Yizkor: Memorial Prayer for the Departed of the Holocaust
May God 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 dwellings 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 Israel.
God 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 were 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.
