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Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Yes, it was on this day 75 years ago that the Soviets liberated the Auschwitz Death Camp, and so it came to symbolize the Holocaust and the need to remember the tragedy, in hopes that it would never be repeated again.
Unfortunately, it is being forgotten. Not even one century has yet passed, and the numbers are staggering, attesting to the fact that young people all over the world do not know or really understand the Holocaust.
Here are some snippets from a recent article (see link below) that reveal just how seriously this plague of forgetfulness is getting:
On the eve of Monday's 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, a new study has found that a quarter of French millennials haven’t heard of the Holocaust, while an earlier study of American millennials found that 66 per cent did not know what Auschwitz was.
More than 1.3 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, 90 per cent of them Jews. By the time the genocide of the Jews across Europe had ended, more than 3 million Jews had been wiped from existence in the death camps. The total Jewish dead stood in the vicinity of 6 million. They died in all corners of Europe, from disease in ghettos, from poison gas, mass shootings, live burial, beatings, incineration.
Seventy eight per cent of the Jews who had lived in territories that fell to the Nazis, perished. In comparison, between 1.4 per cent to 3 per cent of the non-Jewish population in the same territory was killed. Dynasties and entire families, great sages and common workers, Nobel laureates and humble students, whole villages and communities, all disappeared. Thriving Jewish intellectual and cultural centres like Krakow and Vilnius that had bustled with Jewish life, now reduced to rude husks, urban memorials of human depravity.
Scary stuff. Particularly when hate and violent acts and sentiments against groups of people appear to be on the rise.
Here is the link to the article I used in writing this sad blog entry about how we have allowed young people to not remember the Holocaust and the lessons that we should have learned from it:
Lest we forget? 75 years after Auschwitz, too many do by Alex Ryvchin, January 26, 2020:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/lest-we-forget-75-years-after-auschwitz-too-many-do-20200124-p53ugv.html?fbclid=IwAR1WMnIptPpNMu7_vSfL_qNKp5ML__7gJssiqQ0rNiBjZe9vW9FO7v8NQu8
Yes, it was on this day 75 years ago that the Soviets liberated the Auschwitz Death Camp, and so it came to symbolize the Holocaust and the need to remember the tragedy, in hopes that it would never be repeated again.
Unfortunately, it is being forgotten. Not even one century has yet passed, and the numbers are staggering, attesting to the fact that young people all over the world do not know or really understand the Holocaust.
Here are some snippets from a recent article (see link below) that reveal just how seriously this plague of forgetfulness is getting:
On the eve of Monday's 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, a new study has found that a quarter of French millennials haven’t heard of the Holocaust, while an earlier study of American millennials found that 66 per cent did not know what Auschwitz was.
More than 1.3 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, 90 per cent of them Jews. By the time the genocide of the Jews across Europe had ended, more than 3 million Jews had been wiped from existence in the death camps. The total Jewish dead stood in the vicinity of 6 million. They died in all corners of Europe, from disease in ghettos, from poison gas, mass shootings, live burial, beatings, incineration.
Seventy eight per cent of the Jews who had lived in territories that fell to the Nazis, perished. In comparison, between 1.4 per cent to 3 per cent of the non-Jewish population in the same territory was killed. Dynasties and entire families, great sages and common workers, Nobel laureates and humble students, whole villages and communities, all disappeared. Thriving Jewish intellectual and cultural centres like Krakow and Vilnius that had bustled with Jewish life, now reduced to rude husks, urban memorials of human depravity.
Scary stuff. Particularly when hate and violent acts and sentiments against groups of people appear to be on the rise.
Here is the link to the article I used in writing this sad blog entry about how we have allowed young people to not remember the Holocaust and the lessons that we should have learned from it:
Lest we forget? 75 years after Auschwitz, too many do by Alex Ryvchin, January 26, 2020:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/lest-we-forget-75-years-after-auschwitz-too-many-do-20200124-p53ugv.html?fbclid=IwAR1WMnIptPpNMu7_vSfL_qNKp5ML__7gJssiqQ0rNiBjZe9vW9FO7v8NQu8
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