My family's story-Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day

[Danmel]

Last edited Thu Jan 27, 2022, 02:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date was chosen because it is the day, now 77 years past, that the Russian Red Army liberated the notorious Auschwitz death camp and witnessed the unspeakable horrors before them.
My profile picture is of my father's sister, for whom I am named. She and my paternal grandmother Sprintze, and countless other of my father's relatives, friends and neighbors perished in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and many more. Every one in my family, on my fathers side, is named for a relative we never got to know because they were murdered for being Jews.
My father and his brother survived Auschwitz and other camps. My father was liberated from the Plattling camp in Germany by Patton's Third Army on April 28, 1945, which he called his second birthday.
All of my relatives who were survivors have died. Soon, there will be no survivors to tell their history, so it falls on us, not just the children of survivors, but all of us to learn what happened, try to comprehend how it happened in an educated, intellectually and culturally modern country like Germany and spread like an out of control deadly virus across Europe.
It is our duty to not only remember and pass that duty on, but to rededicate ourselves to promoting love, understanding, compassion and respect for all of our fellow travelers on this blue ball in space.
We must open our eyes and see what is before us and resist gaslighting and hateful rhetoric.
The recent wave of Anti-Semitic and other hate crimes is proof, right before our eyes. It spreads and if no one stops it, burns out of control. Just in the past weeks we have seen members of a synagogue held hostage during Shabbat services,witnessed an anti-Semitic attack on a young child in New York City, heard vile anti-vaccine rhetoric from Robert Kennedy, Jr. likening health initiatives to Nazi Germany, and seen posters blaming Jews for Covid distributed around the country.

Remember. Zachor. But that is not enough.

Speak out, educate and fight hatred. It is far more lethal than any other virus.

[Boomerproud]

1. Words are not enough to Express my sorrow for your family.

Will we ever learn?

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Thank you for sharing.

It is indeed sobering to think there will soon be NO survivors, especially given this climate of Holocaust denialism and revisionism.

From the President:

Statement by President Biden on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
JANUARY 27, 2022
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STATEMENTS AND RELEASES
Today, we attempt to fill a piercing silence from our past—to give voice to the six million Jews who were systematically and ruthlessly murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, and to remember the millions of Roma, Sinti, Slavs, disabled persons, LGBTQ+ individuals, and political dissidents who were killed during the Shoah. It was a destructive force so unimaginable that it gave rise to an entirely new vocabulary of evil: words like “holocaust,” “genocide,” and “crimes against humanity.” We join with nations of the world to grieve one of the darkest chapters in human history—and to bear witness for future generations so that we can make real our sacred vow: “never again.”

This charge is even more urgent with each passing year, as fewer and fewer survivors remain to share their stories of lives lost and lives rebuilt.

As a child, I first learned of the Holocaust listening to my father at our dining room table. As a father and grandfather, I brought my own family to see its haunting remnants at the Dachau concentration camp. And today, as President, I’ll welcome Bronia Brandman to the Oval Office. A survivor of Auschwitz who lost her parents and four of five siblings, she could not speak of her experiences for half-a-century. Today, she’ll share her story at the White House—and speak for millions who never got the chance.

Today, and every day, we have a moral obligation to honor the victims, learn from the survivors, pay tribute to the rescuers, and carry forth the lessons of last century’s most heinous crime. From the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, to a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, we are continually and painfully reminded that hate doesn’t go away; it only hides. And it falls to each of us to speak out against the resurgence of antisemitism and ensure that bigotry and hate receive no safe harbor, at home and around the world.

We must teach accurately about the Holocaust and push back against attempts to ignore, deny, distort, and revise history—as we did this month, when the United States co-sponsored a UN resolution that charged the international community with combating Holocaust denial through education. We must continue to pursue justice for survivors and their families. And we must ensure that aging survivors have access to the services they need to live out their lives in dignity.

We cannot redeem the past. But, on this day, as we mourn humanity’s capacity to inflict inhuman cruelty, let us commit to making a better future and to always upholding the fundamental values of justice, equality, and diversity that strengthen free societies.

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Office of the President