Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. “Don’t be content in your life just to do no wrong, be prepared every day to try and do some good” – Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 children from Nazi-occupied Europe. The theme for HMD 2020 is Stand Together. Throughout centuries of… Continue reading Holocaust Memorial Day 2020
Greatest Danger
The greatest danger any civilisation faces is when it suffers collective amnesia. We forget how small beginnings lead to truly terrible endings. A thousand years of Jewish history in Europe added certain words to the human vocabulary: Forced conversion, inquisition, expulsion, ghetto, pogrom, Holocaust. They happened because hate went unchecked. No one said stop. It… Continue reading Greatest Danger
Righteous Among Nations
חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם Righteous Among the Nations ((Hebrew translation is above) Hebrew transliteration: khasidei umót ha'olám) is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. The term originates with the concept of "righteous gentiles", a term… Continue reading Righteous Among Nations
Holocaust Memorial Day 2018
On Holocaust Memorial Day, don’t remember them as just 6 million Jews. The Nazis took their names and identities so we should remember them as 6 million individuals, each with their own story.
Kristallnacht
Early Nazi Persecution In the 1920s, most German Jews were fully integrated into German society as German citizens. They served in the German army and navy and contributed to every field of German business, science and culture. Conditions for the Jews began to change after the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on… Continue reading Kristallnacht
Anti-Semitic Timeline – 1933-1945
I know I haven't posted in a while, I've been focusing on my work and I've also been working on a big article in the background. For now though, I'm finding some filler to put on here in the meantime. 1933 January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Von Hindenburg. March 22:… Continue reading Anti-Semitic Timeline – 1933-1945
The Eichmann Trial
Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to a lieutenant colonel) and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. Eichmann was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer (general/lieutenant general) Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. In… Continue reading The Eichmann Trial
The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath
“So for us even the hour of liberty rang out grave and muffled, and filled our souls with joy and yet with a painful sense of shame… and also with anguish, because we felt that this should never happen, that now nothing could ever happen good and pure enough to rub out our past, and… Continue reading The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath
The Fate of the Jews Across Europe
Only about 10% of Polish Jewry survived the Holocaust, the majority in the Soviet Union. The fate of the Jews of Western Europe varied depending upon the country. In some of the country’s, most of the Jews survived (in Italy and France about 25% of the Jews perished), in other countries the Jewish population was… Continue reading The Fate of the Jews Across Europe
Rescue
"In those times, there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude either of complicity or of indifference. Only a few had the courage to care. These few men and women… Continue reading Rescue