Jose Castellanos

2 weeks ago

80 years ago, 33,771 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and local collaborators at Babi Yar in Kyiv. That year, Oct.1 1941 was Erev Yom Kippur.
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Holocaust Remembrance Association

2 weeks ago

Many Holocaust memoirs and the testimony of eyewitnesses record how Jews living under Nazi rule took extraordinary risks to mark Yom Kippur in some way. Yaffa Eliach’s book “Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust” recounts the horrors endured by a Hungarian Jewish slave-labor battalion in 1944.The prisoners were routinely beaten, starved and used as human mine detectors. On Erev Yom Kippur, they were warned that anyone who fasted “will be executed by a firing squad.”On Yom Kippur, it rained heavily and the area was covered in deep mud. When the Germans distributed their meager food rations, the Jewish prisoners pretended to consume them but instead “spilled the coffee into the running muddy gullies and tucked the stale bread into their soaked jackets.” Those who had memorized portions of the Yom Kippur prayer service recited them by heart until finally, as night fell, their work ended and they prepared to break the fast.They were then confronted by the German commander, who told them he was aware that they had fasted, and instead of simply executing them, they would have to climb a nearby mountain and slide down it on their stomachs. “Tired, soaked, starved and emaciated,” the Jews did as they were told, 10 times “climbing and sliding from an unknown Polish mountain which on that soggy Yom Kippur night became a symbol of Jewish courage and human dignity.”Eventually the Germans tired of this sport and the defiant Jewish prisoners were permitted to break their fast and live – at least for another day.
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Holocaust Remembrance Association

2 weeks ago

blogs.chapman.edu/holocaust-education/2014/10/02/yom-kippur-in-auschwitz/
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Yom Kippur in Auschwitz: 70 Years Ago

blogs.chapman.edu

Seventy years ago, on Yom Kippur, September 27, 1944, the Jews of Auschwitz debated whether or not to fast. They were, after all, starving, each of them near death. Among the prisoners was a teenager …

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