​Appendix 1:

The following two prayers have been translated from the Hebrew in the Rinat Yisrael prayer book. 

Yizkor: Memorial prayer for the victims of the Holocaust
May G-d remember the souls of all the communities of Israel in the European Diaspora who were sacrificed on the altar during the years of the Holocaust (1939-1945): six million men and women, boys and girls, young men and women, infants and the elderly, who were cruelly slain and butchered, and mass murdered in their dwelling places and cities, and in the forests and villages.
Those surviving were brought like sheep to the slaughter to the concentration camps where they died unnatural deaths, and were burned to ashes in the furnaces of the terrible camps of destruction in Germany and Poland, and in the rest of the occupied countries, at the hands of the murderous German people and their Allies, all of whom were of one counsel to annihilate, kill, and utterly destroy the Jewish people, to wipe out the memory of Judaism, and to erase any association with the name of Israel.

G-d of vengeance, Judge of the Earth, remember the streams of blood that were spilled like water, the blood of fathers and sons, mothers and sucklings, rabbis and their students, and repay the oppressors of your people seventy times over.

Do not silence the scream of "Shema Yisrael" uttered by those who were taken to their death, and let the groan of the afflicted ascend before the throne of your glory. Avenge, speedily in our days, before our eyes, the blood of your pure and sanctified sons and daughters who never had the privilege to be buried as Jews…As it is written: "For he will avenge the blood of His servants, and vengeance he will serve on their oppressors, and He will atone the Land of His people." Amen. Selah.

El Malei Rachamim: Prayer for the Departed
O G-d, full of mercy, who dwells on high,
Grant proper rest on the wings of the Divine Presence
In the lofty levels of the holy and pure,
Who shine like the glow of the firmament.
For the souls of the
Six Million Jews, victims of the European Holocaust
Who were killed, slaughtered, burned and wiped out
For the Sanctification of the Name
By the murderous Germans and their allies,
Because, without making a vow,
All the community will pray
For the uplifting of their souls.
Therefore, my the Master of mercy
Shelter them in the shelter of His wings for eternity;
And may He bind their souls in the Bond of Life.
The L-rd is their heritage.
And may their resting-place be in the Garden of Eden,
And may they reach their destiny at the end of days.
And let us say Amen.

Upon the Slaughter
By Chaim Nachman Bialik
Heavenly spheres, beg mercy for me!
If truly G-d dwells in your orbit and round,
And in your space is His pathway that I have not found,
Then you pray for me!
For my own heart is dead; no prayer on my tongue;
And strength has failed, and hope has passed:
O until when? For how much more? How long?
Ho, headsman, bare the neck--come, cleave it through!
Nape me this cur's nape! Yours is the axe unbaffled!
The whole wide world-my scaffold!
And rest you easy: we are weak and few.
My blood is outlaw. Strike, then; the skull dissever!
Let blood of babe and graybeard stain your garb--
Stain to endure forever!
If Right there be,--why, let it shine forth now!
For if when I have perished from the earth
The Right shine forth,
Then let its Throne be shattered, and laid low!
Then let the heavens, wrong-racked, be no more!
While you, O murderers, on you murder thrive,
Live on your blood, regurgitate this gore!
Who cries Revenge! Revenge! - accursed be he!
Fit vengeance for the spilt blood of a child
The devil has not yet compiled...
No, let that blood pierce world's profundity,
Through the great deep pursue its mordications,
There east its way in darkness, there undo,
Undo the rotted earth's foundations!

​
Back to Meaning of the Holocaust Activity