Holocaust Remembrance Day

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January, is the United Nations international memorial day for the victims of the Holocaust, the genocide that resulted in the annihilation of 6 million Jews, 2 million Gypsies (Roma and Sinti) and millions of others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It was designated by United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on November 2005. On 27 January 1945, the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated by Soviet troops. This year, 60 members of the Israeli Knesset, including four ministers and four deputy ministers, are in Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Knesset delegation, as well as hundreds of Israelis and Jewish politicians from around the world, were in Poland early Monday morning for a joint Israeli-Polish ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The chairman of the Likud Coalition, Yariv Levin, and Labor opposition leader Isaac Herzog led the delegation. “Seven decades after millions of members of our nation were cruelly murdered by the Nazis, it is my privilege and responsibility to lead the largest delegation of the Knesset, the parliament of the independent Jewish state, to the valley of death of Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Levin said Sunday. “We will reach the gates of this horrible place with survivors who went through the inferno, in order to honor the memory of the victims and say clearly : " 'Am Yisrael Hai' [the people of Israel live].” Herzog added that “there are no words to describe the powerful feelings we have in expressing the spirit and opinions of our democracy. We are going to remember, to remind, to learn and teach, to light a candle in memory and say a prayer.” Other delegations include European Members of Parliament, the Israel Jewish Congress, the European Friends of Israel, a US delegation led by House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Canadian Minister for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney. The event was created by Jonny Daniels, founder and executive-director of From The Depths (FTD), an organization whose mission is to bring lessons of the past to future generations by helping Holocaust survivors and preserving Jewish sites in Poland. The Israeli delegation will tour the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp on Monday, before participating in the Polish government’s annual ceremony in Auschwitz. Then the group will walk to Birkenau where the traditional kaddish and El Malei Rahamim Jewish prayers will be recited. Later, an inter-parliamentary gathering will take place in Krakow, led by Levin and Deputy Polish Parliamentary Speaker Cezary Grabarczyk and featuring one-minute speeches by lawmakers from Israel, Poland, the US, Canada and other countries. Afterward, the Israeli delegation, Polish lawmakers and most of the other visiting legislators will take part in a dinner sponsored by FTD and the World Zionist Organization, featuring performances by renowned opera singer Andrea Bocelli and Israeli singer Amir Benayoun, with the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Israeli conductor Rafi Bitton. Daniels said, “Members of the Knesset don’t yet realize how impactful this will be. Visiting Auschwitz is a life-changing experience and this is the first time for many of them. You can read [about the Holocaust], but being in Auschwitz with survivors is truly remarkable. It’s an historic event.” The FTD founder noted the subzero temperatures in Poland, saying one survivor called it “Auschwitz weather.” “If we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes for one second, I reached my goal. If we in our coats will be freezing, imagine how they felt in their pajamas,” Daniels added. Rudolf Steinbach, an Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoner who spoke at today's ceremony, said : “The Nazis brought me here to Auschwitz on March 13, 1943. It was here that they tattooed prisoner number Z-2201 on me, and it was here that I lost my whole family. Of my entire family, I was the only one to emerge alive from this hell. I never even go to the cemetery, because the graves of my loved ones are not there. That is why I come here to Auschwitz, because just here, in this enormous cemetery, lie the remains of my parents and siblings. Together, we must take care to ensure that what happened here is never forgotten.” The Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Dr. Piotr sM.A. Cywiński, appealed for the memory of the victims to be honored in an individual way. “A great challenge stands before us all. We should not permit this period, this extermination, to continue to be so little known. Remembrance must find a point of reference for our own responsibility today, which is not exclusively an institutional responsibility.” In her remarks, Polish Minister Elżbieta Radziszewska warned that no representatives of any ethnic group in any country or territory should ever again do what was once done in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, Bełżec, the Gypsy ghettos -- places where the Nazis carried out their exterminations. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the horrific events of the Holocaust are taught around the world through movies, history books, and compelling accounts, such as The Diary of Anne Frank. Here are some facts you can share to remember the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau and those elsewhere in eastern Europe in 1945. **The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers. **The term "Holocaust," originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means"sacrifice by fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. **"Shoah," a Hebrew word which means "devastation, ruin, or waste," is also used for this genocide. **In addition to Jews, the Nazis sent to camps and often exterminated Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered. **The term "Nazi" is an acronym for"Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party"). **The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people. **It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews. The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe. **An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. **But, think about this fact - when the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto on April 13, 1943, the remaining Jews, starved, wracked with disease and possessing armamentts far inferior to those of the Nazis, fought back in what has become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jewish resistance fighters held out against the entire Nazi regime for 28 days -- longer than many European countries had been able to withstand Nazi conquest. ~~~~~ And, while it iis useful to remind mankind of other massive, state-led slaughters - Armenia, the USSR, Cambodia, Rwanda, even Syria - there is one thing that makes the Holocaust unique. It was the most extreme expression of a deep-seated European anti-Semitism stretching from Russia to France across every page of European history. Anti-Semitism that all...all...European governments still monitor and suppress. The Jews are a fragile, peaceable people whose religion has singled them out -- God's "chosen people " -- and who have been envied and persecuted because of this role thrust upon them by God. Anti-Semitism. It is we, the world of non-Jews, who bear the real mark of the Holocaust. It is we who must learn the lesson. It is we who must cleanse ourselves of the taint. Ariel Sharon said it best : "The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered...This is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust and this is the lesson which Auschwitz taught us." Anti-Semitism. The Holocaust. Never Again.