Never Forget - Holocaust Remembrance Day

Sunday is Holocaust Remembrance Day, but even with calendars all over my house, it is only listed on 30% of them. What's up with that? The Holocaust was and remains one of the most horrific, government sponsored acts of genocide that the world saw in the 20th century, but it only rates mention on 30% of calendars? There's just something wrong about that.

My grandparents didn't survive the Holocaust. My father's older brother was shot in the forests of Europe while fighting with the resistance. My mother's brothers and sisters, all twelve of them, died in the camps or with the resistance fighters. My cousins, other relations, and their friends were gathered, transported, and murdered in one of the most efficient killing industries that modern history has developed. To be completely clear, it wasn't just Jewish people who were killed in the various killing camps. It was also the Roma, homosexuals and a variety of political nay-sayers who were in the boxcars, the trucks, and the showers. The fact that the majority of the murdered were Jewish, however, means that this crime against humanity will never be forgotten and will never be unmentioned.

History works its way into the heritage and ceremony of the Jewish people. Hanukkah celebrates eight days of light from a single day's oil supply in the days of the Maccabean Revolt (165 BCE). The celebration of Passover celebrates the release of the Jewish people from slavery in the time of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. These events of Jewish history are still celebrated today. Jewish memory is long.

Light a Candle for Peace

Someday there will be a ceremony for the millions slain in the death camps and work camps of Hitler's Germany. Those things are still to come because it takes time to develop and codify ceremonies that will be celebrated and memorialized throughout the Ages to come. But it will happen. Until that time, remember the slain tomorrow while the full moon shines above us. Never forget.