Minister for <strong>Education</strong> and Skills<br />

• <strong>Holocaust</strong> survivor: Jan Kaminski<br />

• Machinery of death: Dr David Blake Knox, Writer<br />

• Victim readings:<br />

People with disabilities: Lisa McNabb<br />

Poles and Slavs: Dr Ewa Stanczyk, Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, Trinity College, Dublin<br />

Roma: Siobhan Curran, The Roma Project in Pavee Point<br />

Homosexuals: John Duffy, BeLonG To<br />

Black and ethnic minorities: Dr Fidele Mutwarasibo, Immigrant Council of <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

Political victims: Shay Cody, General Secretary, IMPACT<br />

Christian victims: Fr Ivan Tonge, Parish Priest, Ringsend<br />

• All of the victims: HE Boaz Moda’i, Israeli Ambassador to <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

• <strong>Holocaust</strong> survivor: Suzi Diamond<br />

• Scroll of Names: Stratford College, Dublin; Duiske College, Kilkenny; Oatlands College, Dublin; Our Lady’s Bower, Athlone<br />

Musical interlude<br />

• Tribute to Zoltan and Edit Zinn-Collis<br />

• Soon: Micheal O’Siadhail<br />

• <strong>Ireland</strong> and the <strong>Holocaust</strong>: Vincent Norton, Executive Manager, Dublin City Council<br />

• Liberation: Klaus Unger<br />

• Horror of the <strong>Holocaust</strong>: Máire Whelan, Attorney General<br />

• Righteous Among the Nations: Uto Hogerzeil<br />

• Displaced Persons camps: Des Hogan, Acting CEO, Irish Human Rights Commission<br />

• Post-war pogroms: Prof Robert Gerwarth, Director of War Studies, University College Dublin<br />

• Second generation: David Reichental<br />

• Lessons for the future: The Honourable Mrs Justice Susan Denham, Chief Justice<br />

• Go home from this place: Mary Banotti, former MEP, Founding <strong>Trust</strong>ee HETI<br />

• Minute’s silence<br />

CANDLE LIGHTING<br />

• El Malay Rachamim: Prayer for the Repose of the Souls of the Departed, Rabbi Zalman Lent, Cantor Alwyn Shulman,<br />

Irish Jewish community<br />

• Closing remarks: Yanky Fachler<br />

1


Europe and the legacy of the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

<strong>Ireland</strong> is a proud member of the European family – mindful of the shadow of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> that<br />

permeates European existence and proud to stand firm against future tyranny.<br />

Lucinda Creighton, TD, Minister of State for European Affairs<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013 coincides with<br />

<strong>Ireland</strong>’s Presidency of the Council of the<br />

European Union. It is appropriate for the occasion<br />

to reflect on why and how memorialisation and<br />

study of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> has become such an integral part<br />

of the European consciousness.<br />

The <strong>Holocaust</strong> created a void in the heart of Europe –<br />

two thirds of Europe’s Jewish people had been destroyed.<br />

Approximately eleven million people were murdered in<br />

purpose-built death and concentration camps, of whom<br />

six million were Jews who were deliberately targeted for<br />

total annihilation. The genocide was carried out by a nation<br />

renowned for its culture and civilisation. Thus, the<br />

fundamentals of law, philosophy and religion were shattered.<br />

Political, civic and academic discourse struggled<br />

to cope with the experience.<br />

Immediately after the Second World War, the direct<br />

confrontation of the public in the West with the crimes of<br />

the Nazis was short-lived, and was followed by silence. But<br />

this silence has gradually dissipated, especially in the past<br />

twenty years, as the <strong>Holocaust</strong> has been<br />

recognised as part of Europe’s historical<br />

narrative. It is a history shared in all its<br />

complexities with the people of Europe.<br />

Since the breakdown of communism there has<br />

been more focus on coming to terms with the<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> and developing a common<br />

European identity. The need for some shared<br />

values within the EU became more prevalent<br />

after the integration of new member countries<br />

from Eastern Europe. There is growing acknowledgment<br />

among all member states that<br />

active acceptance of the principles of<br />

tolerance, diversity and respect for human<br />

dignity provide the EU with a common identity<br />

based on human rights and the rule of law.<br />

Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

has come to play an increasingly important role in Europe.<br />

The resolutions adopted by the European Parliament<br />

to keep alive the memory of the <strong>Holocaust</strong>, and the<br />

Stockholm Declaration signed by more than 40 governments<br />

in January 2000, are evidence of a general acknowledgement<br />

in Europe that the <strong>Holocaust</strong> holds a<br />

crucial place in Europe’s public memory. Most European<br />

countries have adopted 27 January as their annual day of<br />

remembrance honouring <strong>Holocaust</strong> victims and their<br />

families.<br />

Post-war history in Europe had two discernible<br />

trends. Visionaries such as Konrad Adenauer, Jean Monnet<br />

and Robert Schuman foresaw the need to create a<br />

common European community that would no longer go<br />

to war with itself. The project began with the creation in<br />

the 1950s of the European Coal and Steel Community,<br />

thereby ensuring the neutralisation of the historic means<br />

of developing war machines. It continued with its objective<br />

of developing one economic union which would further<br />

solidify the cooperative links between nations. The<br />

six original member states which came together as the<br />

European Economic Community were joined by <strong>Ireland</strong>,<br />

Denmark and Britain in 1973, bringing the number of<br />

members to nine. Expansion brought about by the Single<br />

European Act in 1987 increased membership to fifteen.<br />

After 1989, the inclusion of a further twelve countries<br />

from Central and Eastern Europe brought together the<br />

27 member states of the European Union we know today.<br />

The original vision has blossomed, fostering peaceful coexistence<br />

and security between the member states.<br />

Communism under Soviet dominance was the second<br />

trend in Europe, covering the eastern nations of the continent.<br />

Under communist regimes there was widespread<br />

ignorance of the pre-war existence of<br />

flourishing Jewish communities that had<br />

been wiped out by the Nazis. The circumstances<br />

of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> were unspoken.<br />

However, since the fall of the<br />

Berlin wall in 1989, the <strong>Holocaust</strong> has<br />

come to play an increasingly important<br />

role in Europe.<br />

To be accepted as a member of the<br />

European Union, states must adhere<br />

to a standard developed in the aftermath of the Second<br />

World War and the <strong>Holocaust</strong>. The <strong>Holocaust</strong> is being integrated<br />

into Europe’s collective memory. This is causing<br />

European nation-states to confront their own human<br />

rights abuses, their own crimes of the past, their own dark<br />

sides.<br />

Such confrontation cannot avoid recognition of each<br />

stateís role during the Nazi era and has led to a thirst<br />

among post-war generations for knowledge and education<br />

about the events of the time. The lessons of the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

are being taught and remembered. It is recognised<br />

that studying the <strong>Holocaust</strong> is important both as history<br />

and as a moral guidepost.<br />

The <strong>Holocaust</strong> is present in the psyche of Europeans and it is part of our heritage. Its omnipresence has<br />

mostly enabled us to adhere to peaceful coexistence for more than 60 years, heeding the universal<br />

lessons the experience of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> has taught us.<br />

Francis Jacobs, Head of Office, European Parliament Office, Dublin<br />

2


The Jews of Europe before World War II<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

Jews in Eastern Europe, c.1930 Jews in Western Europe, c.1930 Sephardi Jewish family, Greece, c.1920<br />

The majority of the Jews living in Eastern<br />

Europe, were members of orthodox<br />

Jewish communities. Many lived in<br />

small towns or villages called shtetls.<br />

They adhered strictly to religious practices<br />

and their lives revolved around the<br />

Jewish calendar. Their first language<br />

was Yiddish and many wore distinctive<br />

clothing, the men being particularly<br />

noticeable in their black coats, long<br />

beards, side curls and black hats. There<br />

were great centres of Jewish learning<br />

and Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe.<br />

Many Jews in these areas made their<br />

living in commercial activities.<br />

By contrast, a large number of the<br />

Jewish people living in the great cities<br />

of western Europe, such as Berlin, Paris,<br />

Prague, Budapest and Warsaw, lived a<br />

more assimilated existence. Although<br />

many observed Jewish festivals, the<br />

Sabbath and kashrut (dietary requirements),<br />

the majority were quite secular<br />

in their lifestyle. They spoke the<br />

language of the country in which they<br />

lived, they dressed like everyone else,<br />

and participated in all areas of life:<br />

academia, the arts, the professions,<br />

commerce and politics.<br />

There were also Sephardi Jewish communities,<br />

most of whom resided in the<br />

countries around the Mediterranean<br />

and in the Balkans. Sephardi Jews originated<br />

from the Iberian Peninsula and<br />

mainly spoke Ladino, a language with<br />

Spanish roots. The communities were<br />

scattered after the expulsions from<br />

Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth<br />

century. Some Sephardi Jews occupied<br />

important positions in the economy<br />

and government administration, others<br />

rose to become diplomats at the court<br />

of the Sultanate of Constantinople.<br />

There were also Sephardic communities<br />

in Amsterdam and London.<br />

Jewish communities flourished throughout Europe, and Jews participated in all spheres of life and society. In<br />

all the countries that were to fall victim to the Nazis, there were well established and often integrated Jewish<br />

communities that dated back over hundreds of years – and in the case of Greece, more than two millennia.<br />

