I worry sometimes about how to keep my children aware of the holocaust. How do I prevent them from just thinking it was just some event that happened a long time ago? When they reach my age what will they and the world do for the 100th anniversary of Auschwitz? Let us hope we can always remember.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Remembering the Holocaust
As you probably know today was the sixtieth
anniverary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In religious school as
a kid we read books, saw gruesome movies, met holocaust survivors and
I visited a concentration camp during a college trip to Europe. But
the enormity of the holocaust hit me most during my sabbatical year in
Amsterdam in 1996. One fourth of the population of the city was
Jewish in the 30's. We had to work hard to find the small Jewish
population so we could properly celebrate the Jewish holidays during
our year there.
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I think that the best way to get some understanding of what happend there is to hear the stories of survivors. I remember when I went on a highschool trip to the camps in poland, we had two survivors that went with us everywhere and told us their stories in the same places where these stories happend. It makes me sad to think that in a decade or so this will be impossible, and that the only way to hear these stories will be on video.
ReplyDeleteIt is painful to see that such atrocities, though in smaller scale, are happening even today. Rwanda and Sudan are examples. It is also surprising that the descendants of the victims of the holocaust are also ill treating others today. So, unfortunately, the human kind has not learned not learned much from the experience.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are "descendants of the victims of the holocaust" who are ill treating others today, but I think that comparisons to the Holocaust, or to the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, ought to be reserved for cases of organized extermination.
ReplyDeleteAll of those aren't bad?
ReplyDeletetoo bad no one will care when the 60th anniversary of the bombing of dresden comes around in mid-february.
ReplyDelete25,000+ german civilians intentionally killed by firebombing from the allies. some sacrosant war that was.
Bombing of Dresden was clearly justified. It was a military action. This issue is discussed by historicans for 60 years. There is no way to to make a special dat out of every battle of the Second World War
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