” Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) is set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding all people of what can happen when bigotry, hatred and indifference reign. ”
When I was a young teenager I use to have these vivid dreams, dreams that I was on a train, a cold damp crowded train, headed for a concentration camp, terrified, knowing that only death awaited me.
It is on this day, at sundown, that Jewish people everywhere, take a moment, and reflect on the utter devastation of the Holocaust. It is an opportunity to remember those who died, not just the Jews, but the millions of others who perished in the death camps, and to honor their memory by not allowing another genocide to occur. But sadly, the world has not learned. We have the examples of Cambodia, Rwanda, and the most recent atrocities in Darfur.
Last night, tears gently rolling down my cheeks, I sat quietly, alone, and watched a wonderful Hallmark movie about a brave woman, Irena Sendler. Risking her life, she saved 2,500 Jewish Polish children in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was an amazing story to watch. Having been to the Holocaust Musuem in D.C. several times, I will never understand the evil that lurks within human beings. The horror of Germany was that it was a modern society, steeped in culture and science.
Irena Sendler stands as a testament to the good that can reside within us. Torture and threat of death, could not break her resolve to protect the children, and the brave families who risked their lives to hide them from the Nazi’s. She was an ordinary person, brave enough, to do the extraordinary.
Today, even in the 21st century, you still have Holocaust deniers, like the President of Iran, who proclaimed at the U.N. Conference in Switzerland, “the state of Israel had been founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering” during the Second World War.”
Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, Canada and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