By the end of World War II, most of the European Jewish communities had been decimated and those<br />

of Eastern Europe had been utterly destroyed.<br />

3


The Rise of Nazi Germany<br />

produce a superior strong ‘race’.<br />

Laws were passed enforcing the<br />

euthanasia of disabled persons<br />

and the sterilisation of Roma<br />

and Sinti (Gypsies) as well as<br />

people of mixed race or of<br />

African descent.<br />

The <strong>Holocaust</strong> did not begin<br />

with gas chambers and crematoria.<br />

It began with humiliation,<br />

taunts, daubings, boycotts, confiscation<br />

of property and gradually,<br />

the complete exclusion of<br />

Jews from German economic<br />

and social life.<br />

‘You are sharing the load! A<br />

disabled person costs 50,000<br />

reichsmarks up to age 60.’<br />

President Paul von Hindenburg shakes hands with Hitler on his appointment<br />

as Chancellor of Germany, January 1933.<br />

When Adolf Hitler became leader of the Nazi<br />

party in 1921, he stated that his ultimate aim<br />

was ‘the removal of the Jews from German society’.<br />

By the time he was appointed Chancellor of Germany<br />

in 1933, he was planning to remove the Jews from<br />

Germany by expulsion and evacuation. Hitler’s hatred of<br />

Jews soon manifested into actions.<br />

Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses, April 1933.<br />

The large notice says: “Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!”<br />

Stormtroopers are fixing labels to the window saying that entry to the shop is<br />

forbidden.<br />

1933: Jewish books and books by Jewish authors burned in public bonfires<br />

throughout Germany.<br />

Nazi ideology alleged a hierarchy of peoples: The<br />

pure German ‘Aryan’ was at the top; Poles, Slavs,<br />

black and ethnic minorities were very low down<br />

on the list; and Jews were at the bottom, considered ‘subhuman’.<br />

Nazi antisemitism was rooted in racial, political<br />

and economic theories and fuelled propaganda which<br />

was thoroughly pervasive and reached all levels of German<br />

society.<br />

The Nazis embraced the pseudo-science of eugenics,<br />

which advocated destroying ‘weaker strains’ in order to<br />

The black athlete<br />

Jesse Owens won<br />

four gold medals at<br />

the Berlin Olympic<br />

Games. Hitler refused<br />

to shake<br />

hands with a “member<br />

of the inferior<br />

race”.<br />

4


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

Entrance to this park is forbidden to Jews.<br />

Children reading antisemitic school book: The Poisonous Mushroom.<br />

Park bench ‘Not for Jews’. Hulton archive, Getty images.<br />

Sign reads ‘Avoid using Jewish doctors and lawyers’.<br />

NOWHERE TO GO<br />

Victor goes down the unaccustomed steps to the courtyard, passes the statue of Apollo, avoids the looks of the<br />

new officials, and the looks of his old tenants, out of the gateway, past the SA guard on duty, onto the Ring. And<br />

where can he go<br />

He cannot go to his café, to his office, to his club, to his cousins. He has no café, no office, no club, no cousins.<br />

He cannot sit on a public bench any more: the benches in the park outside the Votivkirche have Juden verboten<br />

stenciled on them. He cannot go into the Sacher, he cannot go into the café Griensteidl, he cannot go into the<br />

Central, or go to the Prater, or to his bookshop, cannot go to the barber, cannot walk through the park. He<br />

cannot go on a tram: Jews and those who look Jewish have been thrown off. He cannot go to the cinema. And<br />

he cannot go to the Opera. Even if he could, he would not hear music written by Jews, played by Jews or sung<br />

by Jews. No Mahler, and no Mendelsohn. Opera has been Aryanised. There are SA men stationed at the end of<br />

the tramline at Neuwaldegg to prevent Jews strolling in the Vienna Woods.<br />

Where can he go How can they get out<br />

From: The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal<br />

5


The Évian Conference<br />

Anschluss<br />

Evian, France, The Evian Conference, 13/07/1938 Yad Vashem<br />

As it became increasingly difficult for Jews to remain<br />

working in Germany, they sought refuge<br />

elsewhere. Few countries offered to accept Jewish<br />

refugees, and borders were gradually closed to them.<br />

Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States,<br />

convened an international conference in Évian-les-Bains,<br />

France, in July 1938, to consider refugee policies. Out of<br />

all the 32 countries represented at Évian, including <strong>Ireland</strong>,<br />

none was willing to take in more refugees, and the<br />

conference was deemed a failure.<br />

<strong>Ireland</strong><br />

We do not know how many Jewish refugees applied<br />

to come to <strong>Ireland</strong>, although it is definitely<br />

in the hundreds, if not thousands. Only<br />

a small percentage of applicants was actually admitted.<br />

While it is important to examine <strong>Ireland</strong>’s reaction to the<br />

refugee crisis in the light of the broader historical context,<br />

and the policy examples provided by other countries, especially<br />

Britain, one cannot ignore a persistent theme<br />

about this episode in Irish history: immigrants were not<br />

welcome, refugees were not welcome, but Jewish immigrants<br />

and Jewish refugees were less welcome than others.<br />

<strong>Ireland</strong> and the International Reaction<br />

to Jewish Refugees, Katrina Goldstone,<br />

Dublin 2000<br />

Jews being forced to scrub the streets in Vienna with toothbrushes and nailbrushes.<br />

In March 1938 Austria was annexed as part of Nazi<br />

Germany. More than 200,000 Austrian Jews came<br />

under Nazi control.<br />

Stateless Jews<br />

At the end of October<br />

1938, Jews with Polish<br />

passports living in Germany<br />

were declared ‘Stateless’<br />

and deported to the German-<br />

Polish border. The Germans<br />

would not allow them to remain<br />

in Germany and the Poles<br />

would not allow them back into<br />

Poland! Some 15,000 Jews<br />

languished in a no-man’s-land Herschel Grynszpan<br />

near the border town of<br />

Zbaszyn in very poor living conditions. Frustrated by the<br />

plight of his parents trapped in this situation, Herschel<br />

Grynszpan, a German-Jewish student living in Paris, assassinated<br />

the diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, in the German<br />

embassy on 7 November 1938.<br />

What I found most shocking was that the Nazi German leaders were normal people!<br />

Telford Taylor,<br />

one of the chief prosecutors at the first trial in Nuremberg<br />

6


Kristallnacht, November Pogrom<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

In response to the assassination of vom Rath, the<br />

Nazis launched the November pogrom known as<br />

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, on 9/10 November<br />

1938.<br />

During the night of violence against the Jews of Germany<br />

and Austria, 7,500 Jewish shops were wrecked and<br />

their windows smashed – leaving the streets strewn with<br />

glass. Hundreds of synagogues, Jewish homes, schools<br />

and businesses were destroyed and set ablaze. Ninety-one<br />

Jews were murdered, and approximately 30,000 Jewish<br />

men were thrown into concentration camps.<br />

The Jewish communities of Germany were fined 1 billion<br />

Reichsmarks to pay for the damage!<br />

After Kristallnacht, the Nazis considered plans for the<br />

Jews, such as confining them in ghettos, but finally decided<br />

to get them out of the economy and out of the<br />

country. Jewish businesses were sold far below their market<br />

value, employers were urged to sack their Jewish employees,<br />

and offices were set up to speed emigration.<br />

Torched Synagogue, Germany, November 1938<br />

Kindertransports<br />

worked together to find Jewish and gentile foster homes<br />

for the children. Funds were raised, guarantors were<br />

found. Some of the children were housed in boarding<br />

schools, farms, castles, holiday camps – anywhere they<br />

were accepted.<br />

Although most of the Kindertransport children were<br />

rescued, most of them never saw their families again.<br />

Kindertransport child, Yad Vashem<br />

Prompted by the events of Kristallnacht, Britain<br />

agreed to accept some 10,000 Jewish children from<br />

Nazi-occupied lands.<br />

Between December 1938 and September 1939,<br />

Britain accepted approximately 10,000 children from<br />

Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. They<br />

arrived on special trains via Holland called Kindertransports.<br />

Jewish and Christian voluntary organisations<br />

Winton children<br />

Nicholas Winton<br />

Londoner<br />

Nicholas<br />

Winton<br />

arranged for eight<br />

kinderstransports<br />

to bring 669<br />

children from<br />

Czechoslovakia to<br />

safety in Britain.<br />

For 50 years<br />

no one knew<br />

about his assistance<br />

to so many<br />

children during<br />

the war. It was<br />

only when his<br />

wife found an old<br />

leather briefcase full of lists of the children and letters<br />

from their parents that the story began to unfold. Since<br />

then, Winton has been reunited with hundreds of ‘his’<br />

children and was awarded the Freedom of the City of<br />

Prague in 1998 and knighted by Queen Elisabeth in 2002.<br />

It is estimated that there are 5,000 Winton children living<br />

around the world.<br />

7


Murder<br />

In the brief two years between Autumn 1939 and autumn 1941, Nazi Jewish policy escalated from the<br />

prewar policy of forced emigration to the Final Solution as it is now understood, the systematic attempt<br />

to murder every last Jew within the German grasp<br />

Christopher R. Browning<br />

Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and<br />

outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world<br />

war, then the result will be…the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!<br />

