March of the Living

Some 10,000 Jews from all over the world finished making their way from Auschwitz to Birkenau in this year's March of the Living. Ceremonies at Birkenau, led by Nobel laureate Shimon Peres, began at 4 p.m. Israel time (3 p.m. in Poland.)

At the end of the march, participants sang the Hatikva, Israel's national anthem.

Before the march's start, hundreds of youths carrying Israeli flags spent the morning wandering among the wooden barracks and barbed wire of the sprawling Birkenau camp, and visited the museum housed at the smaller Auschwitz camp nearby.

Among those taking part was Diana Katz, a 23-year-old history teacher from Jerusalem, whose grandmother, Lubia Tanenbaum, survived the camp after arriving as a 14-year-old from Hungary.

"I am here with my son to show the evil people in the world that we are here, that we are alive, that we want to live and we want future generations to live," Katz said as she pushed the baby carriage holding her three-month old son, Joseph. "We will not forget, and we have won."

Meanwhile, in Israel, a two-minute siren marked the start of a nationwide day of commemoration for Holocaust victims.

Names were read at Yad Vashem and during the Knesset memorial ceremony "Every Person Has a Name," in the presence of Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other dignitaries.

Holocaust Remembrance Day began Monday evening with a state ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

The hour-long event, which was broadcast live on television and radio, was attended by Olmert, President Moshe Katsav, and dozens of dignitaries and ambassadors from around the world.

The theme of this year's ceremony - coming at a time when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a myth - is "The Human Spirit in the Shadow of Death."

From: Jerusalem Post

"The World Must Not Ignore Calls for the Destruction of the State of Israel"

The world must not ignore current calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, Israeli President Moshe Katsav said Monday at the opening ceremony for the country's annual memorial day for the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Without mentioning Iran by name, Katsav said, "I call on the Western world not to stand silently in the face of the nations that are trying to acquire nuclear weapons and preach for the destruction of the state of Israel."

Iran's president has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, and Iran is widely believed to be trying to manufacture atomic bombs.

The ceremony, at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, included dramatic readings and musical presentations.

In a brief address, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would always carry the memory of the murder of millions of Jews.

Speaking from a podium, an honor guard of Israeli soldiers standing at parade rest next to him, Olmert said, "Israel has the ability to defend itself, but it calls on the civilized world to guard the light and the liberty, to defend the values of justice and the dignity of man."

Though six decades have passed, the Holocaust continues to be a central part of Israel's culture. About 280,000 survivors of the Holocaust live in Israel today, according to researchers.

On Tuesday, air raid sirens will sound midmorning, signaling a two-minute period of silence in memory of the victims, when cars stop on the streets and drivers stand respectfully next to them. At the Israeli parliament and other locations around the country, volunteers will read the names of the victims, a way of dealing with the concept of the overwhelming number of people who were put to death.

Restaurants, movie theaters and other places of entertainment were to be closed throughout the day.

The ceremony Monday evening began with lowering the Israeli flag to half staff in a sign of mourning.

Hundreds of people sat quietly in the outdoor plaza of Yad Vashem on a cool, windy Jerusalem night, groups of soldiers in uniform next to Holocaust survivors and their families, and a few tourists listening to translations of the Hebrew proceedings on earphone receivers.

Six Holocaust survivors briefly told their stories and lit ceremonial torches in memory of the victims.

"In another generation, no survivors will be left as witnesses to the horror of the Holocaust, only the timeless records," Katsav said, appealing for renewed efforts to ensure the memory. "We must see to it that every generation feels that it was rescued from the fires of the Holocaust," he said, paraphrasing a central concept of the just-finished Jewish holiday of Passover, which marks the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Yom Ha Shoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

The Twenty-fifth of April marks Yom Ha Shoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. I originally started this website out of increasing frustration with individuals that I was encountering online, who repeatedly questioned the historical accuracy of the murder of more than 12 million individuals (six milion Jews, and six million Gypsies, homosexuals, and political dissidents) by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime during the World War 2 Era. My initial thought was that I could simply gather all the most incriminating images together in one place, and offer a link that Holocaust-deniers could then be directed to, as a refutation of their claims.

My thoughts on the use of this website have not changed--nor have my plans. As a writer and teacher, I am continually beseiged by various projects, and though I have not had time recently to work much in the direction I have wanted with this website (I do not consider it, in the typical sense, a "blog"), I am planning on continuing to archive as many images as I can scan from as many sources as I can find; as well as continuing to write articles, from time to time.

