Nicely said… let’s all hope it never happens again, and we can stop the ones that are still happening today.

My best friend’s mom died just a couple months ago. She was a Holocaust survivor. She had a tattoo on her forearm with a number. Her whole life she suffered from the horrible memories that haunted her. She fell into and out of depression. She raised a wonderful family with three kids and many grandchildren, but had trouble appreciating them because of the indignities she and so many others suffered.

It’s a difficult lesson to pass on to my children. How do you tell the story of the Holocaust and WWII to a child?

Yeah, this is a very difficult topic. It is hard to imagine that things like this happened, or that people treated each other like this. Buit then you look at places like Haiti and Darfur and the Kurds in Iraq, and realize it is still happening.

I think everyone should visit the concentration camps. It is one of the hardest things I ever did, but one of the most rewarding as well.

Doug

Thanks for sharing, and remembering.

I was not aware of Yom Hashoah. I had the chance to goto the Dallas Holocaust Museum twice one when I was much younger and the second time was in high school. The second time going, I had much more comprehension of the atrocities that were committed. Also for high school we had to read the Diary of Ann Frank as well as Night. It’s amazing that humans can do such things to each other. Certainly it is important to educate future generations so repeats of such atrocities will not happen again.

As an Israeli Jew I hold the issue very close to my heart. The increasing worldwide tolerance of Holocaust denial can only be combatted by increasing awareness of the truth everywhere – even on tech blogs.
“Never again” is a phrase that rings hollow while millions are slaughtered (on the UN’s watch) in Darfur and the threat of annihilation is made daily against my country without a single repercussion.
Nonetheless. it is important to remember for the sake of the millions of victims of WW2 alone.

Melvyn, you make a good point. I thought about mentioning Holocaust denial in the original post, but decided against it. To me, Holocaust denial is one of the single most offensive and harmful things I have seen. For those who are not familiar, it comes in several different forms, all of which essentially result in the theory that the Holocaust never happened or was significantly exageratted by those who would have a Jewish state.

I respond to this with my personal experiences visiting these concentration and death camps. And I’ll leave it at that (I don’t really think any more detail is appropriate in this space).

Doug