Holocaust (Sho'ah in Hebrew) is the name given to the twelve-year period in which the Nazis implemented their schemes to exterminate European Jewry. Beginning in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, millions of Jews were subjected to humiliation, discrimination, slave labor, torture and death. The Nazis and their collaborators in other countries hunted down every Jew - from the prominent professional to the lowly laborer - in their relentless pursuit of the ultimate "solution" to the "Jewish question".

 

At first, Jewish businesses were boycotted and vandalized, books by Jewish authors were publicly burnt and all Jews were dismissed from public positions. In 1935, the so-called Nuremberg Laws were enacted, which deprived Jews of their citizenship and forbade marriage to "German citizens". This was the beginning of the systematic campaign of persecution of Jews, sanctioned by law.

 

The Jews in Germany were bewildered and frightened. Some chose to leave, and emigrated to the United States, the Iberian Peninsula and British Mandatory Palestine. But the majority stayed in Germany, hoping that the "madness" would pass, or at least not increase in its severity. There was no public expression of disapproval of Nazi policies - not by German citizens, church leaders or foreign powers - and this deafening silence brought to the surface the deep-rooted anti-Semitism prevalent in Europe.

 

By the time Germany marched into Poland in 1939 and World War II began, all Jewish property in areas under Nazi control (including Austria and Czechoslovakia) had been confiscated and Jews herded into ghettos and labor camps. As the German Army advanced into the Balkans and the Soviet Union, Nazi SS squads (Einsatzgruppen) annihilated the Jewish population of whole towns and villages, and transported many thousands to concentration camps.

In 1942, following the notorious Wannsee Conference, implementation of the "Final Solution" began in Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau and other concentration camps. As trainloads of Jews arrived from all over Europe, many were gassed to death in specially designed chambers (disguised as shower facilities), or shot by firing squad. The rest were forced to work under the most terrible conditions, which ultimately led to death by starvation or execution. In this way, an estimated six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered during the Holocaust. Some 500,000 Gypsies, mentally ill, homosexuals and other "undesirables" were also exterminated by the Nazis in Europe in this period.

 

The effect on survivors of these abominable acts of persecution are unimaginable; but even in the face of certain death, unbelievable acts of heroism were performed. In the ghettos and camps resistance groups were organized, and Jews also joined partisans in the forests; they fought valiantly, but only a few survived. Individual gentiles risked their lives by hiding Jewish children and even whole families, or helping them to obtain "documents" for escape. Jewish parachutists from Palestine were dropped in Nazi-occupied Europe to help organize escape routes, but many of them were caught and executed.

 

The harrowing testimonies of Holocaust survivors are expressed in every form - verbal, written and artistic. Details of relatives and friends who perished, educational programs in schools and universities, museums and national Holocaust remembrance days continue to inform and answer questions about this terrible period in modern history. Now, more than fifty years after the events of the Holocaust, it is incumbent on us to remember - never to forget.