Although I find myself at a cultural loss to fully-understand the implications of the Holocaust on the one ethnic group most obviously affected by the horrors perpetrated during those six years of murder, I have found in my study of the subject (no matter how informal) that the horror of the Holocaust, to quote Roberto Bennigni, "...belongs to the world." No living human being can hope to appreciate what it means to be a citizen of this new century without first coming to terms with the darkest chapter of the last, and though many will try to deny this assertion, or lessen the impact or import on this singular act of genocide, it will continue to resonate as one of the most important and universal human events in all of recorded history.

Since there are not words that I can adequately use to convey in furtherance of Yom HaShoah, I believe that to write much more at this time would be straining prudence and tact. Suffice it to say, in light of the decades of murder and the genocides that have been allowed to occur in the wake of this awesome human tragedy, the only sentiments I can muster to truly convey my own position, and the position of what, I believe, every moral, sentient human being walking the face of the earth should be, are: NEVER AGAIN.

"...The wrongs we seek to condemn and punish have been so cultivated, so malignant and so devestating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."--Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal

(Below I have posted the lyrics to Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, or Jerusalem of Gold , with a few photos that, I , personally, had not yet seen. In future, once my ability to scan photos is restored, this blog will be updated more regularly. If you have never heard this song, I think that it must count as one of the most beautiful, and moving pieces of music ever written.)

Verse 1

Avir harim tsalul k'yayin
Vereiyach oranim
Nissah beru'ach ha'arbayim
Im kol pa'amonim.

U'vtardemat ilan va'even
Shvuyah bachalomah
Ha'ir asher badad yoshevet
Uvelibah - chomah. Verse 1

The mountain air is clear as water
The scent of pines around
Is carried on the breeze of twilight,
And tinkling bells resound.

The trees and stones there softly slumber,
A dream enfolds them all.
So solitary lies the city,
And at its heart -- a wall.


The gates of Auschwitz, as photographed in 1981.

Chorus:
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Veshel nechoshet veshel or
Halo lechol shirayich Ani kinor.
x2 Chorus:
Oh, Jerusalem of gold,
and of light and of bronze,
I am the lute for all your songs.
x2

Jews captured after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are herded away for deportation.

Verse 2

Chazarnu el borot hamayim
Lashuk velakikar
Shofar koreh behar habayit
ba'ir ha'atikah.

Uvme'arot asher baselah
Alfei shmashot zorchot
Nashuv nered el Yam Hemalach
B'derech Yericho
Verse 2

The wells are filled again with water,
The square with joyous crowd,
On the Temple Mount within the City,
The shofar rings out loud.

Within the caverns in the mountains
A thousand suns will glow,
We'll take the Dead Sea road together,
That runs through Jericho.

Chorus:
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Veshel nechoshet veshel or
Halo lechol shirayich Ani kinor.
x2 Chorus:
Oh, Jerusalem of gold,
and of light and of bronze,
I am the lute for all your songs.
x2

Female corpses piled in Block 11; Auschwitz, 1945.

Verse 3

Ach bevo'i hayom lashir lach
Velach likshor k'tarim
Katonti mitse'ir bana'ich
Ume achron ham'shorerim.


Ki shmech tsorev et hasfatayim
Keneshikat saraf
Im eshkachech Yerushalayim
Asher kulah zahav. Verse 3

But as I sing to you, my city,
And you with crowns adorn,
I am the least of all your children,
Of all the poets born.


Sorting the shoes of the victims.

Your name will scorch my lips for ever,
Like a seraph's kiss, I'm told,
If I forget thee, golden city,
Jerusalem of gold.

Chorus:
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Veshel nechoshet veshel or
Halo lechol shirayich Ani kinor.
x2 Chorus:
Oh, Jerusalem of gold,
and of light and of bronze,
I am the lute for all your songs.
x2

Survivors at Mathausen Concentration Camp counting the dead after liberation--1945.

American soldiers force Hitler Youth members to examine death train with corpses.

Examining corpses at Dachau Concentration Camp.

THE IMAGES AND INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS WEBSITE GIVE TESTAMENT TO THE CORRUPTION OF HUMAN HATE, AND THE END RESULT OF MORAL INDIFFERENCE. THAT THE ACTIONS AND EVENTS DOCUMENTED IN THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT SIMPLY THE REMINDERS OF THE BARBARIC ACTIONS THAT WERE PERPETRATED BY A MURDEROUS REGIME OF SIX DECADES AGO, BUT HAVE OCCURED AND CONTINUE IN PLACES SUCH AS CAMBODIA, KOSOVO, AND DARFUR, IS A REMINDER THAT WE AS HUMAN BEINGS MUST BE EVER-VIGILANT IN THE FACE OF RACISM AND ETHNIC INTOLERANCE. PERHAPS, ONE DAY, WE WILL BE ABLE TO TRULY SAY, "NEVER AGAIN".