Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2022 is commemorated at Yad Vashem as "Transports to Extinction: The Deportation of the Jews during the Holocaust.” The railroad car, the symbol of progress and industrialization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, became the symbol of horror in 1939-1945.
Here lies before us the same unfathomable absurdity of those dark days: concepts such as “progress,” “industrialization and technology,” “efficiency,” “production,” and “globalization” all receded in one fell swoop. The promise of the great advance of the previous century, which was to lead the entire continent of Europe toward a glorious and promising future, was replaced by the rattling of old cattle cars filled to capacity, not with cattle, but with human beings – Jews. These were men, women, and children, who until a moment prior were citizens of countries, worked, lived, were born and gave birth, and dreamed and wove new dreams.
From the moment those loaded on the cattle carts were robbed of their identity as human beings, they became helpless beings who cried out for one thing – to survive another moment, another hour, if possible. They were sick, enervated, and exhausted figures, anxious for their fate and the fate of their children, longing for one more breath from the narrow window surrounded by the iron wire. Those train wheels no longer led to a future of progress, but in only one direction – toward death.
For the Germans, the masterminds behind the “Final Solution” – the meticulous plan to exterminate all of European Jewry – it was a particularly “efficient” step: into a car that was supposed to transport eighteen horses, or eight cows, you could now cram between 150-200 Jews to their deaths. To them, this was “progress” in all its glory. Moreover, it was even possible to increase the number of cattle cars, accelerate the locomotive's engines, and bring about the destruction of these individuals at record speed. And if that were not enough, even the travel expenses would be at the expense of the Jews. Thus, it was thought, the fact of the Jews’ historical existence would become a mere rumor. Out of this perverse thinking emerged the seeds of the most horrific factory ever created by human society: Auschwitz-Birkenau. Clearly, how the term “progress” translates into action lies in human hands.
The executors of this evil plan were not only Germans, but also residents of the occupied countries and cities themselves. They too served as the locomotive engineers who drove to the gateways of death and together with the SS guarded the doors of the cattle cars to make sure that no Jew would be able to escape to freedom, no matter how hard he or she tried.
And so, for six long years, an upside-down world was at work. Instead of a technological advance into the future, the wheels of history were reversed and made to regress, divorced from the values of morality and purity and plunged into the fields of the greatest horror known to mankind - Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno.
When we come to remember and commemorate what has happened, we must keep in mind that even today, more than ever, the winds of denial and oblivion are blowing stronger across Europe and beyond. Half-truths, distortions, and blurred traces of genocide are present today in European public-social discourse than ever. Care must be taken that especially, among these groups, which are numerous and multiplying, the light of truth is not extinguished.
The renowned author and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel wrote in his memoirs about the deportation to the Auschwitz death camp in May 1944: "Life in cattle cars was the death of my adolescence. How quickly I aged."
Blessed be the memory of the murdered.
Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2022 is commemorated at Yad Vashem as "Transports to Extinction: The Deportation of the Jews during the Holocaust.” The railroad car, the symbol of progress and industrialization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, became the symbol of horror in 1939-1945.
Here lies before us the same unfathomable absurdity of those dark days: concepts such as “progress,” “industrialization and technology,” “efficiency,” “production,” and “globalization” all receded in one fell swoop. The promise of the great advance of the previous century, which was to lead the entire continent of Europe toward a glorious and promising future, was replaced by the rattling of old cattle cars filled to capacity, not with cattle, but with human beings – Jews. These were men, women, and children, who until a moment prior were citizens of countries, worked, lived, were born and gave birth, and dreamed and wove new dreams.
From the moment those loaded on the cattle carts were robbed of their identity as human beings, they became helpless beings who cried out for one thing – to survive another moment, another hour, if possible. They were sick, enervated, and exhausted figures, anxious for their fate and the fate of their children, longing for one more breath from the narrow window surrounded by the iron wire. Those train wheels no longer led to a future of progress, but in only one direction – toward death.
For the Germans, the masterminds behind the “Final Solution” – the meticulous plan to exterminate all of European Jewry – it was a particularly “efficient” step: into a car that was supposed to transport eighteen horses, or eight cows, you could now cram between 150-200 Jews to their deaths. To them, this was “progress” in all its glory. Moreover, it was even possible to increase the number of cattle cars, accelerate the locomotive's engines, and bring about the destruction of these individuals at record speed. And if that were not enough, even the travel expenses would be at the expense of the Jews. Thus, it was thought, the fact of the Jews’ historical existence would become a mere rumor. Out of this perverse thinking emerged the seeds of the most horrific factory ever created by human society: Auschwitz-Birkenau. Clearly, how the term “progress” translates into action lies in human hands.
The executors of this evil plan were not only Germans, but also residents of the occupied countries and cities themselves. They too served as the locomotive engineers who drove to the gateways of death and together with the SS guarded the doors of the cattle cars to make sure that no Jew would be able to escape to freedom, no matter how hard he or she tried.
And so, for six long years, an upside-down world was at work. Instead of a technological advance into the future, the wheels of history were reversed and made to regress, divorced from the values of morality and purity and plunged into the fields of the greatest horror known to mankind - Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno.
When we come to remember and commemorate what has happened, we must keep in mind that even today, more than ever, the winds of denial and oblivion are blowing stronger across Europe and beyond. Half-truths, distortions, and blurred traces of genocide are present today in European public-social discourse than ever. Care must be taken that especially, among these groups, which are numerous and multiplying, the light of truth is not extinguished.
The renowned author and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel wrote in his memoirs about the deportation to the Auschwitz death camp in May 1944: "Life in cattle cars was the death of my adolescence. How quickly I aged."
Blessed be the memory of the murdered.