MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Israel
Index
The impact of the Holocaust on world Jewry, either on
contemporaries of the horror or on succeeding generations, cannot
be exaggerated. The scope of Hitler's genocidal efforts can be
quickly summarized. In 1939 about 10 million of the estimated 16
million Jews in the world lived in Europe. By 1945 almost 6 million
had been killed, most of them in the nineteen main concentration
camps. Of prewar Czechoslovakia's 281,000 Jews, about 4,000
survived. Before the German conquest and occupation, the Jewish
population of Greece was estimated to be between 65,000 and 72,000;
about 2,000 survived. Only 5,000 of Austria's prewar Jewish
community of 70,000 escaped. In addition, an estimated 4.6 million
Jews were killed in Poland and in those areas of the Soviet Union
seized and occupied by the Germans.
The magnitude of the Holocaust cast a deep gloom over the
Jewish people and tormented the spirit of Judaism. The faith of
observant Jews was shaken, and the hope of the assimilationists
smashed. Not only had 6 million Jews perished, but the Allies, who
by 1944 could have easily disrupted the operation of the death
camps, did nothing. In this spiritual vacuum, Zionism alone emerged
as a viable Jewish response to this demonic anti-Semitism. Zionist
thinkers since the days of Pinsker had made dire predictions
concerning the fate of European Jewry. For much of world Jewry that
had suffered centuries of persecution, Zionism and its call for a
Jewish national home and for the radical transformation of the Jew
from passive victim to self-sufficient citizen residing in his own
homeland became the only possible positive response to the
Holocaust. Zionism unified the Jewish people, entered deeply into
the Jewish spirit, and became an integral part of Jewish identity
and religious experience.
Data as of December 1988
|
|