Yom HaShoah | | Orthodox Union

Yom HaShoah | | Orthodox Union The Holocaust was arguably among the most fearsome tragedies that have befallen the Jewish People in its long history, in which six million Jews, fully one third of World Jewry, including one and a half million children, were murdered.
And the murderers were not a People who would normally be called "barbaric." On the contrary, the majority of the officers of the so-called Concentration "Camps" were medical doctors (!), or doctors of philosophy, or respected professionals. A degree of evil was exhibited which perhaps has never been exceeded in all of human history.

It is not true that the murderers' evil was unopposed. Tremendous bravery was exhibited by relatively small numbers of Jews and Gentiles, such as at the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jewish Community acted in concert, and by hundreds of individuals whose efforts resulted in the saving of tens, even hundreds of thousands of lives.

Although the saving of a single life is comparable to the saving of an entire world, the dimensions of the tragedy vastly outweighed all attempts to avert it, and the sweet taste of the good deeds was indistinguishable against the bitterness of the evil.