Holocaust

Throughout the centuries, Jews have experienced much persecution. The Roman-Jewish War (66 to 70AD) resulted not only in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (which has never been re-built), but also in the scattering of Jews to countries across the Middle East and Europe. This scattered population is called the Diaspora. Many people in these countries hated the Jews because they were different. Such hatred of Jews, simply because they are Jews, is called anti-Semitism.

Of all their suffering, probably none was as horrific as the persecution under the Third Reich in Nazi Germany from 1933, and then throughout occupied Europe from 1939 onwards.

Hitler believed that the Jews were inferior and the cause of all the problems in Germany and Europe. His plan, the Final Solution, was to rid Jews from Europe by exterminating them. The plan was put into effect by identifying Jews, herding them into ghettoes and then transporting them in cattle trucks, by train to extermination camps like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and many others. This destruction came to be known as the Holocaust, a word which refers to the "whole burnt offering", a sacrifice in ancient times given wholly for God.

The end of the war brought an end to the slaughter, but not before nearly two thirds of European Jews, men, women and children, had been cruelly killed.

On the walls of one former concentration camp, now a museum, - Dachau (where a late friend of mine was once imprisoned and from which he managed to escape to England) - are written, in French, English, German and Russian, the words: