Holocaust Horror

A group of historians working at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has recently published their findings after 13 years researching the ghettos, slave labour sites, concentration camps, and extermination sites set up by the Nazis throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945.

True Freedom

On March 15, 1939, when the Nazis marched into Prague, Jacob Edelstein and his fellow Zionist leaders had the opportunity to flee. But they chose to remain in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and work to support the remaining Jewish population.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

I have enormous admiration for Archbishop Rowan Williams. He is the thoughtful, insightful, and profoundly spiritual, if frequently embattled, Archbishop of Canterbury. But today I wish I had the opportunity to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury a question that unsettles me.

Pioneers of Forgiveness

It is tempting when one has never been the victim of vicious violence or terrible injustice, to fall prey to the romantic notion that suffering inevitably ennobles the soul. It is not always so.

Community Vigil

I am not good at estimating the size of a crowd. But there were certainly hundreds of us gathered at 1:00 yesterday afternoon in the Jewish cemetery here in Victoria.

Is The Holocaust Unique #2

I do not pretend to fully grasp the Jewish argument for the uniqueness of the Holocaust. But I do know that Jewish scholars are not saying that the Jewish Holocaust was worse than any other genocide. They are certainly not trying to diminish the horror and injustice of so many other terrible events that blot the story of human history by elevating the Holocaust above all other atrocities.

Is The Holocaust Unique?

The Jewish Holocaust raises many questions that must be confronted. One of the contentious issues surrounding the study of the Holocaust is the question of uniqueness. There have been countless horrific acts of terror and injustice perpetrated throughout history. But, many scholars argue that a number of characteristics make the Jewish Holocaust distinct from these other tragedies.

You Are Not Human

Most of us, when we think about the Holocaust, probably think of ghettos, transport trains, concentration and extermination camps, gas chambers, crematoria, violent evil Gestapo agents, and monstrously inhuman prison guards.

In her book Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life In Nazi Germany, Marion A. Kaplan demonstrates that the sacrifice of European Jewry began long before the first Jew was locked away behind barbed wire. Kaplan chronicles the daily routine grinding inhumanities that began in 1933 as soon as Hitler came to power in Germany and continued until the War finally brought an end to Nazi brutality.

Kristallnacht

Martin Gilbert’s extraordinary book, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction is a book full of numbers, dates, names, and stories. He piles fact upon fact in an attempt convey some of the horror of the terrible night and day of November 9 and 10, 1938 that came to be known as Kristallnacht. At the same time he presents many eyewitness accounts that give an agonizing human face to the terror of Kristallnacht.

Why Study the Holocaust?

For the past four months I have been reading literature related to the terrible events that occurred throughout much of Europe between 1933 and 1945. It is difficult reading. But, the more I have read, the more I have become convinced how important it is that we look honestly at the terror perpetrated upon innocent victims in the Holocaust.