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𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘆 - 𝗔𝗺𝗯𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗿'𝘀 𝗢𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗸 𝗙𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. It is a number too big for us to grasp. Entire families and communities were eradicated between 1939 and 1945. Parents, children, grandparents and grandchildren, without a single relative, that could have at least carried their memory. Towns, villages and
neighborhoods. Once full of life, that became empty and silent. This loss is disastrous not only for the Jewish people, but also for the whole world.
I would like to share with you a story of one community and one family.
The story of the Anolik family in the town of Vilkomir, in Lithuania.
Lithuania was an independent country from the end of World War I until June 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied it. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Nazis took control of Lithuania in July 1941.
In that year, about 250,000 Jews lived in Lithuania.
By the end of August 1941, most Jews in rural Lithuania had been shot. Thousands of ordinary Lithuanians were complicits of the Nazis in the murder of their Jewish neighbors.
The Anolik family lived in a county town called Vilkomir northwest of Vilnius (today Ukmerge).
Zeev Alter Anolik, the son of Moshe and Shtirl was a merchant. He was born in 1886.
His wife, Sarah (Surel), daughter of Shlomo and Mina Tishman , was born in 1891.
The couple had 8 children. Three sons: Moshe, Baruch, Isaac and five daughters: Shoshana Raizel, Hanna, Pnina Pesl, Simcha and Mina.
In the 1930s Moshe and Hanna immigrated to Canada (Hanna immigrated to Israel after the establishment of the State); Baruch and Isaac moved to pre-state Israel. Isaac (Yitzhak), born in 1916, is my grandfather. The rest of the family stayed in Lithuania.
On June 26, 1941, the Nazis entered Vilkomir. About 8,000 Jews lived in the town at the time.
Within three months, there was not a single Jew left alive in the town.
Jews from the area of Vilkomir and its surroundings - including Zeev and Sarah Anolik and their four daughters - Shoshana (29 years old), Pnina (21 years old), Simcha (17 years old) and Mina (10 years old) - were murdered en masse in Pivonija forrest, near the town. The Nazis with the help of members of the local Lithuanian population marched the Jews to the killing site, ordered them to stand in a ditch and then shot them.
Try to imagine the horror. Had those people known they were taken to their death? Have they had any hope to survive? What did the parents tell their children when asked where they were going to? At what point had it become clear to them they will not live to see another day? What were their thoughts in these moments?
Ninety four (94) percent of 250,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania before the WWII, perished during the Holocaust- one of the highest victim rates in Europe.
Luckily for me, my grandfather, Isaac Anolik, who was a devout Zionist, left his home and family six years earlier and made his way to the Holy Land. Otherwise, I would not have been here today.
It is our duty to remember the Holocaust.
We need to remember those who perished and remember what brought about this human tragedy.
It is a human tragedy not only because of the human losses.
It is a human tragedy also because it is human-made.
It was caused by human beings, who stopped seeing other human beings as such.
Remembering it is the first step in preventing it from ever occurring again.
May the memory of all those perished, be blessed.