Wednesday 27 January 2010

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

'Their Last Steps' painted by David Olere,
an Auschwitz Holocaust Survivor (1902-1985)
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Today is Holocaust Memorial Day when we are reminded of the horrors inflicted on the Jewish people by the Nazi regime.
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SHEMA

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You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.
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Primo Levi

Translated by Ruth Feldman And Brian Swann


"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed." - Anne Frank

3 comments:

Robert said...

A timely reminder as anti-semitism surfaces again in Europe and at governmental level in Iran. The Jewish people are God's covenant possession and we should honour them as He has over the millenia.

Anonymous said...

'Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one...' His ancient people need to hear this call again and return to their divine destiny.

Tony said...

I pray that such a wicked crime may never happen again and I pray that the Lord will bless and protect the Children of Israel.