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A Shabbat Memory
By the Grossman sisters, Esther and Iren (Goldie), Hungary
Shabbat in our home was beautiful. Our father used to sit with the children and read to us from the Tanach (Old Testament). He went to shul every day. Our mother went for Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of the new month) and Rosh Hashana (the New Year). Girls didn't really go to shul in those days, other than to visit their parents. Even the non-religious men went to shul every Shabbat.
The shul was unbelievably beautiful. The ceiling had angels and stars, and was painted with pure gold. The women sat in the balcony. There was a smaller shul in the Beis Medrash (chapel) for the more religious people. Father was head of the Chevra Kadisha (burial society) and at one time, he was the president of the shul.
On Friday night, our father would bless all of us with the traditional priestly blessing. We would all line up, kiss his face, and when we got older we kissed his hands.
May G-d bless you and guard you
May G-d make His face shed light upon you and be gracious unto you
May G-d lift up His face unto you and give you peace
On Shabbat, we had wonderful meals. There was an appetizer, chicken fricassee or cooked fish, followed by soup, of course. We always had poultry or meat. When our mother went to the shochet (ritual slaughterer), she made sure there was food for the poor people. Our mother made delicious farfel, and cakes for dessert. For Shabbat lunch, we had cold food and cholent. There was no eruv (ritual enclosure that allows carrying on the Sabbath), so the maid carried the cholent home from the bakery. For Shalas Seudos (the third Sabbath meal), we would have strawberries and cottage cheese. The table was always covered with a beautiful white tablecloth.
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EDUCATION INFORMATION
THE GHETTOS WERE HITLER'S TEMPORARY SOLUTION TO THE JEWISH PROBLEM
- 800 ghettos were established throughout Eastern Europe.
- Larger ghettos were built along railway lines.
- Ghettos were transition areas, collection points for deportation to concentration camps and to death camps.
- Ghettos were isolated, sealed-off areas with brick or stone walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire.
- Conditions were miserable in the ghettos (filth, poor sanitation, overcrowding, no heat, no food).
- Starvation and disease killed most of the people; it was called, "Clean Violence."
- Secret religious practices, observances, and schooling provided a sense of dignity.
- Judenrat (Jewish Councils) were established within the ghettos to manage daily life and carry out German orders.
- Liquidation and deportation to camps was disguised as resettlement.
- Some people escaped and joined Partisans in the forests.
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Children of the Holocaust
The plight of the children was immediately realized when the Nazis came to power. How parents would save their children from the worst imaginable fear was uppermost in their minds. They understood the only possible hope was a parting. But, it took an incredible amount of courage and strength for parents to separate themselves from their children.
As time went on and conditions became worse for the Jewish people, many children were put into various hiding places. Some of the hidden children were placed with Christian neighbors, while others spent their young years in convents and monasteries, growing up in strange, foreign surroundings. There were also children who hid in the forest aiding the partisans, serving as couriers and helping the resistance groups. Ultimately, 1,500,000 children perished.
Children who managed to survive life in the ghettos saw their childhood end abruptly. Many were orphaned and left alone to fend for themselves after their parents were deported or died from disease and starvation. Ghetto children were forced to work and had to beg for bits of food. At selection, some children were able to pass as adults and managed to be put in a concentration or forced labor camp - they matured overnight. They not only acted as adults, but were treated as such. Children who survived the Holocaust were not only cheated of their youth, but their lives as adults and parents would be affected forever.
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THE CAMP SYSTEM INITIATED STEPS TOWARD THE FINAL SOLUTION - 1933-1945
- There were 30,000 concentration camps.
- The first prisoners were German communists, socialists, social democrats, gypsies, Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals, and social deviants.
- Forced labor and detention camps were originally meant for German economic gain and to meet labor shortages; they were sometimes pointless and humiliating; the ability to work meant survival.
- People were intentionally worked to death (brutality, exhaustion, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of proper equipment, and lack of clothing).
- Transit camps were used as temporary way stations.
- Operation Reinhard was the planned creation of killing centers: extermination camps.
- Chelmno was the first killing center; gassing was first done in mobile gas vans.
- Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek accepted the overflow from other killing centers.
- Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest killing center.
- Jewish Genocide was in full operation in 1942.
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EXTERMINATION CAMPS WE WILL TOUR
Treblinka -
in northeast Poland, situated between Warsaw and Bialystok. It was first a prisoner of war camp in 1941. The
extermination camp began operations in July 1942. It was destroyed by the Nazis in autumn 1943 to conceal their crimes from the advancing Red Army. The number of Jews killed there, 700,000 - 800,000
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Auschwitz I - The main camp
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Auschwitz - A huge complex, consisting of concentration, extermination, and labor camps in Upper Silesia. It was established in 1940 as a concentration camp, and then expanded in 1942 to include a killing center. 1.6 million people were gassed, executed, tortured to death or were victims of starvation or disease. About 1.35 million were Jews, 83,000 Polish victims, 20,000 Gypsies, and 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
Auschwitz II (Also known as Birkenau) -
The extermination center at the Auschwitz complex.
Auschwitz III (Monowitz) - The I.G. Farben labor camp near Auschwitz, also known as Buna.
Additional - 56 sub-camps of labor throughout Poland.
Majdanek- Originally a POW camp for Russians and a labor camp for Poles and Jews. It became a combined concentration and extermination camp. The most recent research indicates that the total number of people deported to the camp was in the region of 500,00, although a definitive figure is yet to be established, and the overall death toll is uncertain, but, is estimated at 350,000. The Red Army liberated the camp in July 1944.
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- Denmark citizens hid and saved 7,220 of its 8,000 Jews, then ferried them to safety in neutral Sweden.
- Governments in Rumania and Bulgaria used bargaining power to hold Germany at bay; protests by citizens saved the Bulgarian Jews and most Rumanian Jews.
- The small French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon sheltered 3,000-5,000 refugees.
- Underground networks in France, Belgium, and Italy were run by Catholic clergy and lay Catholics.
- US based organizations (religious, secular, Jewish and non-Jewish) arranged and secured entry visas.
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GLOSSARY
Einsatzgruppen-
special mobile killing units of the Security Police and SS that followed the German armies into the Soviet Union and executed Jewish residents there by shooting them into mass graves.
Aktion (German) - Operation involving the mass assembly, deportation, and murder of Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Umschlagplatz (German) - Collection point. It was a square in the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews were rounded up for deportation to Treblinka.
Kapo - Prisoner in charge of a group of inmates in the camps.
Selection
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Euphemism for the process of choosing victims for the gas chambers in the Nazi camps by separating them from those considered fit to work.
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Hannah Szenes was a diarist, poet, playwright and parachutist in the Jewish resistance under the British Armed Forces during World War II. Hannah was a symbol of idealism and self-sacrifice. Her poems, made famous in part because of her unfortunate death, reveal a woman imbued with hope, even in the face of adverse circumstances. You may recognize her famous poem that was put to music, "Eli, Eli". An avid Zionist living in Israel, Hannah was one of 37 Jews who was trained by the British army to parachute
into Yugoslavia
during the Second World War
in order to help save the Jews of Hungary.
Szenes was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission and was eventually tried, and executed
by firing squad. Her body was buried in Hungary, but was later brought to Israel after the war where she was given a hero's burial. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where several streets, the headquarters of the Zionist Youth movement
and a kibbutz
are named after her.
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Wishing everyone a wonderful Shabbat with family and friends.
Best,
Sherrie Stalarow, Director
BBYO March of the Living
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