![]() Thousands of mainly Jewish people participated in the 17th annual "March of the Living," a Holocaust commemoration. On IHRD, we all need to remember - and heed the lessons from - a painful part of our collective past for the good of our collective future.Jews from all over the world place small placards in front of the main railway building at the former Nazi death camp of Birkenau (Auschwitz II) in Oswiecim, southern Poland, May 2, 2011. “Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” “Without memory, there is no culture,” Wiesel wrote. He described this as essential to memory. Wiesel, whose parents and sister were murdered at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, spoke about Holocaust survivors as having a terrible burden and important role in sharing their personal journeys through hell, with the hope this will help avoid a reoccurrence. As the late Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel so wisely said, “Anyone who listens to a witness becomes a witness.” It’s up to everyone who listens to continue telling these narratives to remind all of us to never let them happen again, not only to Jews but to any community. Today, in upholding the “never again” pledge, we must listen to those survivors still among us to help ensure the horrors they lived through won’t be forgotten. In Toronto, that’s happening through community initiatives, including the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, the new Toronto Holocaust Museum opening in the spring, and the Tour for Humanity, the specially equipped mobile education centres run by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (the organization I head). As their voices wane, it’s all our duty, Jews and non-Jews alike, to find ways to keep their stories alive and relevant for younger and future generations. Within a decade, few will be left to share first-hand testimony. Each year, like grains of sand emptying from the top half of an hourglass, the number of Holocaust survivors and witnesses continues to diminish. Ironically, IHRD is more important today than ever. When they recount their harrowing, heart-wrenching experiences, it’s not so much a history lesson as a gripping personal testimony, illustrating what can happen when a society forsakes basic human values and allows hate to go unchecked. Historically, survivors have been central to Holocaust commemoration and education. Without survivors and the poignant, living connection with history they provide, there’s a risk the day will seem less real, more remote. Better late than never, I suppose.įor IHRD to make a major impact, dry facts in school textbooks aren’t enough. That it took 50 years until the UN finally devoted a day to the memory of one of the worst human rights abominations on record reflects poorly on the world body. On this date in 1945, Red Army troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest and most notorious of the Nazi death camps. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. The further in time we move away from it, the more important it is to commemorate and learn from this period of unspeakable horror. With the passage of time, it doesn’t get easier to contemplate the Holocaust.Īs the world prepares to mark IHRD amid a global surge in antisemitism, the lessons of human history’s darkest chapter should loom large. How does one understand the reality of a civilized country, such as Germany, unleashing a campaign of industrialized mass murder driven by racist ideology? How does one make sense of it being so widely supported by much of the population? How does one come to terms with the genocide of six million Jews and millions of others? What it says about the human capacity for evil and depravity is sobering, to say the least. It defies what we want to believe about humankind. Admittedly, given its sheer scope and size, understanding the Holocaust, on one level, is extremely difficult. When it comes to the Holocaust, awareness is woefully lacking among many Canadians, especially the young. ![]() It requires a degree of knowledge and an understanding of history. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD) is a powerful reminder there’s nothing like the past to help humanity better tackle the present and address the future.
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