Dachau liberated; VE day; silk hats on fire
A shield, presented as a reward for efficiency is set above the doorway of the SS offices in the Dachau concentration camp. The token was wellearned. From the sidings where a half-cleared train stands, with the remaining corpses of prisoners starved to death on the trip to Dachau, tracks lead into the neat camp interior complete with gas chambers and crematorium. Of the 31000 prisoners liberated here over 3,000 are Jews from all over Europe. Six thousand Jews were taken away shortly before the arrival of the Allied troops. About 400 Jewish children between the ages of three and 14, most of them survivors from Vilna, were sent off in the last few months, but a handful of boys are still in the camp. Two hundred Jewish women survive, including seven from Hungary who were seized although they were pregnant. They are now nursing their babies, born in the camp hospital… According to camp inmates one million people died in Dachau. In addition to deaths from starvation and clubbings, there were mass execution, a killing area, which contains a square chamber with a low ceiling in which there are rows of shower-like nozzles from which the gas flowed.
Victory
Throughout the country on Sunday Thanksgiving services will be held in the synagogues to offer gratitude for the victory of the Allies. In connection with these services the Chief Rabbi has issued the following guidance: The Chief Rabbi would call the attention of all Ministers to an additional item in the Victory Service. That service should include the Gomel Benediction, to be spoken by the minister and repeated word for word by the congregation. His should be done either before the closing of the Ark on page 6 or at the conclusion of the Minister’s address.
Is their face red!
It was revealed at the annual meeting on Sunday that the Stoke Newington Synagogue, which is in an area that suffered heavily from the various air bombardments, remained unscathed—except that an incendiary bomb which fell on the honorary officers room destroyed their silk hats! It must have been extra bad marksmanship on the part of the enemy, for, according to the accounts I have heard from time to time, it is at the Hendon Synagogue that silk hats are the burning question!