Adolf Hitler, January, 1939<br />

The Nazis employed different ways to murder the Jewish people of Europe. It suited them if they could<br />

demonstrate that the Jews had died ‘from natural causes’ – invariably from brutality, disease, starvation,<br />

exposure and hard labour. These methods were soon expanded by the Einsatzgruppen (killing squads)<br />

operating in the Eastern territories and by the establishment of purpose built death camps, specifically<br />

to murder Jews by poison gas.<br />

Ghettos<br />

Entrance to the Lodz Ghetto: ‘Jewish residential district, entry forbidden’<br />

More than 1,000 ghettos were established by the<br />

Germans in Nazi occupied Europe. The purpose<br />

of establishing the ghettos was to separate the<br />

Jews from the rest of the population so that they could be<br />

easily controlled. The Nazis forced thousands of Jews to<br />

live in cramped areas that could not possibly accommodate<br />

the huge numbers being forced into them, often without<br />

either running water or a connection to the sewage<br />

system. As a result, starvation and disease were rampant,<br />

wreaking a huge death toll. It is estimated that between one<br />

and one and a half million Jews died in the ghettos. The<br />

ghettos represented places of degradation, hardship and<br />

unimaginable suffering, where the Nazis subjected the inhabitants<br />

to brutality, shootings, beatings and hangings.<br />

Although there are several heroic stories of resistance, most<br />

of the ghetto populations were deported directly to the death<br />

camps. Thousands of Roma and Sinti were also incarcerated<br />

in the ghettos, and ultimately met the same fate as the Jews.<br />

The inhabitants of the ghettos, who came from all<br />

walks of life, soon realised that the ghetto served as a<br />

place to destroy them physically and psychologically, and<br />

that their ultimate fate would be death. The illusion that<br />

the ghetto was a temporary place to reside before being<br />

sent for ‘resettlement in the east’ was soon dispelled as<br />

the residents realised the euphemism for murder.<br />

Wannsee Conference<br />

The Wannsee Conference took place on 20 January<br />

1942 in a secluded lakeside villa, south-west of<br />

Berlin. Fifteen senior Nazi and German government<br />

officials had been summoned by Reinhard Heydrich<br />

of the Reich Security Head Office and Head of<br />

German Secret Police. He was seeking endorsement to<br />

cary out the Führer’s plans to annihilate the Jews of Europe.<br />

Adolf Eichmann presented the delegates with a list<br />

of the number of Jews living in each European country<br />

whom the Nazis intended to destroy; <strong>Ireland</strong> appears on<br />

the list with a total of 4,000 Jews.<br />

The delegates debated at length who was Jewish according<br />

to bloodline considerations and discussed "evacuation"<br />

and "resettlement" of the Jews. They concluded<br />

that a more efficient method of "disposal" was necessary<br />

and one that would also spare those operating the killing<br />

sites in the eastern territories from the negative psychological<br />

trauma of face-to-face killing.<br />

It took the<br />

delegates less<br />

than two hours<br />

to give unanimous<br />

support to<br />

Heydrich for the<br />

implementation of<br />

the ‘Final Solution’<br />

– murder of the<br />

Jewish people by<br />

poison gas.<br />

List of countries<br />

presented to the<br />

Wannsee Conference<br />

setting out the<br />

number of Jews in<br />

each<br />

8


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

In March 1942 every major Jewish community was still intact, and 80% of those European Jews who<br />

would be murdered in the <strong>Holocaust</strong> were still alive. By February 1943, just under one year later, 80%<br />

of those European Jews were already dead.<br />

Christopher R. Browning<br />

Killing sites/Einsatzgruppen<br />

Operation Reinhard<br />

Einsatzgruppen<br />

On 21 June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet<br />

Union (Operation Barbarossa). Special killing<br />

squads called Einsatzgruppen followed the German<br />

army into Eastern Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia,<br />

Estonia and other eastern territories occupied by the Nazis,<br />

where they operated hundreds of killing sites in these regions.<br />

Einsatzgruppen comprised police, local collaborators,<br />

SS units, as well as officers and soldiers of the German<br />

army. They murdered more than 1.5 million Jews in the<br />

forests, fields and cemeteries or herded them into ravines<br />

or pits which the victims had to dig themselves before they<br />

were shot. Einsatzgruppen killed mostly Jews, but also<br />

murdered Gypsies, communists and others. This “slow and<br />

cumbersome” method of eradicating the Jews as well as the<br />

face-to-face killing which was having a psychological effect<br />

on some of the killers, prompted the Nazis to find a more<br />

efficient solution to the elimination of the Jewish people –<br />

death by poison gas. Einsatzgruppen continued to operate<br />

in rural areas in parallel to the extermination taking place<br />

in the death camps.<br />

Belzec extermination camp stood at this place. A memorial has since been<br />

erected on this site<br />

Named after Reinhard Heydrich, this was the<br />

establishment of three death camps (killing<br />

centres) at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, in<br />

which Jews were murdered by poison gas. Between<br />

March 1942 and August 1943 some 1,700,000 Jews,<br />

mostly from Poland,<br />

were murdered in gas<br />

chambers in these<br />

camps. They were<br />

dismantled on completion<br />

of their “function”<br />

and all traces of<br />

their existence were<br />

destroyed. The lands<br />

where they had stood<br />

were planted with<br />

forests, farms and<br />

grasslands.<br />

ORDINARY MEN<br />

It is everyone’s duty to reflect on what happened. Everybody must know, or remember, that when Hitler<br />

or Mussolini spoke in public, they were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. We must<br />

remember that these faithful followers, among them the diligent executors of inhuman orders, were not<br />

born torturers, were not (with few exceptions) monsters: they were ordinary men. Monsters exist but<br />

they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous is the common men, the functionaries<br />

ready to believe and to act without asking questions, like Eichmann; like Hoss, the commandant of<br />

Auschwitz; like Stangl, commandant of Treblinka.<br />

Primo Levi<br />

9


Murder<br />

Recent research has found that there were more than 15,000 camps throughout Nazi occupied territories<br />

that stretched from Norway to France, Russia, Greece and North Africa. They were run by the SS<br />

and there were four main types of camps within the Nazi system. All of them employed brutality and<br />

harsh living conditions.<br />

Camps<br />

Concentration Camps<br />

Transit Camps<br />

Labour Camps<br />

Death Camps<br />

Plazow concentration camp Drancy Transit camp, Paris, 1941 Forced labour, Mauthausen, 1942 Gas chamber at Majdanek<br />

Concentration camps were an<br />

integral feature of the Nazi<br />

regime. Originally for political<br />

enemies, the first concentration<br />

camps were established in<br />

Germany in 1933. After 1939,<br />

they were places of imprisonment<br />

for Jews. At least 1,500<br />

concentration camps were established<br />

in the territories of<br />

the Reich.<br />

Transit camps were usually<br />

established beside large cities<br />

as a place to collect Jews (and<br />

others) for deportation.<br />

They were sometimes purpose<br />

built, but often they<br />

were run-down apartment<br />

blocks, where hundreds were<br />

forced into poor living conditions,<br />

overcrowding, maltreatment<br />

and brutality.<br />

The labour camp system<br />

meant annihilation through<br />

work. Prisoners were forced<br />

to carry out super-human<br />

tasks such as shifting boulders<br />

or laying roads or<br />

railways by hand, often for 12<br />

hours a day, with little to eat<br />

or drink.<br />

There were six purpose-built<br />

death camps, all of them on<br />

Polish soil, established to<br />

murder the Jews of Europe by<br />

poison gas. Other victims<br />

were also murdered in these<br />

camps.<br />

Roll Call<br />

Camp Orchestras<br />

At the concentration and extermination camps, the<br />

Nazis created orchestras of prisoner-musicians.<br />

These musical ensembles played concerts for the<br />

Nazi and SS officers. But also, the orchestras were forced to<br />

play music while their co-prisoners were marched out each<br />

morning and back each evening after ten or twelve hours<br />

of gruelling slave labour. Most sadistic of all was the imperative<br />

for the orchestras to play as fellow prisoners were<br />

herded to the gas chambers or marched to the gallows.<br />

Roll call at Buchenwald<br />

Afeature of all Nazi camps was roll call in the<br />

mornings and evenings. Often, prisoners had to<br />

stand in straight rows for hours at a time in blazing<br />

heat or freezing cold. Roll calls provided the Nazis<br />

with another opportunity to enforce sadistic rules such<br />

as a ban on appearing without one’s cap – a crime<br />

punishable by death.<br />

An orchestra escorts prisoners destined for execution in Mauthausen.<br />

10


Hungary<br />

Death Marches<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

Hungarian Jews waiting amongst the birch trees beside the gas chambers in<br />

Auschwitz-Birkenau<br />

After the successful Allied landings in Normandy in<br />

early June 1944 and the advance of the Soviet army<br />

in the east, it was clear that Germany was not going<br />

to win the war. In Hungary, which had been an Axis partner<br />

of the Third Reich, Nazi policy changed towards its Jewish<br />

population in July of that year. Adolf Eichmann was dispatched<br />

to oversee the round-up and deportation of Hungarian<br />

Jews. In just eight weeks, 437,000 Jews were deported<br />

to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered. The railway line at<br />

