We, klal Yisrael, all need to do Tshuva and be a light to ourselves and to the whole world. However, the light we shed because of our bloodshed is not the light that is meant. If we would light candles for all those Jews who down through our history were murdered during Pesach alone, we would be able to light up a huge city. If we lit candles for all those who perished during the Shoah alone – and not just on Pesach – we would need a full-scale army to light them and then some.
Here are just a few examples of Pesach murders.
Pesach Pogroms
Kishinev 1903 - approximately 49 murdered
Vilna 1919 – possibly 80 murdered
During the Shoah (Holocaust):
1942 was a year that seemed to end all years for Jews in Europe. While the gas chambers of Birkenau and Sobibor were still under construction, 6,000 Jews were gassed at Belzec on March 31, 1942. Nor were they forgotten on Pesach, when Jewish seders all over were attacked. On Pesach, April 2, 1942, 1,000 Jews from Kolomyja were murdered in Belzec.
The next day, April 3, 1942, 1,200 Jews from Tlumacz were gassed in Belzec, and on April 4th1,500 Jews from Stanislawov were gassed there. The carnage continued. Sobibor became operational on the 18th(Chai) April, 1942, but Chai was for only one, who was chosen to work. The other 2,500 were murdered there.
The Jewish population of Kolomyja, a part of the Ukraine, but a part belonging for some time to Poland until the outbreak of WWII, and where Jews had lived since the 16thcentury, reached almost 60,000 in 1941. When the Soviets withdrew on July 3, 1941, the Hungarians allied to Germany took the reins. In August, 1941 Germans took control of the city.
In the latter part of 1941 and onwards many Jews were shot in the forest after having dug their own “grave”. Between April 3-6, 1942 Jews from the C ghetto where people unfit for work were interned were driven out, their houses were set on fire, and many were shot, or they died jumping out of windows. Together with part of ghetto B, a total of more than 3,000 Jews were deported to Belzec. 1,000 of those were gassed on the first day of Pesach.
Below you can click on a photo from Yad Vashem and see deportees from Tlumacz marching. An additional photo shows a German policeman guarding the movement of the deportees. A third photo from Yad Vashem shows the deportees boarding the train for deportation. 1,200 were murdered in Belzec on the second day of Pesach.
On October 12, 1941 there was a blood bath dubbed “Bloody Sunday” with 8,000 to 12,000 shootings in the cemetery and with incredible brutality on the part of the Germans and the Ukrainians helping them. At the end of March, 1942, the Gestapo ordered Lamm, the Judenrat, to hand over all the Jews unfit for work. When he refused, they set the houses on fire and forced the old and sick out of the houses. They were deported to Belzec for gassing. 1,500 were gassed on the third day of Pesach. Only Jews fit for work were allowed to remain in Stanislawov.
Pesach 1943 consisted of the famous series of Warsaw Ghetto uprisings. On the 19th, the ghetto fighters managed to repel the armed Germans by means of 17 pistols and several thousand grenades. On the second day of Pesach the Germans came with mortars and machine guns, killed all the sick in the Czyste hospital and set the hospital on fire. The Jews fought back with grenades and homemade bombs. On April 25th the Germans set the buildings of fire, shot women and children.
On the first night of Pesach, April 8, 1944 a transport arrived in Birkenau from Vittel, France.
Yet also on the first day of Pesach, April 4, 1945, the American forced liberated Ohrduf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald. This was the first camp liberation by the Allies.
Links to photographs:
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/kishinev/PogromVictims1903.htm
http://www.vilnaghetto.com/chrono.html
http://www.neveragain.org/1942.htm
http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/kolomyja%20ghetto.html
http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/100231.html
deportees from Tlumacz marching
http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/100222.html
http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/100213.html
http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/73547.html
Stanislawov – face of a man after beating
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007236
http://thinkingtorah.blogspot.com/2007/04/chol-hamoed-pesach-1945.html
In Ebensee, Mr. Finkelstein collapses on Chol HaMoed Pesach and is taken to the crematorium before he has a chance to remove the Blatt of Torah law concerning Pesach that he was safekeeping – the one begged from a German guard who was using it as a wrapping for his sandwich.
April 4, 1945 Ohrduf, sub-camp of Buchenwald – first camp liberated by the allies
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0500/pesach.sheni1.asp
Pesach Sheni Dachau, 1945 – after fire set to murder on the part of the Nazis, liberation by the Americans.
However, the candles lit for these and more victims should say not just that we remember, but that we are proudly here. First and foremost, we should shine – in spite of these dark periods – through all they, the victims accomplished, and through all that which we have accomplished to make this a world in which we and all people can and may live, then we are free. In other words, if our Yizkor is an active participation in continuity – keeping our Jewishness, and LIVING with all our love and all our might, we are a light.
The Yizkor for the murdered is a light the world would gladly give us – more and more it appears – even today. However, HaShem made us, klal Yisrael, into an Eternal Light by giving us Pesach – Peh sach of love for freeing us from the slavery of Galut, subordination to the little “gods” of “Gashmius” – and Shabbat – a covenant of peace that only we can really appreciate.
The Shabbos candles say Shabbat Shalom. We have the freedom to accept this Bris and have peace in our own land and on our borders. What is preventing us from accepting thatfreedom and staying alive? Our own Chometz, our own Yetzer hara. – Let’s clean it out once and for all !