Leader:
Let us all refill our cups.

[Take turns reading. Each person is invited to read a grouped set of lines - or to pass.]

During this festival of life, let us remember our lost sisters and brothers - the millions of Jews enslaved and killed in the Holocaust. We remember them along with all the others who suffered.

They were all parts of the rainbow - of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, of progressive activists, resistance fighters, and people with disabilities. Their anguish and death is with us, even in our times of celebration.

We resolve that their memory shall not be lost. We accept the responsibility of working to prevent such suffering from ever again occurring on this earth.

We remember the heroism of those who fought against fascism and tyranny in the forests and the cities of Europe.Men, women, and children who loved freedom and humanity struggled with their own hands against the powerful armies of those who sought to oppress and kill them.

We remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the dawn of the first day of Passover, April 19, 1943.  The Nazis were coming to complete the deportation of the remaining Jews to the death camps.

A shot rang out on Nalevki Street, signaling the beginning of this Jewish revolt. A few hundred Jews with a few guns and hand grenades had decided to resist the tremendous power of the German army and the Gestapo. The courageous men and women of the Jewish Fighting Organization held out for forty-two days.

Although few of the Jewish fighters survived the battle, the story of their courage will never die. Similar acts of resistance took place in Minsk, Vilna, Bialystock, in the cities and towns of Poland, and even in the death camps - Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz. 

Leader:

We were slaves in Egypt and we were slaves in fascist Europe. We have much to remember.
Let us raise our glasses to those who were taken from us and to those who fought for freedom and life. 

P'ri ha-gaphen-`itto,nishteh "L'-Haiyim!"   

Everyone:

"L'- Haiyim!" 


haggadah Section: Bareich
Source: Machar