the death camp was extended under the gateway right up to<br />

the unloading ramp where ‘selections’ were made.<br />

The Nazis were supported by their Hungarian collaborators<br />

Arrow Cross, who were responsible for shooting<br />

more than 100,000 Jews into the Danube. It is estimated<br />

that 560,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered.<br />

A view of the death march from Dachau passing through German villages in<br />

the direction of Wolfratshausen. Germany, April 1945.<br />

As the Allies closed in, the Nazis wanted to remove<br />

all traces of their extermination projects. They<br />

forced prisoners out of the camps to march hundreds<br />

of kilometers back towards Germany. It is estimated<br />

that 250,000 camp internees, already weakened by malnutrition,<br />

labour and ill treatment, died on these death<br />

marches. German civilians secretly photographed several<br />

death marches from the Dachau concentration camp as the<br />

prisoners moved slowly through the Bavarian towns. Few<br />

civilians gave aid to the prisoners on the death marches.<br />

All there is to know about Adolf Eichmann<br />

Eyes…………………………………………… medium<br />

Hair ……………………………………………medium<br />

Weight………………………………………… medium<br />

Height………………………………………… medium<br />

Distinguishing features…………………………… none<br />

Number of fingers……………………………………ten<br />

Number of toes……………………………………… ten<br />

Intelligence………………………………………average<br />

What did you expect<br />

Talons Green saliva Oversise incisors Madness<br />

From: Flowers for Hitler by Leonard Cohen, 1964<br />

Auschwitz-Birkenau<br />

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of the Nazi<br />

camps. There were 40 subcamps in the Auschwitz<br />

camp complex: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II<br />

Birkenau, and Auschwitz III Monowitz, where Primo Levi<br />

was incarcerated, being the most well known. Birkenau was<br />

the killing centre where between 1.1 and 1.4 million victims<br />

were murdered, 90% of whom were Jews.<br />

When Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet<br />

troops in January 1945, they found:<br />

7,600 emaciated prisoners alive<br />

836,500 items of women’s clothing<br />

348,800 items of men’s clothing<br />

43,400 pairs of shoes<br />

Hundreds of thousands of spectacles<br />

7 tons of human hair.<br />

Each lock of hair, each pair of shoes and each pair of spectacles belonged to one person<br />

11


It is true that not all victims were Jews...<br />

T-4 Euthanasia Programme – The Murder of People with Disabilities<br />

Hitler initiated this programme in 1939 to kill elderly people, the terminally ill and people<br />

with disabilities, whom the Nazis referred to as ‘life unworthy of life’. Although it<br />

was officially discontinued in 1941 due to public outcry, the killings continued covertly<br />

until 1945. It is estimated that 200,000 people with disabilities in Germany and Austria<br />

were murdered.<br />

Manfred Bernhardt, USHMM<br />

Political opponents<br />

The torching of the Reichstag national parliament building in 1933 gave the Nazis a<br />

pretext for brutally suppressing the Communists and later the Social Democrats. The<br />

Nazis abolished trade unions and co-operatives, confiscated their assets and prohibited<br />

strikes. As early as 1933, the Nazis established the first concentration camp, Dachau, as<br />

a detention centre for political prisoners.<br />

Political opponents being arrested. Berlin, Germany, 1933<br />

Poles and Slavs<br />

Hitler ordered that the Polish intelligentsia and professionals were to be destroyed. Tens<br />

of thousands were murdered or sent to concentration camps. Polish children did not<br />

progress beyond elementary school, and thousands were forcibly taken to Germany to<br />

be ‘Aryanised’ and reared as Germans. Three million Poles were murdered by the Nazis.<br />

A Polish prisoner, Julian Noga, at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Germany<br />

Roma and Sinti (Gypsies)<br />

The Nazis deported thousands of Gypsies to many of the ghettos and concentration<br />

camps. In 1941 Himmler ordered the deportation of all Romanies living in Europe to<br />

be murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000<br />

Roma-Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis.<br />

Amalie Schaich survived the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau<br />

Black, mixed race and ethnic minorities<br />

In 1933 the Nazis established Commission Number 3, in which hundreds of children<br />

and adults of African ancestry were forcibly sterilised. According to Nazi philosophy,<br />

this would preserve the ‘purity of the Aryan population’. By the outbreak of the Second<br />

World War, thousands of black, mixed race and ethnic people had fled, and most of<br />

those who remained were annihilated.<br />

Images used for lectures on genetics, ethnology, and race breeding, USHMM<br />

Homosexual victims<br />

Thousands of gay men were arrested by the Nazis and sent to prison or concentration camps, where<br />

they were subjected to harder work, less food and stricter supervision than other inmates. Hundreds<br />

were put to death, and thousands died from the appalling conditions and brutality. Homosexuality<br />

remained on the German statue books as a criminal offense until 1969, and many former gay internees<br />

had to serve out their original prison sentences with no allowance for the time they had<br />

served in the camps. This deterred many of the survivors from telling their stories.<br />

Albrecht Becker, ©Schwules Museum, Berlin<br />

Christian victims: Priests, nuns and religious leaders<br />

Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses were murdered by the Nazis for their refusal to salute<br />

Hitler as ‘Saviour’ or to serve in the German armed forces. Thousands of Catholics,<br />

Protestants, and others of Christian affiliation were persecuted and killed. There were<br />

also hundreds of Christians, Quakers and others who actively opposed the Nazi regime,<br />

many of whom risked their lives to save Jews.<br />

12<br />

Magdalena Kusserow, Jehovah’s Witness, Photograph courtesy IWM


...But all the Jews were victims<br />

Europe - The number of Jews annihilated by the Nazis<br />

in each European country<br />

© Martin Gilbert, 2000<br />

The white figures on black relate to the approximate number of Jews who perished in each European<br />

country between September 1939 and May 1945. The total of just over 5,750,000 does not include<br />

thousands of infants murdered by the Nazis in late 1941, before their births could be recorded. Thousands<br />

of people from the remoter villages in Poland were added to the deportation trains which left<br />

larger localities, without any record of their existence or of their fate.<br />

13


Partisans/Resistance<br />

Janow, Poland, 1943, Jewish Partisans<br />

By spring 1942 some Polish, Russian and even<br />

German deserters had become partisans. Many<br />

partisan groups were well armed and organised.<br />

Villagers, thrown out of their homes to make way for<br />

ethnic Germans, swelled their ranks. Most partisan<br />

groups did not welcome Jews.<br />

Jewish partisan groups, consisting of men and women<br />

who had fled deep into the forests of Eastern Europe to<br />

escape the guns of the Einsatzgruppen, also began to<br />

emerge early in 1942. The first Jewish resistance group<br />

in Eastern Europe was started by the 23 year old intellectual<br />

Abba Kovner in Vilna in 1941. Another group was<br />

set up by the four Bielski brothers in early 1942, and their<br />

numbers reached 1,500 by the end of the war. Many more<br />

Jews joined local communist-led partisan units as individuals.<br />

Resistance in the camps and ghettos<br />

There were uprisings in<br />

the concentration camps,<br />

death camps and ghettos.<br />

All of them failed, and although<br />

there were a few<br />

survivors, the majority of<br />

the participants met their<br />

deaths at the hands of their<br />

German oppressors.<br />

Passive resistance, as it is<br />

sometimes called, was the<br />

courageous efforts by many<br />

Jews to maintain their Jewish,<br />

religious and cultural<br />

practices in the ghettos and<br />

the camps, despite the<br />

threat of severe punishment.<br />

Lighting of the seventh Chanuka candle<br />

in the Westerbork camp, Yad Vashem<br />

Rabbi Arie Ludwig Zuckerman wrote this Haggada text by hand and from<br />

memory in preparation for Passover in 1941 at the Gurs internment camp in<br />

France. The Camp Rabbinate made copies, added the texts of the songs, and<br />

the holiday was celebrated despite the harsh conditions in the camp.<br />

Yad Vashem Archive<br />

Liberation<br />

Tanks roll into Theresienstadt, Yad Vashem Archives<br />

The defeat of Nazism would<br />

have taken much longer without<br />

the Red Army’s invasion of<br />

German-held territory in the East.<br />

The D-Day allied invasion of Normandy<br />

took place in June 1944. The<br />

same month, the Soviets advanced. By<br />

the end of the summer of 1944 the Soviet<br />

Army had liberated Majdanek<br />

death camp and reached the gates of<br />

Warsaw, and the road to Berlin had<br />

been opened.<br />

On 27 January 1945, Red Army<br />

troops – including many Jewish<br />

soldiers – liberated the Auschwitz-<br />

Birkenau death camp. It is this date<br />

that was designated by the Stockholm<br />

International Forum on the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

as International <strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day.<br />

14


Righteous Among the Nations<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

