Holocaust

27 January is the international day of remembrance of the murder of the Jews by the German Nazis, because in 1945 the armies of the Soviet Union entered on that day the wretched camp 'Auschwitz-Birkenau', a concentration and extermination camp in Poland. In the history of humanity many tragedies have happened, but none as great as this one: a systematic murder, organized by a state, exterminating six million Jews — men, women, children — only because they were Jews, and millions more because they were Gypsies, homosexuals, or without intellectual or physical capacity. The murder was accepted not only by that state but also by the nations that collaborated with it.

The Germans called this murder 'the Final Solution of the Jewish question'. We call it the 'Holocaust' or the 'Shoah', a word used after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in the 6th century before our era, and the second destruction of the Beit ha-Mikdash in the year 70 of our era by the Romans. The word Holocaust comes from the Greek 'holokauston', which means the burnt sacrifice offered to God — like the dead bodies of the Jews consumed in the crematorium ovens. The word holocaust has the same root as the word 'hypocaust', which means the furnace that gives the hot air of the Roman bath.

When the Russians entered the camp they found 7,000 prisoners who had managed to survive the hell they had lived through there. Of course the word 'Holocaust' or 'Shoah' does not come from this camp alone, because more than five million Jews were killed in other ways — hunger, mistreatment, and saddest of all, mass killing with weapons in this war of Hitler's madness. So 27 January 1945 was accepted as the day of commemoration of the Shoah by Resolution 60/7 of the General Assembly of the United Nations; according to that resolution, the nations must teach the Holocaust so that it cannot be repeated in the future.

Most nations observe this day as a day of remembrance, but Israel and the Jews of the diaspora observe it on 'Yom HaZikaron', which comes before 'Yom HaAtzmaut'. For us it remains to say, for ever: 'NEVER AGAIN'.