By Heather Whittle

During the winter of 1944-1945, tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were death marched to concentration camps inside Germany.

After 10 days and nights without food, with melted snow as his only drink, Elie Wiesel, a survivor, watched the 100 Jews in his roofless cattle wagon dwindle to 12.

Although April is Holocaust Remembrance Month, Yom HaShoah, the day set aside for remembering the approximately 6 million Jews who suffered the atrocities of the Jewish genocide during World War II.

In Hebrew "shoah" most closely means "catastrophe" and is preferred to the word "holocaust."

Ilona Klein, a professor and scholar of the Shoah, said the attempt to replace to the word "Holocaust" with "Shoah" began in the early '80s.

"The origin of the word 'holocaust' means death by being burnt by fire as a sacrifice to please the gods, and this was certainly nothing like that," Klein said. "'Shoah' takes away the controversy to mean only burned and destroyed by fire."

Yom HaShoah was established as a national holiday in Israel in 1959. The day begins at sunset on the 27th day of the month of Nisan in the Hebrew lunar calendar and ends the following evening.

In the U.S., Yom HaShoah was set aside as a special day in 1979, when Congress established the week in which Yom HaShoah fell as the Days of Remembrance.

The Holocaust began with the seizure of power in Germany by the National Socialist Party, more commonly called the Nazis, in 1933. The drive behind their policy was a belief in the superiority of the Aryan race.

"Lots of what the Nazis did was socially-constructed," said Paul Kerry, an associate professor in BYU's history department. "[Hitler] told the people they were superior and had a racial mission to keep the race pure. He never pushed the history too far, and he made them feel good."

Jews throughout Europe were targeted, and their rights were gradually restricted.

Jewish businesses were boycotted. Laws were passed to prohibit Jews from owning land and working in certain occupations. Jews were required to affix a yellow star of David to their clothing.

"Jews had traditionally been seen as White Europeans," Kerry said. "But in countries where Jews began to become more successful economically, like Germany, they began to be envied. In Russia, where the people were poor, peasants didn't want to be below Jews at the bottom of the ladder."

In 1941, Hitler began implementing the final "solution" to annihilate all Jews. It began with ghettoes and labor camps where many died from squalid conditions.

It soon evolved into death camps, where murder reached a new level of "efficiency" in gas chambers and crematoriums.

The Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, later wrote in his book, "Night," of his experiences in concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed," Wiesel wrote in his book. "Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust."

On Yom HaShoah, a siren is sounded throughout Israel for two minutes during which everyone stops what they are doing and observes the moment in silent remembrance.

"When the siren goes off across Israel, everything becomes still," said Drora Oren, administrator of Temple Har Shalom in Park City. "People stop their cars wherever they are, even on the highway, and get out. The whole country stands still at that moment."

In addition, many engage in their own Yom HaShoah ceremonies, from lighting candles and listening to survivors' stories to offering special prayers.

"In private homes, many people light a special memorial candle," Oren said. "Many say the Kaddish, which is a special prayer of remembrance or mourning."

Jerusalem's Yad Vashem is a museum and the official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

"In the Yad Vashem law of 1953, it stipulates that Yad Vashem shall be competent firmly to establish in Israel," said Amanda Smulowitz of the Yad Vashem Jerusalem magazine, "and among the whole people the day appointed by the Knesset as the memorial day for the disaster and its heroism, and to promote a custom of joint remembrance of the heroes and victims,'"

"The state opening ceremony, in the presence of the President and Prime Minister of Israel, and attended by about 2,500 people, among them many Holocaust survivors, includes traditional memorial prayers, speeches, and the traditional torch lighting ceremony," Smulowitz said.

Each year, six torches are lit by Holocaust survivors to represent the 6 million murdered Jews.

Television and radio stations, teachers and various organizations all take part in memorial ceremonies and programs throughout the day.

"It's like all events in the past," BYU student Janell Miskin said. "You remember them and learn from them. The Holocaust is part of world history and it's something everyone needs to learn about. It's about learning from your mistakes and trying not to repeat history."

Klein said she would love to say society learned from the death of those six million Jews except there is still genocide going on.

"It's still happening," Klein said. "What needs to come out of it is the understanding that as human beings we're privileged to live in an educational environment. We are charged to use our brains. What needs to come out is an innate sense of human duty to take a stand. That is the legacy of the Shoah."

Copyright Brigham Young University 2 May 2008