Individuals, groups of people, Arabs and Muslims,<br />

diplomats, businessmen, who saved Jews<br />

during the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

Magda and André Trocmé<br />

of Le Chambon sur Lignon,<br />

France the Huguenot village<br />

that hid Jews<br />

Irena Sendler saved 2,500<br />

Jewish children in the Warsaw<br />

ghetto<br />

Miep Gies, Amsterdam,<br />

looked after Anne Frank and<br />

her family<br />

Khaled Abdelwahhab, one of<br />

many Arabs who saved Jews<br />

Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty,<br />

from Co Kerry, was a member<br />

of the Vatican Diplomatic Service<br />

and worked in the Vatican Holy Office<br />

from 1938. The Vatican remained an independent<br />

state during the war and did<br />

not come under Nazi control. In 1942<br />

Monsignor O’Flaherty started smuggling<br />

Jewish and non-Jewish refugees to safety Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty<br />

through a network of tunnels and safe<br />

houses. His organisation is estimated to have saved approximately<br />

6,500 people.<br />

Mary Elmes, an Irishwoman<br />

from Cork and a scholar of<br />

Trinity College Dublin found<br />

herself in Vichy, France during the war.<br />

Having worked with the Quakers during<br />

the Spanish Civil War, Mary joined hundreds<br />

of refugees who fled over the Pyrenees<br />

into France in 1939. When France Mary Elmes<br />

fell in 1940 thousands of Jews fled south<br />

and were incarcerated in the Rivesaltes Transit camp whence they<br />

were deported to Auschwitz and other Nazi camps in 1942. Mary<br />

and her colleagues organized ‘children’s colonies’ and succeeded in<br />

saving a great number of Jewish children from the Nazis.<br />

Oskar Schindler, German industrialist,<br />

who saved some<br />

12,000 Jews in Krakow<br />

Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish<br />

diplomat in Hungary, saved<br />

thousands of Hungarian Jews<br />

But we have not forgotten…and we have not<br />

forgotten those who stood beside us and risked their<br />

lives to save Jews.<br />

Abraham Foxman ADL Bnei Brith<br />

In 1953 the State of Israel<br />

established Yad<br />

Vashem, the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance<br />

Authority, in<br />

order to document and<br />

record the history of the<br />

Jewish people during the<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong>. Yad Vashem<br />

inaugurated the award<br />

Righteous Among the Nations<br />

in 1963 to honour<br />

non-Jews who saved Jews<br />

during the Second World<br />

War. Over 24,500 people<br />

from 44 different countries<br />

have received the award. There are countless others who<br />

have never received any recognition, and many more who<br />

were killed by the Germans for assisting Jews.<br />

The Righteous come from all levels of society, from<br />

different backgrounds, ages, religions and ethnic groups.<br />

They are individuals such as simple villagers in occupied<br />

countries, families, groups of friends or members of organised<br />

efforts such as the Dutch Resistance, the village of Le<br />

Chambon sur Lignon in France, or Zegota (the Council for<br />

Aid to Jews) in Poland. They include well known efforts,<br />

such as that of businessman Oskar Schindler, and assistance<br />

by diplomats such as the Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg<br />

in Hungary or the Japanese official Sempo Sugihara in<br />

Lithuania. Many Jews who survived the <strong>Holocaust</strong> owe their<br />

survival to Righteous Among the Nations.<br />

The Righteous refute the notion that there was<br />

no alternative to passive complicity with the<br />

enemy. The farmers, priests, nuns and soldiers,<br />

believers and non-believers, the old and the<br />

young from every background in every land<br />

made the impossible possible. Their altruism<br />

calls us to understand the different choices that<br />

individuals make and to commit to challenging<br />

every example of intolerance that we witness.<br />

The challenge of our time is not whether to remember<br />

but what to remember and how to<br />

transmit our memory to our children and our<br />

children’s children.<br />

15


Aftermath<br />

Jewish Displaced Persons and the DP Camps<br />

Displaced Persons baking daily bread supply for their camp, Germany, 1946.<br />

When the Allied armies occupied Germany in 1945,<br />

they found some 6-7 million displaced persons (DPs).<br />

DP camps were established in many former concentration<br />

camps, some of which remained in operation till<br />

1951 and as late as 1957. The Jewish DPs were different<br />

from the other survivors because they had nowhere to<br />

return to. They had lost everything: their homes, their<br />

youth, their hope, their entire families. They called themselves<br />

Sheíerit Hapletah, The Spared Remnant.<br />

Many DP camps were established in former concentration<br />

camps, still surrounded by wire fences, and the<br />

only clothing available to inmates was the striped uniforms<br />

they had worn as prisoners. Paradoxically, for a<br />

brief period after the war, a defeated Germany, the cause<br />

of the Jewish tragedy, became the largest and safest sanctuary<br />

for Jewish refugees waiting for rehabilitation or for<br />

the opportunity to emigrate.<br />

Post-war Pogroms<br />

Antisemitism did not stop with the end of the war:<br />

there were pogroms in various towns and villages in<br />

Hungary, Poland and Slovakia from 1945 till the end of<br />

1947. Historian Jan T. Gross tells how surviving Polish<br />

Jews returned to their homeland to be vilified, terrorised<br />

and, in some 1,500 instances, murdered.<br />

One might have thought that if anything could have<br />

cured Poland of its antisemitism, it was World War II.<br />

Polish Jews and Polish Christians were bonded, as never<br />

before, by unimaginable suffering at the hands of a common<br />

foe. One might also have thought there would have<br />

been pity for the Jewish survivors, most of whom had lost<br />

nearly everything. Besides, there were so few of them left<br />

to hate!<br />

In the city of Kielce a rumour of a ritual murder had<br />

caused a massacre of 42 Jewish <strong>Holocaust</strong> survivors in<br />

1946, something few had believed was still possible in<br />

post-war Poland. The Polish government stood helpless<br />

in the face of the violence perpetrated by police officers,<br />

soldiers, and civilians, augmented by workers from the<br />

steel factories. This event persuaded 100,000 Polish Jews<br />

that they had no future in Poland after the <strong>Holocaust</strong> and<br />

once more they gathered their belongings and fled.<br />

The remnant of Jewry is gathered here.<br />

This is its waiting room. It is a shabby room,<br />

so we hope that day will come when the Jews will<br />

be taken to a place they can call their own.<br />

Zalman Grinberg, the first chairman of the Central<br />

Committee of Liberated Jews for the US Zone of<br />

Occupation in Germany. Munich, October 1945<br />

Mourners crowd around a narrow trench as coffins of pogrom victims are<br />

placed in a common grave, following mass burial service. Kielce, Poland, after<br />

July 4, 1946, USHMM — Wide World Photo<br />

Grodno, Byelorussia:<br />

A street in a shtetl<br />

Suddenly, all those places where Jews had<br />

lived for hundreds of years had vanished.<br />

And I thought that in years to come, long<br />

after the slaughter, Jews might want to hear<br />

about the places which had disappeared,<br />

about the life that once was and no longer is.<br />

Yad Vashem<br />

16


Four million Jewish victims of<br />

the <strong>Holocaust</strong> now identified<br />

Yad Vashem, Israel’s <strong>Holocaust</strong> museum, has by now managed<br />

to identify four million of six million Jews murdered<br />

by the Nazis and their collaborators during the second<br />

World War.<br />

One and a half million new names were added over the last<br />

decade, increasing the list of confirmed victims by 60 per cent, as<br />

the museum stepped up efforts to counter <strong>Holocaust</strong> denial from<br />

neo-Nazi groups and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.<br />

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said one of the museum’s<br />

main aims since it was set up in Jerusalem in 1953 had been to recover<br />

every victim’s name and personal story. ‘The Germans sought<br />

not only to destroy the Jews but also to erase their memory. One of<br />

our main missions is to give each victim a face and a name.’<br />

The figure of six million victims was based on pre-war census<br />

lists of Jewish communities in areas occupied by the Nazis. Due to<br />

the difficulty of obtaining accurate information, particularly from<br />

eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Mr Shalev admitted<br />

a comprehensive tally was impossible, but said Yad Vashem was<br />

aiming to eventually account for five million victims.<br />

In an effort to boost its database, in 2004 Yad Vashem launched<br />

its Pages of Testimony project. Visitors to the museum and to its<br />

website were encouraged to fill in special forms on the victims,<br />

which were then double-checked against existing archival information.<br />

The project was a huge success, and 55 per cent of the four<br />

million names came from Pages of Testimony.<br />

Names of Jews deported from western European states, such as<br />

Germany, France and the Netherlands, were well documented. In<br />

the eastern areas occupied by the Nazis, mass killings and an absence<br />

of accurate lists of victims created a difficult task for Yad<br />

Vashem researchers.<br />

In recent years the museum has focused its efforts on these<br />

areas, making significant headway. Whereas in 2005 only 20 per<br />

cent of the victims from Ukraine were listed, the figure today is 35<br />

per cent. In Poland the percentage has risen from 35 to 46 per cent.<br />

Mr Shalev said Yad Vashem was co-operating with east European<br />

states to obtain extra names from existing archives. ‘We will<br />

continue our efforts to recover the unknown names, and by harnessing<br />

technology in the service of memory, we are able to share<br />

their names with the world.’<br />

Mark Weiss, Jerusalem<br />

Irish Times, Thursday 23 December 2010


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Survivors in <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

Suzi Diamond<br />

Suzi Diamond was born in Debrecen, Hungary, and was with her mother and brother<br />

on the last transport to leave Hungary in 1944, which, miraculously, was diverted from<br />

Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen. Her mother died just after liberation. Suzi was a very<br />

young child when she was found with her brother, Terry, by Dr Bob Collis, who brought<br />

them back to <strong>Ireland</strong> where they were adopted by a Jewish couple, Elsie and Willie<br />

