HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Today is the day we have been remembering the Holocaust when about 6 million Jews were killed on purpose because they were Jews.  Those responsible for wanting to wipe out a people, whether they thought we were a race or a religion or both were the German National Socialist (NAZI) regime led by Adolf Hitler.  

Extermination of the Jews was an essential part of the gospel of Nazism and inherent in the core of its creed.  The Aryan decree issued on April 11, 1933 happened a year before I was born, so it's something that could have involved me.  This decree defined non-Aryan's as any person having a non-Aryan, particularly Jewish parent or grandparent.  My family were definitely non-Aryans:  Jews.

By September 15, 1935, when I was 1 year old, the NUREMBERG  LAWS were adopted byi the Reichstag.  These were racial laws.  They coordinated and regularized Nazi anti-Jewish action.  They were reinforced by persecutory decrees, economic and social discrimination, and incarceration in CONCENTRATION CAMPS without legal proceedings or protection.  

My uncle by marriage, Werner Oster, whose father had been a German soldier in WWI, born in Westerburg, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany in October 1916,  was about 22 when he was thrown in one during 1938-39 which was the Dachau Concentration Camp before they became gas chambers for walking a cow down a path to the slaughter house.  His father was a sausage-maker.  His family took all their money to get him out of the country and he just made it by March 15, 1939 and on March 22 getting his passport to use  on the SS Washington before Jews were not allowed to leave.  

The German occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945) began with the German annexation of Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the March 1939 invasion of the Czech lands and creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended  to all parts of the former Czechoslovakia.

Werner made it to New York and then our great Uncle Max, who didn't know him, became someone that took all the responsibility of his being in the states and spoke for him, his sponsor.  He got him a job with my father, a newbie in his new business of being a wholesale butcher.  Werner married my father's sister Ann and tried to get his parents and 16 year old red-headed sister out, but it was too late. He was one of the last to get out.  Later on this affected Werner terribly who carried a guilt complex for being a survivor of the Holocaust.  All were affected in some way.  

Although the war began with Nazi Germany's attack on Poland in September 1939, the United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.

My paternal grandparents came from Telsiai, Lithuania.  Kovno, Kaunas, Lithuania was close by.  Before WWII, there were about 25,000 Jews in Kovno which was 25% of their total population.  In 1941, they were herded into a ghetto by the Nazis and 10,000 killed in a single day on October 28, 1941.  The survivors were joined by 7,000 deportees from Germany and Lithuania but nearly all were exterminated by 1944.  The Jewish population in Kovno in 1988 was 5,500.  Why they were there and not in Israel is beyond my comprehension except that maybe they were too old and too poor to make the move.  It was a miracle that our grandparents had made the move in the early 1900s to Oregon.  

Update: 4/8/2021 11:20pm

Resource

Family history

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia                  

G0d and Mankind 4,000 Years Ago: Part III India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Persia or Indus Valley Civilization

Nadene Goldfoot                                          

 Clearly the Hindu religion conserves a very old, though unwritten tradition which it shares with the other Indo-European languages.  The religion as known from Sanskrit and later Hindu sources has a common ancestry with the Proto-Indo-European religion. The ancient religions in all of these languages share a common set of Gods, a set of myths, and a common set of rituals which are general throughout the Indo-European speaking regions.

Abraham and the Hebrews  had come from the East, supposedly around the Euphrates River in modern day Syria and Iraq.

Let's really go to the East and see what was going on.  Abraham was born in the 2nd millennium BCE, a time referred to as Late Archaeic.  It covers the years from 2,000 BCE to 1,000 BCE or at least 4,000 years ago.  This was the Middle to Late Bronze Age.  Abraham came to believe in one power in the universe;  one G-d at a period of time when all the other Middle Easterners believed in a pantheon of gods. That's because he spoke to G-d.   There were gods for every situation in Canaan.  How did other people view their world at this time?  We will look at the Aryans who covered this section of land.

The Vedic Religion:  This was the ancient religion of the Aryan people who entered
India from Persia c2000-1200 BCE.  It was the precursor of Hinduism, and its beliefs and practices
are Vedas.  It seemed to at first be centered on one god, Verethraghna.


                                                                             

Here we meet another pantheon of gods with a king of all the other gods.  

Indra, in Hindu mythology, the king of the gods. He is one of the main gods of the Rigveda and is the Indo-European cousin of the German Wotan, Norse Odin, Greek Zeus, and Roman Jupiter.  Indra gets to drink Soma.  "drinks of the elixir of immortality, the soma, which priests offer to him in a sacrifice.


There is nothing in the story of ethical behaviors being taught.   In early religious texts, Indra plays a variety of roles. As king, he leads cattle raids against the dasas, or dasyus, native inhabitants of the lands over which his people range.  In later Hinduism, Indra is no longer worshipped but plays the important mythological roles of god of rain, regent of the heavens, and guardian of the east.  

