Memories of the Holocaust

Last Thursday was the day to remember. To remember the horror. To remember the bravery. To remember so that history does not repeat itself.

April 19 was Holocaust Remembrance Day, called Yom HaShoah. It began Wednesday evening and ended at sundown Thursday, at about 7:35 p.m.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe in 1933. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population at that time, estimated at 15.3 million. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and its Axis partners, and the majority of European Jews—two out of every three—would be dead.

Click here for a timeline of the Holocaust, starting in 1933 with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany.

Area synagogues held services Thursday to remember the Holocaust and its victims.

Congregation Etz Chaim of DuPage County, 1710 S. Highland Ave., Lombard, held a Yom HaShoah service. According to the congregation’s website: “During the service there will be a series of readings, songs and prayers. We will recall the events of the attempt to destroy the Jewish people. The setting and mood of the service differs from other services held her at the synagogue during the rest of the year. We sit close together and take turns reading from descriptions, accounts and reflections on the Holocaust. We begin the service by reciting the Kaddish. During the year we gather as a congregation on many sacred days to remember the events of our past. On Yom HaShoah we come together to mourn and to remember.”

There were also services at Congregation Kneseth Israel, 330 Division St., Elgin and Temple B'nai Israel, 400 N. Edgelawn Dr., Aurora.