Samuels. All of the rest of Suzi’s family perished.<br />

“My brother passed away a few years ago. Now there are only a handful of us <strong>Holocaust</strong> survivors living in <strong>Ireland</strong>. Apart<br />

from my personal loss, Terry’s passing underlines the importance of telling our story to the next generation. It is important<br />

that we pass it on to our children and our children’s children.”<br />

Tomi Reichental<br />

Tomi Reichental was born in 1935 in Piestany, Slovakia. In 1944 he was captured and<br />

deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his mother, grandmother, brother,<br />

aunt and cousin. Tomi was just 9 years old when the camp was liberated. 35 members<br />

of Tomi’s family were murdered in the <strong>Holocaust</strong>.<br />

“In the camp I could not play like a normal child, we didn’t laugh and we didn’t cry. If<br />

you stepped out of line at all, you could be beaten up and even beaten to death. I saw it with my own eyes.”<br />

Jan Kaminski<br />

Jan Kaminski was born in Bilgoraj, Poland, in 1932. When he was 7 years old, he managed<br />

to escape a round-up of the Jews and fled, leaving his family behind. He survived<br />

the war on his wits, running errands, working on farms and even becoming a mascot<br />

of the 21st Artillery Regiment of the Polish army. Jan lost most of his family in the<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong>.<br />

Photograph: Alicia McAuley<br />

Inge Radford<br />

Inge Radford was born in Vienna in 1932 and now lives in Millisle in Northern <strong>Ireland</strong>.<br />

She lost six members of her immediate family in the <strong>Holocaust</strong>.<br />

“Five of my family were spared the unspeakable ordeal of ghetto living, imprisonment<br />

and violent death. That we five grew into relatively unscarred and useful citisens was due<br />

to many people – Jewish and non Jewish – who minimised the trauma of family separation<br />

and loss for us and for hundreds of other refugee children.”<br />

Zoltan<br />

In Memoriam<br />

Zoltan Zinn-Collis<br />

01/08 1940 - 10/12/2012<br />

Edit Zinn-Collis<br />

02/01/1937 - 27/12/2012<br />

In the past two months, ZoltanZinn-Collis and then his sister,<br />

Edit, passed away. They had been found as young children in<br />

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by a volunteer Irish doctor,<br />

Bob Collis, who was working with the Red Cross in the camp, immediately<br />

after the war. Dr Collis brought Zoltan and Edit back to<br />

<strong>Ireland</strong> where he reared them as members of his own family. Zoltan<br />

settled in <strong>Ireland</strong>, married Joan and had four daughters, Siobhán,<br />

Caroline, Nichola and Emma. He is survived by his wife, his children,<br />

his grandchildren and his great grandchildren. Edit remained single<br />

and lived in Wicklow. She passed away three weeks after Zoltan.<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong> would like to pay tribute to<br />

Zoltan for his invaluable commitment to raising <strong>Holocaust</strong> awareness<br />

by sharing his personal experiences of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> with young people<br />

throughout <strong>Ireland</strong>. His story made an indelible impression on<br />

all who heard it.<br />

Zoltan’s memoir, Final Witness, My Journey From The <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

to <strong>Ireland</strong> was published by Maverick House in 2006.<br />

Edit<br />

SOON<br />

Soon now their testimony and history coalesce.<br />

Last survivors fade and witnesses to witnesses<br />

Broker their first-hand words. Distilled memory.<br />

Slowly, we begin to reshape our shaping story.<br />

A card from a train in Warsaw’s suburb Praha:<br />

We’re going nobody knows where, Be well, Laja.<br />

That someone would tell. Now our second-hand<br />

Perspective, a narrative struggling to understand.<br />

Victims, perpetrators, bystanders who’d have known<br />

Still cast questioning shadows across our own.<br />

Some barbarous. Mostly inaction or indifference<br />

Hear, O Israel, still weeps their revenant silence.<br />

Abraham pleaded for the sake of the ten just.<br />

Our promise to mend the earth A healing trust<br />

Micheal O’Siadhail<br />

18


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

We Remember...<br />

Max Heller Born Chomotow, Czechoslavakia Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 73 Years<br />

Klara Heller Born Hermanstat, Czechoslavakia Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 68 Years<br />

Gisella Molnar Born Debrecen, Hungary Murdered Bergen-Belsen 1945 Aged 35 Years<br />

Bajla Hercberg Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 39 Years<br />

Matthias Hercberg Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 41 Years<br />

Ruchla Orzel Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 38 Years<br />

Fajwel Orzel Born Sosnowiec, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 39 Years<br />

Slazma Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 64 Years<br />

Hirsch Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Warsaw 1942 Aged 32 Years<br />

Tauba Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Warsaw 1942 Aged 30 Years<br />

David Josef Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 45 Years<br />

Shaul Urbach Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Germany 1944 Aged 23 Years<br />

Abe Tzvi Urbach Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 16 Years<br />

Gitla Frajdla Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 14 Years<br />

Laja Faygla Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 12 Years<br />

Nuchim Mordechai Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 10 Years<br />

Ruchla Golda Urbach Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 8 Years<br />

Sarah Urbach Born Kielce, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 2 Years<br />

Chil Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 41 Years<br />

Szymon Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 17 Years<br />

Nuchim Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Buchenwald 1944 Aged 30 Years<br />

Fajgla Urbach Born Wloszczowa, Poland Murdered Buchenwald 1944 Aged 44 Years<br />

Perla Urbach Born Wodzislaw, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 39 Years<br />

Frymeta Urbach Born Wodzislaw, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 64 Years<br />

Moses Klein Born Wodzislaw, Poland Murdered Treblinka 1942 Aged 32 Years<br />

Hilde Frenkel Born Vienna Murdered Belorussia 1942 Aged 46 Years<br />

Kurt Frenkel Born Vienna Murdered Belorussia 1942 Aged 16 Years<br />

Walter Frenkel Born Vienna Murdered Belorussia 1942 Aged 15 Years<br />

Herbert Frenkel Born Vienna Murdered Belorussia 1942 Aged 14 Years<br />

Fritz Frenkel Born Vienna Murdered Belorussia 1942 Aged 13 Years<br />

Zigmund Frenkel Born Vienna Murdered Belorussia 1942 Aged 8 Years<br />

Saloman Delmonte Born Amsterdam Murdered Auschwitz 1942 Aged 62 Years<br />

Karoline Wolff Born Aurich, Germany Murdered Auschwitz<br />

Martin Wolff Born Aurich, Germany Murdered Dachau<br />

Wolfgang Wolff Born Aurich, Germany Murdered Auschwitz<br />

Selly Wolff Born Aurich, Germany Murdered Auschwitz<br />

Henrietta Wolff Born Aurich, Germany Murdered Theresienstadt<br />

Rosetta Wolff Born Aurich, Germany Murdered Theresienstadt<br />

Eli Velvel Avisanski Born Lithuania Murdered Lithuania 1941<br />

David Philipp Born Wanne-Eickel, Germany Murdered Stutthoff, Poland 1944 Aged 62 Years<br />

Recha Philipp Born Wanne-Eickel, Germany Murdered Stutthoff, Poland 1944 Aged 54 Years<br />

Leopold Philipp Murdered 1943 Aged 61 Years<br />

Julia Philipp Murdered Riga c. 1942 Aged 61 Years<br />

Dagbert Philipp Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 59 Years<br />

Louis Philipp Minsk, Missing 1941 Aged 50 Years<br />

Valeria Philipp<br />

Rosalia Scheimovitz Born Slovakia Murdered Bergen-Belsen 1945 Aged 76 Years<br />

Julius Mayer Born Slovakia Murdered Buchenwald 1945 Aged 50 Years<br />

Gejza Suri Born Slovakia Murdered Buchenwald 1944 Aged 46 Years<br />

Oskar Scheimovitz Born Slovakia Murdered Buchenwald 1944 Aged 39 Years<br />

Adela Fried Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 45 Years<br />

Bella Fried Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1944<br />

Katerina Fried Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 16 Years<br />

Agnes Fried Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 10 Years<br />

Ezekiel Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Katarina Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Kalmar Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Ilona Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Gita Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Ibi Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Desider Reichental Born Slovakia Murdered Wroclaw 1943 Aged 33 Years<br />

Ferdinand Alt Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Renka Alt Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

19


We Remember...<br />

Erna Elbert Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Marta Elbert Born Slovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Josef Drechsler Born Plzen, Czechoslovakia Murdered Zamosc 1942 Aged 60 Years<br />

Bedriska Drechsler Born Prague, Czechoslovakia Murdered Zamosc 1942 Aged 46 Years<br />

Paul Drechsler Born Plzen, Czechoslovakia Murdered Izbica 1942 Aged 54 Years<br />

Meta Drechsler Born Bzenec, Czechoslovakia Murdered Izbica 1942 Aged 41 Years<br />

Bella Perlberg Born Plzen, Czechoslovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 64 Years<br />

Irma Popper Born Plzen, Czechoslovakia Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Ephraim Nayman Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Uzbekistan 1941 Aged 5 Years<br />

Zvi Nayman Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Uzbekistan 1941 Aged 3 Years<br />

Chaya Zelcer Born Ostrov Mazovyetck, Poland Murdered Poland 1940–41 Aged 50 Years<br />

Israel Zelcer Born Ostrov Mazovyetck, Poland Murdered Poland 1940–41 Aged 50 Years<br />