                                       Example of good against evil
Then he does some good.   He brings rain as god of the thunderbolt, and he is the great warrior who conquers the anti-gods (asuras). He also defeats innumerable human and superhuman enemies, most famously the dragon Vritra, a leader of the dasas and a demon of drought. Vritra is accused as a dragon of hoarding the waters and the rains, as a dasa of stealing cows, and as an anti-god of hiding the Sun.
                                                                  

Indra (/ˈɪndrə/, Sanskrit: इन्द्र) is a Vedic deity in Hinduism, a guardian deity in Buddhism, and the king of first heaven called Saudharmakalpa in Jainism. ... He is the god of lightning, thunder, storms, rains and river flows. Indra is the most referred to deity in the Rigveda.

 "Many of the qualities of Indo-Iranian god of might/victory, Verethraghna, were transferred to the adopted god Indra, who became the central deity of the developing Old Indic culture. Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda. He was associated more than any other deity with Soma, a stimulant drug (perhaps derived from Ephedra) probably borrowed from the BMAC religion. His rise to prominence was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers.

Scholars consider the Vedic religion to have been a composite of the religions of the Indo-Aryans, "a syncretic mixture of old Central Asian and new Indo-European elements"^] which borrowed "distinctive religious beliefs and practices" from the Bactria–Margiana culture, and the remnants of the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley.
                                                                

The mode of worship was worship of the elements like fire and rivers, worship of heroic gods like Indra, chanting of hymns and performance of sacrifices. The priests performed the solemn rituals for the noblemen (Kshatriyas) and wealthy commoners Vaishyas. People prayed for abundance of children, rain, cattle (wealth), long life and an afterlife in the heavenly world of the ancestors. This mode of worship has been preserved even today in Hinduism, which involves recitations from the Vedas by a purohita (priest), for prosperity, wealth and general well-being. However, the primacy of Vedic deities has been seconded to the deities of Puranic literature.

Though a large number of devatas (gods) are named in the Rig Veda, only 33 devas are counted, eleven each of earth, space and heaven The Vedic pantheon knows two classes, Devas and Asuras. The Devas (Mitra, Varuna, Aryaman, Bhaga, Amsa, etc.) are deities of cosmic and social order, from the universe and kingdoms down to the individual. The Rigveda is a collection of hymns to various deities, most notably heroic Indra, Agni the sacrificial fire and messenger of the gods, and Soma, the deified sacred drink of the Indo-Iranians.  Also prominent is Varuna (often paired with Mitra) and the group of "All-gods", the Vishvadevas.

Archaeologists and historians suggest that humans were living in Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago, and that farming communities of the region were among the earliest in the world.   Urbanized culture has existed in the land from between 3000 and 2000 BC.   Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages have been found inside Afghanistan.  Between 2000–1200 BCE, a branch of Indo-European-speaking tribes known as the Aryans began migrating into the region, just like they entered India.  By 1500 BCE the Aryans migrated into the Indian subcontinent. Coming from central Asia, this large group of nomadic cattle herders crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains and came in contact with the Indus Valley Civilization.  

Aryans introduced the caste system.  Their religion is Vedic.

Aryan religious beliefs and practices were profusely described in their religious literature, particularly their Vedas. Vedas (“knowledge”) are ancient texts written in Sanskrit. There are four Indo-Aryan Vedas: 1. The Rig Veda: contains hymns about their mythology. 2. The Sama Veda: consists mainly of hymns about religious rituals. 3. The Yajur Veda: contains instructions for religious rituals. 4. The Atharva Veda: consists of spells against enemies, sorcerers, and diseases. 

                                                       

So much writing was going on at an early date. The first introduction of writing to the Indian Subcontinent apart from the Bronze Age Indus script, which is undeciphered and may not be an actual script, is mostly identified as the Edicts of Ashoka from c. 250 BCE.

 Sanskrit was used from the 2nd millennium BCE to 600 BCE in the Vedic Sanskrit. "The earliest traces of epigraphy (the study of inscriptions)  in the Indian Subcontinent are found in the undeciphered inscriptions of the Indus Valley Civilization (Indus script), which date back to the early 3rd millennium BC" . ... Then the Middle Indo-Aryan languages came into being.  It continues to be used as a liturgical language, and is called Classical Sanskrit.   Writing in Sanskrit (Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit, EHS) appears only later, in the first to fourth centuries CE. 

Religion is carried to other places usually with the help of writing.  Much of this waits until the Hindu religion has developed, along with the more universal writing style.  

Resource:  http://www.ancient.eu/article/230/ Religious Development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_prehistory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_millennium_BC
http://www.ancient.eu/image/322/
http://www.ancient.eu/Aryan/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan
https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/HIST101-Subunit-3.1.2-Aryan-Society-and-Religion-Final.pdf
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sanskrit.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Indian_epigraphy
https://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/what-gods-should-be-in-the-next-gow-31145758/
http://piereligion.org/sanskrit.html