Yom Ha Shoah: Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day-April 7

This Sunday, April 7th will be a somber day in the state of Israel as Yom Ha Shoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day will be observed beginning the evening of April 7th at sundown and ending the evening of April 8th at sundown.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_HaShoah

Yom Ha Shoah, which translates to day of calamity, was first inaugurated in 1953 by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and President of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi as a day for Israel to observe the Holocaust in which six and a half million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany during World War 2.

Jews scattered by the Diaspora will be observing Yom Ha Shoah in the various synagogues in countries all over the world as a tribute to those lost during one of the darkest periods of the 20th century. The Jewish communities domiciled in Europe not only saw millions killed, but also a collaborative effort in many nations to assist the Germans successfully execute Germany’s Final Solution.

The entire country of Germany had turned into a genocidal state with government agencies, churches, educational institutions and even its banking system coordinating the effort to help process the Jewish population to the concentration and extermination camps. It wasn’t until 1942 when the policy of extermination was finalized at the Wannsee Conference.

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-january-1942-wannsee-conference-the-birth-of-the-evil-of-evils

Jews lucky to be shipped to the concentration camps had a minor chance in surviving the slave labor as many Jews were worked to exhaustion during 12-14 hour shifts of work. Conditions were horrific as many workers died from starvation, sickness and mistreatment from the Nazis. The extermination camps were designed to quickly murder as many Jews as possible through gas chambers and other forms of execution.

Josef Mengele was called the doctor of death for his inhuman medical experiments mostly done on Romani children (Gypsies). This racist social Darwinism and eugenics based philosophy was justification that some people were more biologically valuable than others. The death camp where Mengele worked murdered more people than any other. It was worse than medieval.

Those believing population control could not happen again were stunned when hundreds of thousands of Jews were purged from Arab countries shortly after World War 2 in an act similar to the forced expulsion that took place before and during World War 2 in Europe.

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/persecution.html

Israel has a population very sensitive to anti-semitic views and for good reason since Israel has been on the receiving end of several mass population moves. The term "never again" is something those in Israel are quite familiar.

Yom Ha Shoah is a serious time of reflection for the those in Israel and subscribe to the Jewish faith.