5 Zelcer Children Born Ostrov Mazovyetck, Poland Murdered Zambrov, Poland 1940–41<br />

Royze Centnershver Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Shendova 1940–41 Aged 45 Years<br />

Moshe Centnershver Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Shendova 1940–41 Aged 45 Years<br />

6 Centnershver Children Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Shendova 1940–41<br />

Fishel Bernholtz Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41 Aged 48 Years<br />

Mrs Bernholtz Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41 Aged 48 Years<br />

Bernholtz Children Born Dlogoshodle, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41<br />

Lable Nayman Born Vishkof, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41 Aged 48 Years<br />

Mrs Nayman Born Vishkof, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41 Aged 48 Years<br />

Nayman Children Born Vishkof, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41<br />

Menachem Nayman Born Vishkof, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41 Aged 42 Years<br />

Mrs Nayman Born Vishkof, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41 Aged 42 Years<br />

Nayman Children Born Vishkof, Poland Murdered Majdanek, Poland 1940–41<br />

Mordechai Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Hendel Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Sara Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Ester Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Uzbekistan 1942 Aged 4 Years<br />

Moshe Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Uzbekistan 1942 Aged 36 Years<br />

Meir Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 36 Years<br />

Regina Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 36 Years<br />

Israel Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 8 Years<br />

Hinda Shteinbock Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 24 Years<br />

Hrtz Hofman Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Chaya Hofman Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Meir Hofman Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Ela Hofman Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 60 Years<br />

Hofman Children Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943<br />

Zelig Hofman Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 35 Years<br />

Mordechai Hofman Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 20 Years<br />

Baruch Gottlieb Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 50 Years<br />

Royze Gottlieb Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943 Aged 50 Years<br />

Gottlieb Children Born Drohobycz, Ukraine Murdered Bronica forest, Ukraine 1943<br />

Racemiel Smaiovitch Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 43 Years<br />

Sara\Frimet Smaiovitch Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 38 Years<br />

Arie\Lyebi Smaiovitch Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 16 Years<br />

Lea\Lycho Smaiovitch Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 13 Years<br />

Rachel\ Rochele Smaiovitch Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 7 Years<br />

Devora Smaiovitch Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 9 Months<br />

Miriam Pollak Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 38 Years<br />

Doyetch Blimi Born Teresva, Czechoslavakia Aged 25 Years<br />

Jure Mataija Born Lika, Croatia Murdered Jasenovac, Croatia 1945 Aged 45 Years<br />

Ivica Mataija Born Lika, Croatia Murdered Jasenovac, Croatia 1945 Aged 24 Years<br />

Ankica Mataija Born Lika, Croatia Murdered Jasenovac, Croatia 1945 Aged 22 Years<br />

Kalman Rosenthal Born Yasina, Ukraine Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 66 Years<br />

Eleonora Rosenthal Born Kuty, Poland Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 62 Years<br />

Abraham Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 63 Years<br />

Polin Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943<br />

David Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 53 Years<br />

Shemon Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 49 Years<br />

Regena Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943<br />

Rapae Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 45 Years<br />

20


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

We Remember...<br />

Marta Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943<br />

Shabtai Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 41 Years<br />

Lusi Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943<br />

Moshe-Yom Tov Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 34 Years<br />

Adela Soustiel Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943<br />

Agedni Soustiel Brudo Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943 Aged 33 Years<br />

Emanuel Brudo Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz<br />

Soustiel Children Born Thessaloniki, Greece Murdered Auschwitz 1943<br />

Heinrich Hainbach Born Czernovitz, Austria Murdered Riga, Latvia 1941 Aged 54 Years<br />

Selma Hainbach Born Wien, Austria Murdered Riga, Latvia 1941 Aged 56 Years<br />

Simcha Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 61 Years<br />

Rivka Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 55 Years<br />

Berel Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941<br />

Zisse Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941<br />

Nachman Zaks<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Chana Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 56 Years<br />

Aaron Zaks<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Chana Sherhai<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Joel Dov Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 40 Years<br />

Bendit Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 38 Years<br />

Leah Tzedak Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 34 Years<br />

Gitel Zaks Born Ritavas, Lithuania Murdered 1941 Aged 34 Years<br />

Shoshana Zaks<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Sheina Zaks<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Masha Zaks<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Rosa Zaks<br />

Born Ritavas, Lithuania<br />

Tyla Feige Fachler Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 47 Years<br />

David Majer Fachler Born Lodz, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 45 Years<br />

Moshe Fachler Born Ostrowye, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 68 Years<br />

Geila Fachler Born 1878 Murdered 1942 Aged 64 Years<br />

Shayndel Milechman Born Ostrowye, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 66 Years<br />

Yechiel Milechman Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 45 Years<br />

Theo Milechman Born Ilza, Poland Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 45 Years<br />

Joseph Milechman Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 41 Years<br />

Peppi Grzyp Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1943 Aged 38 Years<br />

Chaya Milechman Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 35 Years<br />

Yochevet Milechman Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 33 Years<br />

Chaim Meier Milechman Born Ilza, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 28 Years<br />

Noosen Noote Fachler Born Lodz, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 34 Years<br />

Ester Zarke Jakubovich Born Lodz, Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 31 Years<br />

Meeme Alte Milechman Born Poland Murdered 1942 Aged 67 Years<br />

Levi Fachler Born Berlin, Germany Murdered Auschwitz 1944 Aged 36 Years<br />

Izzy Fachler Born Berlin, Germany Murdered Kielce pogrom, Poland 1946 Aged 23 Years<br />

Natan Fachler Born Berlin, Germany Murdered Kielce pogrom, Poland 1946 Aged 21 Years<br />

Johanna Karlsberg Sommer Born Franksich-Crumbach, Germany Murdered Theresienstadt 1942 Aged 55 Years<br />

Emil Sommer Born Germany Murdered Theresienstadt Aged 65 Years<br />

Ettie Steinberg Born Veretski, Czechoslavakia Murdered Auschwitz Aged 28 Years<br />

Leon Gluck Born Paris Murdered Auschwitz Aged 2 Years<br />

Vogtjeck Gluck Murdered Auschwitz 1942<br />

Moshe Tabolicki Born Kartuz Bereze Murdered Bronna Gora, Poland, 1942 Aged 64 Years.<br />

Zahava Tabolitcki Born Zambrow Murdered Bronna Gora, Poland Aged 54 Years<br />

Rakhel Taboliticki Born Kartuz Bereze Murdered in Bronna Gora, Poland 1942 Aged 17 Years<br />

Hatzkel Abram Born Belorussia Murdered Riga Ghetto, Latvia 1941 Aged 51 Years<br />

Belia Abram Born Suwalki, Poland Murdered Riga Ghetto, Latvia 1941 Aged 45 Years<br />

Ossia Joseph Abram Born Riga, Latvia Murdered K.I.A. Battle of Tartu, Estonia 1941 Aged 19 Years<br />

Sigmund Selig Cohn Born Friedland, Krs. Stargard, Germany Murdered Riga-Jungfernhof, 1941 Aged 67 Years<br />

Ida Cohn (g. Wintersberg) Born Wolfhagen, Hess-Nass, Germany Murdered Riga-Jungfernhof, 1941 Aged 66 Years<br />

Heinrich Herbst (g. Wolf) Born Nowy Sacz, Germany Murdered Treblinka, 1942 Aged 64 Years<br />

Karoline Herbst Born Jever, Germany Murdered Treblinka, 1942 Aged 64 Years<br />

Else Zimmak (g. Herbst) Born Oldenburg, Germany Murdered 1942 Aged 27 Years<br />

Denny Zimmak Born Hamburg, Germany Murdered 1942 Aged 9 Months<br />

…We will always remember<br />

21


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day Candle Lighting<br />

It is traditional at <strong>Holocaust</strong> memorial events to light six candles in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the<br />

Shoah. In <strong>Ireland</strong>, we also light candles in memory of all of the other victims of Nazi atrocities.<br />

PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES:<br />

In memory of people with disabilities and disabling conditions who were murdered, starved to death and forcibly sterilised<br />

by doctors and other willing helpers.<br />

Candle-lighters: Deirdre Spain of Inclusion <strong>Ireland</strong>; and John Dolan, CEO of Disability Federation of <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

POLES, SLAVS and ETHNIC MINORITIES:<br />

In memory of millions of Poles and Slavs who were murdered, displaced, and forcibly ‘Aryanised’ by the Nazis; and the<br />

thousands of ethnic minorities who were persecuted, sterilised and murdered.<br />

Candle-lighters: Joanna Rodziewicz and Thabi Madide, writer<br />

GYPSIES (ROMA/SINTI):<br />

In memory of the Romany people of Europe who were rounded up, murdered, displaced and forcibly sterilised by the<br />

Nazis.<br />

Candle-lighters: Cristian Muresan and Fatima Parulea, The Roma Project in Pavee Point<br />

HOMOSEXUALS:<br />

In memory of homosexual men and women who were persecuted and murdered because of their sexual orientation.<br />

Candle-lighters: Patrick Dempsey and Lesley Fitzpatrick of BeLonG To<br />

POLITICAL VICTIMS:<br />

In memory of the political victims of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> - Socialists, Communists, Trade Unionists, Democrats, and other<br />

anti-Nazi organisations.<br />

Candle-lighters: Ben Briscoe, former TD and Lord Mayor of Dublin, and Anne Fay, President of the Irish National<br />

