Ralph Troll,
longtime resident of our community and a survivor
of Nazi persecution during the Holocaust,
to speak on childhood as a Halbjude in Hitler’s Germany.
The 28th Annual Quad Cities Holocaust Remembrance, known as Yom HaShoah, will be held Sunday, April 26, at 7 p.m. at Temple Emanuel, Twelfth and Mississippi Streets in Davenport. The speaker for this year’s community-wide commemoration will be Ralph Troll, professor emeritus at Augustana College, U.S. Army veteran and a childhood survivor of Nazi persecution during the Holocaust.
In 1938, six year-old Ralph Troll and his family moved from Darmstadt, Germany, to a small, isolated farm in the countryside about ten miles from the Rhine River. They were hoping to escape the Nazi persecution sweeping Germany and threatening Ralph’s mother, who was Jewish. Because of this, Ralph was officially designated a Halbjude (literally, a “half-Jew”), and was not allowed to continue his schooling beyond the elementary level.
When war broke out, Ralph, his parents and his new baby sister often spent nights in the cellar of the farmhouse or days in nearby foxholes to escape allied bombing raids. Although there were constant fears of attack or betrayal, he and his parents worked hard to keep food on the table and to help others when the need arose. In February, 1945, however, the Gestapo suddenly appeared in the middle of the night and took his mother away. Months later, after the war ended, his emaciated mother was liberated from the infamous Theresienstadt concentration camp and rejoined her family.
The entire family emigrated to the United States in 1947. After serving in the U.S. Army, Ralph earned a Ph.D., and is professor emeritus of biology at Augustana College in Rock Island. Today Ralph and his wife, Loretta, have three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
As part of this year’s observance, the Quad Cities Yom HaShoah Committee will sponsor a showing of the Academy Award-winning film The Counterfeiters on Wednesday, April 22, beginning at 7:00 p.m. at the Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street in Davenport. Admission is $5, free for students (the film is rated R and may not be suitable for younger viewers). The Counterfeiters is the subtitled version of the German-language film Die Fälscher, which won the Oscar in 2008 for Best Foreign Film.
Yom HaShoah, translated, means “Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust.” For more than a quarter-century, this has been marked in the Quad Cities by a service of mourning and hope which unites persons of all faiths in remembrance of the great human tragedy of the Holocaust. As part of the annual observance, memorial candles are lit for the six million Jews—and millions of others—who were murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II.
The Yom HaShoah Committee is comprised of representatives from the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities, Temple Emanuel, the Tri-City Jewish Center, Churches United, Augustana College, St. Ambrose University and WQPT Public Television. They invite you to join them at 7 p.m. on Sunday, April 26, for the 28th annual Quad Cities Yom HaShoah observance, held at Temple Emanuel in Davenport.
All people of faith are encouraged to attend.
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General Background
As an aid for reporters covering Yom HaShoah, the following background information was compiled from a variety of sources, including Every Person’s Guide to Judaism by Stephen J. Einstein and Lydia Kukoff, 1989, UAHC Press, New York.
About the Holocaust:
Prior to World War II, approximately 8.7 million Jews lived in Europe. By war’s end, some six million of them had been systematically murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies.
A crime of such horrendous proportions could not have been perpetrated in a vacuum. Centuries of anti-Jewish teachings—either promulgated or countenanced by churches and states—created fertile ground for the seed of Nazi hatred to flourish. The people of Europe had been conditioned to despise Jews and see them as something less than human. Thus, they could rationalize the elimination of the Jews not as murder, but as the removal of an unwelcome element of their society.
Millions of people from many ethnic backgrounds were killed in Nazi extermination camps, but Adolf Hitler ordered ferocious intensity be brought to bear in reaching his goal of destroying the Jewish people. In his terminology, it was the “final solution to the Jewish problem.” The murder of six million Jews, including one and a half million children, has indelibly etched the names of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Treblinka and many more camps into the memories of the generation that witnessed the Holocaust and those who have learned of it since.
About Yom HaShoah:
Yom HaShoah, or “Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust,” occurs every year in communities around the world. While it is primarily observed by Jews, it is by no means an exclusive commemoration—as witnessed by the community-wide event held here in the Quad Cities.
We remember the Holocaust not simply because it is a Jewish tragedy. We talk about it because we believe the world must not be allowed to forget that twelve million innocent human beings, six million of them Jews, were murdered by the Nazis. Yom HaShoah seeks to ensure that a crime of such proportions will never be allowed to happen again. We keep the memory of the Holocaust alive to guard against the wanton destruction of any people.
In the Quad Cities, Yom HaShoah has been observed annually since 1982. The committee which organizes the observance was initially formed by representatives of the Quad Cities’ Jewish and Christian communities, and has maintained ecumenism in its membership and mission ever since. Sponsors of the 2009 Yom HaShoah service include the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities, Temple Emanuel, Tri-City Jewish Center, Churches United, Augustana College and St. Ambrose University. For additional information on the history of Yom HaShoah in the Quad Cities, please contact Suzanne Golden at 309.788.0682 or Ida Kramer at 563.388.3249.