19505_HMD_Cover:Layout 1 - Holocaust Education Trust Ireland
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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.