12,000 survivors of the Holocaust died this past year. In Israel, a survivor of the Holocaust dies every hour. Soon, there will be none. Who will remember?
Of all the genocides in the history of humankind, the Holocaust – that took the lives of 6,000,000 Jews, including 1,000,000 children – stands out as the most brutal, the most vicious and the most catastrophic – as Hitler and his Nazi horde attempted to annihilate the Jewish people. It was not just happenstance that 6,000,000 Jews were killed. Hitler targeted them, slaughtered them and nearly succeeded in eliminating them from the face of the earth. The Holocaust – the most written about, filmed about and spoken about event in human history – will be officially remembered tomorrow, April 19, 2012. The Houston commemoration will take place this Sunday afternoon, April 22.
There are those among us who cynically seek to ignore the Holocaust as history left on the book shelves. There are those among us who diabolically seek to deny the Holocaust ever occurred. And, there are those among us who ignorantly believe that the Jews were not singled out by Hitler.
They are all wrong.
The Holocaust is history but it is history worth teaching so that such a catastrophic occurrence never repeats itself. It is history that we must teach to our children and our children’s children so that we can truly mean what we say: “Never Again.”
The Holocaust did occur. There is ample evidence through the still existing death camps, through the remaining survivors who have told their stories and through the volumes of personal testimonies that have been documented through books, articles, oral histories and films.
And, though there were millions of others that were killed, Hitler did single out the Jews alone for total annihilation through his depraved sense of the future of the world.
As the years go by, it is easier and easier to forget. But, let us never forget. Let us, indeed, remember.