Tu B'Shvat
Welcome to the Tu B'Shvat page!
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Tu B’Shvat, which literally means the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Sh’vat, is known as the New Year for Trees.
In biblical times this date was the starting point for agricultural tithes and for calculating the age of trees; its modern focus is more to do with the environment and our relationship with nature.
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In the 17th century, Kabbalists created a ritual for Tu B'Shvat that is similar to a Passover seder. Today, many Jews hold a modern version of the Tu B'Shvat seder each year.
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This year it takes place from 27th-28th January.
Yom HaShoah
Welcome to the Yom HaShoah page.
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Yom HaShoash is the Holocaust Remembrance Day and commemorates the death of 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It falls on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
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It is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nissan — a week after the seventh day of Passover, and a week before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers).
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In 1942 the Nazis discussed "the Jewish problem" which was to exterminate every Jew living in Nazi Germany and beyond, otherwise known as the Final Solution.
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Please view the gallery to see Mr Moriarty's pictures from the March of the Living trip he went on to Poland.
Nicholas Winton
Kids meet a Holocaust Survivor
Stopping Traffic in Tel Aviv
Shimon Srebrnik Testimony
The Warsaw Ghetto
Never Shall I Forget
by Elie Wiesel
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust
Mr Rosenberg's Must See Holocaust Films
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The boy in stripped pyjamas
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Escape from Sobibor
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Auschwitz
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Last train to Auschwitz
Films to avoid
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
First They Came
by Martin Niemöller
Yizkor for Yom Ha’shoah
TEREZIN BY NORBERT TROLLER
Born in Bruenn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czechoslovakia) in 1900, Norbert Troller served as a soldier in World War I, spending time as a prisoner-of-war in Italy. After the war he studied architecture in Brno and Vienna and worked as an architect in Brno until the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
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He was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, where he worked as an architect for the Jewish self-administration of the camp, and produced works of art as well. During this time Troller created several drawings and sketches that documented the appalling conditions for Jews in the camp, which were then smuggled to the outside world as proof. In 1944 he was imprisoned by the Gestapo, and was sent to Auschwitz later that year.
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After liberation, he lived briefly in Krakow, and then reopened his architectural business in Prague and Brno. He emigrated to the United States in 1948 and worked for the National Jewish Welfare Board in New York designing Jewish community centres, before opening his own practice.
Eli Eli
For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt
Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses, and being brought at that time
Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
"I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."
Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,
The sack of gunpowder failing to ignite.
His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap
Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light.
And that was but one, and by no means one of he worst;
Permitted at least his pitiful dignity;
And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,
That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility.
We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.
Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.
Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.
No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.
No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.
More Light! More Light!
by Anthony Hecht
Margot Schlesinger Testimony
Mass Murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau
The Survivor by Primo Levi
Once more he sees his companions' faces
Livid in the first faint light,
Gray with cement dust,
Nebulous in the mist,
Tinged with death in their uneasy sleep.
At night, under the heavy burden
Of their dreams, their jaws move,
Chewing a non-existent turnip.
'Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people,
Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone,
Haven't usurped anyone's bread.
No one died in my place. No one.
Go back into your mist.
It's not my fault if I live and breathe,
Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.
Barbara Steiner Testimony
Oskar Schindler Testimony
El Malei Rachamim
In 1944 Doris Clare Zinkeisen was commissioned by the Red Cross and St John War Organisation to record their work in north-west Europe, and was one of the few women war artists to be sent overseas.
On 15 April 1945 British soldiers entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to find a scene of absolute horror. Ten thousand corpses lay unburied, and around 60,000 starving and sick people were packed into the camp’s barracks without food or water. Doris Zinkeisen arrived soon afterwards.
HUMAN LAUNDRY, BELSEN: APRIL 1945 BY DORIS CLARE ZINKEISEN
​Raised in a traditional Jewish family, Karl Robert Bodek worked as a photographer and draftsman. In June 1940, following the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina, he fled first to France and then to Belgium in search of refuge. That October he was arrested and transported from Belgium to the Saint Cyprien camp and then to the Gurs camp, both in southern France. Bodek drew "stamps" protesting the inhuman conditions in the camp. In April 1941 he was transported to Camp Les Milles, near Aix-en-Provence, where he taught painting, drew portraits of fellow prisoners, and worked on the murals still extant on site. Bodek's attempts to be released failed; in August 1942 he was transported to the Drancy camp, and then to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.