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Society
for the History of
Czechoslovak Jews
SEVENTY
FIRST MEMORIAL SERVICE
FOR
CZECHOSLOVAK JEWISH VICTIMS
OF
NAZISM
March
19, 2017 21 Adar, 5777
Since
1946, Czech and Slovak Jews have gathered annually to remember the 3,792 Czech
Jews who, after being held for nearly seven months in the “family camp” BIIb at
Birkenau, were sent to the gas chambers on the eve of Purim, 1944. Their murder
is a horrifying example of the criminal lunacy of Adolph Hitler and his
followers, who murdered six million of our brothers and sisters, our mothers
and fathers, our grandparents and great grandparents, our spouses and children,
our neighbors and friends. This is the 71st annual memorial service.
We do not forget!
For
the past 23 years, the Society has also prepared a Memorial Book, “These We
Remember,” listing the names of our families’ Holocaust victims and all the
others whose lives we wish to commemorate. Each memorbuch has included a Holocaust memorial in the Czech Lands or
Slovakia. This year’s memorial is a monument by the late Czech Jewish sculptor,
Aleš Veselý. It stands at the entrance to the cemetery at Terezín. Both the
monument and its title, “The Law of Irrefutability” are designed to elicit
serious thought about the unprecedented criminal behavior that is called the
Shoah or the Holocaust – the mass murder of our people, the importance of memory
and the ways that justice can be done.
May
we have the strength to use the memories this service evokes to shape a better,
more human future for the sake of the victims, the loved ones for whom we mourn
and for the generations yet to come.
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