The Shoah, or Holocaust, was the Nazi Party’s attempt to execute the Jewish people of Europe en masse. Six million Jews were murdered, along with other minority groups. The Holocaust is a reminder of unimaginable suffering and death and is commemorated on Yom HaShoah and Holocaust Remembrance Day. The promise of “Never Again” has not been kept with subsequent genocides. Some deny the Holocaust, making it difficult for modern Jews to remember.
The Shoah is another word for the Holocaust. It comes from the Hebrew and literally means catastrophic upheaval. The Holocaust, or Shoah, refers to the Nazi Party’s attempt in the late 1930s and early 1940s to execute the Jewish people of Europe en masse. Included in this genocide was the murder of other minority groups such as homosexuals and political dissidents, but the real focus of Hitler’s “Final Solution” was the Jews. About six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, mostly en masse in gas chambers.
The Holocaust is the culmination of centuries of misleading and hate-based thinking about Jews. The Egyptians enslaved the Jews and then the Romans. They were scattered to the winds of every European country, then successively driven out of these countries. When so many Jews settled in Germany, Poland, and Austria, the aftermath during World War II was frighteningly horrific.
Occupying an extremely important place in Jewish history, the Holocaust is not only a reminder of unimaginable suffering and death, but also the impetus for the development of a Jewish state. After the Holocaust, many Jews became more interested in creating a homeland from which they could not be persecuted or driven out.
The effects of the Holocaust are still felt strongly by the few remaining survivors, the families of victims and survivors, and others. In Israel, the United States, and other countries around the world, Jews and non-Jews formally observe the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah, or Remembrance Day. Often on Yom HaShoah the names of the victims are read aloud throughout the day to try to figure out how many lives have been lost. Candles are often lit, poetry is read, lectures are given, and Holocaust survivors are often invited to tell their stories. Yom HaShoah, or Remembrance Day, is held on the 27th day of Nissan according to the Jewish calendar. In the Western calendar, it typically falls on a day in late April or early May.
In addition, on November 1, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day. Some also participate in the annual “March of the Living,” a vigil held in Auschwitz, the main Nazi extermination camp located in Poland.
The reason for these commemoration days and activities is to remember the victims and to prevent such atrocities from happening again. The promise of “Never Again” was made after the holocaust. But with genocides subsequently occurring in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, some say the international community has not kept that promise. Others however argue that those genocides did not reach the levels of the Holocaust.
It is especially difficult for the modern Jew and others in these times to remember the Holocaust while battling the indifference and sometimes outright denial of the Holocaust by some. Some people with anti-Jewish beliefs argue that far fewer than six million were killed, stating that the figure is somewhere in the one million mark. Others emphatically declare that the Holocaust never happened.
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