Teachers’ Organisation<br />

CHRISTIAN VICTIMS:<br />

In memory of Christian victims of all denominations including the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were persecuted and murdered<br />

by the Nazis.<br />

Candle-lighters: The Rev Maurice Elliott and Sister Phil Conroy, of the Sisters of Sion<br />

JEWISH VICTIMS<br />

Six candles are dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews, including one-and-a-half million children, who were<br />

annihilated in the <strong>Holocaust</strong> by the Nazis and their collaborators. Jews were murdered in concentration camps and death<br />

camps, Jews perished in the ghettos, Jews died of starvation and disease, Jews were shot in the forests and Jews were<br />

murdered in the streets and in their homes.<br />

Candle-lighters:<br />

Candle-lighters are children or grandchildren of <strong>Holocaust</strong> survivors, second and third generation. All of them lost<br />

countless members of their families who perished in the <strong>Holocaust</strong>.<br />

• Joe Katz, whose mother, Frida, survived Auschwitz<br />

• Sharlette Caplin, whose father, Raphael Urbach, survived Buchenwald and Theresienstadt<br />

• Emma Zinn-Collis, whose father, Zoltan, survived Bergen-Belsen<br />

• Brenda Borchardt, whose grandparents Hatzkel Abram and Belia Abram and other family members perished<br />

• Mary Drechsler, whose grandparents Josef Drechsler and Bedriska Drechsler and other family members perished<br />

• Mark Hainbach, whose grandparents, Heinrich Hainbach and Selma Hainbach and other family members<br />

perished in the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

22


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day 2013<br />

The only public <strong>Holocaust</strong> memorial monument in <strong>Ireland</strong> was unveiled in<br />

The Garden of Europe in Listowel Co Kerry in May 1995.<br />

The occasion marked fifty years since the end of World War ll<br />

when the horrors of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> were revealed.<br />

Paddy Fitzgibbon, of the Rotary Club of Listowel, made a very moving speech on that occassion;<br />

an excerpt is printed below:<br />

Our generation, and the generation or two after us, will be the last that will be able to say<br />

that we stood and shook the hands of some of those who survived.<br />

Go home from this place and tell your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren<br />

that today in Listowel, you looked into eyes that witnessed the most cataclysmic events<br />

ever unleashed by mankind upon mankind.<br />

Tell them that you met people who will still be remembered and still talked about<br />

and still wept over 10,000 years from now – because if they are not, there will be no hope for us at all.<br />

The <strong>Holocaust</strong> happened and it can happen again, and every one of us,<br />

if only out of our own sense of self-preservation,<br />

has a solemn duty to ensure that nothing like it ever occurs again.<br />

23


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day<br />

REFERENCES and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />

HONOURED GUESTS<br />

Suzi Diamond – Bergen-Belsen<br />

Jan Kaminski – Bilgoraj, Poland<br />

Inge Radford – Vienna<br />

Tomi Reichental – Bergen-Belsen<br />

Doris Segal – Sudetenland<br />

BIBLIOGRAPHY<br />

A Hole in the Heart of the World, by Jonathan Kaufman, Penguin Books, 1997<br />

Histories of the <strong>Holocaust</strong>, by Dan Stone, Oxford University Press, 2010<br />

Enclycopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the <strong>Holocaust</strong>, by Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, New York University Press 2001<br />

If this is a Man. The Truce, by Primo Levi, Penguin books, 1979, reprinted 2005<br />

The End, Germany 1944-45, by Ian Kershaw, Penguin Books, 2011<br />

The Gossamer Wall, Poems in Witness to the <strong>Holocaust</strong>, by Micheal O’Siadhail, Bloodaxe Books, 2002<br />

The Hare with Amber Eyes. A Hidden Inheritance, by Edmund de Waal, Chatto & Windus London, 2010<br />

The Third Reich at War, how the Nazis led Germany from conquest to disaster, by Richard J. Evans, Penguin Books, 2008<br />

The Legacies of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> in Europe after 1989, by Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, Danish Institute of International Studies, DIIS working paper 2009:36<br />

Front cover image, Tisa Van der Schulenburg<br />

Auschwitz-Birkenau, Gate-tower and Ramp, courtesy Panstwowe Muzeum,<br />

Auchwitz Birkenau, Poland<br />

Avoid Jewish doctors and lawyers, Imperial War Museum<br />

Belzec planted with grasslands, Chris Schwartz, Galicia Jewish Museum<br />

Death March, KZ-Gedenkstädte Dachau, Germany<br />

Displaced Persons baking daily bread, Germany, 1946,CHGS<br />

Einsatzgruppen in action, Imperial War Museum<br />

Entrance to park forbidden, Yad Vashem<br />

Haggada in Gurs transit camp, Yad Vashem<br />

Jesse Owens, USHMM<br />

Jews forced to scrub the streets after the Anschluss, Vienna 1938<br />

Jews not allowed, Yad Vashem<br />

Jewish partisans in forest, Yad Vashem<br />

Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna, Austria<br />

Kindertransport child, Yad Vashem<br />

IMAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS and ILLUSTRATIONS<br />

Map of Europe showing Nazi domination, c.1942, USHMM<br />

Map of Europe showing number of Jews murdered, Atlas of the <strong>Holocaust</strong> by<br />

Michael Gilbert, Routledge<br />

Mary Elmes, courtesy Elmes family<br />

Mauthausen prisoner orchestra, Encyclopedia of the <strong>Holocaust</strong>, Yad Vashem<br />

Park bench ‘Not for Jews’, Hulton Archive, Getty images<br />

Political Prisoners being arrested, USHMM<br />

Polish prisoner, Flossenbürg, USHMM<br />

Righteous Certificate, Yad Vashem<br />

‘Sharing the load!’, reproduced in a biology textbook by Jakob Graf USHMM<br />

Shoes in Auschwitz, courtesy Riva Neuman<br />

Slave labour, National archives, Washington<br />

Tattooed arms, Getty Images<br />

Torched synagogue, Yad Vashem<br />

Wannsee List, Yad Vashem<br />

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />

The committee wishes to acknowledge the co-operation of:<br />

The Department of Justice and Equality<br />

The Lord Mayor of Dublin and Dublin City Council<br />

FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS and GRANTS<br />

The commemoration was made possible through the generosity of:<br />

The Department of Justice and Equality<br />

Dublin City Council<br />

The Dublin Maccabi Charitable <strong>Trust</strong><br />

The Jewish Representative Council of <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

The Sisters of Sion<br />

The Council for Christians and Jews<br />

Private donations<br />

MASTER of CEREMONIES: Yanky Fachler<br />

Music: Lynda Lee, soprano; Dermot Dunne, accordion<br />

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY COMMITTEE:<br />

Debbie Briscoe, Oliver Donohoe, Clement Esebanen, Yanky Fachler, Chris Donohoe-Harbidge, Lynn Jackson, Estelle Menton, Marilyn Taylor<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong>: Tel: 00 353 1 6690593 Email: info@hetireland.org<br />

www.hetireland.org<br />

BOOKLET<br />

Writing & Research: Lynn Jackson Proofreader: Léan Ní Chuilleanáin<br />

Printing: Print Bureau, Inchicore, Dublin 8 Design: Siobhan O’Reilly, Print Bureau<br />

24<br />

©2013 <strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong>. All rights reserved.<br />

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing.


<strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day<br />

The <strong>Holocaust</strong> Memorial Day commemoration is designed to cherish the memory<br />

of all of the victims of the Nazi <strong>Holocaust</strong>.<br />

A candle-lighting ceremony is an integral part of the commemoration<br />

at which six candles are always lit for the six million Jews who perished,<br />

as well as candles for all of the other victims.<br />

The commemoration serves as a constant reminder of the dangers of racism and intolerance<br />

and provides lessons from the past that are relevant today.<br />

Summary of the Declaration of the<br />

Stockholm International Forum on the <strong>Holocaust</strong><br />

Issued in January 2000, on the 55th anniversary of the liberation<br />

of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945,<br />

and endorsed by all participating countries, including <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

We, the governments attending the Stockholm International Forum on the <strong>Holocaust</strong>,<br />

recognise that the <strong>Holocaust</strong> was a tragically defining episode of the 20th century, a<br />

crisis for European civilisation and a universal catastrophe for humanity. In declaring<br />

that the <strong>Holocaust</strong> fundamentally challenged the foundations of civilisation, we share a<br />

commitment to commemorate the victims of the <strong>Holocaust</strong>, and to honour those who<br />

stood against it. The horrors that engulfed the Jewish people and other victims of the<br />

Nazis must forever be seared in our collective memory. With humanity still scarred by<br />

genocide, antisemitism, ethnic cleansing, racism, xenophobia and other expressions of<br />

hatred and discrimination, we share a solemn responsibility to fight against these evils.<br />

Together with our European partners and the wider international community, we share<br />

a commitment to remember the victims who perished, to respect the survivors still with<br />

us, and to reaffirm humanity’s common aspiration for a democratic and tolerant society,<br />

free of the evils of prejudice and other forms of bigotry.


Dublin<br />

January 2013<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong><br />

Clifton House, Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2.<br />

Telephone: +353-1-669 0593 Email: info@hetireland.org www.hetireland.org<br />

© 2013 <strong>Holocaust</strong> <strong>Education</strong> <strong>Trust</strong> <strong>Ireland</strong>. All rights reserved.<br />

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!