During the two thousand years of exile, tens of thousands of the Jewish nation have been sacrificed simply for the crime of being a Jew. In different periods over the course of history, the nations of the world actually labored to find more ‘creative’ and ‘interesting’ ways to kill.

One of the most sadistic methods invented was, without a doubt, King Ptolemy IV(4th) Philopator’s sport of crushing the Jews under the feet of elephants. King Ptolemy planned to kill masses of Jews using 500 war-elephants, which he first drugged with wine and incense, and saddled with ‘terrible iron weapons’. The slaughter was pushed off twice, and even on the third time Heaven prevented the elephants from trampling the Jews. (Hasmoneans part 3, verses5,6)
     
This method of crushing under an elephant’s foot, was the common form of death penalty in South-East Asia for thousands of years. In India, the British continued to carry out executions using elephants, until April 1947. The last elephant used for crushing to death was nicknamed ‘Hawaii’, and weighed over eight tons.

The Inquisition, established in the 13th Century, tortured the ‘heretic’ Jews to death and held their infamous ‘Auto-de-fè’ ceremonies – burning Jews at the stake. The Nazis, too, boasted of their invention for mass extermination of the Jewish nation in the fastest, most efficient and quietest way possible. Their most effective method was suffocation by Cyclon-B gas, which they coined ‘The final Solution’.   
     
 “We constantly mention Hashem’s Name – they collapse and fall and we rise up and live on.”