Especially Now We Must Not Forget

 245,000.  Remember that number.

This is one of the days I pause my normally happy programming.  It will be back tomorrow.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in modern day Poland.

Yes, what we call The Holocaust happened.  We still have living survivors - some 245,000.  95% of them were children.  It will not be that long, sadly, before most all of them are gone.

We are already forgetting.   What happens when they are all gone and we have no living witnesses?

We must not hide history, even if it's painful.  We deny it at our peril.  The type of hate that led to the Holocaust is on the rise.  People are angry and frustrated. They are frightened for the future  They want someone in power that can fix it.  Someone with a lot of power.

That usually doesn't end well.

I've blogged about this before, and part of this post is taken from a post I wrote in January, 2023.

I read about the Holocaust as a young girl.  I knew Holocaust survivors - they were the parents of some of my friends.  It wasn't spoken about, but I breathed it in with each breath.  And those books, geared to young children? Some were published by Scholastic.  They included pictures, too.  Yes, perhaps not the worst pictures, but these children's books were never hidden from me.

It didn't wreck me.  Rather, my parents hoped that I would be in an adult where hatred of Jews and other minorities in this country would disappear.

That world has never existed, and it's getting worse.  It's acceptable once again to show hate.  Incidents of hate continue to rise both here and in other countries.  It isn't just the Holocaust.

 

I am horrified at the efforts to silence the teaching of certain parts of our history here in the United States, because, if anything needs to be taught in our schools (besides reading, writing, arithmetic and life skills one will need as an adult) to every child, it is history - including the history of how and when evil seemed to triumph for a time, and why.  It happened in Europe in the 1930's and 40's.  It happened here in the United States from time to time.  

 

These are universal themes, this hating of "the other".

 

Just to be clear, "that other" may be your co workers, your friends, members of where you worship, your family (and maybe you don't even know all about your family), the people who grow and harvest your food, your medical professionals, your childrens' friends, the military people and first responders who protect you.

We must teach our children well, even as we adults confront this rise in hate.

"Never Again"begins with "Never Forget".  I think those 245,000 survivors of an actual event would agree with this.

 

"Never Forget" begins with good education.