Yom Kippur 5779 - prayer for the Holocaust victims

After 25 hours without solid food and water during Yom Kippur, and spending 12 hours in the local Beit Knesset, the insight of how brittle life is, grows. To voluntarily refrain from food and fluid is tough, very tough. Fluid is, of course, available if you need it and anyone who is not healthy, too young or too old, must not fast.

I also thought about the victims of the Holocaust and I was thinking of my mother, who talked about being without fluid for three or four days, never knowing when or if to get any more. She told me how her tongue swelled and stuck to her palate, and how she and her fellow prisoners wished they could pee, in order to have something to drink.

I also think of the 2 800 Israelis who died and the 8 800 were injured when our country was attacked by several Arab armies on Yom Kippur in 1973. Together with a fighting civilian population, they saved the Jewish people from a second Holocaust and we owe enormous gratitude to them.

There is a prayer for Yom Kippur dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust and there were many of us who cried as we prayed. I am writing this prayer here in English and I thank God for Israel, who protects the Jewish people.

For the Holocaust victims 

God, full of mercy, Justice of widows and Fathers of orphans, please do not be silent and hold Your peace for the blood of Israel that was shed like water. Grant fitting rest on the wings of the Divine Presence, in the heights of the holy and the pure who shine and radiate light like the radiance of Heaven, to the souls of the millions of Jews, men, women and children who were murdered, slaughtered, burned, strangled, and buried alive, in the lands touched by the German enemy and its followers. They were all holy and pure; among them were great scholars and righteous individuals, cedars of Lebanon and noble masters of Torah, may the Garden of Eden be their resting place. Therefore, Master of compassion, shelter them in the shadow of Your wings forever, and bind their souls in the bond of everlasting life. The Lord is their heritage; may they rest in peace, and let us say: Amen


The Koren Yom Kippur Machzor, Nusach Ashkenaz: The Rohr Family Edition 2014 p. 762

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