Auschwitz 70 Commemorative Letter

To all my Facebook friends,

Tomorrow (or tonight) I urge each one of you to take a little bit of time out of your very fulfilling life and remember what this day is all about. January 27th is a very important day to us as a people because we cannot forget that atrocity is all around us, especially in the times we live. January 27th is a day for reflection and to remember the lives lost, not just in the Holocaust, but in any genocide whether it's the Native American genocide or the recent genocides in Rwanda or Cambodia. Genocide is one of the world's saddest concepts and it's such a big concept that we can barely begin to understand it and if we try it crushes us.

I am an ameuter Holocaust historian as you all well know. Some ask why I like this period of time, and honestly that isn't the right word to use and it almost comes off as inappropriate. I don't like this time period at all. I think the acts committed by the Nazis during this period were so unspeakable that no word can sum them up properly. I study this time period because I think the past holds a key to the future. If we repeat the past then we won't have a better future; and like children we won't learn from the mistakes we made in the past and we keep making them. Some people ask me if the Holocaust has affected me directly and the answer is actually yes and it continues to affect me to this day. I am disabled, and the Nazis killed people like me. The Holocaust is wrongly believed by many to be solely part of Jewish history, but it's really a part of world history because countless other groups like Poles, disabled people, homosexuals, political enemies, etc were also targeted in the Nazis' program to purify Europe as they saw fit. I am not Jewish but my best friend is and I can't imagine anyone hurting her or her family. The world needs to realize that the Holocaust holds importance to every person and not just the Jews. If gentiles don't help our Jewish friends with the campaign to remember we will have come nowhere from where we were in the war when most looked the other way.

That is unacceptable.

So why is Auschwitz 70 so significant? We still have survivors with us today but it saddens me that they are slowly diminishing. There will come a time soon when no survivors will be able to gather at Auschwitz like they are doing tomorrow. When that time comes it will be up to us to go on their behalf. It will be up to us to say, "I will not forget. I stand with the victims and survivors to remember." So I ask each one of you to take a minute out of your day to reflect, light a candle, or even just spread the word about why January 27th is so important. I know a whole generation of people that your acknowledgment of tomorrow's significance will mean the world to.

I will say Never Forget and Never Again not just tomorrow but every day. I hope you will as well too.

Thank you for your time.